The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast

Jay White answered a newpaper ad looking for a radio writer. Turns out he had a knack after listening to decades of rock radio. Little did he know what it could lead to. When he took a job writing copy for Bass Pro Shops, his skills jumped up. When all you have is 50 words to sell both low and high-ticket items… your copy has to be tight. In 2004, he went freelance and has never looked back. Writing for some of the planet’s most well-known online “gurus”… like Rich Shefren, Alex Mandossian, Jeff Walker and Jay Abraham. Now he has a controversial viewpoint he’d like to share. He’s heard the same advice for too long and Jay’s experience is different. It’s what I’d call “client-first”. What do clients want from a copywriter? Listen now and find out where your copy career may be careening off the tracks… In this episode, you’ll discover: How to stop leaving money on the table every time you work for a client. (Jay made this mistake for years, throwing away huge stacks of cash!) The P2P “Beetlejuice” lean-in copywriting secret. Stop the “building -2-building” writing and keep eyes on your copy. Writers Jay turns to when he feels his “picture painting” is getting stale. Do you find the hardest copy to write is your own promo material? Jay has answers. Against the grain career advice. Clients want this one thing…are you shooting yourself in the foot? Mentioned: Jay White’s Get CopyWriting Clients Email Copy Made Easy Tom Clancy’s books David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey,everybody We’re back with another edition of the podcast. I’m David Allan from makewrodspay.com. I’m your host as usual. And today we have an exciting guest someone that goes back to the very beginning of my own copywriting career and I took one of his courses. His name is Jay White. He’s from getcopywritingclients.com Jay welcome to the show. Jay White: Thank you very much David. It’s good to be here and thank you for making me sound like an old man in this industry. Because I am honestly I I’m an older guy in this game. But you know with with age comes experience so. That’s right. And wisdom hopefully hopefully. I don’t know. You have to ask my wife about that. David Allan: So it’s interesting is that like we talked about off the air, I took on your course back then A.W.A.I. course Autoresponder Apprentice which is now called Email Copy Made Easy and that was a second I think copywriting course I ever took. But you’ve been sort of off the radar – my radar Anyways maybe this is an unfair. Then recently I attended a couple of your webinars so maybe take us back to the beginning. Like how did you get into all this. Who was your super hero origin story of where you came from and then bring this up today. Jay White: Well you know I’ve been right about 20 years. I didn’t I didn’t set out to be a copywriter. It was not a dream it was not a goal. You know I didn’t even I didn’t even ever think about running my own business. You know I came from a family where you know you went to work for a guy and then you worked for them for 40 years and then you retired and you know just a typical thing. I never I never dreamed about owning my own business but I guess it was 1997 maybe 1998. I answered that ad in a newspaper somebody was looking locally here for a radio commercial writer. And at the time I was working in the insurance industry I had was I was just freshly married about 30 years old and not just not going anywhere. You know I knew that insurance wasn’t for me. And what I was doing was probably going to put me in an early grave because of the stress. And so I answered this ad and I got this little little bitty job writing in the basement of a radio station writing commercials and I was making nothing. I mean just it was just a pittance. And I was having a blast. Right. For some reason I had a knack for plugging into the rhythm to the pacing to the to the format of a good radio commercial and the only thing that I can think of that prompted that was you know 30 plus years of listening to classic rock radio in my car with my buddies and hearing commercials over and over and over again so pretty soon you got to you know there’s a format to them. Maybe you want this for. The answer and here’s the details and here’s how to get it. And so I just kind of plugged into that and I had a knack for it. And next thing you know I was winning some awards and you know things like that and I thought well maybe I’m on to something here. I ended up moving from there into a catalog writing gig we have a bass pro shops headquarters nearby where I live here in southwest Missouri. And they were looking for a catalog writer and I thought well here’s a good step up. And so I went in there and started writing catalog copy and I did that for six or seven years and let me tell you that was the best education I could have ever received as a copywriter because they throw you into the mix and it’s like you’ve got 50 words to sell this product. Go ahead and you know sometimes the product is. It costs 99 cents and sometimes it costs ninety nine dollars and sometimes it costs nine hundred ninety nine dollars. So you really want your feet to the fire in that situation. But let me tell you that was where I really honed my copywriting skills. And what was going on all this time was I was learning how to write really good direct response copy. I just didn’t know it. I was just doing what I was came natural to me in about 2004. I had the opportunity when the opportunity I decided to go freelance writing and big huge huge you know move on my part but in my life when I felt like it was the best move. And so you know after a while of kind of arranging a movie in 2006 I actually did it. I actually in January 2006 I launched my freelance career and I never looked back. I quickly became one of the email and auto responder copywriters of choice to the internet marketing guru at least at the time. And we’re talking guys like rich friend and Jeff Walker Alex Mandos in does some stuff for Jay Abraham. Steven Pierce Joe com a lot of the guys at the time who were big who were big names and I was their email not a response guy for the most part and the reason I was able to to excel in that area so quickly is because I had honed my short copy skills in catalog and I was able to move those right into an email format. I didn’t know how to write emails. You know I remember the first time somebody said Can you write me an auto responder. I said what’s not a response I mean I didn’t know. So but all I did was do what I had already known how to do was take a short piece of copy and turn it into a selling prospect and selling to a prospect and you know my career kind of took off from there. 2009 I was able to hook up with the AI and we released autoresponder Apprentice. It was one of the biggest launches they ever had. Teaching people how to write out responders we rebranded that few years ago an email copy made easy is still one of their best sellers. I do a lot more coaching and teaching these days than I do writing. In fact I hardly do any writing at all I focus just on my students and it’s been it’s been quite a ride but it’s been a great ride and I’m really I’m really looking forward to what’s next. Yeah that’s awesome. It’s a great story. Like I said originally I was one of the purchases of that product that I thought it was great it was right to the point and made things very easy to understand. I had some previous experience with the ferry system I guess. Yeah it was just along those same lines. You know another person sort of trumpeting the same sort of ideas. But you know I was impressed with as well just a casual conversation. I think to call it like water cooler talk. Yeah yeah. And that’s really the crux of my whole style. You know I had guys I didn’t I didn’t go out and read something from a from a director remark or direct marketing guru or some advertising it was all war. And so. So yeah watercooler talk is one of those things that is is kind of the crux of my whole e-mail structure and it’s the way that I approach e-mails and what that is really is that is just basically talking in a natural unhindered no selling type of of a way that you would around the water cooler in the morning at work you know and it involves getting somebody drawing somebody into an email by saying something and doing something that causes them to literally lean in and you know I mean lean in. I mean you know walking. Think about it if you’re if there’s a girl around the water cooler and somebody walks up and says Oh you wouldn’t believe the morning I just had everybody to stop what they’re doing. They look directly at that person they lean in them and they’re like what. You know what are we talking about. Give it up or even if you walk up and you say you wouldn’t believe what my kid did today or you wouldn’t believe what happened to me on the way to work or I’m so mad I could spit nails or or I’m just. I’m sorry I’m cracking up so bad over what I just saw. All these things are our little statements that cause people to stop what they’re doing and pay attention to you and lean in. And that’s extremely important. In an e-mail especially today when there’s an inbox that has hundreds of e-mails every morning waiting for people to address them how do you get their attention. How do you get them to open it and how do you get them to engage in e-mail and lead them down the process to a to clicking a link and you know taking an action. So that’s really what my process my whole thing kind of revolves around is the concept of watercooler talk. Yeah I think that’s a perfect perfect way to describe it. I think when I took that original Matt Furey course he would say like write like you talk talk like you’re right. Exactly. Exactly. And that’s a perfect casual converse after John Carleton’s say the same thing and you know one interesting anecdote I will say that I’ve never really heard before and this is a way for people who maybe maybe English isn’t your first language or you’re not familiar with maybe they are reading from here because they are not that familiar with but you speak the language. David Garfinkle gave me an absolutely great tip one time where he said you and he had to do this somebody somebody told him to do this or that which was he went into like a Starbucks or something and just recorded people MM Yeah. And then transcribed it over just to see how you know real people interact and not like you don’t know but it’s like when you have a second reference point it’s kind of like oh yeah. And you know I teach my students this all the time. If they if they send me a piece that they want to use as a sample on their website or it you know they’re writing for a client and they want me to critique and it looks like it was written as you know like a technical document or something. It’s an old. There’s an old movie called Beetlejuice I don’t know if you remember it or whatever but there was a there was a part in Beetlejuice where somebody had left the like the guidebook to the afterlife a house. And every time somebody would open it they’d read it and they go oh my gosh just reads like stereo unstretched and that’s the first thing I always think of when I say sort of this I’m reading stereo instructions no talk like people or write like people talk. Get into the conversation in their head. Use short phrases start your sentences with prepositions. You know you don’t have to be completely Grimmett you know use contractions. Oh my gosh wouldn’t believe how many people do not want to use contractions. Well guess what. Nobody talks that way. So write like they talk and make it comfortable for them to consume the words. If people have a words or a piece of copy David they will not do it. Period. No they won’t do it. And when I say work I mean you know all that copy block is more than four lines long it looks like it’s going to be work. I’m not going to read this. And sometimes that’s all it takes. Or if it reads clunky if it reads You know like stereo instructions. If it’s not interesting if it doesn’t engage it but not if it doesn’t flow smoothly from one thing to the next they will not read it. So you got to plug into that mindset when you’re writing. Yeah that’s really one of the real crux is when you know it’s a one to one conversation and so you know when you get that feeling from it from reading something really well-written in terms of using that technique then it really seems like that person is speaking right to you. Yes. And just you and that’s that’s really what compels people to read and to act. And the good point you made a good point there a second ago about a one one conversation I have a lot of people who say well you know do I need to change the way I talk. For be to be e-mails or for be to be you. I’m like No we’re not building to building here building the buildings. It’s happy it’s people the people. So talk to them like you would normally talk to them Do you want to bulk up your your your grammar a little bit because it is a business type environment. Maybe but you don’t. You know ice for a while there I worked for some people who who used to want me to write these things from. From the company to another company. And oh my goodness. It was like yes I understand you have an MBA. We all know you know. Good Lord can we just talk to each other in a way that makes sense for everybody. I just I don’t subscribe to that notion it’s like let’s just talk to each other and do business and and be real instead of trying to be something that we’re not. Yeah you really come across that when you start writing for other people as on Web sites and then their sales material or whatever is that it’s got this very stero I don’t want to offend anybody. I’m trying to stay away from anything controversial and it got so far away from anything that it just doesn’t resonate at all. It seems like a robot just spit it out. Absolutely absolutely. Nobody wants to read that nobody will. You know we want we want to be we want to read things that are interesting. We want to read things that are engaging that pleased us and that entertain us you know and it has to be it has to be easy and it has to be you know quick to consume now for yourself. Jay did you do you read stuff anything in particular outside of you know like I remember back you know when I got into copywriting Gary Halbert would suggest to people that work to read Travis McGee detective novels. Yeah and stuff like that. I know people read you know Jack Reacher novels or people talk about and so forth and you know what are some of your favorites. Does he read outside. You know for writing purposes that you read outside of you know fiction is I guess you know that’s an interesting lesson. A lot of people ask me you know have you read you know this business book or that business book or whatever. And I you know as far as that kind of stuff I have a confession to make. Those things are just as boring as all get out. And I understand that they are helpful and there’s new ideas there. But every time I try to pick one up you know I just want to fall asleep. Now what I did and I think this you touched on something here. I grew up as a reader. I read everything I could get my hands on. I had a stack of comic books in my room that was like three feet high and I’m sure if I still had those today I’d be probably a multimillionaire because I’m a Spider-Man 1 and you know whatever but I used to read those things over and over and over again and then I would read short stories and novels and I think that that has helped me to hone my craft to live even better along the way. So one thing that I do when I when I feel my writing getting stale and this happens to everybody you know you kind of level off and you go oh you know and you just kind of get into a little rut. I always go out and I get a new novel. And guys I like to read are people like Stephen King who can describe the situation and just so brilliantly guys like I’m kind of a Tom Clancy novel fan you know. Even though Tom’s gone now but I still like to read his stuff. There’s just it when you read a good author it’s like it imprints you are what you need to do to make your copy work. And it’s not just syntax or grammar or anything like that which is important. It’s also painting a picture. You know these guys can paint a picture so sharply in your head that you’re literally seeing everything and you’re also filling in spots. You know that that maybe they didn’t subscribe or they didn’t describe so clearly but you’re filling it in automatically because everything else is so brilliantly done. And so that’s what helps me it helps me to kind of refresh my picture painting technique and to really approach the copy in a new and fresh way after reading some really good fiction plot because it’s sort of up to where you’re at today. I got in contact do you have to listen to a couple of your webinars which I thought were excellent. And you have some interesting takes on what people teach nowadays so maybe take you know take us forward. You said you’ve got your writing has kind of in the past sort of most of behind you and you’re into coaching and helping students so maybe let’s get into that a bit. Yeah you know once I released my product through a I had a lot of people started approaching me about do you do personal coaching and I never even thought about it but I I started working out a program where I could help copywriters basically get client ready. And that was all about trying to get them working and moving forward in their career as as as good as possible and not just an email copy but in their entire copywriting career. One of the things that inevitably was a big hurdle and a big stopping point for my students was marketing no matter how well they could write no matter how far along they were in their copywriting journey they always got to the marketing point and started to stumble I don’t know how to contact clients I don’t know where to find clients. What niche should I be in if I do talk to somebody what do I say if they want to talk to me how do I reply You know I mean it just went on and on. So finally I kind of pulled back my coaching program actually I kind of pulled it off the market and I started to rework it. And now it’s reworked into just a marketing program for copywriters and it’s all marketing centric. It’s it’s been really really I’ve done this I guess it’s probably been about six or eight months now and it’s really really taken off and gotten a lot of a good head of steam as they say and what I’ve done is one of the things you were you were kind of alluding to here. I’m I’m I’m going against the grain on what a lot of people teach. And you know I’ve seen people out there that will teach the fact that you need to be this type of copywriter in this type of niche so you have to you have to establish yourself as a female copywriter in the health and wellness niche or as a social media copywriter in the financial niche. That’s the only way to be successful in fact I just saw a young lady in a video the other day saying no you specializing is the only way that you get clients these days. And I’m like one guys you know I understand a specialization thing and I understand you’re thinking you want to do this new. I want to do that. But here’s what you’ve got to remember. A client once a copywriter that they can hand everything to they don’t want five different copywriters that specialize in five different things. They don’t want to think OK I need some web copy. Which one of these people is my web copy guy this gets my e-mail guy. And she’s she’s only social media. So no no no no. You know what they want. They want you to come in and take care of whatever they need. Period end of story. Do you think they want all those people to juggle and try to you know work projects around. No. You’ve got to make it simple for the client. What I see in this whole knitting thing is that people are trying to set themselves up as as a star in a certain way and they’re not thinking about what the client wants. Right. OK. If you set yourself up as a certain copywriter in a certain niche guess what. You’re the box of clients possible clients that you have is very very tiny. OK. However if you go into a certain niche that you’re more knowledgeable experienced and or passionate about and you walk in you say here’s is who I am here’s what I do here’s what makes me unique which is my knowledge and experience or passion in this particular niche. And here’s how to contact me. Well that gives them all the reason to just say yeah. What how. You know what can we do to get together. You know when you walk in and you say what can I do for you as opposed to I want to write your emails or I want to write your Facebook posts. Well guess what. They may not need Facebook posts. Yeah. I mean you know one of the examples I have on my web right now is my own experience and this you know I was the e-mail not a response guy for a long long time. And you know I was doing very well in that well. Inevitably people would thanked me for emails a lot of responders and I would make a deal and they say Great. Now do you also do write in ages do you also do sales letters. Guess what. They needed more for me. And you know what I did guys I would say no I don’t do that. So literally literally they were pushing another stack of money over to me on the table and saying Would you like to take this money. And I was saying oh no I just want this. Responders. You know it took me because I’m thick headed it took me a couple of years before I realized wait a minute. Am I giving up here on the table. I don’t know if I fell down or if I but my head or how this apparently came to me. But you know finally I said I can’t believe I’m doing this. And so I would walk in and I would say instead of saying I’m an e-mail writer can I write your e-mails. I would walk in and say I’m Jay White. I’m a direct response copywriter and marketer. What can I do for you. And guess what they tell you everything that they need and when they tell you everything that they need you say I can help you with that. You go back. You make a proposal that gives them everything that they need. You come back and they write you a check. It’s that simple but it’s all about thinking about what the client wants as opposed to what you want to be or how you want to present yourself. That makes great sense and make good sense and is true. I think I did the same thing actually which is interesting because I learned about e-mails first and as a result I really only thought about e-mails because I’m taking courses like we talked about earlier. And so I was like OK I’m going to do e-mail. I had the exact same thing happen to me. And then there wasn’t even that people even asked me as I was when they did the e-mail I looked at some of this stuff and I said well this is not going to work very well. These e-mails kick ass. They go to sales pages that are like atrocious. Yeah. This isn’t going to work you know. So I said well yes fix it you know and I also talked my way into more work because I’m basically saying this isn’t going to work unless you do best. So it is very interesting that sometimes you just gotta go out don’t do what we did and you do it the hard way do it. They say yeah you know it’s so much easier when you do it that way and it frees you up to work to write anything for everybody. Well Jay that is great information you have been entertaining and knowledgeable guest on the show today if people want to get in touch with you. What’s the best way to get in touch. Well I have a web in our set up that get copywriting clients dotcom. Get copywriting clients com free webinars. I go into a lot more detail in some of the things I talked about today. And then at the end you’ll have an opportunity get on a call with me if you like to talk further about what we do and see if you’re a good fit for my program some people are some people aren’t. But this is you know if you are a copywriter if you’re a freelance writer at all. You know I don’t want to put you into the copywriting box. If you’re an arc or a writer or a blog writer or an email writer or a cop you know whatever case studies white papers it doesn’t really matter if you’re a freelance writer who wants to make money from from from what you do or is not making enough money from what you do. My webinars will help kind of open your eyes a little bit to a few things and get you rolling in the right direction. And like I said at the end if you want to schedule some time with me I’ll talk with you personally and we’ll see if you’re a good fit. Maybe I can help you maybe not but either way my webinars will help you to move forward in your career. I promise you Gabb copywriting clients dot com. Absolutely I agree. I watch the web for myself it’s fantastic and it’s funny to watch as it’s entertaining. So it’s well put together and that that in and of itself is a great lesson. Actually it’s an art itself. It’s just me man you know I can’t be I literally just before we got on this call I was listening to another webinars by somebody and it was so clean and so precise and the graphics were beautiful. And God bless this woman. She’s very very good at what she does. But I I was watching this and thinking gosh I sound like an idiot on mine. You know what I don’t know how else to do it. You’re you’re you know there’s my wife’s father has a saying You say this is who I am warts and all. And that’s kind of what I say that’s what you do when you see me. This is Jay warts and all and I’m and I’m I really I just give you everything I can to help you. I don’t hold back. And so if you want just an all shucks Midwest you know dork to your writing career then I’m your guy. Well thanks a lot Jack. I really want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show and drop such valuable knowledge to all our our freelancers and would be freelancers. Well I appreciate it David. And again get copywriting clients dot com. Check out my Web and our no obligation just you know just check it out and hopefully we’ll all be talking to you soon. For everybody else. You know what a fantastic show this was a lot of great knowledge there stuff you should be doing every day like says mid-off 20 minutes spent marking yourself as a copywriter then you shouldn’t be in this industry period. And hopefully we’ll be back again with another just as exciting just as knowledgeable guests. Next week on the show until then. The post Episode #174 – Jay White On Do You Need A Niche? Controversial Client Secrets From A Freelance Copy Warrior appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

It’s the podcast with the two Daves. Both with roots in the magic community. Dave Dee grew up aspiring to be a performer. Everyone and I mean everyone… dissuaded him. “Get a real job” “What’s your backup plan?” You know what disappoints him most? He listened. He spent years following other paths and jumping around trying to be things he wasn’t. When he decided to stay late at a motivational event… everything changed. He went from magic pauper to booked like crazy. In the process, he kept increasing his ability to SELL. When he sold $575,000 in 45 minutes he’d found his next level. He can help you get to yours. In this episode, you’ll discover: The whopping amount of money he made with a promotion to sales manager in an early selling job. How Dave took his performing business from three shows a month to an average of 25 – in 90 days flat. (This works no matter what business you’re in). These two key ingredients separate the winners from the losers in business. (If you can’t do these two things…nothing else matters!). Where to start if you want to create a business and life changing sales presentation. (Dave is giving away his slide-by-slide template to listeners). Exactly what he’d remedy if he started all over again from scratch…can you relate? Mentioned: Dave’s website + FREE 7-figure template GKIC’s Magnetic Marketing Tom Hopkins David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey everybody, it’s David Allan of makewordspay.com and we’re here with another exciting guest today and this guy is someone I’ve been looking forward to talking to because we have a very strong commonality where both come from the magic community the sleight of hand community. David Dee Welcome to the show. David Dee: Hey thanks so much for having me. Yeah I don’t think there’s a lot of people with that commonality by the way. David Allan: No I don’t think too many make it out of that rabbit hole. Oh yeah. David Dee: You know I suck at sleight of hand so that’s why I do mentalism just so you know so much more talented than I am when it comes to that for sure. David Allan: Well I heard a friend of mine, Paul Vigil, once say that mentalism is for people who don’t like the practice. So anyways great to have you on the show. I’ve been following your career for many years from as far as I got into marketing to a new sort of seemed to have taken me earlier yet same trajectory. And of course seen you on a lot of Dan Kennedy products and stuff which I am a huge fan of. So let’s go back to the very beginning Dave maybe even before you were a magician I don’t know how you got into that and we’ll take it all the way up to the present. David Dee: Yeah it’s an interesting story about the evolution and there’s a lot of lessons in it. So you know when I was very very young like a lot of kids I got a little magic sat by the way this is a really we start out talk about magic but this isn’t by magic this is really about this show. And I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I there was no doubt in my mind about it. There was no question and if that’s what I wanted to do and now my parents thought that was kind of cute. Right when I was eight when I was nine when I was 10. But when I got to be 16 17 18 and they no longer thought that was very cute. Right. So they gave me all of that. You know they’re the best parents on the planet. My friends call them Ward and June Cleaver with Oprah. They’re really young folks will see this school just look up Ward and June Cleaver on you. So my parents are and they wanted the best for me and they just had no idea about anything about being a magician or being an entertainer. And so I got a lot of negative programming. You know you can’t do that. It’s not practical. You’re going to have to get a real job. All of that have a backup plan. All of those kind of things. And so I went that route. You know I went to University of Massachusetts graduated with a degree in communication got a job in radio. Then I noticed everyone who was making any money in radio making really all of the money was not the on air talent but rather the salespeople. And so I said this is interesting. So I got into sales and I sucked I was like probably one of the world’s worst salespeople of all time and I really didn’t want to be doing that I really wanted to be a performer. So I eventually quit that job moved to where I live now in Atlanta and got a job working for a company called Magic Masters. Right. And the magic yeah magic Ken Fletcher’s company is the owner and Magic Masters is a chain of upscale magic stores that don’t cater to magicians but rather cater to conventioneers So basically they were in the convention hotels where obviously conventioneers would go and so we would stand up there and we would pitch magic tricks all day long. So that’s where I really started to learn how to sell what I call sell one to many sell in front of a group gather a group of people around do a demonstration for them and then close them on the sale. So I did that for a while I became the number one salesperson for the company. And then I was made sales manager and now I don’t want to be jealous about the number on my ticket. I’m not saying to impress anybody. OK. But as a sales manager being number one of the company I made a whopping $23000. Oh yeah. Nice. Yeah I know I know I know there’s a lot of your listeners right now are going my God I cannot wait to hear this guy’s secrets to how he could possibly do that. What’s really interesting today is when I go out and speak less than a day’s pay. And so that kind of I mean it’s kind of a neat thing. And so I eventually left that job actually got fired for that job because of my entrepreneurial spirit really and wanting to open up my own stores. And I did that for a while but I was still skirting around my real passion what I really wanted to do and I was felt deep in debt. I was $80000 in debt. I lost. I got fired from my job. My wife was pregnant. It was it was a nightmare. I mean it was one of those nightmare stories. And I had to make a decision. The decision was who was I going to actually pursue my dream as a performer really go for it or was I going to get a regular job and I knew if I got in a regular job that was it. Right. I’m not coming back. And so I went to a motivational seminar that came to town in Atlanta in the Peter low success seminars maybe some of your listeners will remember. Yeah. Zig Ziglar blades Zig Ziglar was one of the speakers and I think General Norman Schwarzkopf was the speaker. And so and then the last guy in the program was it was an entity. And I never heard of him before but he was after Schwarzkopf. Everyone’s going up and leaving I sat down and I watch and he was talking about marketing. And then it really hit me right there as I’m sitting in my chair that this is the whole secret to the whole game. It doesn’t matter what a great entertainer I am if nobody knows about me if I can’t generate lead then I can’t close sales. It doesn’t matter how good I am because as you know and it’s not just in magic it’s in every profession. It’s what they train you want it to get good at your craft so the warrior is trained on how to be a good lawyer. The dentist is trained on how to be a good dentist chiropractor a good chiropractor. We’re not trained in school about how to run a business or how to market how to sell which is the key. And so a major key shift in my mindset was I went from thinking of myself as a magician to thinking of myself as a marketer of entertainment services. Right. And yet with that shift everything changed because it focused my energy on the correct part of what I should be doing. Right which is marketing. And so I got Dan’s course I started studying that I implemented it immediately and I just bought books and I just I did massive implementation right. Massow not bad. By the way reading and studying is not implementation. A lot of people mess that up they think that they’re actually accomplishing something as they finish the book. Does doesn’t matter if you finish the book. What you do with the book is what you do with the course that makes a difference. And so a lot of people say yeah right. They buy the course right. They get the high from buying the course and they go and buy the next course but they never implemented. I just took Macs. I had to make this work right. No if ands or buts this had to work. And no choice. And so I just did massive action. Most of it most of the marketing stuff I created sucked. I mean sure but I just did massive stop. I did everything I possibly could do everything I could do and the bottom line is this. I went from doing three shows a month averaging 25 shows a month at less than 90 days. Yeah. In my fourth month I did 57 shows in a month. Yeah. And by the end of a year. By the end of the year I paid off all of my debt. I had bought a new house I had bought a new car everything changed and I really never looked back. That what happened was other I started speaking at seminars not for magicians just were business people and other business people smart business people started asking me Well how did you do it. Because they understood that marketing is marketing and selling is selling. It doesn’t grow and it’s all relatively the same height regardless of what your business is. You know you have to generate leads you’ve got to close. You’ve got to get referrals get deliver the service so it’s the same thing. And so I started doing coaching and training and things like that. And today I you know I run my own business out of my home. I love it. Kicking butt taking names and helping a lot of people and my real focus right now is on teaching people how to sell one to many how to do webinars how to do seminars. Just did a tell a seminar right before a call with a large franchise company. You’re like how or how could you do a tele seminar for a franchise company. Well really the motto was we generated leads and obviously we’re not selling a $50000 franchise. Tell us on a 60 minute seminar but we had people sign up too for a call right. So we had thirty three people on and 12 people signed up to get on a call to learn more about buying into the franchise. So yeah. And also teaching people how to sell from the stage fright how to get up on a platform in front of a group of people and sell. So for example I’ve trained dentists who have these little INS been in office seminars. OK. So that’s one of the best ways. So if you if you’ve got if you’re a peer or a dentist or in that kind of thing hey bring people in. Talk to them about Invisalign talk to them about whatever it is you have to offer. I work with obviously a lot of financial advisers who are doing dinners seminars and things like that. So that’s what my focus is now. And it’s absolutely fantastic. I mean I’m living my passion so it’s great. And you can really tell by the enthusiasm with which you speak about it. I absolutely love it because I just know the impact that that learning how to sell is so interesting there’s so many business owners that are such a negative connotation around selling right. That is because of all of the garbage all of the old fashioned hard core closing techniques that are still being taught today which are highly ineffective especially for keeping customers in the long term. Right. And and they just feel creepy. Feel lousy to use. Right. So the dentist wants to be a dentist you just want to be a salesperson A FINANCIAL ADVISER Well he may want to be as bright. But the point is they want to be professionals as well. How can you present in a way where you actually engage the customer and client get them to buy clothes to sell. But at the same time do it in a subtle way that is integrity based as opposed to hey I’m going to really hard close or close this person. That’s what I think yeah maybe let’s talk about some of the things that allowed you to sell $300000. Sure. Five hundred and seventy thousand dollars that means that some people in this world their own mindsets and stuff that sounds like you know it’s probably five or six years salary for some people was. So you know this is this is real. So yeah it is definitely real. I don’t give the impression that I made five hundreds but I sold 500. I mean like when I sold 300000 I made 150. That’s right. I don’t want to give the wrong address. They’re still really really big numbers right. Absolutely. Absolutely. But but really it really comes down to this concept which we started with about one to many selling. So if I’m selling one to one. Right if I’m selling one to one I’m limited to how many people I can sell to in a day if I can put together a weapon or a live streaming presentation or get in front of a group of my ideal prospects right now and gather my ideal prospect together I can then create a presentation which sells to the masses sells to all of that. And so I’m now I’m making money for lack of an elegant term and big chunk. Right. I’m creating a sales stampede. I’m creating a bit filling up my appointment book for the entire month with a single presentation. Right. And so that’s the power of one too many selling. There is there’s three major aspects to this. Number one is obviously the generation of leaders. How do you get people to watch your presentation. Whether it’s a weapon or a seminar or an in-person whatever it is or your idea whatever it is. So you have to know how to generate leads. We talked a little bit about that. The second is the actual presentation itself. What is the structure of your presentation. And I do have a gift for your listeners that also actually give them my structure. I mean like literally my slide by slide structure every time I create a presentation. Slate So what is the structure of your presentation and then of course its the actual How do you present it. So quite frankly there’s a number of people out there who are I will say modeling made now modeling me and giving away their templates their structure for their presentation and thats not really the be all and end all though because now I need to know how to present it right. I get the proper structure but if I dont present it properly its going to come across not well so lets take the magic example right. I could learn the mechanics of doing the trick. And as you know theres a lot of magicians who are really good mechanically but they can entertain with crap. They dont know how to. They dont know how to fix them. Right. You don’t get it right. You’re not going to close. But the biggest piece of advice I could give you and give your listeners in very limited time left is that Stephen Covey said We begin with the end in mind and that’s where you start with your presentation. Most people when they create a presentation start at the beginning and work their way through it. No you start at the end. You start with your offer. You create your offer first. I mean incomplete. You create your clothes. Everything that you’re selling and you create that. And then you loop back around. Because here’s the thing. Everything in your presentation that you say every gesture you make. Everything that you do needs to lead to that sale need to lead to the offer. And so if you begin at the beginning and you don’t know what your offer is then you can’t construct your presentation. So it leads to the sale and makes it very natural for people to want to buy. And so where you come up with an irresistible offer where you come up with the irresistible offer like getting deep inside your prospects heads not just surface level not just OK you’re selling a How To Make Money product not just that the prospect wants to make money but rather what do they really really want on a deep emotional basis. Right. And if you and when you not if you because there’s a strategy for getting to that end when you get to that you get to that core and then you construct an offer which gets them what they really want. And the deepest emotional level that offer becomes almost irresistible. And one final thing on this I get all excited about talk for hours. This is it. People don’t sell people what you think they need. Don’t sell people what you think they should want. Tell people what they want. Find out what they want not what you want to sell them not even what they need but what they want. Right. Right. So for example when I’m selling a coaching program what almost everybody need me. You everybody is the mindset aspect right so we need a coach or a program that’s going to help us with the mindset. Right. So all of that. But that’s really really really tough to sell. Tony Rother really tough to sell but they need it right. So I don’t sell that when I’m selling a coaching program I say hey we’re going to get together three times a year. We’re going to work on your business re-integrate market mature generation material. We’re going to look at different models that are working. Right. And so that’s what I’m selling because that’s what people want. And then though I guess what happens at the meeting you know we do all of that but then we all do it. Yeah that’s right. So here’s what you do. You create an offer around what people want what they ardently desire. And then as you deliver what they want you also give them what they need. Right. Beautiful. Excellent. Very good advice. Very good advice timeless advice now and that’s that’s an amazing amazing concept that people hopefully can grasp. You know maybe talk a little bit more time we have remaining. You know if you are starting from scratch today you know and probably you are just going to go straight into it or you just go straight into what you’re doing now. I presume you know what sort of things looking back were like maybe stumbling blocks or dead end roads you drove down. So you can shorten the learning curve. And people listen. Man that’s a great question. That’s one of the best questions I bet. Thank you. And yeah. And here’s my answer. This is going to sound all airy fairy but it is. And that is really follow your heart. All right. So I danced around my passion for years. It wasn’t until I knew when I was eight years old what I wanted to do and I let all of the other people totally influence me to such a degree that I never went for it until way later in life. So do what you want to do. Go for it. There has to be a reason that you’re going to the market right. There’s got to be a reason why are you in the market what what are you going to provide that someone else is not already providing. But follow that passion. And once you really have it I’ll tell you one of my biggest the biggest mistake that I’ve made that I’m only honestly rectifying now is jumping from one thing to the next thing to the next doctor hey. So I knew I always knew that I wanted to be a professional magician. I did that. And then I fell in love with information marketing which I loved even more than Patrick and I was very successful selling to other entertainers. Right. And then I took that model and I tried different things. And so and so I became the e-mail guy. So for a little while I was the e-mail guy was selling e-mail courses. And then I became the the guy that teaches people information marketing. And then I went to something else. I never stuck with Hey what I what am I really freaking good at. Like what am I the best on the planet right. I never asked that question. I went to whatever I thought was hot. This is like a big damaging admission. Right. But it’s true. It’s the truth. I think a lot of people do that. And so today I focus on one thing one thing only which is teaching people to sell specifically how to sell one to many because I’m the best on the planet at it. Right. And so I’m not teaching the generation could I teach regeneration. Yeah. What am I the best on the planet at it. No there’s people way better than me. There’s no one better than me. That’s all I want to get right. There’s no better. And so and there’s nobody that incorporates what he used in his mind reading show into it right. Right into the presentation. So it’s really figured out what you’re really good at. Right. What you want to do by the way. You don’t you i i i. The good fortune of having lunch me on stage but also having lunch with Barbara Corcoran from shark tank. And we were talking we had a really really cool. We had a private lunch. We were we were sitting there talking and she said she said this one thing she said passion is really overrated. She said everyone’s passionate when they get started. Right. Right. Everyone’s is passionate when they get started. But then when they hit the roadblocks that passion waits. Right. So is is not necessarily passion that you need but a strong desire a strong desire and most people that are listening to this so they do have a passion they do have something they want to accomplish and go for that. What are we waiting for. What what what are we waiting for. What is what’s going to change right now is the time to do it. I’m not saying quit your job and all of that but I’m saying go for it. My favorite all time motivational speakers Jim Rome. You know it he says Find the thing that keeps you up late and get you up early to keep you up late because you’re so excited you get you up early and and do that thing that those were. There’s a whole bunch of different stuff there. But if I say that stumbling blocks that was it not going for it earlier right. Understanding that marketing and selling is really the foundation of a successful business. Yeah right. One hundred percent. And and then jumping from thing to thing. The thing as opposed to laser like focus which I have now very very good examples from your own life and I’m sure people can relate because I can listen to you. I can relate to exactly what you’re talking about revenues. So for exactly the same things to eerie Dave you know it’s been great having you on the show if people want to get in touch with you. And I know you mentioned you had something for our listeners so maybe you just give the roll down of all that stuff. Yeah it’s really cool. So if you’re interested in one to many selling and using ethical mind control you know my big hook is I can teach you how to sell more of your products or services in a day than you now do all year with a single presentation. And I can sample one of my clients Michael Rosby book sold four hundred thousand dollars worth of his product with one live video broadcast that we put together for him. So we really can’t. There’s. Yeah. So we really do. But if you’re interested in one too many selling then you can download my seven figure sales presentation template. Literally there’s nothing that I go through slide by slide by slide. What should be on every slide in the proper order. You can download that if you just go to the dot com that the D E dot com. And then I also send out a daily e-mail. They’re fine or entertaining but they really can take with regrets about how to close sales. And again an ethical sales the way there’s free video training and if you’re if you’re a subscriber and you will be once you download the template I do a lot of free training for my folks and things like that that’s not available unless you’re on my list so go download the template a day dotcom and more importantly more importantly use that template download it actually and actually use it. Yeah. So you get a result too great. And that’s amazing and it’s you know I have downloaded template myself I am on DVDs listing everything you just said is 100 percent accurate and I just really want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show and educate and entertained our audience. Man I had a great time. Thank you so much for inviting me. All right just to come alive for a bit there and for everyone else listen to this of course that was fantastic. You should listen to that many many times because there’s a lot of little nuggets in there that you may have glossed over. Upon first listen hopefully we’ll be back with another as entertaining and educational guest next week on the podcast. The post Episode #173 David Dee On Selling More In One Day Than You Sell All Year. appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Liam Martin discovered through experience teaching wasn’t his “thing”. When a third of his 300 students dropped the class he reconsidered his career path. Starting and growing a pre-med tutoring company to 200 tutors worldwide was exciting… until a huge problem develeoped between the students and the tutors. A problem that threaten to destroy that business. So in building a solution… he changed his route again and co-founded Time Doctor. On this productivity path he’s learned all about remote employees, systems, business growth… and (most of all), himself. Listen as Liam explains his jouney and what it takes to grow a company past the first employees. Freelancers take note. In this episode, you’ll discover: How do copywriters stack up productivity-wise? (Liam’s data and opinions on his copywriters may surprise you). Why “distraction machines” are causing your productivity problems 16 minutes at a time. The “World of Warcraft” cautionary tale for business owners. How to leverage yourself into high-fee consulting by providing this simple gateway. The curious “Tuesday mystery”. What Liam did to boost his productivity immediately. Mentioned: Time Doctor Liam Martin’s email Traction by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey, everybody We’re back with another edition of the podcast. I’m David from makewordspay.com and we’re here today with a man named Liam Martin. He’s the founder and CEO of Time Doctor staff.com. Well I have to ask about a domain name and a bit too I’m sure because that’s very exciting one. Liam Welcome to the show man. Liam Martin: Thanks for having me. I’m actually CEMO – my co-founder Rob is the CEO of the company. But sometimes that actually gets kind of frayed as well as I do the same jobs a lot of times but I’m very happy to be here. Yes. Everyone likes to talk about that domain name. Yes it costs about half a million dollars. Yes. We had to go here a very interesting process to be able to actually get it took about six months. Karen negotiations back and forth and at the end of the day we kind of got ripped off for both. Well I mean we originally negotiated I think the private was for 20 and then we really wanted it and we had my staff dot com as an. And then about six months later we basically said we’re going to hold off and we’re going to see whether we can all buy the product and figure out whether we’re going to achieve product market fit. And then six months later the guy came back saying Hey I have another buyer. So he’s trying to push us right as some people like to do people. People like to keep pushing us towards the be all same. He had her get caught. He got on the pot and we said well you know we can give it to you all in cash. So we just we just bought the domain cash. So that also for those people that don’t know it like it. Another big component of having a high end domain name when you e-mail people cold and I’ve run this experiment myself. So I will run. We’ll send 100 e-mails through you know limit time Dr. dot com and we’ll send her e-mails through Leaman’s dot dot com. Just the response rate is about double. The higher end domain. And there’s no real. And these are people that are not associated with one brand or the other. They just respond more because they see the domain and they think to themselves oh that must be legit. Very interesting. It’s an interesting exercise to kind of go about trying. I would personally not suggest that you do that until you really know that it’s something that you can forward with. But for those that want to make that type of investment it’s it’s big. Just in terms of deliverability. Awesome. All right. Well take us back to before you were starting up these companies and stuff. What were you up to where were you and how did you get started. Sure. So I ran a I was actually at a I guess a graduate student and I was a lecturer at a university. I was taking my Ph.D. in sociology down there and I was really excited about becoming a professor and going into academia that was what I wanted to do. So I was on my second year. And in your second year of graduate school they start to give you classes. And the reason why they get asked is because you’re really cheap and. Able to to work with. So we had I was teaching a class of round Leave it was like 200 ish students and one of the persons working with me on it and I thought oh man I’m going to have just fantastic. I’m going to be amazing at this. I ended up being absolutely horrible at it. It was a horrible experience for me. Ended up I think at the end of the year I lost about a third of my class from people dropping out. And then I remember going back to my supervisor and I told my supervisor I don’t think I’m very good at this. And he turned to me and said you’re not good. And I said well what do you think I should do. He’s like well if you want to go into academia you’re going to be doing this for about 40 years. Bruce might want to think about that. Right. Like I’ve heard beforehand so I said Well can I like how can I get out of this situation. He said Can you write 200 pages on any subject. I said basically yes. He’s like they don’t need your master’s degree. You want to walk out and I did. And then about eight to 12 weeks later I get it back and BAM. I was I was out of graduate school which was which was scary. And that was actually around 2000. I finished 2008 to get it before the big collapse. All right. So it collapsed you know and everyone knows and we and you know everything went sideways. So I didn’t end up having any. You know I was I was thinking OK I’m going to go get myself a nice government job I’m Canadian so you need to get a degree for someone with degrees in sociology. You know you don’t really have any degrees in like business or marketing or anything like that. So I ended up not being able to do that because no one was handing out jobs and I ended up running an online tutoring company because I really teaching. But I didn’t really like lecturing. So that was I was very passionate about teaching people one on one. So I started the tutoring company. I turned it online I started tutoring kids to St.. Long story short about two and a half years later that turned into 200 employees in the company working teaching tutoring students on your medical pre-med classes you’re pre-med. So like math to come on to you because it’s cute. Kids pay a lot of money for that kind of stuff. We’ve been through that. We ended up. That was about two and a half three years. And one of the things that came up which was a real problem for me and actually stopped the company from scaling and getting to the next level was the tutor would say would charge the student for 10 hours and then I’d build the student and the student would come to me and say well the tutor didn’t work with me for 10 hours. He worked with me for five hours. I got to go to the tutor and I’d say did you work with the student for 10 hours and he’d say of course I work for the student for 10 hours who’s who’s lying. Right. Who was telling the truth and who’s lying. So what I end up having to do is I’d refund the student for five hours and pay the tutor for the full 10. Can’t figure. The answer right. In this was destroying the business. There was no way remotely because these 200 tutors were all over the world they were all over Europe in North America. How the hell do I figure out what people are doing and how can I confirm that. Not just that time was tracked but that they were actually working with that person you having a state call with that person for two hours and 20 minutes 13 seconds. That’s how we build time doctor. So that was the solution that we needed to be able to figure out what was going on. So time Doctor is what we call a time analytics tool. So it measures the website’s applications most movements and keyboard movements that you’re working on through your workday. So right now I’m on podcast with David I’m on 35 minutes and 28 seconds. As of right now and at the end of this call I’ll be able to analyze you know how long am I on Zoom How long am I on G How long am I on this how long am I on that. And that allows you to be able to figure out different metrics and figure out different productivity variables that apply to you if anyone knows you. Most of your audience probably knows Google Analytics basically think of Google Analytics for human beings. That’s what we saw that’s very interesting. And when you found out when you start applying that technology to those tutors What did you find out. Did you find out that the tutor was doing spending time you know away from the actual skype call. Well actually I sold that company to be able to work on time doctor full time with my co-founder which is Rob. So we but I can tell you because we actually don’t see a huge niche for us is Tudor’s online tutors and you’ll find about 95 percent of them are actually you know what they say is 100 percent of what they actually do. There’s about 5 percent variation that or either they don’t know how to use the tool properly that’s a smaller component probably about 20 percent of that 5 percent don’t use the tool properly. And then the other 80 percent basically they’re ripping off their employer resonantly. And that’s neither. So ripping off might be a strong word. There are some people inside of organizations and we focus on remote teams. We have hundreds of thousands of these people all over the world that currently use our software. But we have. When you focus on in-person offices there’s usually these people that I would kind of call like the office clown or like the guy that kind of holds everybody together the top 10 most copywriters actually like this. There are other personality types are very much connected to that type of archetype where they’re easy get along with everyone kind of loves them and they always feel like they’re doing things well they’re not they’re not doing they’re not doing work in the classic terminology of what work is. But they’re actually you’re doing something else which is keeping the team together and making sure that they’re happy we’ve got a couple of those guys on our team right now and. Those guys are fantastic and they may not be the most productive employees but you need them inside an organization to have them function properly. So for us as well as well like we’ll see people on Facebook or YouTube or something like that. Like if you wanted a couple hours on Facebook and YouTube for weeks during your work week. Not a problem. It does become a problem if you’ve got a 40 hour work week in 20 of those hours are spent on World of Warcraft when you’ve got to have a conversation. You actually had one or one interesting story from a client. We’ve had a or he had a senior level developer. They started detecting World of Warcraft on his work computer in an office. Right. So the guy says well you know with it why the plane would have work that at work. And he said well here’s my problem. I worked for you guys for about you know eight hours a day. I go home I play World of Warcraft. I go to sleep and then I wake up again and I go work you guys. They asked him like Is this a problem. I said Yeah I’ve got a kid. I’ve got a wife. I don’t talk to them I don’t interact with them. See they instead of firing them. They went in got him some therapy in a DSM approved videogame addiction. They had him delete his videogame character and now he’s back being one of most placket employees in the company and out of I think 40 guests that he had on the team. So if you hadn’t had their technology in place what would have happened is just general dropsonde productivity over let’s say six to 18 months and it would have resulted in a. But because you were able to detect that earlier on we’re able to nip it in the bud and get him the help that he needed and now he’s you know one of the top guys in the team are back to being the top guys. So that’s kind of another variable as well. That’s super important for us when we look at how we’re don’t. There’s a component that’s absolutely monitoring particularly for remote teams but for us we also want to say we also want to show customers you can use this as a productivity tool. Fundamentally that’s what it really is. That’s what we look for. And then all the other factors you can secondary to that primary one now did you when you were making time doctor you sort of had you know had different versions I’m sure the different iterations to just sort of apply it to yourself. And what did you find out about yourself in your own time. So I actually after about six months of using it I discovered an interesting trend which was my productivity goes way down on Tuesday afternoons and I was saying to myself hey what is this trend line that’s Tuesday afternoon your shit. And I really you know I started studying what the hell I was doing from Tuesday afternoons welke to the afternoons and same thing in the United States. OK. But it isn’t Canada. It’s a cheap movie night. Yeah that’s strange. I don’t know if that’s the same here but I’m from Winnipeg actually so I could get a tattoo. Yeah. Tuesdays are like half trance movie nights. So what ends up happening is my girlfriend calls me. Hey what do you want to go see. Do you want to see Superman or Batman Eric. OK I want to see Batman. OK. Find out if Suzanne wants to see Batman. Can you message her. OK I’m going to messager. She does want to see that she wants to see Superman. So it’s a back and forth back and forth in what that what that creates is these notifications. And really another component connected to copy in and copy to me is not just writing stuff down I think it’s a lot more multifaceted than that. If you can get my attention you win as a marketer. Right. So what is this is a distraction machine. This is specifically designed to distract you from the best acts in here are just the bare ass distraction machines. That’s it. So when you look at distractions you know you’re getting pulled off of what you’re currently doing. It’s a really it’s not just looking at a tweet. It’s not just looking at a Facebook messages. It actually takes you about their studies to show takes about 60 minutes to get back into the flow which you know is a flow state focus but just like this concept of just getting into flow writing properly doing your main task. So that tweet didn’t just cost you 30 seconds it costs you 16 minutes and 30 seconds and you have to be mindful of that. So what I now do is I take Tuesday afternoons off. I just don’t work on the afternoon. So pretty counterintuitive right if you were working in a company they probably like the fuck you talking about. Can I get a kick to the job. I make it up in other places I make it up at other times. But like these Tuesday afternoons I think to myself OK I’m going to knock off around 3:00 4:00 in the afternoon and then I’m going to go and do that and do the movie thing. And that is a much more when you look at the you know if you want to really measure and that’s what we measure so our mission statement as a company is we want to empower workers to work wherever they want whenever they want. So once you you know you had your own needs you made in your own previous company for stuff like this. What did you then do to try to reach out to people and try to grow this new company in your software. That’s I mean that’s a very long story. One year six right now we’re at 80 ish people in the company and honestly everything anything under the sun for anyone that’s interested in that. In general I would suggest the book traction that’s a fantastic book to really kind of figure out where you’re going to start. You know the different traction funnels and how to implement them for us. We fundamentally just started talking to people. There’s a lot of tech startups are anything that you think you need to get to product market fit as fast as humanly possible. So you need to spend as much money as much time as much research as to get the credit market that is the definition of product markets that in him. And I apologize if some technical terms are coming up but if your audience doesn’t understand them then just stop me and I’ll explain them. So you need to be able to have below two and a half percent monthly as an example customer churn inside of your is this your business needs to be growing continuously in an upward preferably. I would say at the beginning of your business you better be doing to get 300 x per unit to 300 percent growth the year. And then as you get into scale past 1 million preferably doing 100 percent year over year is fantastic. Doing a little bit lower than that is also great but you need to be able to keep that curve going and if you can keep that curve going and then youll have 100 million 200 million 300 million dollar company. Its just math. But then you I mean its math in perception but in reality a lot are multifaceted and complicated. So you need to kind of look at it and there are some products that you probably get to a million but can never get to 10. There are other products that could get the $10 but could never get to 100 million. So you need to know where you are there in terms of. And then also possibly adjusting that product along the way. I know that’s something that you’ve really focused on is okay we’ve got this market. How can we 10x it as an example how can we get how could we 100 x it. And those are very interesting conversations to have. Once you have cash in the bank and we’re able to think strategically about your next step. So at the very beginning of the business basically we’ve started selling the product for free. So you know we would give them a free copy of time doctor and we ended up having with 6000 companies at that point using it. And when we went to no wait sorry it was out in the numbers but when we start when I first opened our doors we had six thousand monthly recurring revenue inside of the business and we cut. I think we only had about 20 percent of our customers that ended up switching over to a paid product from a free product. But because of that we actually had something else that was very interesting that happened. Our time track tripled which was a very important engagement metric for us. So our big engagement metric is are you trapped in time you’re not tracking time you’re not using media. So we only have 20 percent of our customers stay with us and to a degree that was not great but in another context we actually started getting much more useful feedback that was coming through the business because now we had a product that people were really using. They were using passionately they were giving us feedback on you know why it’s working and why it’s not working because once they start paying for it their feedback literally 10x. And that was that was super power for for us to be able to evolve the product to the next level as we thought we had it locked. We thought we had a bunch of engagement metrics that were doing quite well and yeah we didn’t have anywhere near as many people using it. When we went to paid by the engagement metrics just like went through the roof which was fantastic. So was one of the big cogs was sort of giving it away and beginning to get that engagement. I would say if I was going to do it again I personally would not give it away for free. It’s like a bit of a step or something going on or whatever it is just just let me just open up your wallet just open it up a little bit and then later on a company that we had talked about beforehand was intercom and intercom charged us $25 for unlimited users like unlimited emails on Internet like all you can eat package get 25 bucks. When we first started using it and were like that’s amazing we pay them thousands of dollars now. Well all right. And they just wanted engagement metrics. They wanted to know they are paying for it and they’re using it as long as those two things. And I was giving them feedback I was e-mailing them all the time was e-mailing their support. We get calls. You know I was really passionate about the product because I knew that it was something that I used on a daily basis and I know that it’s a tool that a lot of copywriters use as well. So that for me that was super smart on their part. Just make it stupid cheap but make them jump through some type of hoop because if it’s free you’ll try it and then you’ll just say they’re on it. Yeah absolutely. All right look it’s a very good point I think. There’s a lot of direct marketing companies of course are going to go that route with that minimum sort of free trial yet to get people. And even though it’s only a dollar and bringing in that it creates at least I have seen it creates a much a much different person. Absolutely true. Even with that minimal charge I was talking to someone just a few days ago and they were trying to sell me on and of course to be able to do something connected to Facebook advertising. And I said I’m not interested in buying your course on Facebook advertising but I am interested in you coming in and helping us with Facebook advertising. So like understand your different customer as they apply to different. Like I don’t have time. We have to go through five or six guys that do the Facebook advertising you see them instead of the company. What I need is an expert to come in and help me. And you could probably make 20 to 30 x just coming in for the day and helping me. If you have that knowledge if you’re that good to be able to be able to work on a problem with that. So I think that that’s something that a lot of people don’t really like. Throw that option in you know even when you’re in this kind of goes a little bit past direct marketing and copy but if you have if you have the hey here’s the course for 500 bucks and we’ll do it for 5000 for a day. Do that. I’m the guy that buys that every time first. And people buy it. It’s a circus. It’s obvious to some of us and others not so much. But that is basically the way you get consulting gigs if you’re smart is to teach something like that and then use that as part of your fun. I’m still technically the person in charge of Visio inside of the company and I no longer know all of the processes that go on inside of a inside of the company because there are so many there are 20 people that are associated with it. So it’s a huge machine now. And for me I know each part theoretically but I don’t I could not actually show you I could not sit down with you and show you that process because we’ve hired experts to be able to go in and work with those different people. So think about that context and you want to you want me as your customer because I pay you a lot more money than than someone who’s laid off. Well you know I’ll pay 400 bucks for something that I’m going to do myself. If you think about that because I think that that’s so powerful to people that don’t really get. Yes it’s a smaller demographic. Slap it up there because I understand your exactness and your demographics willing to 10x your price. Yeah yeah. That’s a very very very astute thing to say. People want to get a hold of you get in touch with you and check out doctors. Where do they go. Yeah I I hate people that I was. Do you like your Twitter or something like that you can get for me. It’s it’s Liam. I am at time Dr. dot com and you can just email me right through there if you want to send us your e-mail address. You can also e-mail me through remits dot dot com. And there are those ones work that are in the same inbox. You should be interesting when you e-mail me because if you’re not my assistant will just pull it off of you and I’ll never see it. So make sure that it’s interesting and I’d love to talk. Awesome. I really want to thank you for coming on the show. Liam this has been excellent You’ve done a lot of life experience that you’ve managed to condense and share with us here today. It’s been a real pleasure. Yes. Thank you. And here everybody else will be back again with another exciting episode of the podcast next week hopefully with somebody sharing as much valuable information as we can. The post Episode #172 – Liam Martin On Google Analytics For Human Beings. Boost Growth And Productivity With Systems. appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Erika’s career started in on-air broadcasting in the Bay area. With a young son in tow, she switched careers to PR. She worked with the cast of such hit shows as “Will & Grace” and “Crossing Jordan”. 12 years ago she decided to freelance and started “Three Girls Media”. They handle content marketing, social media and PR for small and medium-sized businesses. Flying in the face of the industry, they are making PR affordable for small business. Erika breaks down some of the best practices in social media… and some of the nuances of finding your audience on these platforms. It’s a great primer to get you going… or help you understand what a company like Erika’s can do for your business. Raise your social media from the dead with this episode. In this episode, you’ll discover: The best single rule to remember about your company posting on social media. (Pareto would be proud!) A little insight to the lifespan of tweets and how to pump up your Twitter game. How to use the forgotten magic of Erika’s favorite small business tool. A simple strategy Three Girls Media employs to make PR affordable for small business. The simple-as-pie content marketing services Three Girls offers.(You won’t even have to write!). Mentioned: Three Girls Media Three Girls Media Blog Effy the office dog on Instagram David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey, everybody welcome to another edition of the podcast. This is David Allan of course from makewordspay.com. And we’re here today with a very special guest. She is a PR specialist and social media specialist and as she has a rather long career in various different media which she’ll tell you about in a second. Erika Taylor Montgomery Welcome to the show. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Thanks so much David thanks for having me. David Allan: Yeah I’m really interested to hear some of things you have to say I was looking over your bio and you have a very long and interesting history of the different things you’ve been involved with sort of all on similar veins perhaps but sort of very disparate in different ways as well. So maybe take us back to sort of the beginning of all this and sort of give us the superhero origin story the career trajectory that brings us up to speed. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Sure. Well I actually started right out of college and my initial career actually which was broadcasting and I worked on air in San Francisco Bay area both television and radio for about 20 years mostly doing morning shows. And in order to do that you have to get up very early in the morning or middle of the night. To most people I’m talking about 2 or 3 a.m. and after doing that for over a dozen years it was just very difficult to do. I had a young son at the time and it’s not really conducive to family life if you have to go to bed a 6 o’clock in the evening. So I decided it was time for a career change and I wanted to utilize my broadcast skills without necessarily being on the air. So I did some job research and I came up with the field of public relations. It’s really dealing with the media in so many ways but not actually being in the press. So I was fortunate enough to get a job at a well know public relations agency and so probably got my feet wet in PR were everything I could and worked my way up from a junior account manager to the director of media relations for the entire agency. And I’m the person who likes to keep growing and learning new things. And after a few weeks where I felt like I had taken everything I can here and now and you know do something bigger better different to where I can learn more. So I dove into the world of politics and became a press secretary for the California state legislature and that lasted for a couple of years until I was thoroughly finished with politics. David Allan: You know, it’s kind of ironic that we’re talking about this today on the day that James Comey is giving his testimony. Erika Taylor Montgomery: I know. Oh my goodness. So true. So true. David Allan: So you got sick of politics. I could see that happening. Erika Taylor Montgomery: I absolutely got sick of politics. Yes. So I failed from that and really had two choices. I knew that I can go back to work for another Silicon Valley PR firm and make close to a six-figure income and work seventy or eighty hours a week or I could do something different and at that time of my life, it was really more about quality of life and family time with that sort of thing. So I decided to do something crazy as all my friends and family thought I was nuts. But I decided to go into business for myself starting Three Girls Media and actually celebrating our 12 year of being in business June 5th. David Allan: Wow congratulations. You started in 2005. That’s right. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Yes. So 12 years I think is a pretty good track record and that brings us up to where we are today. David Allan: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Now you and you sort of maybe glossed over it a bit but one of the things I found interesting was that you had done some public relations work with NBC. Erika Taylor Montgomery: I sure did. David Allan: Maybe talk a little about that because as that’s one of the things sort of jumped out at me that maybe you know the average person might be listening to this might want to hear about. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Well that happened while I was working for the large Silicon Valley PR firm – one of the accounts that we got in was NBC. And so I was put in charge of that account -we ended up really doing some fun things that I was able to take the lead on everything from working with the cast of Will and Grace and doing some promtoional things with them -from specific ads that they were recording that we’re going to play. In the San Francisco Bay are where we were that were very localized. When we’re done with the shoot for the day they invited me out to dinner with them. The whole cast, and I thought wow. It was nice and amazing. So that was kind of the experience is that the others are people that I work with pretty closely with the cast of Crossing Jordan which was another NBC show. So it was definitely fun working in the more Hollywood entertainment realm as opposed to local radio and TV that I was used to. David Allan: Very interesting and it sort of jumped off the page when I was reading about you. I thought that that’s very just a very interesting sort of anecdote for people who can remember those shows too I guess. Erika Taylor Montgomery: That’s rightit’s been awhile, am I aging myself. David Allan: I think we may be aging both of us because I asked about it. Now that brings us up to speed so you have a PR agency like you mentioned Three Girls Media – celebrating your 12th anniversary. What kind of companies are you working with nowadays. Erika Taylor Montgomery: That’s a great question. You know we really work with small and medium sized businesses who are looking to improve their branding and name recognition and drive publicity about their business in a variety of way whether it’s through traditional PR and maybe pitching a product or service to the media for coverage or maybe it was just positioning a product they have and if we can get the media to request samples or that sort of thing, or productize a service. And then also the one thing we do quite a bit of now is social media and that’s because so many small businesses simply do not have the time or the bandwidth to deal with posting on social media like they should be and how we’re able to take them on as the wizards behind the curtain and make them look great on social media. David Allan: So those are two main focuses – sort of traditional public relations stuff and social media. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Yeah I’d say so and even more than social media I would also say content marketing and certainly social media is part of content marketing. We also provide a lot of services that some of your audience may be interested in like blogging for example or e-newsletters and I know that you have a lot of freelance writers in your audience that correct. David Allan: That’s right. Yeah. So you know one of the things that we’re always looking for is people who’d like to have a guest post on our blog. And if any of your listeners are interested in writing a guest post that would appear on the Three Girls Media website. We’re more than happy to get that and help how we can. David Allan: Awesome, awesome so people out there and who knows I might even do one myself. You never know. So. Exactly. So let’s let’s dive into some PR stuff like as a copywriter myself, one of the things I constantly run into is that there seems to be and this may not apply specifically to PR but may may have some ideas. Is I run into people making you know businesses I work with they are doing the same. They’re making the same mistakes basically. So there’s you know sort of initial period where you’re correcting the same things almost with every client that I run into because it’s sort of everyone sort of has misinterpreted things perhaps in the exact same way and it’s always me too type of scenario. So when it comes to PR, are people doing PR and they’re doing it wrong? Or are they not even aware that PR is a tool like what has been in your experience. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Well my experience when it comes to working with small and medium-sized businesses – initially a lot of them think I can’t possibly afford PR. Most of them are under the impression that they’re going to be out for a very large retainer something on the very minimum of three to five thousand dollars a month. And that’s something that simply out of their grasp. So I think a lot of them probably won’t consider it because there’s an impression that they couldn’t afford it. And secondarily I think that some of them have the impression that it was not for me. I don’t know what it would do for my business. I’m not quite sure how it works. So I think there’s a lot of education needed to let business owners know what we are really what is what we can do for their business. And that it is not necessarily cost prohibitive especially when we’re working with an agency like Three Girls Media. David Allan: Right. And what do you think drives that in your opinion what is driving that perception that people have that it maybe is like wildly expensive and sort of out of their range. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Well the bottom line is it’s true in most cases… David Allan: There is that [laughing] Erika Taylor Montgomery: And it is sad I think because it really does put the budget out-of-range I think for most small and mid-type businesses…there are some companies like Three Girls that service them – we’re certainly the minority not the majority but if you search around you can find the occasional agency here and there that price things a little bit differently. So at Three Girls Media – rather than asking for thousands of dollars for a monthly retainer, instead we offer all of our services on an a la carte menu. So, instead what that means is, instead of paying $5000 a month to do a variety of activities for you if all you really need is blogging help and you just want us blogging for you once a week – hey we could do that and it’s only going to cost you a tiny bit of money. And so on and so forth. So I think that there are exceptions but unfortunately the perception is true. David Allan: Right. Because it is very expensive for most people they would contact. It’s pretty expensive. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Right. Exactly. David Allan: All right so you have the a la carte menu if you will of services maybe run down some of those things maybe some things people like you said the content marketing the blogging and so for posting on social media perhaps – what are some of things that maybe aren’t readily spring to mind for people out there that have businesses already. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Sure. Well one of the most cost effective tools that there is in terms of content marketing is an e-newsletter and I think that a lot of business owners are missing out on that opportunity to give each other regularly communicating with their customer base potential customers – previous customers. It’s something that we do very well. So we’ll do everything from create a template for you in the e-news platform of your choice – some common ones we really like are Mailchimp, Constant Contact…some others but we’ll create the template so it matches your brand and your website. We’ll create all the conten for you – all of the writing and then we will send the newsletter out to your list with your database and it is a great way I say to promote what’s going on with not only on the public front for example like sales you may be having or products or services that you want to highlight for a particular month or season but also it’s a great way to let your readers in your business kind of behind the scenes. And I think that’s also something that business owners often miss out on is that people like to know who they’re doing business with. So if you can give your readers a little peek behind the business, who’s your team member? Where do you work? What’s your office culture like? – that sort of thing. I think that’s great to put into an e-newsletter as well. David Allan: Yeah it’s funny. I wholeheartedly agree with what you just said in regards to the e-mail marketing certainly And of course everyone in the mix at the McMethod feels the same way. I’m about to give my own seminar here upcoming – I really consider e-mail like you’re one of those sort of small business almost like a small business secret weapon because it doesn’t seem like yeah many people are utilizing it the way they could be and maybe it’s stuff like this that will help spread the word but that it can be. I mean especially like online it’s still the highest return on investment thing you can do Erika Taylor Montgomery: no question. Absolutely positively. No question about it. David Allan: And so people if you’re listening to this you should be killing it with e-mail because it’s you know it’s cost effective obviously. And and it can it can …I’ve seen it work wonders. So aside from that and the blogging and I’m assuming you guys do posting on other social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and a number of other ones I’m probably not even familair with. Erika Taylor Montgomery: We basically manage most social media sites for our clients – everything from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram. We’re working on a bunch of those. And I think one of the things that makes Three Girls different than a lot of other companies with social media is that we actually create all of the content for you. We do not rely on our clients to come up with the content and send us articles or pictures or memes. Those are the things we find of ourselves. We created our own – customized specially just for youer business. And I think that the one thing that a lot of social media companies don’t do. David Allan: Yeah I think you’re just basically an arm of the small business in terms of like gets your – almost like your own little marketing department. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Right.Exactly yeah. David Allan: Now maybe let’s talk before we go back to PR maybe dive into that let’s talk more about social media so things like Twitter and Instagram for people that maybe aren’t at the level yet that they’re going to be able to afford to hire somebody to do that for them. You know what is sort of the Three Girl Media approach to doing some of this stuff maybe explain some of your approaches to that that that work on these various platforms. Because I can speak for my own personal experience like I do some tweeting and stuff with some of the podcast episodes and then some of the stuff I write but in regards to like Instagram and some of the other ones I’m completely clueless. So maybe talk about the difference some of these different platforms and sort of different approaches to what makes these things work. Erika Taylor Montgomery: You bet, you know I think the number one mistake that small and medium sized business owners make when they start managing their own platform be it Twitter or Instagram or any of them is that they really make it all about themselves. They’re posting content only about their business or their products or services or an event and not really mentioning anything else of value for their followers. And that is definitely a novice mistake. What we really recommend is that companies follow what we call the 80 20 rule of social media and what the 80 20 Rule says is that 20 percent of the time, absolutely you should be plugging your business in any way, shape or form whether telling your custoemrs about a product or service or event or whatever may be coming up – even a behind the scenes look of the company. All the stuff is great but only 20 percent of the time that should happen. The other 80 percent of your content on social media should not be self-promotional. Instead it’s a content that’s related to your brand but not necessarily about your brand. So for example one of our clients is a well-known nursery in the San Francisco Bay Area – we’re managing their social media and instead of posting things about we have these flowers on sale. Instead we may post here a great article about flowers that are made to plant right now or here is how you care for flowers that you just planted when it comes to fertilization and things like that. You can see where it’s related to the nursery but it’s not talking about them or their products or services. Does that make sense? David Allan: Yes. It’s an educational approach. Educating people with your knowledge and the other 20% of the time you’re like – we have this stuff actually for you. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Exactly, Yeah that’s it. So I think following the 80/20 rule is sort of thing that people in the industry social media management industry know. But a lot of novices don’t. So that’s a good tip that they can take away. And then the other thing of it I hear a lot from potential clients is that oh we’re only posting twice a week because we don’t want to spam our followers you know we don’t want to overwhelm them too much content. And I appreciate that sentiment but unfortunately it’s totally wrong. David Allan: {Laughing}I knew that was coming somewhere there. Erika Taylor Montgomery: Yeah yeah yeah. Definitely not the way to go. With social media what’s important is frequency and consistency. So you need to be posting daily on your various social media platforms. And depending on the platform perhaps it’s called for to post multiple times a day. Each social media platform has their old kind of rules if you will or a recommendation for how frequently you should post. So for example on Twitter it’s recommended that you post it three to five times a day. Now that may seem like a crazy amount of posting but the reason behind that is because the lifespan of a tweet is less than 60 Minutes. And what that means is that after 60 minutes it is so far down in your followers news feed they’re not going to see it anymore. So if you’re only posting once a day you only have an opportunity to catch a very small portion of people who are following you on that platform. Does that make sense? David Allan: Absolutely. Erika Taylor Montgomery: It’s important to know how frequently you should post on the various platforms. David Allan: Yeah. Now if people want to get in touch with Three Girl Media they want to get in touch with you personally, Erika. What’s the best way to do that? Erika Taylor Montgomery: I would say that the easiest way is through our website. If you go to our contact page at threegirlsmedia.com there’s a form there you can fill out. You can also use the email at info@threegirlsmedia.com. That comes straight to me personally. So I’m the info person. You can reach me there. Also there are phone numbers on our website. Those are cell phone numbers that come directly to me. I’m very easily accessible. I should also mention with the URL of our website it is the name three all spelled out so threegirlsmedia.com. Also you can follow up on social media both me personally and three girls and if you’re on Instagram I highly recommend you follow our office dog, Effy. David Allan: Well, I want to really thank you for coming on the show today, Erika. It’s been a real pleasure talking you. I think you’ve given a lot of great information for our audience that people can go out and immediately and put into play and if not come to you guys to get it done for them. Erika Taylor Montgomery: I really appreciate the time. It’s been real enjoyable talking to you and thanks for having me on your show. David Allan: No problem…everybody else of course will be back again next week with another edition of the podcast and hopefully we’ll have someone as fun to talk to and as educational and and just a joy as Erika has been today. So until then we’ll talk to everybody. The post Episode #171 – Erika Taylor Montgomery On Social Media & PR Secrets. Discover Your Audience In One Hour A Week. appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

I read Michael’s book “Bringing Home The Birkin” after having it on my wishlist for a couple years. Finally, when I cracked it open I couldn’t put it down. It had it all… intrigue… international travel… luxury… danger… it was like James Bond meets Catch Me If You Can. What was a massive interview I pared down for the McMethod to the barest of exciting essentials. Above it all, this story gives great business examples. Niche-ing, marketing, problem-solving and more. I have no doubt when you listen you’ll not only want to snag the book and hear the other hour of my interview with him… but you’ll want to go see what Michael’s up to now (more Hermes!). In this episode, you’ll discover: The super-intense “insider” secrets of the luxury brand Michael infiltrated. The real reason clientele were willing to pay up to 4x retail value for his auctions. The biggest (and easiest) secret that propelled him into a million dollar business. An eye-popping demonstration of a strategy every copywriter and marketer knows! (or should). The surprising “full-circle” irony in Michael’s new company. Mentioned: Michael’s personal website Respoke Article on Michael’s new company David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey, everybody We’re back with another edition of the podcast. I’m David Allan from makewordspay.com and we have a very unusual guest I would say today because it’s sort of off the beaten track. He’s an author he’s an entrepreneur he’s a socialite of some of some distinction I think in my in my world after reading his book I think and he’s got one of the most fascinating tales I’ve come across a very sort of niched subject. Michael Tonello, welcome to the show. Michael Tonello: Hey thank you. Thanks for having me. David Allan: Yes we are talking a bit off the air about sort of you know I found your book years ago and I don’t like I said I don’t really recall what how I stumbled on it I think it might have been in a bookstore maybe in an airport or something or other. And I remember thinking myself This sounds fascinating. I don’t know why I didn’t buy it at the time or somebody must build some story there too. But I eventually bought it on Amazon and read it and thought boy this is one of the such a great adventure tale you’re actually a very good writer. And so I was like just sucked into your world of handbags and international travel and intrigue and it had sort of that air of like almost like a James Bond be an air of mystery in imagery. You know how you were going around the world. So maybe let’s start at the beginning for people who have read the book sort of where were you and what were you up to when all this stuff sort of kicked off. OK. So what happened is we go back to 1999. I was doing hair and makeup for print advertising. My clients were like Dunkin Donuts and me and T.J. Maxx and Marshalls and Reebok and a lot of the big corporations that are based in New England because I lived nearby. So a lot of the big corporations from New England and what day in January of 1999 I got a call from the agency that represented me and they said they had just booked me for a one week job for IBM for the iPad. It was a quarter page ads that would be running in Time magazine and we were going to be shooting it in Barcelona Spain and I would go there with a whole photo crew and we’d be their full week. So off I went with the Sodoku I’d never been to Spain before I knew we’d been alone obviously during the week. I really loved Barcelona at least what I see of it because since I was working I really only had the evenings free. What I saw that I loved and I decided that I would return I went back two months later on vacation by myself I stayed for about 10 days. And during that 10 days I became obsessed with the city. I loved the food the culture the architecture everything about it the lifestyle and I decided I really wanted to live there. And over the course of that spring and summer I kind of like put my affairs in order if you will. I sold off about things I sold my car I just did everything I could to get rid of extraneous things. Pack up some extra money and in September of 99 I moved to Barcelona. I quickly rented an apartment which in Spain requires a five year lease. That’s crazy. Yeah I mean I didn’t really do any research before. And that kind of caught me off guard. But you know I was so in love with the city I was just like in all of this. I’m going with it also and I love the apartment that I found. I mean it took me several days to find it. We looked at a lot of places that I knew this I mean when I saw this place I knew it was the place I signed the lease. And then over the course of the next several weeks all of the boxes that I had arranged have shipped there started arriving with all of my personal effects in them and you know we start at this point getting into more like you know October-November all winter and in being Barcelona the temperatures were still in the mid to upper 60s even close to 70. And all these boxes are arriving and they’re full of all my clothes and other things. So being a New Englander a lot of my clothes were like cashmere in tweed and all has its. You know. Yeah. And I had very little need for any of them that they are. And as I’m packing all this stuff I’m thinking what am I going to do with it all. And I decided I would start listing a few things on ebay. I had never sold anything on Ebay previously I had bought several things. I was a collector of Reier first edition books modern first editions and like Lillian Hellman and Truman Capote the Inca. OK. So we e-bay was a good source for that for me for buying but I never sold anything. Anyhow I took a picture of this. Polo Ralph Lauren cashmere scarf that I had bought at a polo Ralph Lauren outlet store in Connecticut I paid $99 for it. I still hadn’t even worn it. It had the price tag so attach it. Ninety nine bucks for I wish to drive a seven day auction just a regular street auction seven days in this car sold for over $400 a Beemer. That’s like exactly what they say. I couldn’t believe it I love it. You know I mean that first initial reaction which I in the book was like somebody must have been obsessed with flat terrain. Was like this round of base class thing. It was a guy in the Midwest and he had sold out. So I shall look into my things for more things to sound like you know every now everything had Bill signs on it for me. I’m like wow. So the second thing that I came across was this little orange box. If you know the brand Remez which is a French goods house kind of like Chanel or Louis baton or Christian Dior or Remez. It’s a very old company that dates from the early 80s. It’s used to make saddles and all kinds of things for the carriage trade. But in more recent years they started becoming a very big company for silk and made all kinds of Silcox. Anyhow in 1992 I went on a black tie. New Year’s Eve dinner party in New York City and I went into Bergdorf Goodman and I bought this hermès so scarf it was three foot square. It was black smoke and it had like gold equestrian stuff on it like metal. You know what’s that. So I wore it new years eve under my tuxedo in your following day New Year’s Day I folded the scarf back up put it in the scarf box. And now seven years later here it was you know showing up a passport and I had one scarf in seven years. I thought OK I can easily solve this. Two pictures of that put it on e-bay. Again a straight 7 day listing a street auction may that sold for more than $500 $530 if I remember correctly. Wow. Insane right. Seventy five dollars for every night. So it’s more than doubled your money. More than double almost triple my money. I used to think more importantly I woke up the following morning to about 10 or 12 e-mails from people that had been bidding on that scarf on that auction and didn’t win it. And they said to me you had more or most cards I didn’t have any more mascots but I wrote back to all these people and said What are you looking for. And then they responded to me with all kinds of information which I now call a wish list because what I learned is just as there are people who collect stamps and coins you know shot glasses and who knows what else. There are people all around the world they collect mad Scots. Now what I learned at that time back in 99 we said remeasure only had about 15 stores in the United States. They had around 250 stores worldwide. So there were a lot of people living in a lot of places they couldn’t get mascots unless they bought the airline ticket and flew to another city where it was from. So it was cheaper for them to pay my markup on e-bay for a scarf then obviously to buy an airline ticket in a hotel room. All that sort of stuff. So the following day after I got all those e-mails I went to the Remez store in Barcelona and I bought two more scarves and I put those on e-bay. And again I more than doubled my money when I realized at the time but I quickly learned was that Remez also didn’t have a website at the time. Right. So again as that auction was progressing people were e-mailing me and asking me for specific things because these collectors all around world were looking for specific remet scarves. Each year I was maybe half a dozen new designs OCHA and they each have a name and they’re designed by a specific artist Yadi idea. It’s very complicated as is anything that you know collectors are usually involved in. It’s kind of like art if you will. So anyway we love story short within about four or five months. I was doing almost twenty five thousand dollars a month on a splitting or scarps not it was crazy. It was insane. So about six months into that I got an email an email through Ebay system from a famous celebrity Allender California. And she said to me I see you have a lot of women’s scarves on e-bay. And at that point I was adding a few more things I had you know some bracelets and just a few small things that were easy to share. Light weight not terribly expensive but I could you know. So anyhow she says to me in email do you happen to have an hermès Birkin bag. Now I didn’t know what a Birken bag was to the time I knew what a Kelly bag was because of Grace Kelly and was very famous. I knew what it was I googled it and I discovered that it was the same mislike celebrity handbag made by her mags. I thought well if I can double my money on these cards imagine if I can double my money on one of these handbags because they were really expensive. You know they were like 7000 pots. So to the store and ask for a Birkin bag and they said oh no no we don’t have any. So you only continue telling me what are the things I like to serve. One of the things I liked about the story too was because my other sort of career that I have going simultaneously. I’m a professional magician. And so the thing I liked about when you have things I like about your story was that you had sold a deck of cards this famous girl it’s told you about the and the famous singer songwriter. And for me personally Dechert decks of cards being strewn all over wherever I am usually that’s I thought that was very poetic. From my point of view I guess that a deck of cards has led you to the book and yet you know it’s interesting because that’s why she bought a deck of cards and when she received the cards she saw that they were absolutely pristine mint as you knew is if she had herself bought them at an Amish store that morning. Because I mean I literally was going into mass buying just you know the seeing it and putting it up for auction. So there was never any like you said you know it wasn’t like I was sitting around using this stuff and then reselling it. It was all very you know made it brand new. And he asked me about getting you know one of those bags and of course I couldn’t get the bag on that first attempt but I was momently get her a bag. At that point I decided to rent a car because I knew that Americans have a lot of stores in the south of France which only was about a two and a half or three hour drive from Barcelona so I rented a car and I drove to the south of France. I saw that I could hit the store in Moho way and be home a Marsay Exham all those kinds central hey all those sort of you know famous chic towns and there were some very older stores there that had been in business you know 50 or 75 years. Why I thought one of those stores has to have a broken bag right. Right. So I lived with my aunts and going to the first restaurant I ask for and. And again the same thing you know like we don’t have a bourbon bag and I was like OK I get it. I leave in a car and I drive 45 minutes on to the next town. And I went to the store and I asked for Birken bag and the salesperson looked at me with great disdain like I was some kind of a stupid idiot. You know a stupid american or right. And she was like this a two year waiting list for over and back. Now that was the very first time I had ever heard the term waiting lists. I mean I you have to wait two years to get a handbag. Crazy. I mean it was crazy I inhabit that was when I realized Wow I guess that’s why this celebrity is asking me if I had one because even she can’t get one because there’s a two year waiting list. Right. And we all know the people that have a lot of money and you know celebrities you see getting things right now. You know tomorrow. Yeah. Because of you know you know skipping a line. You jumped the line. You know those chords are only meant for the general public not for the rich and famous That’s right. Why don’t they. I guess this was about six or eight months in I decided to go to Madrid for the weekend to hit that Remez store there because it was it was one of the largest stores in Europe so I thought they probably have a lot of scarves and I really want to do a big way for the jury for the weekend. And I went into the store and I just went I had all these sheets of paper that I used to call wishless. I had names specific names specific scarves specific clients were asking for and I knew that if I could get those scarves I would sell directly to the client. I would put it on e-bay in hopes of having a bidding war because I knew that one person specifically wanted that Scaroni one. All you need is two people somewhere in the world and you can have a bidding war. Right. So I have these lists of Scalzo I was before I went to the store in Madrid I was in and I asked all these scarves. I quickly piled up a pile of I don’t know 15 or 20 scarves and as we were doing this you know I said I’m going to take all of these and you know I’m asking the same. And then it’s just almost literally as a second thought just like randomly I say you don’t happen to have a Ergen bag do you. And the salesgirl said Oh I know when we look in the back and at the very first time that anyone at any of my store had said to me let me look in the back because when I went on a road trip to the south of France they all said we don’t have any Birkin bags. Well there’s a waiting list in media right. So when do you suddenly look in the back. Thought oh that’s good right. And then two minutes later she comes walking out of the road with this big huge orange box about this is a portable television set. It’s just out on the counter in front of me and she opens just little draw and she puts on a pair of white cotton gloves and she takes the lid off the box and removes the tissue paper and then she takes the bag out and she starts telling me all about the bag like this specific information about the bag like size and color and material and stuff of which I could not care anything about. I didn’t know anything about eggs. That’s right. Your and you were thinking you were in or I was in awe and I’m also thinking to myself and emotionally she’s going to remember that there’s a waiting list and somebody is waiting for this bag with some manners is going to come out and tacker on the shoulder and say that it’s already sold. So I’m thinking like I just wanted to pay for the bag in scarves and get out so as fast as I could. So did you even have any idea like what it cost at that point. No. So happened. No I didn’t. What happened was that as soon as I could get a word and I said I’ll take it. And she starts talking she packed it all back out. We went to the cash register. They rang it up and all these cards you know I to my American Express card for the car. And I say I love the store and I have two giant orange shopping bags huge. And I get in a taxi and back to my hotel in a taxi I couldn’t wait to get to the hotel I was dying to open the box. Look at this bag and you know see what the whole thing was all about why there were people waiting two years for this thing. I got to the hotel I opened the box and as I’m packing everything I see the receipt and I look at the receipt and there was like 28000 gongs and I nearly had a coronary. I was thinking I had to pay for this bill in full at the beginning of the month because it’s Americans graphs and I look in that bag was like you know 21 grand or something like that. You kidding me. Here they are the anti-Roman mistake and I look at the receipt and I see and I learned very quickly when I had bought was a no man’s crocodile Birken back when in anthracite Gray which was like a charcoal gray. Meanwhile I’m like panicked because I’ve got to pay for this back you know. So I very quickly took a photograph of the bag and I sent an e-mail to that celebrity that had contacted me months ago and I said I have a broken bag. This is what I have. And I told her you know I wrote down exactly what it said on the receipt because I didn’t know any of it. But you spoke out that Senate seat and I added $5000 to the price. And now about five minutes later I got an e-mail from her. It was one word why she asked explanation I’ll take it again. I couldn’t believe it. Could not believe that I made it quick five grimier. Well little did I know. I mean now I know about that. I could have double the price of that. I didn’t know about. We fly by the city or Pantea. Yeah I was green. I didn’t know anything about that whole world at that point. But a few years later I got another e-mail from her assistant and she said you know I am the assistant. I will make payment arrangements with you and shipping arrangements. And she said My client is leaving for Harris in two days she’ll be staying in the coalition suite at the Ritz in Paris. Could I arrange for you to ship that in there. And I thought to myself is celebrity Coco Chanel sweet Ritz. I was going to deliver the bag. Good idea. Right. So I bought an airline ticket and I flew to Paris. So Whole days later and I was very graciously welcomed into the Coco Chanel suite and I sat there for about a half an hour or chatted with this celebrity and she was so in love with the bag. She had already paid me by bank wired days before and she told me she wanted more crocodile Birkin bags if I could get them. So when I left her I look downstairs and I decided I’d stop in the Hemingway bar there in the lobby of the Ritz and have a glass of champagne with my good fortune. And I wanted to call my mom and tell her everything that just happened right. Because my mother was a voracious reader and she you know would love the fact that I’m sitting in the Hemingway bar and like that place it was muddy. So I mean there really are no way quietly on my cellphone speaking. My mom and I’m telling the story and actually through the story she says to me you know Michael is something I don’t understand. I said What what’s that mom. And she said a few months ago you did that road trip to the south of France and everywhere you went they told you there was a waiting list of two years. So how did you manage to get a bag in you know 20 minutes in the store the other day in Madrid. And I said I don’t know I just went in and I borrow the scarves and then I asked the bag and as I was saying that I was like wait a moment. It was like this light went on in my head because I realized that when I did the road trip in the south of France I went into each store and just asked for a bag and they said they didn’t have one or they said it was a waiting list and I was like when I went to midways up I hope things were committed to buy a whole bunch of things. And as I was paid for those things I asked for a bag so I had this hypothesis and maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was buying all that stuff. So there I was in Paris which was like you know ground zero Furman’s. So I thought OK tomorrow morning I’m going to get wake up and get a cup of tea and then you get all dressed up and I’m going to go in the flagship store and I’m going to try and see if I can get another Birken back. That’s right. For me I get all this out in order to amass. And I went in and I had on my wish list and I went up to the scarf encounter and I ask all of these cars and then I think they ask for a lot of the exact same scarves that I asked for mid-grade or one of those scarves was like a secret. Right. Right. Good thinking. This is a work in progress. I don’t know what’s going on here right now offices. So as soon as I pile up about 10 or 15 scarves that I said I’ll take them all. And we started to walk towards the cash register. And just very sort of nonchalantly say if you happen to have a broken bag my mother would like a bird back and the salesman said to me I don’t know let me look in the back. Bingo bingo two minutes later he came walking out of the back room with that giant orange or many spots. And when I saw that box I knew right then and there that I was going to be the new Houdini man spoken. Yeah. You seriously knew like I could crack some sort of code some sort of formula. Yeah it for me it was a formula. And I’ll tell you a year later I bought and sold 1.6 million dollars worth of Burkin bags. Wow. And I bought every single bag and it remains stored somewhere in the world. Like I went to just a different store every other day. So I mean it’s all been really really great experience for me and really exciting and in a lot of it is because of the fact that you know a lot of these people that were clients migrated to being what I would consider to be friends. You know a lot of times it’s really on who you know in a lot of these friends that connected me with our friends and one thing led to another. I mean I recently launched my own brand which is it. It’s actually it’s funny because it’s kind of come full circle with launches Grandcourt. Oh yes. OK. I just I took a few words I took the word reinvented. There were reports in the word. So combine them together to make this word was a joke. So what I’m doing is I’m taking an iconic silk scarves from imams and Louis Vuitton and Chanel and Puchi and sourcing them from major auction houses around the world. And I’m buying them and I’m bringing them to Spain and I’m working with this very very old hundreds of years old workshop in Spain and we’re hand making. As for drills you know what else to do. I don’t know that no the materials are these. It’s like these four where the bottom of them is like this rolled in like straw. OK I think I’ve seen those. And then they have some roll around the bottom. They’re very cheap right now they’re very stylish and fashionable and they’re you know very sort of in vogue if you will. Where have making these videos using this iconic silk scarf from all these companies. And just a week or two ago we got a big order from Bergdorf Goodman and we have a meeting today with Neiman Marcus and we’ve launched our own Web site. So it’s all come full circle. You know my very first huge success on Ebay was styling and all of my stuff and now here I am making Aspen Rosalie grass. It’s crazy how the world works. It is so crazy. It’s like and I just like I pinch myself each day and I’m like you know I love it. It’s great. I love it. Certainly I found something you’re passionate about too I think. I think you know reading the book and sort of not knowing what had happened you know in the interim 10 years or whatever since it started with the finished I always sort of thought to myself I wonder if Irma’s ever consider bringing you on you know as some sort of like spokesperson or something like that because it was obvious to me even though that you were working the system. You know I sort of figured out their formula and sort of expose them for their waiting list nonsense and their sort of marketing angles. But also you were super passionate actually about you know people certainly who bought all the stuff from you and you sort of had this respect for the fact that even though it’s like these crazy prices of crazy handbags like how can this be worth that you still had like an empathy for her. You know Irma’s because it changed her life. And I thought I always thought you know I wonder if that ever crossed their minds and sort of reach out to you and just sort of turn it from almost an adversarial relationship perhaps into something more mutually beneficial. It’s interesting. You know a lot of very intelligent people who I know have said the same thing. They thought though they are thinking as you know it’s sort of better to have the enemy on your side and on the other side. Never have thought of me as being sort of the enemy. Well then I mean the thing is when you read my book and if you were to watch all of the interviews and listen to all the interviews that I’ve given since the book came out I don’t see anything better on that because no you know I love them as I have changed my life. And you know good were they not perhaps the most honest about how they handle the selling of the products. Well you know that’s people to make a decision about I sure you know the thing is my book which is very mainstream and romance is not very mainstream. So in some ways my book draw the mass brand Young much more into the mainstream and that’s a great thing for him mass certainly got a lot more publicity than anybody else in recent years. Absolutely. And really you know personally and I’m certainly not their demographic perhaps but certainly for me like I knew nothing about meze I’d had me you know I don’t think I even heard of them when I read your book. Even though they’ve been around since like 1837 or something. You know it’s so for me you know I’m sure a lot of people perhaps had that Namibia people into some lesser things lesser price point handbags Maybe I’ve been awoken to a whole new world. Well you know this is when I was out on the west coast doing publicity for my book. This was you know back in 2008. I just spent on it like I forget what it was the Today Show or good morning america or something. And a day later I was in L.A. and I came walking out of a parking garage on day. Right now we see to it like a kiddie corner. So I go and look in the window before I went to meet some editor at some restaurant and it’s sitting there on the street looking in the window when he comes out and she says Excuse me you know. And I was like I need advice. And she says Oh hi I’m so-and-so I’m the store manager of a mess. And I said and I was like oh. And she’s like Oh God she goes we’re in love with your book and everybody in the store is reading your book. It’s like three or four copies going around would you mind coming in and saying hi to people. Oh gosh. So she got it she understood it well you know what she said to me we get it signed we I went inside I had like 10 or 15 minutes to kill. I mean inside quickly had like oh you know 10 people gathered around talking and laughing and she said to me you know there are ever since you started with all this publicity and people coming in the store thinking they can buy the book here. Well are we seeing five to go do you know what. A lot of them buy a bottle of cologne or something like that while they are here. So it’s relevant because you brought a whole new group of a whole new audience a whole new customer base to us. We couldn’t be happier. Yeah. To be honest as a person who’s into marketing and sales you know I think they really missed the boat. If I had gone if I was I had a. You know maybe they have this sort of I don’t know maybe they are more snooty than I’m giving them credit for perhaps. But you know maybe I would a couple I would have had that book in that store the next day. Yeah. Well they’re very fresh. They don’t think the way we do right. You know that’s clear. Obviously that’s what it is. You know that’s amazing. It’s an amazing story. I’m so glad I stumbled across your book. You’ve been uber generous with your time to come and talk with me about all your insane adventures and anybody listen to us eventually I hope we get to get the book managed because there’s so much more we didn’t even touch on and that so much so much exciting and insane stories. It really makes you think about other for me anyway as it made me think about other things out there that might be like that’s you know that remain undiscovered perhaps. Yes. And you know and I get e-mails to people now occasionally all across the world that are like you know I love you both. I read your book I really want to try and create some kind of a business. Can you give me any kind of suggestion and I like is I feel like I had some kind of a formula for for are can they replicate something. And you know it’s very simple and it’s so true. It’s like find something that you either know a lot about or love and really want to learn a lot about. You need to be able to answer every single question that people throw at you intelligent you know. Right. And you can people. I mean I think the sky’s the limit. It’s a matter of figuring out what the product is what the item is or what the service is and this really go for you. And I think to you know in some ways your work can be seen as like an exposé I guess of sorts of the marketing and selling process behind or as in regard to their Burkin bags especially I guess but also those are those are if you look at it from a different perspective those are actually very clever marketing things that they’ve done to grow their brand into billion dollar you know brand. So true so true. You can see it from a number of different perspectives. And those are all things that are usable in other and other venues. Yep I agree. Fantastic now people if people want to get a hold of you Michael where should they go. They can go to my Web site you know dot com. And there’s a contact button on there and I every one of those messages comes directly to me. I read all of them and I respond to all of them. Awesome awesome. And now you got the yearbook has been optioned you know for a movie perhaps. And here you have this new clothing company of sorts. Yeah. Call folk are USPO okayi dot e s great sons. I just want to thank you so much for your enthusiasm and interest because that’s the kind of thing that I mean it’s so invaluable to writers. You know it’s really great. So I really do appreciate you reaching out. No problem no problem. It was a pleasure reading the book. I think you are a great writer because I mean it was one of those page turners I couldn’t really put down. The combination of the of your writing ability and the material the content it was it was a pleasure having you on the show and I really want to thank you for making the time. My pleasure. Anytime. Awesome for everybody else listening. Hopefully we’ll have our next guest will be as exciting and as adventurous and I have so many interesting things to say as Michael. So until next time we’ll talk to you later. The post Episode #170 – Michael Tonello On Becoming The Houdini Of Handbags. 5 Years Flipping One Of The World’s Most Sought After And Exclusive Accessories. appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

She had suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts for a long time. To the point of cutting on a daily basis (people had to hide the sharp objects). She often took refuge in computers… sneaking down in the middle of the night to use the one in her parents living room. She found success building websites for her personal trainer and later, others. When she wanted to level-up, her Grandma gave her $4000 which she plowed into a coaching mentor. By helping others she met through that experience with their websites and systems… She became familiar with internet marketing and connected right away with another entrepreneur. Teaming up, they started a bots company. Have no idea what a bot is or how to use it in your business? That’s what this week’s episode is all about. In this episode, you’ll discover: How to avoid the spammy pitfalls with bots. (Don’t get banned from the book with a face!) Why the “natural” bot is the way to go and 3 examples of how to use them in your business today. The surprising open and click-through rates people have been experiencing with bots. (What does this mean for the future of email?) Take a little of the sting out of depression by following in Kat’s footsteps with this one idea. One quick-start step you can use to get working for yourself (and get free services for your friends!) Mentioned: Free Gift for listeners Bots for Business Katya on Facebook Co-founder Scott Oldford David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO The post Episode #169 – Katya Sarmiento On Automatic Minions! Deploy Your Own Army Of Messenger Bots With Personality, Flair And Wild Success. appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

His family escaped communist Russia in 1980 for America. Between dumpster diving and gasoline showers, his father instilled the entreprenuerial spirit. Even now, a can of Spam still makes him weak in the knees. He kept going. While working three jobs… 11 dollars an hour perrsonal training… fry cook at Disneyland… bouncer at a gay bar (it paid more than a straight bar)… he landed a gym client that would pass on business and success knowledge as Bedros trained him. (Shout out to Jim Franco!) Before long he opened his first personal training studio. Then another. When he had five, he started consulting and coaching with other trainers and gym owners. He has lived what so many consider a mere cliché… The American Dream. Here’s what he did… In this episode, you’ll discover: The simple little cassette tape product his client gave him that changed everything. The two startling and sleazy employee mistakes that told him it was time to sell his studios. The single, critical key angle Bedros used to rock the entire fitness industry! (While attracting business buyers at the same time). How did Bedros re-enter the gym business and found the fastest growing gym chain in the world? The “one year before prom” events that caused him to reinvent himself from the ground up. (Improving this will change everything in your life!). Mentioned: Bedros’ website Bedros’ fitness marketing Bedros on Facebook David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey everybody it’s David Allan from Make Words Pay dot com back with another edition of the podcast. And I got a very exciting guest here today. His name is Bedros Keuilian and he is the most trusted consultant in the fitness industry. Now he started with a number of fitness gyms and you know much to our liking of course use direct response marketing and sales techniques to blow those businesses up. And then he became the founder of the Fit Body Boot Camp and fit body which is according to what I’ve read the fastest growing fitness chain in the world. Bedros, Welcome to the show. Bedros Keuilian: Thank you sir and thank you for having me. What a great opportunity. David Allan: Yeah it’s exciting to have you on the show. Now maybe we’ll just start you know maybe if people that don’t know much about you. And to be honest you know I’ve read a few things but I don’t know a ton about you. Take us back to the the very start and sort of give us you know the trajectory that your career has taken – a superhero origin story if you will. Bedros Keuilian: Yes absolutely. My pleasure. I’ll encapsulate this and then you can take it you know in depth if you want. However it’s my story’s a little different than everybody else who has had a rags to riches story because mine was a dumpsters to riches story here. But you know it all worked out OK in the end but my dad decided that we’re going to escape communist Russia in 1980 and get to the United States. And I was six years old. I was the baby of the family we were or we were broke. We didn’t understand the language but the greatest thing was that we were in a country that gave us opportunity and hope and make money as long as we paid it forward and serve the people in the communities that we were going to go into business. I mean that was my dad’s whole philosophy he wants to come to America learn the language and then start a little tailor shop and then serve the community of Anaheim Anaheim California where he still lives today with my mom and I. That’s exactly what he did man and he taught me and my brother and sister These idea of being an entrepreneur of freedom that will allow you all the types of opportunities that you want but in the process you know we moved around a lot growing up different apartments got evicted a lot lived in apartments that were so dirty so filthy that as a child that eight years old I got lice and we were so broke. My mom couldn’t afford lice treatment and so she literally had my dad siphon our gasoline from the car and she washed my hair with gasoline on the grass in front of me. Yeah. Wow. So I kind of tell people listen I’ve eaten out of dumpsters because it was cheaper to just dive into the dumpster according to my dad behind the grocery stores and pick out take out food that’s been expired but necessarily hasn’t gone back yet. And she read that in to go and buy the food from the grocery stores. And so at the end of the day all of those adversities that we faced I realized adversities that have helped me become a better entrepreneur because there is not a tough situation that I haven’t gone through from having my hair wash with gasoline to being yelled at and said hey you’re you’re a fucking foreigner. Get the fuck out of this country. Two to two eating out of dumpsters so any business adversity that I get today is like a walk in the park as far as I’m concerned. Right. And what was your you know your father instilling this entrepreneur mindset on you. What was he started to do what sort of businesses will see delving into. And so he was he worked as a tailor in Armenia which was looking for the role and he wanted to have his own little tailor shop rate and custom make shoes and stuff. And so we came to the United States and he and my mom and my older brother and older sister all were two or three jobs around the clock and they saved enough money where before we ever even bought a house my dad within three years of being in the country he had a tiny 900 square flight alteration shop a tailor shop in Anaheim and believe it or not and he did alterations for the CEO of Disney at the time. He did alterations for the Backstreet Boys when they came to perform at the stadium. I mean my dad has done work for some make big wigs Red Orange County Zevon by getting a reputation. This old Warner dude. And it was that little tailor shop that helped him by three homes one of which he lives in and the other two ended up being his retirement nest. That’s right. Well he’s very smart. Absolutely. And he put the business you know the the wealth generating thing first by getting the tailor shop. Exactly and so growing up while I have this rags to riches story I resonate better with the whole. I’m the American dream but I have the immigrant edge and Grac you share with people these days. So what point did you start delving into like fitness and stuff like that. Oh man I was a fat kid growing up because when you’re eating out of dumpsters and when your parents were all for and cheese of the white bread and spam I still look I see it can of Spam grow. I could bite through the can again I’m the was that was like You’re really making me. I don’t care about any of that. You show me a fan of mine. He’s going to be like. So it’s a problem. So by the time I was in high school I was like 40 pounds overweight. I was like a squishy fat kid having to go to prom with this girl named Kiah and prom was one your way because this was 11th grade now. And I go man she’s not going to want to go to prom with some fat dude. So that summer I started working out reading muscle magazines eating is clean and healthy as I could. And before you know it I lost 35 40 pounds went back to school senior year. And I was a whole new man. Never mind the physical transformation. They was talking about like emotional strains. I’m talking about making eye contact with people and talking about confidence self-esteem self-awareness all of these things happen when you when you get fit and lose weight because you kind of come out from highly. And so while I never worked up enough nerve to ask the guy to the prom I just I never went to the prom which was OK the best gift ever God gave to myself was that good fitness and a rebirth if you will. So I decided that this is going to be my path. I want to help more people achieve this outcome of self-awareness of discovery fitness. Developing your mindset and self-confidence and so on. And of madness. Nineteen ninety seven this is what I’ve been doing. It’s been a hell of a struggle and I ended up homeless a couple times I want to be older too. But that’s you know that’s the path that all entrepreneurs probably take. So you went from there did you start just by personal training people at the local jammer and graduate or how did it work. Yeah. So I you know in the back of those mount muscle magazines that I was reading it you know they had a little fractional ads. And one of the ads said become a certified personal trainer and make a hundred dollars an hour. Well listen I did that. I’m I’m I’m not. I’m not a mathematician but I did come back with a hundred dollars an hour. And if I can train eight people a day that’s $800 a day you multiply that by the number of days in a month. I’m going to be rich. Right. What I didn’t realize Dave is that you actually have to learn how to prospect and influence and write a period of branding and awareness and all that stuff. So I was the personal trainer who was certified but instead of $100 an hour I was making $11 and 30 cents per hour at the local big box gym. And then I also worked as a fry cook at Disneyland and I worked as a bouncer at a gay bar on the weekend because the gay bar paid more than the straight bar. Again talk about the trajectory of the entrepreneur. I realized at the gym all I want to do is train people but I had three clients and most of the time I was spending my time racking up weights of people who just decided not to wreck their weight. Oh my God. Yes. Well a bumpy start you could say but thankfully thankfully one of my personal training clients His name is Jim Frango and we’re still friends till this day. He’s in his 70s now. He was this wealthy entrepreneur without even realizing I was being mentored by him as I was training him in the gym man. He started to teach me how to become an entrepreneur how to think like a millionaire how to think scale. And before long for a few years later after getting sort of a i’d I opened up my first person training studio in San Diego so he was sort of like by osmosis he was sort of delivering these you know ideas into your head during your your sessions. Yeah exactly. Once I figured it out I started to kind of read the next 30 minutes after his session open. So I would you know just start kind of tagging along. I was there nagging along and walking him to the front door and I stopped him at the juice bar and I’d ask more questions of you know now I was getting coaching and mentoring from him. Right. Right. Now did you take that and build up a training business like within that establishment first and then take them elsewhere or what was the next step. No. No. One thing I learned very quickly quite is this karmic justice. And I still teach that the person thing is right. Don’t go building up your clientele somewhere and then still those clients and go somewhere else because karmic justice will work your ass and the same thing will happen to you. Right. So I literally what I did though is I started putting lead boxes out in the community as my gym was being built out. And while I was still working at a gym in town pick up and do the you know at the time no Facebook no social media someone lead boxes in the community and then you’re getting all these people via e-mail letting them know what my gym is going to open up that work out for the first two weeks. Absolutely free. And so I did create a lot of organic buzz the best I could and this was at the time I guess social media marketing very 1.0 sounds like it. Now I would point to well you’ve got your first gym open and then you started. Now you’re in business and you’re in business for yourself you’re officially like you know I guess you were before an entrepreneur but now you’re really feeling it. At what point did you start learning about direct response. You know I. So here’s here’s one thing that Jim Franco that client made for me. He turned me on to a sales set with rushing into this doesn’t know what a concept of the wax museum they probably have like a cassette tape artifact. But he gave me a cassette tape of Tom Hopkins who did real estate sales and he said he listen to this real estate sales audio cassette you just don’t know how to sell your in order take are you getting all these sales go by. I said great no problem. So Tom Hopkins leads the Brian Tracy. Tracy said Tony Robbins Tony Robbins is the banking and the Kennedy leads. Gary Haubrich No no no no no. Yeah right. So I’m exposed to not only selling but personal growth and direct response. Man I remember Dan Kennedy talking and one of his audio cassettes about if you really want to learn direct response marketing which is accountable marketing and that’s the way he said it he said it’s just brand building it’s accountable marketing direct response is where you take a dollar and you know exactly how much money that dollar generated for you then you’re going to want to take the best performing direct response ads and hand write them in that audio cassette. He talked about and he said for example like any high performing ad from Gary hopper. So again I’m not the sharpest guy in the world. But you’re smarter than we are wealthier than me says. This is what you do. I get my writing finding all these Gary Halpert letters in handwriting them and till this date I have two giant crates of Gary Hurlburt letters which actually shared with Kevin and bon Talbert a few years ago when they photocopied them. So I had all their dads you know old yeah not so you just went and actually found those letters on your back then of course you know it wasn’t readily available like the Internet of course. So you just went and searched in papers and magazines and so forth to get those things. Exactly. That’s great. That’s great. And as a result you probably value them a lot more. Absolutely. And back then I had time on my hands just like the wire for starting out. You got we got time in your hands you can go do the search. These days that Google search the damn thing out and start handwriting it these days. Now I don’t have time on my hands. I pay people to go find me stuff. But man that time on your hands and people tell me I don’t have the resources I don’t have the time. I just want to slap them silly when they say that Jack. I went through the same process too and I found out about all this. Gary Hulbert which people can go back and episodes listen about. Yeah that’s that’s interesting and actually it’s funny because I started in the fitness industry too. I had my own personal training and gym at one point in my early 20s and I didn’t know anything about I wish I’d learned about direct response then because I probably would still exist if I had. But one of my mentors was Arthur Jones. I started Novelis I guess. Yeah. So I met him so that was an interesting thing. But so you’d see you get your own and now you start to multiply your germs you start to open other ones you start to take you know start your own empires at the next step. Yeah yeah. So I was sort of a guy like this. I was a java owner when I had my own gym. I was a job and I went from having a job to owning a job which is much better than having a job and you’re pretty much working 24 hours a day is a job. And then I went and started figuring out that I can become an entrepreneur and have others work for me and run the systems and the systems can run the business. And for long I have five first on training studios throughout San Diego which I ultimately ended up selling and I went into coaching and consulting trainers after that. Now when you decided to make that leap from owning the actual gyms into it like telling people what to do with their gyms essentially that Kennedy is still a big influence on that regard. Tyler Yeah by that point that you know Kennedy E.J. Abraham Joe polish I mean and you name it. I was I was lying. It gets to events audio cassettes CDs memberships and newsletters. I had it all. I was spending money I didn’t have money myself because I had discovered that the more I was you the more I realized I didn’t know. So I had to learn it all so that I could be the best at my craft and money well invest. And that’s I think a common theme for all the people we have on the show is that they attended live events which is a big part of their thing with the connections I made and the you know training and stuff they got. And just seeing other people doing what they want to do you know that sort of mindset stuff you talked about a bit earlier coming from such meager beginnings and also the knowledge you know you just availing yourself of the best of the best. Where are you where you want to go. Yeah exactly right. I mean what could be more powerful than being at a gang Kennedy seminar as a young man and seeing exactly how he moves the audience. It’s into action what could be more powerful than hearing his agent person trying to you know reverse engineer it right for the hour. Then the environmental exposure that you’re going to get at a live event. I don’t know anything more. That’s right. All right so you decided to jump into the coaching and consulting business and at that point you know how are you finding people did you go to other gym owners and stuff you approached them or how did it go. Yeah. Because by the time I had my five hours on training Germans people were trainers and the industry started to reach out to me you know of a couple of our industry publications have written about about the fact that I own personally. Here’s a weird thing as a fellow trainer you understand this. We already have been writing about the fact that I have my personal training gyms are kicking ass right about the fact that I was rocking the industry because I decided to do two things different than all of trainers which was I switched from 60 minutes to 30 minute training sessions right. Instead of selling 10 15 and 20 sessions at a time and then coming back and seeing you again I was going to sell you a 12 month membership to my program and actually charge you 500 to $800 a month on a recurring basis. And they got the craziest most absurd thing right about me. This is crazy man doing wacky stuff in our industry. But a handful of trainers who were like you know maybe that’s not so crazy if the guy has five studios and is working these guys and gals who reach out to me. My only question to them was are you in San Diego. And they said no you’re not in San Diego you’re not competing with me I’ll help you for that. And so I think coaching and consulting even before I sold my gym I loved it so much that I kept them kind of in my circles. And then at this point you know the Internet started to rock n roll is 2003 2004 and I started doing the google search and I hate to admit this but I started scraping e-mail addresses. I mean honestly the pace is what it’s about right this is people want to know what works not what you know not some utopian approach for the record do not do not do not want to try to say I guess you can call them that Anyway I’m speaking to your listeners here but right back in 2003 2004 you’re going to go find Bob’s personal training website and then send them an email over and over again with no unsubscribe Reagan. And that was fine today. So you are you are just using what was available and sort of it was kind of like the Wild Wild West too at that point. Yes sir. So then you built up this you know from helping these people for free and then they eventually. Now did you make that they just sell everything first and then do it or did you start taking pay clients for that consulting and then sold your gems or what was the order of events. I actually didn’t have any plans to sell my gems. A kind of a big national brand came through and made me an offer from my gyms that I couldn’t refuse. And check this out. The only reason they wanted to buy my gym is that because I had a great grand or I had this awesome system. It wasn’t any of that they were that wacky idea that I had about putting people on a 12 month commitment contract and charging them monthly right. Well as it turns out they like the idea that I had clients who were committed for 12 months which means I had a business that had predictable recurring scheduled income prancing. We want to buy your future receivables and we’re going to open up bigger person training studios right around the areas that you have your James. And so we’re going to disrupt those kinds over. So they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse I sold. And at that point I was kind of at a fork in the road why do I open up more gems or do I start coaching and consulting because I’ve gotten a taste of that and I like it. I chose the coaching. How did you choose against the gems because you thought it was just a labor intensive and so forth or what was it what was the thinking. Oh man I’m going to lay it on you straight in and you’ll appreciate this as a fellow trainer do it right around that time. It’s almost like the universe spoke to me right around that time. I had a trainer who had already we had just caught. It’s over seven seven thousand dollars training clients under the table. So $7000 for me and one of my jeans for head gets better gets better. Another trainer and impregnated a client right. Yeah. They got what I got screwed. The company that’s like it’s like one of these reality TV shows. Yeah man. And so I realized all right. I got 60 employees and there’s just no way I can get like fighter jet level employees when you have 60 and you can probably get your Ivrit fighter jets. But if you need a large number of team members you’re going to have to kind of get some lower level people unfortunately. So I was tired of having that many employees who I was unable to manage am a better manager and hire of people today. So I don’t have those problems even though I’ve got more employees. But back then I would just done done done. So I just went the path of coaching and consulting. So you started doing this coaching and consulting for the people that you know you already had in your inner circles. What did you do from that like where did you take it to do you sort of how did you decide to build that business. Yes so I asked my brother in law I said hey look at what all this knowledge so create a course that we can give away for free in exchange for email addresses at that point when shopping cart had come around and I started using one shopping cart I was also known as marketers choice and which is just an email. So it’s like an archaic infusion of software on proport right for that. Long story short I said that I got this knowledge was create a digital course that we can give away in exchange for an email address. And then I will start following up these people on Ausstellung Coachy. We created the course before you know it you know Google started to rock and roll so we’re doing a we put up a blog and I started creating blogs and P-T power and renegade and the marketing folks started to rank really high for all my key words like fitness marketing personal training marketing and started personal training business. And so I started creating a. By 2005 I had a product suite. So I did many did three or four different lead generators to sell personal training how to market personal training. Those were free those like two nine different information products courses and stuff CDs DVDs books that you would get. And those escalated into higher level coaching and consulting and around 2009 I realized I had more phone coaching clients that I know to do with how I’m spending my too much time on my ass and not enough time working on my business and I need to again go back to group training. I like training so I started the masterminds. And today I have three different masterminds and over 400 mastermind coaching clients and of course we have. In 2012 I launched it by people who can’t franchise and we have over 500 locations worldwide there. So those are actual gems. Yeah those are actual gems I like the subway of kind. So you already went full circle you went from having gyms or personal training to having jams to getting out of the gym business like doing coke and then getting that getting back into the gym business just like a sort of a logical extension of your sort of brand and everything. Yeah it is. Man on a personal trainer my heart. Now we want to meet him anything. And so that to me is helping business professionals grow their business and then brooders his profession like helping people in the community who will never meet me graduate better lives. And so I figured what better way than to create a franchise where it’s the model that I envision all the training style and the way they’re going to teach it and how we’re going to coach them and we’re going to have them even though it’s got to come full circle. And how do you find working with you know because obviously you’re working on the higher end of the business but when you’re setting up these new things like So people go to like I’ve never been to a fit body location what am what am I. What’s the experience of experience next. So everybody comes in on a low barrier offer and the lowest barrier offer we have is 350 workouts the highest barrier offer is a six week transformation contest and anything in between to be a 21 day rabbit that I was program. Well I’m a big believer in we’re not going to sell you a 12 month program without even trying it. So I live on a low barrier program and it’s really cool man you’re doing you’re using equipment that is effectively functional equipment for fat loss like the suspension straps battle ropes kettlebells sleds flying boxes you know weighted balls dumbbells etc. but the truth of the matter is you’re working out in a group environment. And our model is called the forestation rotation. So we put clients as much as 70 clients at a time through anywhere between four and six stations in 30 minutes. We rotate them with music. It’s a family community type of deal. We have Facebook private rooms for every single location but you can’t location so even when you’re not working out you’re not really your plug in your iPhone or whatever it may be that you have. And we focus on mindset and nutrition as much as the workouts again. As a trainer you know this without that we’re not going to get results and so we focus on mindset and nutrition. People realize that you know what. This is way cheaper than one on one personal training because a set of four to eight hundred hours a month they’re now paying 147 for 197 a month. Really cool community. That’s competitive fun. And you actually get results of that. Yeah that sounds really cool. So for people who have products and stuff too that people can access. Maybe don’t just pertain to the fitness industry. Yes. Well no not not really the only product I have outside of the business industry is a direct coaching consulting. OK. The fitness industry has got a massive product line software resources et cetera which they can access people can access my free stuff and based on our dot com but on my blog I have a lot of free stuff. We’re all types of entrepreneur is bedrolls Humean dot com is my blog. I was actually interested in working with me so leave them with a tough job. Everyone wants to work with me and I’m very grateful for that. They would just click on a consulting tab and you just want to be followed by them and work with me. Awesome. I want to thank you bedrolls for coming on the show and you’ve been really entertaining and giving a lot of knowledge to the audience and it’s been a real pleasure having you on the show. Well thank you so much David I really appreciate the opportunity man it’s been great. And for everybody else listening we’ll be back again with another addition of the podcast next week. All right we’ll see everybody then. The post Episode #168 – Bedros Keuilian On How I Raised Myself Up From Dumpster To CEO. Founder Of World’s Fastest Growing Gym Chain Tells All appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Nobody thought he had any shot at all at becoming wealthy. A high school dropout… ex-welder… factory worker… with an obsession. While co-workers and family members laughed and put him down, he soldiered on. He admits he was delusional in his pursuit. When he met his wife and they started their direct-marketing company things changed. A copywriter approached them and they began to work together. The business started to flourish. T.J. applied himself to learning sales copy and when he penned his first letter it brought in a cool million bucks. The rest, as they say, is Goessel, Kansas history (population 400!). So if you feel like you’re never going to succeed… you’re beaten down… and no-one believes in you… THIS is the podcast for you. In this episode, you’ll discover: How to have the last laugh when no one (not even your friends and family) believe you can succeed. The honest, no “bullcrap” truth of turning $300 into 10 Million (in 5 years!) without special knowledge, skills or ability. Almost fool-proof way to succeed by employing one method every successful person uses. The dirty-little secret of opportunity market spouses. A “can’t miss” way to sell in your market. The number one reason why the opportunity market is so rabid. Mentioned: T.J.’s Website The Money Machine Webinar T.J. on Facebook David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey, everybody and we’re back with another edition of the podcast I’m David Allan and I have a very interesting guest on the show today. Dan Kennedy actually called him at one time – one of the best copy writers in the opportunity market. Other people have referred to him as the 150 Million Dollar Man T.J. Rohleder, How are you? T.J. Rohleder: I’m great man. Fired up ready to go. David Allan: Awesome. And I hope I pronounced your name right. I hope. T.J. Rohleder: Absolutely. It’s like rolling a letter. David Allan:So T.J. for people who don’t know who you are and maybe aren’t down the rabbit hole as deep as some of us in direct marketing. Maybe start with where you came from what you were doing – because you have some of the most interesting, you know, direct mail. You’ve been featured on different people’s seminars and so forth especially of course the aforementioned Dan Kennedy. And just tell your story sort of what you were doing before you got into all of this sort of you know bring us up through the through the years to where you’re at now. Well I’m a salesman you know. So I got into sales back in the mid 80s. Prior to that construction were factory work. I was a welder. A blue collar kinds of things which I’m still I’m still a blue collar person. I’ve no bluejeans millionaire because I don’t dress up and what you see is what you get grow. But I started by money making programs and getting involved in network marketing opportunities and that got me out of the factories started my own business. And then in 1988 I met my wife. And so you know almost 30 years ago. And her and I started a little tiny direct response marketing company in Godso Kansas which without Google you’d never be able to find that out of four people. Right. And we started with 300 bucks and turned it into over $10 million in our first five years in total revenues. And you know that’s that’s my that’s my claim to fame her and I did it together we generated tens of millions of dollars and next year will be our 30th anniversary. So of the business and you know I just I learned direct mail from a from a master copywriter I’ll tell that story maybe later in the podcast but you know direct response marketing turning words into money. Yeah. Now what was the first time you heard about like the concept or direct response that somebody another business person mentioned it to you. Did you pick up a book by accident. Like how did that start. Oh no no no no. There really were no real books 30 some years ago on the subject. Do you know except available through mail order. You know I don’t know but you know there I was just by a money making program. I answer to that. In some of the magazines about some of the business opportunities that worked for sale and ended up getting on all these mailing lists then you know so I know that that was you go to the mailbox. And if you’re a hot prospect and you’re buying lots of this stuff then you open your mailbox and it’s just flooded with junk mail and you know. So that’s that’s really how I discovered it all. And and and ironically enough a lot of the money making programs that were for sale back then and a lot of of them are still for sale right now. It’s all about making money by selling the opportunity itself. You know that’s a common theme in our market right. Yeah making teaching you how to make money. It’s very strange telling selling money making program. Yeah it’s very it is. I’ve always thought that was a little bit funny. Yeah it is very strange once you sort of step back and think about it. So you were answering all these ads in the back of various magazines that people were sending all sorts of stuff. And most of it was just not very helpful I trust. Well you know I was I certainly wasn’t making any money with all the network marketing programs and stuff like that. And my friends and family they saw me spending all of my money on these plans and programs and they thought I was absolutely crazy. And I was there’s no question about that. You know like a factory worker who thinks that he can become a millionaire and he had no special knowledge skills or abilities. I mean you know I it was crazy. It was crazy to think that that someone like myself back then could have ever made a lot of money that come. Like your persistence in sort of you know going through and purchasing these programs and sort of persisting despite the fact it sounds like you know that quite a few people around you and your family perhaps were saying you know how crazy and where. And like forget it. And it’s never going to work. What did that persistence and that sort of confidence that you’re going to find something that did work where did that come from. Well I think I think it really was just delusion at the time it was you know delusion kept me and I just I had this I had this fantasy that I could become a billionaire and and all of these network marketing programs that I was part of 35 years ago back in the first you know the middle 80s you know that that’s that’s what they’re all about. You know they show you they draw the circles. They show you how you can have this huge organization and be oriented you know hundred thousand of all that was you know back. It’s even more pronounced today. Right. But you know so that I just bought into it. I see it now you know. Now I realize that all the people that laughed at me and my friends and family coworkers You know I asked me how right they. I had the last laugh. So I mean I had the last laugh. You continued unabated. So you were just hell bent on like I’m going to make this work. Yeah yeah we just you know and then we we we got lucky in the beginning in the sense that there’s this direct response company that my wife and I started we sold a program called dialing for dollars which showed people how to make money with a simple telephone answering machine and all of the concepts and dialing for dollars basically still work today with some real tweaking. We don’t use answering machines anymore we use voice mail Bell you know messages we use webinars and all that kind of stuff. But but we came up with this little program for making money with an answering machine. We sold 160000 of them in the first four years. And a lot of those people stayed with us for many many years because there’s an ability to this opportunity market place that I’ve been part of now for three decades. People just can’t get up. And the more they buy the more they want to buy. Every purchase fuels the desire for the next purchase. And they are truly insatiable and they spend a lot of money every penny that they have and then some. Right. And you were and you were the same one. I mean the sort of God and that’s that Pepsi that’s might. That was my connection to the marketplace. And out of everything I’ve learned and I’ve strived to learn as much as I could. I became obsessed with learning everything there is to know about marketing and sales copywriting information marketing and all that. But the one thing above everything else that’s made me more money and makes me more money than anything else is that that affinity that I have with the marketplace. I mean I am the market and they are me I understand these people way better than they’ll ever understand themselves and I don’t mean that in a cocky arrogant kind of way. I’ve worked really hard to understand them and to understand yourself Well yeah I mean you know you really can’t understand anybody else until unless you really understand yourself. But but. Yes sure. So what. What was the desire behind my desire to make all this money what is what is their desire. I mean it’s a fantasy that people trade. It’s no different in some ways and maybe that’s a little off color. But people that are all caught up in pornography or whatever other fantasy that people get caught up in that they end up devoting large portions of their life to their chasing dream. You know because that’s that’s what most all of this get rich quick stuff is it’s just a dream it’s a fantasy. And and people are chasing it now. Did you have examples in your own life people that you knew that had been successful when like the network marketing thing or maybe a money maker. Absolutely not. No way no way. I said you always hear about those people you know go back to network marketing being the best example. You know there’s always the stories of you know sometimes you do actually see them in some of the National pep rallies the stuff that those companies have you know they’re they’re up on the stage they’re the superstars. Right. And there’s no question of that in network marketing alone. There are people that have made billions of dollars they’re making hundreds of thousands of money right now. You can go to some of the popular Web site to see all the stories of the people that started broke and now they’re making millions so it does happen but it’s mostly just a fantasy for them. For the average person it will never happen. Right. Right. And did you have any like did you have any business people that were you were you know maybe close to your family or some people you looked to that had been successful that sort of gave you that glimmer of hope. No. No but we were lucky in the beginning because we we met this guy named Russ Bonhoeffer a legend in our business and he sent us. We were in the business six months and one day I went to the mailbox to grab all the orders that came in brand new to the business. And I I got a brochure from this guy in El Cajon California who I already knew his name. He was he was also in the opportunity market. And he sent along a little oh this is it’s kind of noteworthy you didn’t send a brochure. He sent a brochure with a little post-it note on their hand and it just said hey I like what you guys are doing. Give me a call I think I can help you make more money. I will help him. And that started a relationship that is still going to to this day 30 years later. So that’s amazing. You know he he yeah he taught me direct mail. So he used to come out to our house. We’d pay him 25 bucks he’d come out to our house for the weekend and we at that time we were brand new in the business so we had a customer base and we would just sit around talking about what what other kinds of products that the customers might want to buy. And then he would just get really excited. He wrote all of this copy by by longhand on legal pad. So we always had to have a stack of legal pads right there when we can vote. All right. I guess he was just we would drink a lot of coffee and then we get excited and he’s going to start writing fast and furious that once he got started you just you didn’t you know you just let him go. He was done. And they did. And then he cool off that you know after 10 minutes or 15 minutes he lose his train of thought or whatever and we drink some more coffee and talk a little bit more and up and sure enough we get all excited he’d start right when we took all those legal pad when we took him back to the airport on Sunday. We would then on the way back home we stop at the pipers and we had a lady type it all up and then we turned it into sales letters. And that’s how that’s how I learned direct mail. That’s also when I just go somewhere somewhere. As I was watching this guy do his magic. I said I’ve got to learn how to do this right. And I did. I taught myself how to do it. And my first sales letter brought in over a million bucks. A good start took three months to write it though David. Three months to write it sounds like every every year sounds like every day it was worth it. That would have brought it down and I wrote it all out longhand like he did you know that it was only years later that I said Man I can’t do this because it’s you know tears up your hand. I learned how to write on the computer and stuff like that you know. Right so let’s sort of silly this was just sort of a you know a chance occurrence. Yes. I mean you said you knew who this guy was already but he reached out to you. Yeah. Yeah. He sent us a brochure on his copywriting services and he included a personal note. And and to this day I really have to believe that that personal note made all the difference because you know you had your greenmail your white male and then the greenmail took the priority to the male with the money in it and the white male if you you know if sometimes you didn’t even get around to doing much with the white male if the business was good. So it was just that personal little touch. And I think in many many many ways all of us as marketers need to find ways to add some kind of a personal touch to make ourselves stand out a little bit add that element of oh I don’t know what do you call it. I just call it human war. DAVID Yeah yeah. There’s like an empathy and a sense that you know it’s how you treat real friends of yours. Yeah exactly. Exactly. You know you speak a certain way to your friends and that’s kind of how you talked to the people that are you that you’re trying to create that for. Right. That’s exactly how I I treat every single prospect and I’ve done business with with hundreds of thousands of people over the years. And when we put our friend on our sales letter we mean it. Yeah I mean a friend is somebody that you have something in common with somebody who’s trying to look out for your best interests. You know we really do try to reach out to people in an altruistic kind of way. Now the market that you’re in they actually Mark and I have been in for lo these many years as kind of a bad rap against it. That’s that. That is an understatement. And this is a dirty rotten filthy whiny market. But the truth is you know but it’s also a market that is very lucrative and the people within the market are really great people even though sometimes they don’t behave. You know they do they behave poorly. You know it’s it’s it’s it’s a really I thought about getting out of this market for many many many years. But I keep coming back to it because you know I know it so well. It’s just you know you want it for so long. But but ultimately that’s not enough. And the money’s not enough. I I really have an affinity for these people and I feel their pain and they’re all in pain and they’re in great great great emotional pain. And you know they’re just they’re they’re they’re just like I was 30 some years ago and they haven’t changed it it’s not going to change 30 50 years from now. You know albeit you know a little bit more fragment with the Internet like that but but with the psycho graphics behind the whole thing it’s never going to change people. People are not just looking to make a lot of money they want to make a lot of money fast and easy and they want the dream to be real and they want something to get excited about and more than anything else. I think that’s what it is for a lot of these people you know they’re just they’re they’re there I know I don’t want to say they’re bored out of their mind. I don’t want to say that. Let’s just say that they’re not they’re not happy and they they really just want something to get. That’s why I like look. Let’s go back to network marketing. Ninety 97 98 percent of the people in Network Marketing already but even making a thousand bucks a month. Some of these people say with those things for years because because they want to feel alive they like wanted the pep rallies. They like being around other like minded you know kind of people that are excited. And so the money really doesn’t even factor in. I mean they’re always hopeful. You know they’re going to sign up some heavy hitter or some nonsense like that you know. Now for you personally did you ask as you went forward into the opportunity market before you started your own company and you were buying these money making things. I was the customer before I became a seller. Yeah. Yeah and people were telling you like forget it this is never going to be you you’re never going to be rich or whatever you know. However they characterized it. Was they’re part of it your motivation to prove these people wrong. Oh absolutely. Oh absolutely no question about it it was that there was that little kid you know the little kid that you know you’re pushing him down and they just keep coming back you know or whatever. So sure you know I. Nobody. I suffered some humiliation. Right. You know people people not only laughing behind my back but laughing right in my face you know like oh he thinks he’s going to get rich someday they just thought that was the funniest damned thing in the world. And you know what it is really looking back at it all looking back at it all I totally the joke really was on me not them because because most people most people that have my kind of background you know blue collar guy think he’s going to become a millionaire. I mean come on that’s I could see I could see it really was a joke. But you know really was no question about it. Yeah. It’s very interesting. Do you find that motivates you now too because you know when you’re talking because you are are are your market as you’ve pointed out repeatedly. Does that motivate you to help these people because you want to help them prove people wrong too. Well I I if I had a thousand dollars for every time I’ve said to one of my customers I’ve said things to the effect of Hey we’re going to make that wipe a believer or something like that. Right. But God only knows how much money have. You know really were they have they they all have people in their lives that are naysayers. Critic you know the world is full of all of that. And so they’ve got all kinds of oh the fact that a lot of these people they’re there by in these programs behind their spouses back. So I’m very very very very very common. You know they’ve got credit cards that their spouses don’t know about. They’ve got phone numbers that their spouses don’t know about. They’re sneaking around behind their spouses back. So I see all of that is just very very very common thing. But inside it’s their desire for having something more. And they know that other people have done it. There’s tons of social proof out there even though when you when you really study it you’ll see that there are isolated stories but you know my story is very isolated to bed yet. And yet I’m a high school dropout. I have no knowledge skills or abilities. I wasn’t born with any any good looks or any talent or anything you know just I just had just had this crazy idea that I could make a lot of money and then I ultimately I fell in love with the marketing that I fell in love. See that’s that’s the difference between me and a lot of my customers that you know I fell in love with all this stuff to the point where it became sort of an opposition and I devoted every waking minute of every day to you know trying to really master some of this stuff. Do you see that do you see that as a you have that in common with the people who’ve been successful in past. Oh what a successful at anything he does. You know this this this whatever you want to call it drive determination. This is the way that they make it so. Well no just in business in general. You know the people who succeed are the longest stand and the most are the ones who who make it if not the top priority in their life. It’s definitely one of the two or three top priorities in their entire life. Yes it seems to me too. I sort of didn’t get into it really you know through. I want to make a lot of money. I mean I’ll say I didn’t buy a lot of those things kind of like you did when I was a kid. So when I was a kid I guess or like a young adult I would buy stuff on the back of magazines because I had sort of that same desire. I had some people around me some neighbors and some family friends that were like pretty wealthy. And so I was surrounded by that and maybe at some point I moved away from be extremely wealthy and to like I just got absorbed into the psychology and everything of it. And that’s what sort of drove my passion you know to get into the things I ended up in. But it’s interesting to see a lot of people who are very successful are very obsessed you know with whatever. And in this case direct marketing people now that I know in direct marketing and they’re just they’re very excited about it even though they’ve been in it for like 30 40 years. You know they’re just it’s very. It’s just like oh and by the way by the way one of my biggest pet peeves David is the fact that when when you when someone gets off set with marketing and sales and information selling or whatever a business fit you know all of a sudden they’re labeled and they’re like some kind of a workaholics freak or kind of a greedy Hitto such a group or people or people are just oh bad they’re feeling so sorry for them because all they ever do is think about making money. All said you know what. You know what. People don’t have a habit. People people can have a hobby. People can have a hobby and be totally of or or or art you know art or music or whatever you know. And the way that the way that the way that others look at people that are devoted to their music or their other art forms or more their hobbies compared to the way people feel about somebody that that’s that that has those same whatever you want to call it up sections about businesses you know. So it’s not about the money it’s not about the greed or anything like that business. It’s very fulfilling and it’s something that we we we do put a lot of ourselves into it. But we also get a lot out of it and we provide a lot of value to the people around us that are part of our teams and stuff like that. So I’ve got I’ve got staff members that have been with me for many many years. And you know we provide a lot of value to a lot of people. Yes sure. I see what you’re going to it’s like you never see somebody who’s like immersed in music is trying to make music maybe or or you know maybe a D.J. or an actual musician and they’re just you know they’re around that 24/7 365 nobody seems to call them a freak. But you want to know on the on the on. On the contrary they tend to admire them because of how dedicated they are to their art when it’s business or making money or marketing or sales or copywriting. All of a sudden you get a bad name to it. So to say you know yeah that a real pleasure having you on the show. So people want to get a hold of you they want to avail themselves perhaps of some of your products or get in touch with you what’s the best way they should do that. OK so I’ve got a Web site thanks for asking. Yeah. I’ve got I’ve got my main web site is w w w and then it’s my name T.J. rollator T.J. our 0 8 LCDR dot com. So OK. When they go there. There’s 63 of my books that I’ve written on marketing are available for instant download is just certain groups that are dot com. Great blog site. Man thank. My my number one book which is some people think I just have one book because I’m the book on most famous for whatever is how to get super rich in the opportunity market. Right. Which is there and then and then if you want to see a current promotion that I’m doing at the Web site right now still being worked on but it’s up there it’s what’s hot right now. Dot.com. OK. So just to show you I talked a little bit about this postcard that leads to a one hour webinars that want our Webinars on that Web site. So what’s hot right now without an apostrophe. Right. So what. But anyway so I appreciate the opportunity to share. And every big shot is just a little shot that just kept shooting and there is no difference. All of the most successful people I’ve ever met and I’ve had the privilege of meeting some some really successful people they just people that are deeply committed to their businesses they’ve fallen in love with with the kinds of things that they sell the people that they sell to. And they just strive to learn and to sort of master all of this to the best of their ability. I think that’s great. I think you’re exactly right and you’re your own story has borne that out over lo these many years. And I want to thank you for coming on the show making time for us. And a pleasure. Yeah it’s been a real it’s been a real pleasure. Stick on the line a little bit. You judge everybody else right who listens to this podcast. You know why on this back listen to this one a few times because T.J. has been there he’s done it. You heard where he came from. And I think those are just a lot of important lessons that he laid out there in his own career trajectory and his life and for everyone else will be back again next week with Hopefully someone just as exciting and informative as T.J.. The post Episode #167 – T.J. Rohleder On Persistent Success Secrets Of The Blue Jeans Millionaire appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Ian’s dad was an entreprenuer and it rubbed off. When he was first introduced to the marketing rabbit-hole through A Dan Kennedy book… there was no looking back. Through consulting, he learned many hard lessons about managing clients and money. What he enjoyed most though was the AUTONOMY. Freedom. So when a friend called him up after the recession and told Ian about the money he had scooped by investing… It drew Ian into another world. Soon he was spending every day studying markets with the same zeal nerds play video games. His “Call of Duty” was money. So today he’s coming on the show to share his journey through marketing to investing. Showing freelancers and other entrepreneurs how to put your money to work for you. Like a rabid, relentless money-sucking terminator that helps secure your freedom… with one more revenue stream you can count on. He made a quick $3500 in the morning hours before we recorded this episode… So I know you’ll find it as exciting and informative as I did. In this episode, you’ll discover: 3 secrets of a “freedom” career. Save yourself years of frustration, confusion and anger. Why Ian immediately came to know, like and trust Dan Kennedy because he reminded him of this man. Can money buy happiness? If you can’t do this one meaningful thing…nothing else matters. The “All-star team” way to dip your toes into the investing pool. How to create wealth for your kids future by doing the bare mimimum right now (So easy!) Mentioned: Ian Dunlap on Facebook Article on Ian’s strategies Ian Dunlap’s Hyperacceleration Ryan Stewman David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey, everybody – We’re back with another edition of the podcast. I’m David Allan and we have an interesting guest for you today which is taking a slight departure. You’ll see what I mean in a moment. We’re going to talk about some things that pertain to entrepreneurship which most people may be overlooking or just not addressing in any way shape or form and you’ll see why this is important later because the family you have on today sort of live that and he’ll be able to explain it a lot better than I can. Ian Dunlop Welcome to the show. Ian Dunlap: I’m super excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. David Allan: Yeah it’s great to have you on. You know I didn’t know really anything about you you know at first until I read the articles you put up and so forth and it sounds like you’ve had quite the journey so that’s usually where we like to start. Let’s start right up front with Tell us about your origin story your superhero origin story. Tell us where you were where you came from and and lead us down the garden path where you’re at today. Wonderful. So initially how I got into entrepreneurship is because of my dad. He’s had a construction company ever since I was a kid. So he blessed me with that gift of wanting to be entrepreneur. Fast forward later on. Finally have the audacity to reach out on my own and begin to do some things. And I went to a Dan Kennedy submit our way back in that day I think it was maybe 2003 or 2002 or. And I said holy. I didn’t know there was an industry where you can actually do marketing. So I was into you know fashion and different things that were hot but I didn’t know how to monetize that by you know listening to Dan and all of its greatness speed on about how you can market and get clients. And my first client in Bloomington Indiana where I went to college at Indiana University was a local insurance company there. OK I was going to say now before we talk about that like how did you hear about that and what made you decide this is something I need to attend. Back then it was the wild west so there wasn’t a ton of verified information so people were pitching Lam’s claim they were making a million dollars a day and you know all that crap back in the day and then whenever I would look because my dad would always tell me that sales and marketing are the two most important parts of the business. And then of course reputation ranch would just randomly look for marketing things in between classes and then I don’t know how I went down the rabbit hole of internet marketing. Right. And I think Corey Rudel And I think he was a man and one of my friends. No Bull. He said I got this book about time management. I don’t know who this guy is. Hands down the most honest guy ever heard of business. OK. I’m sure Dan would appreciate that. And I said OK let me go run to the bookstore. Got the book and I was blown away. You know some of the teachings and I saw some of the old newsletters and then I really got wrapped up in learning you know through dad and his newsletter because back then I mean we’re older. There wasn’t a ton of information. You had a couple of books for a couple of magazines but there was not a proliferation of great info from people and wonderful podcasts like yours to help people who were beginning right now. And so I’m always fascinated by how people are sort of you know the way that the way they find their way into this into this kind of world. So you know I like to hear those stories. It’s fascinating for me compared to how I got into it and so forth. So you went to the seminar you’re surrounded by all these crazy entrepreneurs and the bluntness of Dan Kennedy and yes and so were you. Did you feel empowered coming out of there like I’m going to. I did. Yeah. Yeah I feel empowered because a lot of the things that Dan would say I heard my father tell me early on because my granddad was in the military so he was very harsh and brash the way that Dan was and that got passed on to my dad. But now finally had like a friend. So I got the ultimate marketing plan the ultimate sales letter and I’m like now I have a blueprint to follow in those first sales letters and marketing plans I create it was terrible for the client I had they didn’t have anything but a sales force in the fleet came in. They will call no follow up. Right. We know how important you know things are respond to this. There was no follow up. Back in 2002 2003 of any kind so if a person didn’t buy within 30 days they trashed delete and I said Hey why don’t we just send out something every week and just talk about some different areas in which they can be covered and then things began to converge and I began to tell my dad and he was like hey this makes a lot of sense. And he would put those things into place and his business I wasn’t compensated because he was paying for the school paid off radio. It was the it was equal trade off. But I know when he called me and said hey I think you’re really onto something that kind of empowered me to go on and start to pursue aforetime because before then it was a lot of hucksters out there to generate that information and they were promising the world but the results were not coming. And so Dan was the first person who actually delivered on a lot of these promises. Wow that’s high praise. Especially when you get started through it and at marketing I would say See the highest of praise I would say. So you’ve got this local insurance client and like you said they had like a lot of things and no follow up. They had very limited marketing strategies in place. Did you start looking for other clients after that or were you. I did. Then things got tough because you don’t know about how to manage your money for a client because it’s first client so I’m thinking hey I’m to cry every month I’ve made it king of campus. And then a 2005 Facebook as were available to college students so I remember the days when I could run an ad for $40 a week like Facebook. And so you know I would do other things like throw parties with my friends and we would make a ton of money because we would always spend $400 on ads and make five or six grand in a night. Right. Right. But then you had your hiccups of mismanaging money and then clients are not coming in or client does not want to pay. They own the rights to that system and there’s nothing that you can do. So I’ve also had a decline as well. But I kept learning because I knew that I was on to something and with my dad. The one thing that I did see in comparison to other members in our family he did have a sense of liberation even though he worked a lot of hours right there was a lot more joy that he had because he found his sense of purpose and he had more money come in and people loved to say the money can’t buy happiness and they can’t buy the purpose or completion. But happiness is for sale. If you can’t provide for your family you’re going to be miserable. Yeah. So I saw that clearly in my family that worked the companies for 30 years and got a small retirement and then my dad will get a contract. Six degrees would be jealous and I’m like but if you’re happy with what you’re doing why do you care what he made. So I just kept down the path of entrepreneurship and find because once you sort of get into it at least I found it this way especially the direct response world of Dan Kennedy is now Albertsons open. People we talked about off the air about that. You know you can’t and you can’t unsee this. You can check that box or what you want to say. Now you’re kind of like compelled to do something about it. Yeah. And I think you have to make a clear distinction and the choice of either I’m going to go work the corporate route which there’s nothing wrong with that. And that’s what you truly want to do. But when I was done with college the recession hit shortly after and all of the friends who thought I was crazy for reading all these books in the library or in the Student Union when they were getting laid off they’re like hey how can I make some quick money. I’m like I don’t know because I’ve been on this journey now for two and a half three four years. I don’t have an easy recipe for you because I know people love to say that entrepreneurship is easy to read make all this money but that’s not always the case. Now what I hate it is that people will glamorize how easy it was and it’s like any other endeavor any other sport. You have to consistently work at it. All in all I’m glad a lot of people like Ryan’s didn’t win that you had on him there telling you you have to work this every day. The facade of going on a yacht and making 200 grand from a launch and doing it every month I’m glad that’s been wiped away. But like you said as you see this the opportunity that is there is kind of hard to unsee it and go on the other path. Yeah it’s fine. And you’re right there has been like sort of you know it’s understandable why because it’s a lot easier to sell something that’s simple and easy and you know there’s a sort of like marketing and copywriting secrets to make your stuff after that stuff. Sort of Machiavellian things. You know you know you stay away from things that sound like work or learning or anything. Yeah. But yeah I think you’re right. I mean when you do encounter real people doing it for real. And certainly when I started to kind of people who were actually doing it and yeah they were working harder harder than any sort of job related people. But maybe they were doing it on their own terms and so you know there was a freedom to that. Yes. You know there was a freedom to be able to do it when they wanted where they wanted with who they want and so forth. It makes a huge difference. That sense of liberation even when my girlfriend was in the hospital two weeks ago with pneumonia she was in there for six days. I know a lot of my friends if they will work on someone somewhere they would have been able to take off six days and work from a hospital. And I’ve known you know other friends or family members will get sick and they would have like a two day furlough where they can leave but they would have to come back. I just don’t like that kind of life. And in entrepreneurship is a gift and a curse. But once you can find your own pocket for what works for you that’s an incredible thing when it goes right into the kind of I don’t know what the words are maybe but it’s like you don’t know when I had jobs. I sort of hated working. You know I think all people experienced when you have a job and you’re not a good troll maybe and that’s maybe part of it but also what I would even if I was making not so much money or maybe it was making more money. The very fact is I was in control and I was doing what I enjoyed. Yes because it was stuff I was reading and doing and applying it even if I was didn’t have a client I’d still be studying or doing whatever. So yeah I think it’s the happiness comes from like you said you in sounds like what you’ve done is you found your purpose and that has motivated you to get into what you’re into. So take us up so you got out of college. What was the next step. Then I moved to Atlanta and began taking clients and I went down the rabbit hole of being a consultant for a long time. Recently in the last three and a half four years I switched to investing which we’ll talk about in a little bit. I had clients over some of the most heart wrenching times of my life but also some of the most beautiful because you learning how to actually manage your business to manage clients keep the end flow and not focus on just having one client because if they walk away you’re in trouble. That’s why I like to refer to the masters of you know Dan Kennedy and halber and in direct response space but even like Auris and his books on positioning and write all the books that he’s written on mark to them because I think entrepreneurs today because there’s so much information available on Instagram and Facebook they don’t read those classics and they’re going to run the same traps that I did. So for us five or six years like I had you know clients and I did that for a while and I was fortunate enough to partner with a big ad agency when I was around 29 to 30 and I end up working with rebought and Chevron and a couple other big clients so I got to learn how that infrastructure works which is really fascinating and for all of those of you who listen that right copy there’s a ton of money for you in corporate because there’s not a lot of good content writers in the British you know a source like you have to learn how to navigate the creative with being a wordsmith. But there’s a ton of opportunity there. I think just a lot of people in this community don’t go after and reach it. Yeah I think I think there’s a lot of truth in that. And you know I think from a lot of people perhaps it’s an us versus them mentality. It’s you know there’s a lot of there’s a lot of real obstacles mental and otherwise between that. But yeah I think you’re right I think for somebody who’s looked to do stuff that the right choice you know that you can get in there somewhere. So you know when you were a consultant what sort of ways did you look at getting clients and stuff like how did you acquire the clients and what were you. So a lot of it was doing what Ryan studen hates when someone does to him I would go to our go to a small business and say hey this ad is not going to pull well for you but the difference with me was I would I was a little bit more rogue so I would test ads all the time and I would bring data to them and say wow I think this will will perform better than I had more of a shotgun approach and I would just approach a bunch of people and that particular industry and then I had like a small newsletter probably that I should have sent out. I know Ben Seto’s you just sent it out to email every day and we’ll get into that. But I would send out an e-mail and say Hey here’s something that could help me in your business. And I was a little bit of copy and it just sent this out in the e-mail solacing little blueprint to help them slowly build build a relationship. I will talk about it on social all the time. And then I will get clients in like that like hey because a person in a construction business a palm in business a dentist a dentist office they don’t know anything about building a marketing plan. They may know word of mouth networking events and a couple other things but they don’t have a full robust plan so and then in 2007 the book The Ultimate sales machine came out with just one of my favorite books of all time. My guy was his coach at home so he came up with the idea of targeting 100 companies or a best neighborhood strategy. And I began to use that so I would specifically focus on the industry at a time and go after. And then I would get one or two clients out of that mix and that process going and I really got good into real estate and construction areas just because my dad had been in the industry forever and I knew all of the pain points of what they needed. Awesome. That’s awesome man. It sounds like you’re really out there playing what you learned. It’s nice to hear. Yeah I mean I was listening to good times and bad times. Definitely. There’s a lot of things that I wish I would have done better have been more consistent in putting out content. That’s why I think the discipline of putting out an email per day. Right. That’s good. That’s something that I do now via video for those that follow me for investment advice and really just listening to those who came before me and just applied what they said and not try to remix or change anything that they said. So right. Right. Yeah I think a lot of respect for you mentioned rhymes to earlier. People like that have a lower respect because they just love he’s just Khankan. I mean he just gets a done and he just gets stuff out every single day and it’s it’s crazy. So you know he’s super motivated and stuff but I mean there’s no reason why he couldn’t do that. Absolutely. And I think for me it was just getting over my fear of what if I’m not good enough. There’s people who are. What if the content isn’t as good. But most people are going to create a video or post on anything. So and if you look at the success of Gary V in my opinion every V is nothing more than the newer version of Dan Kennedy or hauberk. Right. But he just puts out a ton more content. And of course technology was different. Back in the early 90s and early 2000s. But if you look at the things and principles that Gary talks about when the Superbowl we can’t I mean to me he is like a hybrid of Dan Kennedy and halber but he just uses different media platforms. But the principles are exactly the same. Yeah I think you’re right. And you know he’s got that one thing that obviously a lot of these people have in common is this is a very strong personality they make they make delineations they draw lines in the sand where it’s like this is where I’m coming from and this is what I think is the best. And you may think otherwise but that’s for you to think you know. This is where the problem is and they’re not afraid to stand up for what they think. Absolutely. Yeah same thing with Ryan and Perry Marshall. Clear line is saying get it done just execute don’t overthink it. That’s one of the things that I wish if I can go back 10 years I would tell myself I’m just saying don’t worry about it execute it to fails. It’s OK it’s going to cost you that much. Right. But having that confidence over time means a hell of a lot. What sort of things do wish to impact those consulting days you think you might repair that and knowing what you know now. We could be here forever well one when things are going good aspect for the bottom to fall out because here’s the thing that bothered me about all the marketing books and advice and there were maybe a couple people were telling me but but at some point Klein is going to feel that you’re not doing anything for them they’re paying you. No matter how much money you’re making. So I had a client and this was right when I quit. That’s the reason why I got out of consulting and went into investing. When they came on with me they just had started their store. They don’t have any employees no inventory no sales. So I started with them from the very beginning and got to a point where they were selling out of all of their inventory. They ended up on the $80000 and they told me well you’re only putting together the marketing component. I don’t want to give you the 80 to get your own. And I said how could you not want to pay me and before I bought the building I bought the inventory but I had no customers. None. And that was the kind of thing where I mean it was my fault because I probably should have got all the money upfront and not allow payments to happen. So it’s one of those things we’re hindsight is 20 20 and I really just got tired of being in a situation like that where a client would end up being ship and you see in an ad agency world as well. Like it would do incredibly well for big brand. And after four years they would just change the agency to go with us for no reason at all for no reason. So yeah it happens a lot. And I think you know that’s it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because when I got into this as well and I do consulting now when I see you know when I watch those Holbert videos from back in the day in the early county ones and I sort of heard all the stuff that they had to say about these kind of situations. And then you go through it yourself and I don’t know if or just don’t you don’t take it seriously or are you going to see for yourself for it. Yeah I was like how were these just the all grim result. And he doesn’t know. Well I think it’s unlikely that he was right all along. It’s funny because you almost have to like prove to yourself why one of these huge deals that were people a over and you’re like he was right you know or whoever you know it’s funny how it works that way with psychologists. But you yourself see it first and that really is the experience of course. But what’s so much better than that. Yeah. And one of the people yeah and I was younger and a little probably too arrogant at the time a little bit naive but that’s one of the lessons inside OK what you have to protect the money. And it wasn’t like I could afford not to have 80000. Not only was I upset financially but I was also heartbroken because I liked the person who ran the company. But I see why Kevin O’Leary and Dan Halbert as they got older they became so harsh because they had been screwed over so many times and they’re so blunt and in their dealings. So that’s one mistake that I wish that I could do over again. And then probably not putting myself out there more earlier. And I think we all want to be great before we present ourselves to the world but at a certain point I think you’re just plain and let in the fear and your mind overcoming So working through whatever subconscious issues that we have and seeing the people that are out there now going back to write my cry and it’s just absolutely fearless like Gary Vaynerchuk fearless garden fearless so I’m really trying to just put myself out there more and get better everyday. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Love brings us up to where we’re at. I mean you decided to leave the marketing consulting world and decide to get something different. Yes. Tell us about that process where you were sort of at the end of that phase and you are going to begin a new phase and sort of the thinking that went all that you know is perfect time and so I had a college buddy who called me and we both went to Indiana University together and a guy that he went to who we got his MBA with called him and said I have to get you guys on the phone to tell you something. So this was right after the recession. So he picked up city at I think a dollar 10 and previously I think city was like a five hundred bucks. Well I was like OK great. You know the whole stack thing I’ve heard of it. My dad had lost a ton of money in 2000 so my appetite was turned off too. And that’s when at that time and then like four or five months later he called us back and he was like yeah I’m about to exit my position at seven dollars and I’m like What do you mean. And he was like remember what I bought it at a dollar and some change of say yeah sounds good now. Now seven bucks and I’m like oh geez. Are you serious. Got to let the fire. My other friend had already been investing. So he said I want to show you what I know. Because the guy who taught me told me to pass it on. So on. And at the time I mean I was getting fed up with the market in a tricky toad like I was good at marketing. I don’t know for some corporations but I knew I couldn’t be the best at it. So there’s a small niche that I could be a part of. And there are so many marketers now. I couldn’t find a lane to to stand out and so we have to for a few sessions for about three weeks in a row and every day I’m telling you like a kid who’s playing Call of Duty I was around 30 hours a day and I felt like I finally found my passion because all marketers know what’s hot. We know trends very well and when you’re looking at the stock market and you’re looking at a graph you’re doing nothing more than looking at data. So if you are as are underperforming they’re going to go down. Well they’re going to go out. So I saw the parallels in the market and I just went all in and I asked him I said well if I wanted to make more money per day what would I do. And he said just buy more contracts in a futures market or buy more shares. And I said well how much of my limited to he said as much as you can afford. And I said Oh and guess what. Eureka and the great part is like I don’t even know. I told the guy yesterday I said he said I don’t know if I’m going to work with you. I said well you work with me or not does not determine what I make. I’m completely fine with that come on when you’re ready. But I love the fact that if I do well in the market like a trader the German DAX which is their index today. OK. I was in and out of the market for two hours nice day. Thirty five hundred. And I’m really happy because I didn’t have to negotiate with anyone to write right on money but going through that journey again and learning and apply myself and taken all the tools that I learned about discipline from marketing I’m just applied in here to a different skill set. Right. Just basically when he told you about this you just got very excited about it. Much like you probably did when you first step to move the room there the Kennedys. The same feeling same feeling and autonomy. Like you said you don’t have to negotiate with any person and so forth must be a draw to have the autonomy to just work on your own or your own leisure and or at your own frenetic pace. So it’s very true you look at the market everyday because I think a lot of people saying in investing they give this illusion that you can sit on a yacht and make ninety seven thousand dollars in two minutes. And those are the people that are not making any money. They’re making all their money off of you know students who people buy subscriptions. So are you keeping the same discipline because in any industry the people at the top are working consistently. So I look at the market every day because I’m studying because what people are realize is that the charts that you see are representative of millions of people buying and selling. Right. So you have to study the patterns over and over again. But I do love the autonomy deliberation and then taking something that most people think is such a difficult thing going through the process of learning of how to get in and get out of the market. And I think one of the biggest mistakes we were talking before we began recording no one tells entrepreneurs Hey I know that you’re going to be hustling and grinding away but you need some money to work for you. So in case things do not go well in your business. God forbid you will still have a nest egg there. I think one of the most important lessons there’s a Tony Robbins book money master the game is the one that I recommend the most. I don’t have any affiliation but that book has made me more money than any other. Every entrepreneur has to be invested into the market. Man I know we can make a certain amount from our actual business sense but let the other wealthy people do follow their trend. Look at the S&P 500. And then also invest long term. You know you’re talking off the air before we started. So it’s one of the things that people get into trouble sometimes people go back to look at the episode I did with just a goss most recently at the time of this recording he talks about how he was doing consulting him freelance copywriting and you could call that the three days I and heal. He lost his biggest consulting client which was like 90 percent of his income while his girlfriend dumped them and then LeBron James left Cleveland for Madison on all three of the three big ones but you know 90 percent of your income out of the window. I mean that can happen if you don’t have a diversification and multiple income streams. And that’s why I think it’s important to have you on today. So you know I’m a complete moron when it comes to this stuff. What should I know. You know right off the bat about investing. OK. First thing first don’t worry about the market crashing because everyone always asks me what are you going to do if the market tanks. And the short answer is there are many crashes that happen almost every year so like October 24th August 24th was a flash crash that happened in Japan and then spilled over here getting word of last year the market was down for 30 days straight Breck’s June 24th and then after the election. Trump you know the market went down and up and overall if you look at any chart I tell every entrepreneur you can see train because it’s what you do for a living. Especially marketers look at a five year month and just start with the basics. Look at the Dow the S&P 500. Look at the Nasdaq. So the Nasdaq and indexes nothing more look at it like an all star team. So it’s the 30 best companies for the Dow the 500 best on the S&P. So you don’t have to pick a particular company to do well just go with the all star team. You may not be a great GM to pick the best player but if I tell you to put money on the West and All-Star team every year are the same concept so the Dow the S&P and the Nasdaq are the three biggest indexes that there is in our market. Just start there and then Vanguard has some very low cost ones so even like IWM which is a ticker symbol which is the Russell 1000 a smaller index is only around like $135 per share and I said do the minimum and just do 250 a month every month because my dad didn’t know so when I told him that you know if he would have put 250 in per month and if you would get 7 percent interest every year which is a very small amount it’s average by the time I turned 30 I would have 321 thousand dollars. My 30th birthday he said I could have taken half of that money and just put it away because technically I gave it to you that’s it. I still would have been adding 100 plus Grant sitting there for me. So if you guys have or Ogowe it listen to the podcast. If you have kids at least start for your children. So when they get to be of age because I’m very terrified after the next recession. And then with robotics and AI coming into play I don’t think we’re going to have a sustainable job market in 2025. I’m going to be very doggy dog so so already mentioned money master the game. That’s a good book. And then I put out a video every day this let this shorter than seven minutes every day. If you guys want some more information there. But if you’re not invested in the market I would personally tell you. Just get into an index fund. Ride it up. And even after the recession the market went up 300 percent. And the Trump bump that happened is just an extension of what happened when Obama was in office and we probably could get a 400 percent return off of bottom. But most entrepreneurs are not in the market and is only so much hustling and grinding that you can do to make your business work for you. Absolutely. That’s great. Thanks a lot man. You’ve dropped a lot of knowledge here today it’s good to hear you know your sort of career trajectory of your story and it’s been fascinating talking with you. I really want to thank you for coming on the show. Thank you. I appreciate it so much. I had a blast. Awesome for everybody else listening to the show. That’s a wrap for another edition of the podcast. We’ll be back again next week with somebody else who’s just as excitable and interesting and as fun as you and hopefully and told them. The post Episode #166 – Ian Dunlap On How To Guard Your Freedom By Adding Another Relentless Profit Stream To The Mix appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

This episode is experimental. So bear with us. New Zealander Ewen Vile has had a recurring direct-response bug throughout his life. Like a safety axe, business owners call him when their ads are flailing and disaster and chaos is setting in. Emergencies. Through performing this kind of last-minute consulting, Ewen developed a system. A system that produced immediate results. He called it the “ATM” system and now walks groups through it so that they can have their own revelations. In today’s episode, he walks me (David Allan) through it. So strap in and watch me become the flailing guinea pig… as Ewen demonstrates how he finds winning elements for home-run ad copy. In this episode, you’ll discover: Why 99% of alls ads miss their mark and how to use the “A” of Ewen’s process like a laser-scope. Exactly how Ewen came up with his system. (In stressful situations and inspired by a marketing legend). Put an end to guesswork about who to write to and ferret out all the possibilities. This is his “snuck in the back door” system. Results amidst failing campaigns with panic and chaos setting in. The often-overlooked targets that may produce the greatest returns. Mentioned: Ewen Vile on Facebook Dan Kennedy John Carlton David Allan’s Make Words Pay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO David Allan: Hey,everybody – We’re back with another edition of the podcasts. And I’m David Allen. Of course we’ve got a very interesting guest on today and I have no idea how that’s going to go. We’ve already had some technical problems even getting this going so this is one of those things that’s going to get wild it’s going to get crazy. And today I’m talking to a man by the name of you went viral who is basically a shy farm boy who turned to direct response advertising so he could basically avoid manual labor for the rest of his life. And I take great pride in that myself because that’s basically what I wanted to be since I was a kid. I didn’t know direct response advertising would be the vehicle but I knew I wanted to be paid for being smart and clever not for actually doing what people consider real work. So today I would welcome you into the show you and how are you man? Ewen Vile: Excellent man. I I really smiled when you see her about escaping from that hard life like you know it just brought back memories all of that and it’s just like you know being sort of out of it for so long and you know it’s just like well yeah that’s what it was really like. David Allan:Yeah. Now you’re about 20 years older than I am… Ewen Vile: Oh, are we going to get into the age thing… Carry on. David Allan: And we developed it we talked the other day and sort of came under my radar we talked about Facebook and stuff and then we have a recession. We had a lot in common and sort of hit it off and you told me something that’s very interesting which we’ll get into pretty much right away. But basically how it came up with a system of some kind that you’ve devised a sort of a process I guess that would put people through and maybe you could explain it better than I. Because you have sort of all the nitty gritty details. This is a sort of a proprietary thing or something you figured out. Explain what you’re going to do today. So what am I gonna do. What am I going to do to you. Is it the company. That’s I haven’t and I have agreed to this so it’s my own doing I guess in a way and it’s also my my possibly my fear in the sense that you know we’ve got no. This isn’t pre. You know and cut and there’s no safety net. Fly by the seat of our pants. Yeah. This one is you know. You know it is just like this thing and what have you. So it’s great. Yes so what. Know whether they need to be any backstory as to how it sort of came about or we just goes straight straight into it. Well maybe maybe give a couple of points like you know you sort of told me the other day that you were you know you had a long sort of history of being sort of in and out of advertising and one point you were ran your own ads and then were taking the calls for a weight loss thing and then you’d gone back and forth through different manual labor jobs and there were periods of your life. But it was always a theme sort of throughout that direct as. And yes it wasn’t so much of the I mean you know it just made me tenfold in terms of you know where are we going to go today. And you know take you through the. Is that how that came about. You know the so-called you know my signature or our tree mythology to be able to you know write these winning direct response. That’s right. So you’ve sort of built up a track record of writing these direct response ads that have raked in some serious money for people and you but you basically come up with a framework in a process so that you can walk people through it often in small groups so that they arrive at the. The big idea themselves I guess. Yes. Yes. Correct. And so this was just born out of me actually doing consulting of get colder. And we things just go terribly wrong. And you know on the whole I’ve gone to actually down and sort saying they’ll get paid money upfront just sort out the mess. You know where these datelines And you know just chaos is happening and to me sort things out. So you see you become kind of a consultant and like where things are going horribly wrong for a business or a campaign didn’t work or you know there’s real havoc you’re kind of that fire x in the box where it says case of emergency break the glass. Yes. In this case is break break the glass. Pick up a phone and talk to us. Yeah yeah. They can be a little bit like that but the other thing too is that we got snuck in the back door and you know they don’t nobody wanted to know that these are the problems. All sorts of things. And you know I just kind of be hashed hash. So it’s kind of a John Carlton flex I know John Carlat it used to be all right you snuck it in the back door the L.A. ad agencies and put these great you know hooks and stuff in headlines like ads that would crush you. That’s just it of it’s so interesting and funny. You know it’s just a great kind of a joke for John Karr. It’s not that I’m not going in the back door that you know these fancy agencies can and silly I have snuck through the side door for London and I say yeah. Now when you sort of came up with this process this was over a period of time where you sort of assemble the parts and realize these are parts we need. Or was this a more gradual thing that you know it’s sort of assembled and said you know how did it really come about where you ended up it’s sort of a five step process or something. So how did that really come into where this is. This is yet it just gradually came to me and you know I’d be kind of interviewing the client as to what’s going on and I don’t know just me was bored with pusley the influence of day in day you know just stay the message of the market match. Right. That’s media right. Yeah yeah those story. And so you know I was going into with their idea of what’s going on there. So that was the sayd to it all get cool. And how many people have you use this stuff with. I know you take small groups of like by people through this tummy or these sort of sessions or whatever you want to call them. Have you had with people. Yes. In terms of attacking racial groups. So yeah you’re just kind of jumping forward in terms of me actually taking the proceeds that I went through it. So it has been. Was it about four or five groups and inside groups it’s very small and intimate like five people sort of Max. That seems to be the ideal size that that sort of I didn’t think that I could actually take that because you know you hear the story all the 10000 hours to me up get you know and you know one’s kind of superpowers that you know that are good at doing something that nobody else can do. You know and you get sort of seduced into believing that a not thing that you can actually transfer it over to other people and that’s kind of a theme I think throughout life in general is that I’ve seen you know anything I’ve endeavored to really learn. Has this mystique around it of some kind. It’s often different done in different ways. But yes you know whether it’s playing you know for me personally whether it’s playing guitar or fixing my own car. Of course learning copywriting stuff like learning magic which of course I’m professional magicians. In other words there’s lots of things around all these different things I’ve endeavored to do and I see them out there for things that other people are desperate to do where they just kind of it’s. It provides a huge wall obstacle almost right off the bat where a lot of people just quit at the very beginning. Yes yes. You know and it’s just amazing in this day and age. I was in there you know these so many trainings and you know people imparting knowledge you know these shortcuts so that they don’t have to go through all of this. You know it’s finally being broken down I think people looking more and more so in and I think it still can be even done even more so you know it is you know was you just you standing on the shoulders of other giants. Really. You know that’s right. You never you know you’re not discharging them or anything because you know that they still you know you have full respect for what I’ve done. It wasn’t for them in the first place you know you wouldn’t be we wouldn’t be here we are at now. Right now it’s true. And so this process basically that you take people through it was born out of your own. Is this the process you were using. Yes. OK so you did so then you’re kind of like I could actually turn this into something I could get other people to figure it out for themselves. Yes yes yes. Yes correct. And that was I a couple of incidents occasions where that thing that my goodness other people are picking this up and it’s just like oh my friggin goodness. It was a Revilla Tory experience. Yes. Yeah. For me in the same state that these people you know two cases young people have never been written and ad before. You know they’re just young new to the business will pick it up. And even without my intervention or guidance you know just saying like one chap just say I’m sorry to say sort of post and you know that a couple of them together and then just went out and did it and it’s just like and the results just were just you know explosive. No no I was going to say and do. Have you found these. You know you’ve taken of limit the number of people sort of in these groups through the years in your experience with that process. You know I often find that I’ve caught a few people different aspects magic things I never really form I give them lessons but I’ve given people some you know some help like kids and stuff or teenagers and stuff. We’re trying very cool you know. And one of the things I sort of learned from doing that you know again very little of it is is that almost there preconceive all that stuff they’ve learned up to that point really hurts them in any way. Right before you know I maybe a new person I would be able to help them get it a lot faster because they don’t have this other stuff. Yeah. Yes it is isn’t it. And sometimes you’re like usually calling tell me that Dzhokhar is used you know they have to take people through a brain that’s for sure. Right. Who knows. And you know like oh you know it’s just me. That’s right. You have to escape that stuff out in the car blow it out of your head first. All right. So let’s delve into this because I’m gay. We’re here to I’m here to get the 49 lashes or whatever they call it and I’m throw myself into the deep end of the pool I want I want to see what you and you know what this whole thing is because I’ve talked with you and here a couple days ago and we set this up the road get on the gas and I’m excited. I’m excited to learn that there’s nothing else in my life. I’m I’m a student of my friend Steve likes to say I’m a student or student of students you know so let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s the what’s the let’s do it. And so now did we. You are going to come up with the same money big idea that this young gentleman sold car parts in Jamaica. OK. OK. So there’s a business that sold car parts in Jamaica. Yes you took them through this process you know before and they came up with this big winning ad through it through this process basically is going to recreate that because I don’t know anything about this. No. And you don’t possibly know anything about Capossela and I’ve never and I’ve never been to Jamaica. So we’re three for three. You don’t need that stuff. That’s it. All right let’s do it. We stop the car parts business is selling at copouts retile. And so we got to come up with Ray as a force to sell these cab pass now. So he’s a proces. OK then we have to work out who is going to be the audience. You know be speaking to. So who do you think would be the ideal audience. Well the cab pass. Right. Well since it’s a retail place I assume is consumer so people that are fixing up their own cars I presume now want these car parts. Who else could be a new audience. Well I guess garages. Yes. You know people that are selling them in bulk. Yes. Or use a lot of them in bulk or shoes. So it’s like a bigger bigger market I would imagine. Right. So when you come up with the Do It Yourself the weekend warrior and then you have the commercial you know this whole wholesale. So who else could be an audience for anybody that probably sells cars too I imagine. OK. Yeah. Because those are. Yeah. So say. So there’s another division I’ve tried. OK. So I imagine like I don’t know maybe they’d fall under one of these categories I’m sure. Like government or somebody too would be OK. Yes. That’s not as. It’s kind of also kind of thing yes. So the fleet of vehicles. Yeah yeah. So that’s good. But who else in the get get. Oh you know see if we can do a little bit of a process of elimination for you guess. So when I get in so he’s not going to be doing it. So I’ll try it. You know like the ones that you mentioned so don’t let you carry on because yes you expanding your thinking of all different audiences you see. That’s the key thing going through the process of thinking of all the different audiences that could be possible. Right. It’s sort of like a lateral thinking exercise. Yeah yeah yeah. Just to be able to and when these are a group you know you sort of bouncing around to somebody meeting something and then it just sparks an idea or springboard to something else. You say wrangling dynamics just really kicks in. Well I think another another one will be anybody that sells anything related to cars really. So like right. You know even places like I’m sure like car wash and stuff like that. More of a wholesale deal right. Yes I hope so. Yeah but probably also trying to think of a busy time around the like you know maybe don’t sell cars but there’s something else that’s like almost a car. You know you’d cross sell them by somebody something like that maybe. Right. Yeah you’re thinking so let’s think it it in terms of what would be the baby like carry on like tow truck drivers and stuff like that. I mean who would be the Who havey uses all of you know like like a mechanic’s place or an auto body place or going on the track of the kind of wholesale who would be heavy users of cars you know because I write all the parts to get to wear out fast wouldn’t I. Right. That’s right. So. Why has a fleet obviously. Yeah right. Right. So let’s touch on how they’re based the government police. You know tractor trailer companies freight companies. That’s right come next year. Yeah. Well sort of. Let me just I don’t know if I’m going to get it. You got to kick yourself when it was your talk. OK. Taxi drivers are taxi driver Jesus Christ the taxi drivers. It’s been a while since I guess. I guess that would apply to Uber and. Yeah well that does not in Jamaica. So this isn’t Jamaican makup I guess it’s been a while since I’ve taken a taxi so I guess it was yeah out of your framework. But you say this the point you know we’re you’ve got to get out of your own sense of your own world or reality or you know you take yourself outside what you are I was not disappointed this exercise. You’re just getting Stroh you know you think of all the markets all the different things and then you start thinking well you know who’s going to be the ideal. You know what characteristics and who you know started out who the is going to be touring the biggest mileage on the clock. Taxi Driver Yeah. You say taxi drivers and you know they’re solid operators. So yeah. So that’s the audience. That’s right. That’s great. So in that case. So that was taxi drivers. Yeah yeah. So now all any any any thoughts are around that know because everybody talks about you know who’s your audience who’s your audience target tag. And so you know this is an exercise in how to sort of get your think through all the different groups of people. And that’s when it’s maybe not obvious all the time right. Yes. We’ve just learned. So the point you have to you know of the exercise is to go through all the different possible worlds and then you know not not filtering out you know who’s on a guy with all the like the government agencies and you know all of those ones in business you know. So you know that was just exercising the brain. You know it wasn’t so. No no no no. I’ll just let you go you say. Yeah. But so you create that. You know research you say the gears of the brain. That’s right. They come up with different ideas. Yeah. So that’s. So anything else would you kind of like to read before we move on. You know we’re learning there. You know this is a good exercise I think because you know it’s that’s one of the things that sometimes I guess because my it’s not it’s not unlike you know I’ve looked at different clients stuff and tried to fight figured out different ways to like who they could sell to that they’re maybe not doing immediately. And that’s usually a case where it’s like it’s usually a couple of obvious ones. There’s obviously you know other ones I’ve probably missed. Of course in the past too. Because it’s just outside of my personal experience and stuff and you decide to put yourself in other people’s. Just think of all all through the possible ones and there’s the things you know you have to edit all the ones you have to you know just pick one you know and that can be a bit of a bit of a trauma for yourself. The you know the writer or you know for all you know if you’re you know gun for hire. You know get a new client. Oh no I can’t eliminate all these others. So he just you know it strikes fear doesn’t it. So but you really do have to talk to you know when one person who is a representative of a whole group which occurred in St. Louis may die. But they say this this is a real fine. So that was a lot to the audience. Yes. This is new territory. You know the timing that nobody seems to do. But it gets to just go straight into it. I did start a demonstration. All right. And that’s the end of this episode of the method email marketing podcast that was just a small fraction of a much longer interview I did with you and vile. You can actually reach you in down below. The show notes on his Facebook page is where he resides mostly and of course we only covered the day of his 8 a.m. system which is a very sort of intensive walk through of how to come up with ideas from really blockbuster ads that he that he has crafted through his own consulting. If you would like the rest of the interview you can also contact myself Dave make words pay dotcom and we’ll be back with another edition of the method podcast next week. The post Episode #165 – Ewen Vile On A 3-Step System For Targeting Your Ideal Customers appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.