0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast. Today, we'll be focusing on the first mover advantage in digital marketing to drop these value bombs. I've brought Rich Schefren into EOFire studios. Rich is widely recognized as an internet marketing pioneer and one of the world's top experts when it comes to online business strategy, he's coached the world's top online business gurus increased clients' revenues by BILLIONS of dollars in grew three of his businesses to seven figures a year rich found his Strategic Profits in 2005. And the company's mission is to turn struggling opportunity seekers into highly profitable entrepreneurs.

0 (48s):
And today for our nation, we talking about how we can get and keep attention on social channels that seem so loud. So noisy, so obnoxious. We're going to talk about telephone selling. Believe me, it's still a thing as well as lead generation and cutting the cost of your leads by up to 90 plus percent and so much more. When we get back from thinking our sponsors, are you looking for a proven business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you to increase their profitability by an average of 104% per year, all for less money than it would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee schedule your free consultation today with Clay Clark, a former small business administration entrepreneur of the year at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire.

0 (1m 31s):
Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. Rich say, what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming a successful that most people disagree

1 (1m 60s):
Well welcomed by our nation. I'm happy to be here and excited to be with you, John. And I'd say one thing that I guess I believe about success that many people would disagree with is that I believe success is much more of a series of sprints with rapid recovery in between than just a marathon. And one of the things that's allowed me to kind of rise above the clutter numerous times in my career is kind of taking work on as a sprint, as everyone else was kind of running a marathon. So I would quickly get out in front, get a lot of attention capitalize on that attention. And then when I, while I was recuperating, everyone would be catching up running their marathon.

0 (2m 41s):
You know what I like about that as well, Fire Nation is that it gives you an opportunity to just relax, smell the roses, look around and see what other opportunities are coming down the road. I mean, when I really, really started focusing on working incredibly hard on what was working in my business one day per week, it's not like the other five or six days per week. I was doing nothing. No, I was reading books. I was perusing the internet. I was seeing what other people were doing. And then when opportunities came up that I found interesting, I could pounce because I had gone through that sprint and I was in that relaxed mode. So I love all of that. And if rich is talking about this, you know, you got to listen because as you heard me talk about in the introduction, this guy has been a rock and it was strategic profits since 2005, he's increased clients' revenues by billions with a B, not to mention three of his businesses are at seven figures plus per year and so much more.

0 (3m 34s):
And you know, we're talking about a lot of great stuff today. So let's talk first rich about teas versus tastes. How can we Fire Nation, both Getz and then keep the attention today on these social channels. That just seem so saturated. So normal.

1 (3m 54s):
Yeah, totally. And you know, one of the things is that back in like 2007, not like in 2007, I wrote two reports called the attention age doctrine one and two. And in those reports, I talked about how attention was quickly going to become the scarcest commodity online and what that would look like and what marketers would need to do differently because of that. Well, you know, that certainly has happened and it's evolved. And I was doing a steal our winter segment with this gentleman by the name of Walter Burch. And Walter shared with me a like, you know, a research study that he had done on what made effective YouTube advertising work and he's in we generation.

1 (4m 33s):
So how do you make it work when it's in a highly competitive environment? And he did an analysis of all of the ads that he saw working versus like all the ones that weren't, and Walter's very successful. So like he put a lot of money behind his tests to test it. And what he came away with was is that nowadays to make advertising work in YouTube. And I think this applies to more much more than just YouTube, right? Someone's going to YouTube. They're about to click on a thumbnail of something they want to watch. And now your ad comes in as a total interruption of what they wanted to do. And the idea is like, you could have two different ways to approach this, right?

1 (5m 16s):
You could tease, or you could give people a taste, right? And so the idea is, is like, let's say you're targeting the right person, but they're not in the mood because they're in the mood to watch what they ever just clicked on. So just because something is relevant to them doesn't mean necessarily that you're really going to get their attention, especially if you're teasing them. Right. And the tease would be like, let's say, we're talking about boosting your conversion rate, that the teams would be like, Hey, this is rich Schefren. And in this video, I'm going to show you three great strategies to immediately increase your conversion rates, right. That would be a teaser versus a taste would be. So the first way to increase conversion rate is this. And then I would explain it and then I'd be like, Hey, I'm rich Schefren.

1 (5m 58s):
And in this video, I'm going to tell you two other ways in total, three ways to increase your conversion rate, right, by giving people a small taste. First of actual content, what you're doing is, is you're setting people up to one, see that you have value that it's not just a tease and what your goal is, is to get someone to think, if I skip this video, will I possibly lose out on something that might be valuable for me? And if you can get them to have that thought, then you're in. And so more and more the, in my it's my belief, this is like proven for YouTube, but I think this is pervasive everywhere. You got to give value earlier in the process, and then you can tease what's coming, but you see this everywhere.

1 (6m 45s):
These days, it's now also appropriate for advertising. Does that make sense?

0 (6m 50s):
Sense and Fire Nation. I really hope you're hearing this because it's so valuable for you moving forward. I mean, that's why companies like Alexa and Google literally try to listen to you. They try to listen to you through their devices because they want to serve you what you're talking about. And we had an incredible example about a year ago, more like 18 months ago. Now we were sitting around my table here in PR and we're talking about golden doodles. And I'm with a couple of friends who are both dog owners. We're talking about pros and cons of dogs and blah, blah, blah. And I was telling them how I was considering getting a golden noodle, which I now have. And he's like 16 months old. He's the best, but that's time for another conversation. The weird part was my phone.

0 (7m 32s):
And my search search is going for, for like the next like couple of weeks were showing me as for golden doodles, but that's not the weird part. Cause you might be like, you know, John, like, I mean, come on. I mean like you might have done a search history for them cause you were talking about them. And you're thinking about getting one, but all three of my friends who had dogs and were doing no searches at all, whose phones were also on the table, we're showing them ads for golden doodles because they heard, they heard that and they were trying to do what rich is talking about and kind of a creepy way. But you know, they were doing that in a very targeted manner. And that's why I love that Billie Jean quote, which is boring, we'll put you out of business. And like where Richard saying is non-targeted will not get you any business.

0 (8m 15s):
So think about that. You've got to be entertaining and relevant. Those two things have to be part of what you're doing. And when people always ask me, John, like, what's the best way to grow your podcast audience? Like I get this question every single day. The answer is always well, you've got to get on more podcasts as a guest because podcast listeners listen to podcasts. People don't go to Instagram and YouTube and Facebook to find their next podcast. So stop advertising there beyond more podcasts and have your call to action. Be listened to my podcast. I want to be one of the seven you listened to. So let's move into email. Deliverability. How specifically rich does every unopened email hurt our profitability tomorrow?

1 (8m 59s):
Yeah. So this is really fascinating. I, this, I did a segment with Fernando Cruz and Fernando is one of the top marketers, all of the Gora and he started my conversation with him and he was like, Hey, rich, I have a list of like 980,000 subscribers. What would be a good open rate? And I was like, I don't know, 15%. He said, we have a 48% open rates. Why then he asked me like, we have a list of 540,000. Like what would be a good open rate for that? And I'm like, well now I have no idea. And he was like, we have like a 57% open rate for that. And I, and then he told me how he was able to attain that.

1 (9m 40s):
And so at a Gora like we mail heavy, right? So someone ops in and they're going to probably get like three emails a day. So that's 21 emails a week. What they've noticed is, is that ESPs will ding you for every email that is not opened. And so they quickly throttle people down if they're not opening it. And they quickly throttle people up if they do open. So if someone opens an email today, they're going to get at least two emails tomorrow. And those emails are going to go out before like the emails go out to people who maybe didn't open yesterday. And there's this constant like red, yellow, green kind of thing, where if like they haven't opened in five days, they're getting really, really throttled down if they opened yesterday and they, oh, and they opened two different, let's say emails yesterday, then they're being even throttled up more.

1 (10m 35s):
So the idea is when Fernando was explaining this to me, I happened to have my Infusionsoft account up, which, you know, tracks our sales and our CRM system. And I was looking at someone who had canceled their membership like a month earlier. And yet they were still receiving our daily emails, but none of them had been opened. Right? So we had been emailing this person for 30 days, just free content, but they're not opening it. And what Fernando was explaining to me was making me realize how much that person is costing me because, because I'm still emailing that person, the likelihood that like a prospect who is actually interested in waiting for an email might not receive it. And so what people have to realize is is that there really is a cost to keeping people on your list that are not opening.

1 (11m 20s):
And that cost is that your emails to the people that want to open are not going to be receiving as many.

0 (11m 26s):
So there's a dollar cost as well, Fire Nation, because the more people you have you're paying for those, like you're paying for contacts from most of these services, like we're on infusion soft as well. And we try to do full scrubs every three months. Now, what do you recommend for the listeners and for myself as well? Like how often should we be doing a scrub of our email list? And when we're doing it, like, what are the key filters we should be implementing to say, okay, this person's not quote unquote worthy of my email list.

1 (11m 56s):
I would say that, you know, the more often emailed the better overall in general, like two-way lists because that helps build the reputation, what clean cleaning the entire email ad west while important, and something that should be done like quarterly is a lot less necessary if you are actually throttling up and throttling down based on opens or not opens. And so like to go three months is too long. Cause you'll end up hurting your reputation. If you're mailing a whole segment of your list, you know, like 90% of them, because you have a 10% open rate for three months, non opening, that's going to hurt you big time.

1 (12m 39s):
And the only way that you get beyond that is to develop a reputation with Google, with Yahoo, with all these ESPs that your emails get open. And the only way you can do that is making sure that you're mailing to the people that are actually opening and throttling down the people that aren't. And you know, if you're mailing as frequently as daily, then it becomes relatively easy to throttle people down. If you're only doing it weekly or twice a week, then you're going to have to like, you know, you're going to have to go maybe a month where, you know, eight emails, let's say if they have an open, they gotta be, what

0 (13m 16s):
Is that specific number where you look at someone and you're like, okay, they haven't opened in my last three emails, my last five emails. Like what's a kind of a decent baseline for

1 (13m 24s):
That, where it is so dependent on how much you're mailing, right? Like, because if those three emails took place over three weeks, that's a little bit different than if they haven't opened in the last three days. Right. If someone has an opened in the last three weeks, odds are, and you're only mailing like once a week, then, you know, the likelihood is, is that that should be like taken off if you're mailing every day and they haven't opened in three days, well, maybe they just need to be throttled down a little bit because like, you know, someone could go on vacation for three days. They probably didn't go on vacation for three weeks. And you know, so it's really, it's a judgment call. I don't want to give any standard clear formats just because people are in the email, like at such different rates.

1 (14m 9s):
But what I would say is is that, you know, if let's, let me say, if you've sent more than 10 emails that have been unopened to a person at that point, at the very least they should be throttled. If not deleted

0 (14m 24s):
Fire Nation, we're gonna be talking about telephone selling. We're gonna be talking about bringing down your cost of leads by 90 plus percent. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, the pandemic has changed how we do business and how we make money. And over the past year, we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs turning to online courses to help hit their bottom line goals. But we've known just how impactful online courses are for years. We've been using Thinkific the best platform to create market and sell it online course since 2017. But don't just take from me, meet Kate Klassen co-founder of coastal drone company. She's been using Thinkific to train thousands of students to become certified drone pilots before creating online courses. Kate spent a lot of time coaching students in person, constantly traveling around cities.

0 (15m 5s):
But by teaching online with Thinkific, Kate has been able to reach more students, earn more income and achieve more location in time. Freedom. Now Kate easily creates an as new videos and lessons each week with Thinkific updating courses and lessons while on the go and our students love the simple user-friendly way. Thinkific allows them to learn and take action fast. So if you're ready to create an online course as a lasting way to reach a wider audience, build revenue and make an impact, then Thinkific is the perfect partner to have by your side. Get started at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. Looking for a business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you to increase their profitability by an average of 104% per year, all for less money than it would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee, Fire Nation meet Clay Clark.

0 (15m 53s):
Clay has been coaching businesses just like yours since 2006. Yup. Even through the great recession and he does it for less money than it would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee at a time when Inc magazine reports that by default 96% of businesses will fail. Within 10 years, clay is helping businesses like yours to grow on average by 104% annually. How's this even possible clay only takes on 160 clients. So he personally designed your business plans. Plus Clay's team helps you execute that plan with access to graphic designers, Google certified search engine, optimizers, web developers, online ad managers, videographers workflow, mappers and accounting coaches. Visit ThrivetimeShow.com/fire, to see thousands of video testimonials from real people, just like you, who Clay has helped over the years.

0 (16m 37s):
That's right. Do your research and view thousands, not hundreds of proven, documented and archived video testimonials from real people, just like you at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire. Then schedule your free consultation with Clay himself to see how he and his team can help you thrive. Rich we're back. And I want to talk about outbound versus inbound leads. Now specifically is telephone selling still a thing. And if so, how has it evolved over the past? Say two plus years.

1 (17m 8s):
Yeah. Telephone selling has been a major backbone of internet marketing for quite a long time. I mean, certainly lots of my clients have, I've seen like them five X their business when they went from selling primarily through webinars to selling on the phone and the primary model that people have been using in internet marketing to sell on the phone have been, what's really called like consultative selling, right? It's a strategy session. There's going to be an exchange of value and a pitch generally like in that call and for the last, I'd say five years, that's been the primary model where basically someone watched a short video, they'll fill out an application and then they'll have a quote unquote strategy session.

1 (17m 51s):
Well, the top internet marketing companies out there have switched their model over the last, I'd say 12 months. And what they're doing now is more outbound calling as opposed to inbound waiting for the strategy session. What that looks like is it's making a telephone number, an optional form field on pretty much every opt-in page that the company has. And then when someone is interacting with content, actually doing an outbound call and taking more of a concierge or leadership approach. So they're actually adding an extra call to their overall sequence where they're just introducing themselves, seeing where the person like what brought that person to the website or to the landing page today and how they can help.

1 (18m 37s):
And so they're giving something away for free. They're finding out about the customer if they have time and they're setting up a future call. And this process is like, I'd say for the companies that have already moved on this, it's now accounting for about 80% of their sales and the strategy sessions now are only 20%. And so this is a great time to know about this model, primarily because right now, when companies are doing it, what's being received like by the prospect is someone who's happy because like, wow, this company really cares about me. They're going out of their way. They're trying to help me. That will not be the case in two or three years from now, whenever website starts calling, it's going to get like everything else in marketing.

1 (19m 20s):
We abuse the crap out of it until it doesn't work anymore. And so this is a new model for the online world, as far as telephone selling. And I know that those who jump on it quickly are going to do insanely well, those who wait a couple of years, we'll find it to be as similar to the strategy session is today

0 (19m 41s):
For Fire Nation, who's listening and they're potentially interested in this. Do you have like a baseline dollar amounts that the product or service should be that you're getting on a phone call for somebody like, I'm assuming you're not doing this for just a $27, you know, download

1 (19m 55s):
For $27 thing. Generally it's, you know, thousands and up, right? So if you're not selling it for, let's say a minimum of, let's say 2,500, then phone selling is probably not for you. Perfect.

0 (20m 8s):
That's the baseline Fire Nation. Think about it to now lead generation rich is everything. How can we Fire Nation cut the cost of the leads that we're bringing in to our offers that we have by 90 plus percent.

1 (20m 23s):
This one I'm really excited to share with you because it ties back to a previous conversation. You and I had the last time I was on entrepreneurs on fire. And that time we were talking about like the evils of big tech. And so, you know, big tech is taking more over, more and more of the world. And what's crazy is, is that, you know, my peers and my competitors were all paying Google, Facebook and all these other social media behemoths that money for the same lead, right? Like, they're on my list. They're on Todd Brown's list. They're on Travis Paul's list. They're on Ryan Laveck list. They're on everybody's list, right? And we all paid Google and Facebook to get them on our list. And that makes no sense to me.

1 (21m 4s):
And so I went to, so I learned this strategy from Jeremy blossom of strike point media. And basically we started a co-reg service where we went to a lot of the people that we do joint ventures with, and we made their premiums available when someone opts in for our like bonus, right? So, you know, we advertise a docu-series, which is a 10 day, like, you know, they get a video each day and then it expires. And you know, self-destruction 24 hours. When someone ops in for that, they're also offered Todd brown swipe file Ryan. Luvox something of his, a free groove account and something from traffic and funnels, anytime a prospect takes any of those $4 goes from their company to me.

1 (21m 56s):
And I do the same with them. And so ultimately it's like a weed co-op we're doing it by co-reg. But this way, like we are splitting the cost of a lead as opposed to each giving Google Facebook and all these other companies, the same amount of money, each of us for the same lead

0 (22m 15s):
Fire Nation. Can you see the possibilities when he started doing things like this? And again, this is just like that next level of going from the old way of doing things. And now this new opportunity that people like rich have discovered and are passing along to you. So rich let's really bring this home. How can Fire Nation really walk away with the key point you want to make during this interview share the best way that we can connect with you in your business, in your company. And then we'll say goodbye online

1 (22m 43s):
With marketing, there is a first mover advantage. Anytime you come across something that you haven't seen before as a mechanism of selling, and it got your attention, you should categorize that and capture it and really think about maybe you should be doing that. And here's why, you know, when I introduced VSLs to a Gora right, it immediately increased their conversion rates by 300%. And a VSL for those that don't know is a video sales letter. And just by taking the regular sales letter and making it a video conversion rates went up 300% worldwide. Wow. Today though, when we test a V a video sales letter versus a regular sales letter, there's no difference.

1 (23m 25s):
There's zero difference. So you were either there for that 300% increase in sales with no effort or you weren't and things like that happen consistently. Mike, in the 20 years, I've been online, I've seen it time and time again. So members of the Fire Nation, what they should be looking out for is anything that is unique and different. That captures attention as it relates to selling what I've shared with you today use versus taste, how to increase your email, deliverability, you know, outbound versus inbound and this lead co-op, all of these are new strategies that are currently crushing it that you won't see in most places, as you see it in more and more places, their effectiveness will go down.

1 (24m 5s):
And so you really just have to stay at the forefront and look for any best practice that is re that could replace something that you're currently doing, but done better because it's currently clocking in a better. And if you want to know more about me, you can go to our Facebook group, strategic profits, or you can go to and find me on Instagram, the real Rch Schefren, and we're on YouTube as well. And we're pretty much everywhere. So the name of the website is strategic profits. The product I have that I'm most proud of is steal our winners. And I'm just excited to be here and thankful that you had me here. Rich

0 (24m 40s):
Always love having you on brother. You drop nothing but value bombs every single time. I mean, Fire Nation. This is a person that has continued to be first mover in many different ways, since 2005. So just realize when he spots movements, you want to be jumping on that train. And by following him as strategic profits, you'll be able to do just that. So Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with RS and JLD today. So keep up that heat, head over to eofire.com type rich in the search bar. And by the way, we did an episode a while ago, and you could listen to that one, which was on fire as well. So check out that previous episode, rich, thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (25m 26s):
Awesome. Look forward to talking to you again soon.

0 (25m 29s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Rich and Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals, which is why I created the freedom journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal and 100 days. And we're talking step-by-step. So visit the FreedomJournal.com use promo code podcast, free $15 discounts. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you looking for a proven business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you to increase their profitability by an average of 104% per year, all for less money than it would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee schedule your free consultation today with Clay Clark, a former small business administration entrepreneur of the year at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire.

0 (26m 17s):
Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF.