Fastest & Easiest Ways To Doubling Your Business With Charles Gaudet
In the podcast:
03:13 – Overview of Charles Journey in the World of Online Marketing05:49 – Continuing His Journey as an Entrepreneur and Facing His Biggest Challenge09:19 – Way to Success15:45 – Speed to Scale Program17:35 – Three Ways to Grow Business
Charles Gaudet and I talk about the fastest, easiest and most effective methods to increasing (and in some cases, doubling!) revenue in your business.
Read on to this interview with Charles Gaudet and we will reveal the fastest and easiest ways to doubling your business.
Ilana: I have a very special guest today whose name is Charles Gaudet who has done so much stuff. He has written a bestselling book called Predictable Profits Playbook and is also the founder of the Speed to Scale Program which we will be discussing a little bit about. He’s been featured in Fox Business Forbes Entrepreneur Magazine you name it. This man is everywhere. So welcome Charlie.
Charles: Well thank you very much Ilana. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Ilana: It is a pleasure to have you. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve actually known Charlie or Charles for many, many years before both of us even started on this entrepreneurial journey and it’s just nice that we’ve come full circle and now we’re on this cold together today.
Charles: Isn’t that cool. I mean seriously, I have known you I believe since 1997.
Ilana: 1998. I think it was.
Charles: Yeah. You believe that? That was amazing, that’s amazing.
Ilana: It is amazing. And do you know what I still remember the first time I met you. I don’t know if you remember but I did. You want me to tell you the story?
Charles: Yeah, it’s time for those stories, you know, I mean. Those back in that crazy college days.
Ilana: It’s crazy. College days. But you don’t know, I did a semester at Babson College in America. So a little ozzie went all the way to the other side of the world to these college in the middle of nowhere in Boston and one of the first couple of days I was there. I was so shy and I got dragged along to this fraternity party which I couldn’t believe actually really did exist because I’d seen them in the movies and I thought surely they’re not real. But yes they were. And I saw you standing on the stairs at this party with your UNSW sweater. But I know you don’t know, UNSW is the university that I was going to in Australia so I saw that I’m like, this guy is going to be my friend because he’s got the UNSW jumper and that’s where I go to school.
Charles: That’s awesome. And it didn’t take long before we were friends.
Overview of Charles Journey in the World of Online Marketing
Ilana: Yeah, it’s crazy. Anyway back on track. So welcome and thank you for spending time on this particular episode with us. You have done so much in the world of online marketing. I feel like it’s an episode in itself just explaining your journey. But to abbreviate your background do you want to give us a bit of an overview of what you’ve done?
Charles: Sure. So you know I’ve actually been an entrepreneur since I was at the age of four and I was selling artwork to my neighbours at the age of four and I started young not because I was necessarily born an entrepreneur but because my dad worked every waking hour of every day and like many entrepreneurs I’m sure can relate. And when he had a good day he’d come home and say hey son if you want to be something and make up to yourself, you’ve got to be an entrepreneur. And when he had a bad day, he would come home and say son entrepreneur employees suck. Don’t ever be an employee.
And so that the only time I saw my dad up until I was in the third grade was you know if I happened to get up early in the morning or if I had to catch him, it was happen to be up late at night because he worked all the time and so to get my earn my father’s affection and I became an entrepreneur and you know through that time you know I did a lot of odd jobs you know. Whether it was painting or it was landscaping or whatnot I always found a way to do something great something on my own. Which eventually led me to go to Babson where you and I met which is known as one of the nation’s best colleges for entrepreneurship. In fact it’s been ranked number one for decades. Wow. And so from Babson where all my classmates were applying for jobs, I decided I was just going to burn the bridge and then continue my entrepreneurial journey. And through that process we created one of the nations or the world’s first pet health insurance companies.
The challenge though with pet health insurance is that we are way ahead of part time. And we recruited an A team plus players. Some of the top insurance sales people in the world, some executives, some big insurance companies and whatnot. And then the market crashed in 2000 and all our money or seed money dried up and the venture capital money or the initial investor money that we are promised several million dollars we didn’t end up getting. Now the good news is we created a good foundation, a good start. Ernst and Young nominated us, as having one of the nation’s best seed stage companies and we were selected inside by venture one and we were all in all these newspapers and whatnot including you know different languages we couldn’t even read what was being said about us. So you know it was a good, good humbling experience.
Continuing his journey as an Entrepreneur and Facing his Biggest Challenge
And then about a couple of months later I ended up finding investors, starting another business, real estate development business. And before long I found myself and over a million dollars in debt, personal debt. So that was an interesting situation and I fell into the same trap that my dad was in when I was younger, I worked every waking hour of every day and eventually what ended up happening is I mean when I say I worked every waking hour of every day, I didn’t just go to bed and wake up on my own. I would work until I couldn’t stay awake anymore. And then I’d go to bed and let’s say I got up at midnight to go to the bathroom. That’s when I started working but I always set my alarm for 330 in the morning so I wouldn’t quote unquote over sleep.
You know I lived on caffeine and adrenaline and then over time that caught up with me and I’m driving home and I see my house in the corner of my eye. And, all of a sudden I started getting this pain shooting of my right, you know at the base of my spine all the way up through my neck and to the top of my head and I realized I’m not going home today. And I ended up in the emergency room. And the doctor did ran a whole bunch of tests and he said okay well here’s the deal. What you’re going through right now is a result of stress. I’m thinking of myself, yeah, no kidding. I mean I’m in an over a million dollars worth of debt. I’ve got you know hundreds of individual subcontractors running around everywhere. No no no. No crap Sherlock. Of course it’s stress. And he’s like Bob the issue here is you’re not sleeping, you’re not taking care of yourself nutritionally and with the amount of stress that you’re under right now, your organs are starting to shut down and the pain that you’re experiencing and the symptoms you’re experiencing is your body shutting down. I don’t know how else to put it. But you’re dying. I’m like what? And he’s like, you are killing yourself. And so I just can’t continue much longer.
And so that was a wakeup call for me. I’m in my early 20s and I’m told that the only strategy that I knew to work hard couldn’t work anymore. And so that was the turning point actually in my life. You know people say you do things of desperation or inspiration. And for me this is definitely both right. I was inspired to make something of myself but I was desperate because I had to make different decisions.
Ilana: If that’s not a wake up call then I don’t know what is.
Charles: Yeah it was scary, it was scary. I mean I could go on what I went through. Oh my God. Feels like a different life. I mean I couldn’t sleep at night. Heather my wife, you know, I mean she would make me a cocktail every night. So that it would take the edge off. And then I couldn’t sleep in my bed, so I would have to fall asleep on the couch watching TV. And then once I could fall asleep then she would grab me and bring me to bed and I could sleep in my bed. But then I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t fall back asleep. And if it was too early to get up to work. She would have to rub my back to put me back to sleep again. I mean that’s insane. Right. But this is my life. But then the funny thing is after this incident in the hospital, we made a few strategic decisions that I managed to pay off all my debt, bring at my first multimillion dollar business in about a year.
Way to Success
Ilana: Amazing. So, do you want to tell us about it?
Charles: Yeah, more than happy to. So, you know. What we started to look out was, yeah I have this phrase all the time and I’m sure you’ve heard it too. You got to work smarter not harder right. I mean we hear that all the time but it always seems like just words we’re never actually finding out ways in which we can actually you know turn that into practical application. And so we started looking at our business differently. And you know where selling property at this point most people look at it as a simple transaction. You sell you own property, then you sell it, you collect money and that’s it. All right. In our case you know we’re building houses, so you build a house for somebody that’s it.
So we looked at it and we said well what can we do to actually drive a bigger result for our clients and do it in a way that presents them with a huge advantage so that people will not only be happy to pay a premium pricing for our property but then also be willing to give us more and more money. And so you know through that process we created an experience where we made the housebuilding process a lot easier.
So just by the way. No we would take them by the hand and have them be able to customize share their experience to their house became a home. That was something that was important that help us to get more premium pricing and you know we did different things that I won’t go into details about where we left more treaties than everybody else because we knew that’s what you know clients liked.
But you know we also in the beginning I needed to find ways in which I could get more money upfront. And so I found out that the banks will lend construction loans and now I’m not going to give you the details of like the real estate, the construction loans or whatnot because that’s not gonna put most of the people on this podcast. So here’s a minute I think which is interesting. In the beginning, I wanted people to collect construction loans so I would tell people, look if you don’t do a construction loan, right, so this house is for sale via construction loan if you don’t do a construction loan I’m going to have to charge you $10,000 more. And I thought I could do that because I saw others, my competitors getting away and doing that themselves. But I notice I was getting a lot of pushback and I’m like huh. It seems like a penalty, it seems like punishing people. If they decide not to do a construction loan. So then I changed it. I raised the prices of everything that I did all the properties that are sign by $10,000 . And then I said to him you know what, here’s the price. But if you want to save $10,000 you can get a construction loan and then all of a sudden people were like wow that’s awesome. And so we ended up tons of people getting construction loans.
Then the way we saved $10,000 is we gave people a $10,000 credit towards all upgrades in their home. Well guess what the upgrades didn’t cost me $10,000. Right. So the same thing when you look at it from a payment plan right. If you’re looking to grow your business and you’re charging $10,000 for a particular $10,000 right. Or you want $10,000, you ask yourself the same question right. Well okay so what do I want. I ultimately want $10,000. That’s my bottom line. $10,000 is what I ultimately want but I know that a lot of people can’t afford $10,000. So what can I do? Well what if I made them payment plans of a 12 part payment plan of 997. Well at 997, a 12 part payment plan equals $12,000. So I guess I get more clients if they come in at $12,000. But I really want that $10,000. So how can I make that more attractive? No problem. Tell them look. What we can do is we can get you into this program at $997 a month for 12 months. Wow that sounds awesome. Well here’s the thing. I can instantly save you $2,000 and I’ll give you this benefit, this benefit, this benefit. If you want to pay unfold to that. The savings plus the additional benefits becomes so damn attractive. You’re going to get a lot more people paying you that 10,000 pounds. Is that makes sense?
Ilana: Total sense. Price anchoring I think they call it.
Charles: Yeah, I don’t know that. Yeah that sounds about right, you know. Price anchoring. I think I might called that one. You know a lot of the stuff I do that I don’t even know if there’s an official term and if there is one, I’ll make up an official term. You know that’s just like we did that and we did joint venture opportunities where we said you know what are all the different ways that our clients could benefit from you know what can we do to drive bigger results and make them even happier.
So we made relationships with television companies and landscaping companies and patio furniture companies and home alarm theater companies and home furniture companies and we went on and on and on. We’re like we went to each person we said look I’ve got a whole bunch of clients that I can send to you by order for me to send you these clients you have to promise me you’re going to give them a preferred advantage that you’re not going to give to anybody else. And when you do happen to make the sale, I want to have a small percentage of that sale. I want you to be able to pay me that. And we just did that not because we saw anybody else doing it. There’s nobody else is doing it. But the result of that ended up, we were making tens of thousands of dollars a month from these referrals.
Our clients are super happy because we gave them a preferred result that nobody else is getting. Our vendor partners are excited because they’re all getting clients that they didn’t have to pay for because I referred them over to them. And so everybody’s winning. And then one day I got a knock on my door. And it’s my accountant. From a big accounting firm in Boston. And he says Charlie, we need to talk. And I’m like. Well this sounds serious. And he’s like, let’s talk. So I said, come on in and he sits down on my breakfast table and he goes right. Well here’s the deal. You’re paying fair value for your properties, you’re selling them at fair value yet you’ve got one of the highest profit margins in the entire industry. And I can’t figure it out what the hell are you doing.
That’s because of our joint venture opportunities. Right. So. You know we. We did that. And so you know then I created a proprietary stock trading company where we ran you know millions of dollars in markets and I did all algorithmically and that was the first time I really kind of built in systems which I carry now and to the businesses that I run. And when I did that and other things that brought me to the company that I have now predictable profits. You know with all those experiences and everything that we’ve done, you know we’ve helped companies bring pretty remarkable results.
Speed to Scale Program
Ilana: So let’s talk about that. So about predictable profits and I believe you have a program called Speed to Scale. Is that right?
Charles: You’ve got it.
Ilana: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Charles: Sure. So, you know. Like I experienced, entrepreneurs get to the point where they built their business where it is right now because they’ve been working hard, working hard, working hard, working hard. And they finally realize I can’t work any harder than I’m working right now. But I want to be able to take my business to another level. How do I do that? That’s usually when people call us and we put strategies and systems in place that take their business over that next level. The most interesting thing about what it is that we do is most people think the answer to that problem is to get more new clients. Right? To get more traffic. You probably hear this all the time being the expert in your business. You know get more traffic to be the solution or get more clients.
Ilana: And the clients are always about I need more leads.
Charles: Absolutely. And I get that. But one of the things that I think that people find more remarkable is that, they could, they have the capacity to double their business without really doing or spending any more money than they’re spending right now. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be acquiring clients, pay a pay-per click or anything else because that’s really smart and you want to dominate the market place. Like, look. I mean it’s a really smart decision. You should do that. There’s tons of opportunity internally in which you can increase your revenues.
A perfect example was a woman that I worked with had a database that she was marketing to on a consistent basis. But there was a tweak that she was missing inside of her emails and we showed her how if she just applied a few psychological triggers in her e-mails. Then she could increase her conversions. And she took two emails and just with those two emails she was able to increase from month to month sales by 100%.
Ilana: Incredible. The thing it doesn’t really take much to make a big difference to the bottom line. Clearly.
Three Ways to Grow Business
Charles: Well, there’s a lot of ways in which you know. Jay Abraham talks about there’s only three ways to grow business. Right? Get more new customers. You can and which is where everybody focuses on. There is increase your average transaction size. So if your average transaction size is a thousand and you know increase it to 20% up to twelve hundred. And the other one is increasing by frequency. So it’s get more new customers increase of transaction size and increase the average amount of time somebody does business with you. That’s the only three ways to grow a business right. But most people are focusing only on the first one so they’re ignoring 66% of the formula for growing their business. And even still when they’re focusing in on getting new customers nine times out of ten we’re diving into it we say okay so you want to get new customers. What is your process for following up with the people who say no? And they look at me kinda weird like what do you mean when you mean say no?
And it’s like well you’re, you’re not most businesses aren’t selling more than 50% of the people who inquire, in fact if you have an online business and you’re converting 3% of the people that visit your website, you’re doing really good. Won’t you agree on it?
Ilana: Yeah, totally. The average conversion rate.
Charles: Right. If you’re selling a product it’s 3%. If you’re going for you know if you’re a dentist and you’ve got a conversion page and you’re getting phone calls and whatnot hopefully you can convert more than 3% on a phone call so those metrics are a little bit different. But even still you’re still going to get more people saying no to you than yes. So how do you convert those nos into more yeses. How do you convert the people that you had sales calls with decided not now how do you convert those into more sales?
Ilana: What’s one of the ways you can do that?
Charles: You know, the funny thing is and this is like, this is one of those you know, no kidding moments. But I find that most people don’t have a formalized follow up process.
Ilana: I would say that’s true. I think people they feel offended. You know if somebody says no, oh okay I don’t want to hassle them anymore. It’s like they don’t want to take it personally.
Charles: It’s funny because I’m actually going to, I’m going to say that you’re right. I do see that a lot. But at the end of the day, people have inquired because they’re interested. Right. They’ve raised a hand and they said that they’ve interested. Now there are two types of people out there. There’s the type of people that believe in what’s called ABC Always Be Closing. And then there’s the other type of people out there that decide that what they want to do is they want to build to try that what they don’t want is they don’t want just another client. What they do want is they do want to fan. And you know, Ilana are you an Apple fan by chance?
Ilana: I am.
Charles: As am I. Did you get the new X?
Ilana: No I’m on the fence. I’ve G for new phone and I am tempted but I mean did it. If I was a true they both then it wouldn’t even be a question. That’s the trick. I’m hesitating, to be honest. Well I mean it’s not like I’m not going to get the eight or the 10. It’s not with the apple.
Charles: Sure. And if you let’s just pretend for a minute that you did want the X and on November 3rd they went live to sell the X. What would you have had to have done to ensure that you’ve got your hands on an X on November 3rd?
Ilana: Lined up like those images inflate around like crazy people lining up.
Charles: And what time do you had to have been there?
Ilana: Night, 3 a.m..
Charles: Right. I mean 3:00 am. My wife and I ordered it online and we got up a 2:50 at am to order it online.
Ilana: No kidding.
Charles: Yeah. And so let me ask you a question. What other company do you know of or product or service where you would get your customers to go or your clients to go out of your way, out of their way to do business with you? Can you think of another one?
Ilana: Not really.
Charles: Yeah it’s tough. And so the question that we ask ourselves is we’re not asking our clients to get up at 3:00 in the morning to do business with us. But we were asking ourselves what has to happen in order to ask our clients to go even a little bit out of their way in order to do business with us. And that’s the difference between great fans and building a tribe versus just ABC, Always Be Closing.
Ilana: I’m not a fan of the ABC. It just feels to sale-sy, it’s just awful.
Charles: I think you’re right. And you know a lot of people feel proud when they can say oh I could sell ice to an Eskimo. I could sell steak to a cow. And it’s like, why why should you be proud of that? Look, that have been cool prior to 2010 when companies had all the power and companies could control the flow of information and what consumers knew about a product or service. But prior to, but since 2010 when that balances shift and shifted forever now. Where consumers have all the power. We have access to everything we want at the palm of our hands. The average consumers especially in B2B, right? They’re looking at 94% of the buyers are looking at several different sources of information before doing business with you. You can’t afford. You can’t sell the wrong client the right product because what’s going to happen, if I sell you something. So you are you know one of the top experts in pay-per click traffic and media buying Ilana, so if I go over to you and I have unrealistic expectations and so many of your services. Who am I going to blame, you or me for having the wrong expectations?
Ilana: Well, me.
Charles: Right I’m going to blame you. And all right your better view and all that other stuff. And that’s why it’s important for people to understand that you don’t want to sell the wrong person the right products. You have to sell the right person the right product and that’s how it works. Or sometimes you have the right person but unfortunately you’re just not the right person to deliver on what it is that they need. And at that point we just you know create some sort of win-win situation. So they still feel like they’re better off having spoken with you than not to talk with you at all. That’s how you kind of build a tribe. A tribe of referrals, a tribe of customers will go to bat for you and defend you. Who will go to bat for you and want to support you.
We have a company in town, who, the company was actually, they just it’s a local business and they, like a lot of local businesses were losing a lot of business to the big companies right. It was a bookstore losing a lot of business over the Barnes and Nobles and Amazon. And so they reached out to the community and they said hey you know what. Unfortunately we, we just can’t compete with these big box stores and Amazon. It looks like we’re going to have close the doors. And you know the community did? They rallied around and years later the business is still around. But that’s what happens when you create fans and you can do that even in an online marketing. Find out what it is that you can do to help your clients produce a greater result even if you’re not getting paid for it in advance.
You know Frank Curran point this results in advance you know what can you do to give your clients the results in advance come off? So cool that your clients become raving cancelling with you. Right? And you can give tips and information and you just don’t do it in sales the way you do it in a ways that people can take actionable advice and start to get some sort of experience. Start to get a taste of what it would be like working with it.
Ilana: And then I mean you know it’s building trust in a relationship and if you can’t build that at the start, people feel like they are being sold to. It’s just you know, how are they going to trust you later? It’s such a trustworthy relationship that you have with people.
Charles: You know I am super, super glad that you said that because in 2017 Edelman’s who does a study on trust and consumer trust they reported an unprecedented drop in trust a larger drop than anything they’ve ever experienced in the times that they have been studying trust. Right? So what does that tell you? That when somebody is looking to do business with you are they coming to you and thinking out of the cold that they’re going to trust you or not trust you? Do they trust you or not trust you right off the bat.
Ilana: Not at all. And fair enough I’d probably be the same.
Charles: Right. They don’t trust you. Coming off cold, no relationship they don’t trust you. And now you’re asking them to buy from you right off the bat and that’s not ultimately what’s going to end up happening, right?
Now, you got somebody who coming off the street you’ve got to build that relationship with them. You’ve got to build trust, you’ve got to put your best foot forward and deliver those results in fans and show them that you’re the real deal. I mean part of what you’re doing right now which is fantastic by creating these podcasts, I mean you’re spending your time, you’re spending your money and your going out there and sharing great advice and tips not only from yourself but for research because part of that is building your time.
People are going to you know, they’re going to value the information that you’re sharing with them and progressively that plants the seed for a much longer more fruitful profitable relationship.
Ilana: It’s interesting I had the privilege of talking to business owners all the time and each business is a different point in their journeys. Some are starting out, some really well established and often the ones that are starting out so they come to me, they want Facebook ad management and I’ll often say to them okay. So you know, have you got a sales funnel in place, oh no, and I said okay come back to me when you get a sales funnel. You know and they immediately get oh, okay I need a sales funnel. That’s right. Because you wanna have to give, provide value upfront with the Facebook ads. How are you going to convert them later? So I can get you leads, but unless you’ve got a process to convert those leads into sales. There’s no point filling your pipeline with these leads because you’re going to spend all this money and then what you gonna do? And people really value that kind of, that pushback from me you know. Because I don’t want your money now you know, and because ultimately in three months time if they do become a client, if I had taken them on, they going to be like well on spending on this money what do I get in front? Well exactly right, I can get you the lead beyond that I can’t help you. So unless you’ve got that in place then you know, what’s the point?
Charles: I can’t tell you how many times somebody will call us either because they were referred by somebody or they read an article about us somewhere or whatnot or they read my book and they’re like alright I’d love to become a client. You know where do I sign up. And we immediately come back with appreciate that and I love the vote of confidence but I don’t know if I want to work with you yet. And right away people are, they’re like what? What do you mean? It’s like, well you know I need to make sure I’m really going to be the right fit for you and that I can deliver the results of going to make a difference for your company because first of all our results are guaranteed. So we need to really make sure that we are producing. But second of all you know we take pride in being trusted by and we want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing. The funny thing is is when you’re honest with people like that, not only do they like you more and they start to trust you more but there’s a side effect. Believe it or not if they start selling you as opposed to you selling them.
Ilana: 100%. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. I actually had turn people away lots of times much to the surprise of them just for that example I use before with not having a sales funnel. Come back to me when you get it. And then they start sending me people. It’s quite interesting. I mean which is you know, I didn’t ask for it. It’s just I’m looking out for them and I really am because I always say to a client you know I’m not going to commit for a year and have my services we got month by month. Because if you’re not happy then that I’m not happy and I like to deal with happy people. And that’s the honest truth. Like I just want to deal with happy people like I don’t wanna lock someone in if they’re not getting results that’s not goor for me, that’s not good for them you know.
Anyway, back on track, so I feel or I guess your sweet spot of way you can provide the most value for people and really get the biggest result. Who would you say is it’s the best fit for? Like for example if you could wave a magic wand and you see a business that has got certain things in place that they’re not doing you know like who would you say that is, like where can somebody get the biggest results, what kind of business?
Charles: So one of the ways that or the number one way, when we’re we’ve been able to drive the fastest most efficient growth possible is businesses that have momentum. Right? So if you’re struggling to grow your business you don’t have a strategy problem. What you actually have is a momentum problem that’s the reason why it’s a lot easier for you to go from a hundred clients to 200 clients than it is for you to go from zero clients to your first hundreds.
And so what we look for is we look for businesses that are past that startup phase that are in that phase where are they have a proven product, proven concept that have some momentum but for whatever reason they’re stuck. They can’t seem to get beyond the revenue level that they’re at right now.
Ilana: They’re plateaued.
Charles: They’re plateaued. They say things like my business is losing out to competitors. I can’t seem to get above a certain frustrating level of sales. Our sales aren’t automatic regular or consistent. I keep doing more and more but is working less. Perhaps you know they’re feeling like their business has become can’t monetized and they’re competing on price consistently and they don’t know how to raise their prices or they feel like they’re marketing for whatever reason isn’t producing the results that it should or it’s not effective and they just don’t know what to do next. And of course like many business owners too they’re just doing everything themselves and they’ve got no leverage. And they just you know they’re stuck in that. That’s the point where you know we’ve been out this enough. Right now we’re working with 50 entrepreneurs in a whole bunch of different industries most of them service related industries whether they’re coaches, consultants, experts. We have B2B companies, national advertising agencies, we’ve got people in the health field, we’ve got financial traders, who are doing training education, we’ve got you know, people in all walks of life but they all have sort of that sort of criteria where they want to get more out of their existing business and they’re looking for a little strategy and have leveraging existing momentum to just you know blow that out.
Ilana: So, a database of a certain size perhaps?
Charles: You know it’s funny that you say that. And you know of course it’s easier. We talk about expectations earlier and you know I’ve taken a company that was doing $250,000 a year. And I was able to take that company and grow it.
I made them more money in you know, a couple of weeks than they made an entire year combined, right? But I was able to do that because they had a massive, massive, massive database. So it was easy because we could set the expectations that look you’ve got a huge database, a follow up process can be improved, the communication, the offers and whatnot that you’re making them, they can be improved. All the stuff to get good momentum just need to make a few different tweaks and boom all of a sudden just massive performance.
Then we’re working with a client that he really at a small business been at it for a little while never really spent the time to build out a database. And so for him to go from zero to doubling his business and a month’s time is unrealistic because he doesn’t have the same level of momentum that the other guy did. And so, it comes to, if you want to work with us you know, and it all depends. I mean it might not be a good fit but if you don’t have the right database it’s just a matter of making sure that your expectations are aligned. It’s like, I don’t have a database that means there’s a lot of foundational stuff that I need to build. I got to put you know the cornerstone in place in order to build my empire on top of and get that I’m okay with that. It might take me a little while but I’m definitely going to be a hell of a lot better off having worked with you and not working with you at all.
Ilana: Yeah, it’s interesting. You know one of the first questions when I bring a new client on. I mean at my job as an ad manager person is to find the lowest hanging fruit just from the outset you know. So they can immediately get a return and said the one of the first questions I asked people is, what assets have you got? If you got a database that I can upload to Facebook and then straight away, we don’t target those people. Have you got a remarketing list that I can straight away hit some remarketing ads because they’re the ones going to work the best or will be on Facebook where we can target your friends, you know and that’s where we can get the lowest hanging fruit and without that, it’s just my job is so much harder. So that it’s not worth doing but as you say there’s unrealistic expectations if you haven’t got some existing assets in place that we can just get that lowest hanging fruit.
Charles: I love that you just talked about that because that’s actually the topic of a newsletter that I’m writing right now is on this whole idea of traffic and the low hanging fruit because Ilana you are one of the few people that actually get it, right? Because most people will immediately go to Facebook and they’ll spend their first advertising dollars on cold traffic.
You know and it’s like wait a minute. But you’ve got a list of you know X amount of thousands of people in your database that you know if you’re lucky you’ve got a 20% open rate that means 80% of the people aren’t even seeing your emails but they already are familiar with you and are more, more likely to buy from you than not. They’ve already raise your hand. They’re already a targeted market. Why don’t you target those in the Facebook and target them first. Because you know why if you can’t make money with those people then why are you going to try to go through the headache of testing different markets.
Ilana: Testing targeting and testing offers. If you’re offer weren’t convert for those assets then it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to convert the cold people.
Charles: Exactly. And it’s like you know or you know pixels right. People are coming to your website and they walk away. What are you doing to retarget them. They’ve already been to your website. What are you doing to bring them back? Nothing. So you’re going to spend all this money. See people are so and I don’t want to insult those people that you know most of them is just they don’t know and it’s actually I blame the guru world, right? Because a guru world are going to sell you a Facebook strategy, they’re going to sell you a Pinterest strategy and Instagram strategy, a Twitter strategy, you know native advertising strategy and they got all these different strategies but nobody thinks in terms of systems. And it’s like look when you really think about it and if you have a database it’s that of warm traffic and 80% of the people aren’t even seeing your emails.
What can you do? You go over to Facebook and you create a campaign but then there’s effective frequency in place where the more you show the ads, the higher the conversion rate. So why not, you can approach other remarketing sites like Perfect Audience or whatnot and or Google content. That GDN network, right? And so now you’re doing retargeting across the board, so now people are seeing or add more and more and more. They get warmed up again more likely to do business with you and then what about you know, let’s say you are going to end up paying for some of Google search terms which are awesome. Somebody is looking for you know a dentist in Sydney. What better search term than looking up dentists in Sydney? Somebody is obviously, they’re looking for you know a dentist in Sydney and so then you, somebody goes to the website then they leave.
They don’t submit their information right away. You retarget them and so it’s like there’s a whole system in place you don’t just do one thing because you’re going to sub optimize your results if you do one thing and you do one thing only. You get a list of buyers of your e-commerce company, you’ve got a list of buyers you can use that list of buyers build the momentum off the list of buyers to create a custom audience that matches that exact profile and advertise across the board and share related products.
Ilana: And you know what? We remarket in conjunction with email marketing for the very reasons on Facebook that people will share that and this happens all the time. You know we’ve got this client that is a whole email marketing funnel and the sort of the final offer in the funnel, we then show an ad full of people sharing that final offer. I’m going to give them a hug. It’s amazing, so clever. I’m like that no one’s going to forward an email but all they got to do is hit that share button and it’s then distributed to all their network and be endorsed by them.
Charles: So it’s it’s now free. Free advertising.
Ilana: That’s right. Free advertising of the final offer.
Charles: I know it’s amazing. It is absolutely amazing. But it’s sometimes, it’s just a matter of thinking a little bit differently, right? Full circle all the way back to what is the Apple’s tagline what has it been forever, think different. You know right now we tend to also consider where everybody right now, they’ve got tunnel vision.
Ilana: I think there’s also a lot of noise in the market as you say you know. The gurus are to blame and we won’t mention any names but they really kind of ruining like the good advice that’s out there because I think there’s some really bad advice floating around.
Charles: Absolutely. And most of it is self-serving advice try to just sell another programmer or sell another course and get that. But at the same time if they have the attitude of creating raving fans as opposed to just another client then their approach would be slightly different.
Ilana: Well I have a short term view, really. That just getting this house straight away with no concept of the lifetime value of a customer is worth a hell of a lot more than the short term gain. And if you look after people then you have a customer for life.
Charles: Oh, yeah. You’re about to see that whole everything that you’re talking about, about short term views and cryptocurrency and what not, there are more companies springing up right now in that industry. When I can I mean it reminds me in so many other industries where people see money and opportunity and it’s going to be difficult to cut through to find out who the real players are. We can get real value, real information. And unfortunately that’s going to negatively impact the industry.
Let’s talk about something crazy. Did you hear being a bitcoin. Did you hear about Agora’s latest webinars and the results that they did. So Agora is one of the most brilliant direct response marketers on the planet. Billion dollar company. There’s so much you can study from Agora. They ran a webinar. I mean have you guess they ran a bitcoin webinar. I’m just have you guess how many people do you think they have registered on the webinar? I want you to think high. Of what webinar and you’ve ran webinars before. Yeah how many people that had registered on the webinar?
Ilana: Wow. Hundred thousand?
Charles: Two hundred and twenty five thousand. Amazing. Now you’re ready. Imagine having 225 and that’s like, I mean holy cow I don’t know what to do if I had 225 thousand people on the webinar.
Ilana: That’s like a stadium of people.
Charles: Holy cow, I know right? 225,000 people. The information that I received and so this is what I received and I know they did really well. I got this from a very reputable source.
Ilana: So hang on a minute. Are you one of the 225,000?
Charles: I wasn’t but I actually I got the replay so I could study it because when you hear these numbers you’ve got to know why. I understand and again don’t quote me on this, this is just what I heard that they did a million dollars in sales within the first 30 minutes. 11 million dollars in the first 24 hours.
Ilana: That’s insane.
The funny thing is and that’s amazing and it really is extraordinary it goes to show you about the power of the offer whatnot. And everybody then wants to know how they get the 225,000 people to attend the webinar. And all that has to do with forming those joint venture partners, right? A lot of reached joint venture partners and said hey look we’d be willing to compensate you royally if you’d be willing to send some leads over our way and so forth and they did. As I understand it quite a bit advertising and their partners to big quite a bit advertising. But they created quite an extraordinary event. And I just find that awesome. I mean you just never hear of unless it’s Apple or whatnot you just never hear of an online media buying frenzy from a webinar like that.
Ilana: Bitcoin is all the rage at the moment. Interesting what happen with that. That’s probably out of topic.
Charles: I know we can go on and on. You and I could carry on this conversation for the next 3 days.
Ilana: It’s true, I could talk to you endlessly Charlie and I am very mindful of your time. So you’ve been very, very generous with your time and your course your knowledge. So I want to say thank you. Where can people find out more information about you and what you do?
Charles: Well I’ll tell you what. If anybody wants to go to my website at predictableprofits.com and you know depending when you go there we there is typically a button somewhere in there where they can start a call and be more than happy to jump on the phone with you and just kind of talk things through. Find some clarity see if there’s a way that supers will see how much opportunity exist in your business and if there’s enough opportunity and you think that we can help you because we guarantee our results will only extend the invitation. We’re now being kind of go from there but predictableprofits.com is best way to get a hold of me.
Ilana: Awesome. And I’m sure your book Predictable Profits Playbook is available from the usual sources.
Charles: From the usual sources for sure Kindle Playbook Amazon Deals.
Ilana: Awesome Charlie. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. As I said I could talk with you endlessly. But we will finish up there. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom.
Charles: Well thank you very much for having me.
Ilana: It’s been a pleasure. Talk to you soon.
I hope you get a lot of value from that interview. I know you certainly did.
