549 – OTR Case Study – How to Transition from eBooks to a Membership Featuring Clint Paddison

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Clint Paddison

Episode highlights:

03:15 – The meeting that started everything
06:25 – A caution about affiliates
10:30 – Delivering the message and helping people
14:05 – The steps that built the Paddison Program
18:23 – DO THIS
26:28 – From overwhelm to enjoyment
32:07 – A look at the payoffs
37:27 – If you’d like to magnify what you have…
39:09 – Members helping the community
42:06 – A couple of key points

Do you know someone who needs help with Rheumatoid Arthritis? Clint can help at the Paddison Program

Let James guide your own OwnTheRacecourse journey inside JamesSchramko membership

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, I have a very special guest. Actually I do say that on every episode but I do mean it even more so in this case. Super special guest, I’m going to upgrade that with this episode. We’re doing a case study with a friend of mine. He’s become a friend first and then a business person second in my life. And welcome to this call, Clint Paddison. Good to have you here, mate.

Clint: Good day. How are you, James?

James: We first met through a mutual friend. And you came along and visited us at one of our live events, I think, might have been sort of an intro into the world and at the time, you were transitioning from a former career into this new passion of yours, which is a super admirable passion and that is, you had through a journey of self-discovery managed to fix some of the health issues that you had been experiencing and you wanted to share these solutions with the broader community. Is that right?

Clint: Yeah, and that’s true. When I was going through terrible, crippling rheumatoid arthritis, which was affecting what felt like about 80 percent of the joints of my body, at that time all I cared about was getting myself well and being able to still perform standup comedy, which has been my day job, in inverted commas, for 17 years. And you mentioned our mutual friend, Joel Ozborn, he saw me at the worst of times, had to help me sometimes to get along the street, and all I cared about was getting well.

But then once my wife and I worked out what worked for me, she said, “We really need to be sharing this to the world and coming up with a way of sort of helping other people, because if we can just help one person with the information that we’ve put together then it’ll be worth it.” So we just started out with an e-book because I didn’t want to go through the publishing process because what if it doesn’t work for other people? But sure enough, the first ebook we put online, I think it sold that same day and I forget how that happened because obviously Google doesn’t act that quick. But I think I’d put up a little bit of a sort of an awareness page first and then lo and behold, when we put the book up, someone bought it straight away. And that person to this day I still know and has done well and that was about five years ago when we first started with a simple e-book online.

James: So I think we’ve met quite a few years ago now. It seems like a while back, where you were at that sort of early stages of having this information that had helped you, and you were publishing it and other people were buying it and it was helping them. But you had all these questions for me, all the usual questions. It was a pretty small-time business at that point, wasn’t it? You were making some sales but it was also a fair bit of work for you because you were doing every single job within the business on this side project, as most of us start out doing, right? Can you sort of paint a picture of what it was like when we were chatting there? I think we were probably in the foyer at the State Theater. I’d watched you perform and you had a hundred and one thousand questions for me. What was going on in your mind at that point?

Meeting James

Clint: Oh that was a funny time. I remember that actually because you know I’ve seen Joel perform hundreds of times like we did in Melbourne Comedy Festival together. We lived together down there for a month performing. He’s done my whole act on stage. I’ve done his. We know each other’s shows so well but he said, “You’ve got to come watch me at the State Theater because Schramko is coming.” And I said, “Really?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Come meet him. Come meet him. He’ll totally help you with your business.” And I’m like, “Alright, alright.”

James: I didn’t know I was in the crosshairs.

Clint: So anyway, I didn’t want to seem like I was one of those annoying people that come up and just straightaway just pick your brains for everything. But as it turns out that’s exactly what I did.

What happened was, Joel did his show and you were milling around at the steps there in the foyer area. And I went over and introduced myself. I just wanted to sort of get an idea of how to get off of the situation I was at the time, which was I was heavily dependent upon ClickBank. So I was getting most of my traffic through that affiliate platform, which was good for me in getting some traffic. But boy, the traffic I was getting was coming from very poor marketing approaches. So people were using phrases like, ‘Is the Paddison program a scam?’ And people were clicking on it and then coming to my page and I’d put, you know, dedicated my life to trying to put the right information onto my website and into my program. And I just hated those kinds of phrases being used.

And you said to me straight up, “I used to be on ClickBank too. And they did the same thing to me and I got off ClickBank.” And in a classic kind of Schramification, you sort of just said it to me in one sentence like, “What else is there to talk about? You’ve got to get off that platform if you care about your brand.” Now, I want to say ClickBank was fabulous for me to that point, until it started to get to the point where people were competing for the clicks by using those sorts of phrases. And so your advice to me, I mulled over for some time and I was then eventually able to implement more strategies that you kept drip feeding me with and be able to move onto my own ways of generating traffic without having to then depend upon other people and their little sneaky techniques.

The problem with affiliates

James: Right. So the big point here is you were relying on a source of affiliate traffic and when you’re on a platform that is affiliate heavy, you have no real control. I know you can whitelist affiliates with ClickBank, which is something I would definitely recommend as a first step, make sure you approve affiliates. But the problem is they do this technique called negative slant advertising and that’s they’re preying on people who are researching. The trouble for you, if someone’s searching a phrase like the one you mentioned, that means they already know you exist. And now they’re looking for verification.

Now if they already know you exist then you didn’t really need the affiliates’ help so much because you could have just put up a Frequently Asked Questions page. You could have a page on your site with the exact same phrase buried in there somewhere. More than likely, actually, if someone googles that phrase now, it’ll probably bring up the transcription on SuperFastBusiness.com. And then people will be able to find ThePaddisonProgram.com‘s actual link and go to the source.

This is a classic OwnTheRacecourse maneuver of saying you know what, I’m going to take back a little bit of control of my own brand. This is exactly the thing that led to me shutting my affiliate program, was brand control and stopping people making outrageous claims. The one that used to crack me up was they would grab a screenshot of me, they would squish my head into weird, contorted dimensions because they’re not very good with Photoshop and then they would go and register a domain with my own name in it and start picking off my own customers who are already searching for me. And I thought, you know what, this is ridiculous.

So the other thing was affiliate fraud, which is a huge issue. And then of course you’re paying quite a fee for these companies to manage all these things for you. I’m not saying you don’t have affiliates here. Just by the way, if you have affiliates, step one is to approve them. Step two, make sure you have very clear terms and conditions. And step three is see if you can already go and get the customer yourself with your own marketing, which more than likely you probably can these days. Affiliate marketing is just a marketing expense.

So you put it on a private scenario and you were able to take back some control of your brand. And like, you’re in a super sensitive market because you’re dealing with people’s health and their lives. And I think you mentioned something to me that was very profound and that is that you are often preventing people from suicide, like it’s that serious. And I felt compelled to help you for several years because I believe in what you’re doing there. I believe the Paddison Program is excellent. And you shared with me some of the concepts of how it works and we’ve had discussions, as you know I’ve been through my own health journey and you have helped me on my journey. You’re part of my health team.

So having that connection, I’ve been able to watch you grow from years. So you effectively went from having a little e-book on ClickBank, which was doing OK. And like, putting aside financial stuff here because I don’t think that’s the real point in this discussion. The real point is you did this because you want to create impact and you would like to get this solution in front of people who are probably getting bad information from multiple sources, whether it is large companies swaying the market, whether it’s just the fact that even well-intentioned doctors, they’re just too busy and caught up in running their business. It’s very hard for them to stay on top of developments. And you’ve got this great information and you’re getting on board a lot of medical people who see what you’re doing and believe in it. But how do you get your message out there? That’s number one on a bigger scale, and without relying on these negative slant affiliates. And two, once you have the client, how do you help them solve their problem in a better way?

And I argued with you that an e-book is great. However, it’s quite likely that someone is going to buy the e-book, maybe skim over it, if that, probably download it to their desktop; a more mature generation often print it and put it in a binder. I’ve seen this occur many, many times, and maybe don’t look at it again or maybe not consume it or apply it properly. And that’s why I said, “You know what Clint, if you really want to have impact, if you want to help people get results, do what I’m doing and create a community, a place where people can interact, get better information that’s customized to them to be able to go through this journey with others rather than isolation and by themselves where their family probably aren’t sympathetic to it. Often, they’re not getting much support at home. They might need access to more information that’s in just an e-book, like what types of things that they can source, new things that come along after the book is published. And of course, you know, the big Mac Daddy is to be able to ask Clint something or when you innovate something, you can share it immediately and you can help them in that journey.”

And that’s really how The Paddison Program came about. So my main question for you is, between when you’re on ClickBank with your e-book to now where you have a thriving community at The Paddison Program, what sort of steps have you done to get to that journey? If we can map out a path, I’d love three or four nuggets here, and I just want to say one thing about this just to address the financial question, the big problem I see with people who are experts, authors or specialists in something, is they are just quite often unleveraged. You can only help a certain amount of people if you’re doing things like selling your time one-to-one or if you are selling information products. It’s not helping someone get the result. But at some point, your life gets so consumed building your business that you reach your capacity and then you’re just physically not able to help more people.

So there’s this one argument out there that if information is fantastic, it should be free. This is a big one that comes up. Customers will demand it. There is this sense of entitlement in the market. The reality is you’re going to need some tools and systems and team members to be able to scale to build something like a Paddison Program. And I specifically love this case study because it’s outside the business world, it’s outside the internet marketing niche. We’ve heard in a previous episode, we heard from Kevin Rogers in the copywriting market. So we know it works in the traditional space that a lot of our listeners are in. But the fact is, if you want to have impact, you need to be able to support yourself and your family to be able to dedicate more time and energy to it because otherwise, you’d probably be doing corporate comedy gigs and still having this little ebook on the side. So what helped you make this a full-time gig and empower far more people to get results? What were the steps?

The path leading to The Paddison Program

Clint: Well one of the first things that I did was create more value so that people were able to be more compelled to engage with what I was offering. So just like you said, a lot of people,particularly in the demographic of my audience, they like to print the book and I’ve met people and they’ve showed up and had me sign the actual printed, dodgy-looking printout of 190 pages in a binder. And so when I see that thing, I’m like, ‘Gee, I’ve got to be able to present this information in a way that is a little bit more consumable.’ And so I looked at some of the key aspects of it that were easier to put into a video format. And I do enjoy that format. I like speaking in front of a camera and I’m good sort of top of my head and so my wife and I created training videos to augment the offering of the e-book.

So then we went from having an e-book to a full comprehensive suite of training videos and this then felt much more valuable to someone who was looking to learn this information. So that was step number one, was having better information. Now once we had better information, I then thought, well, and this was entirely you, this is 100 percent James Schramko, and in fact, I hadn’t even contemplated this before you put the idea in my head. You said to me, “Start a podcast.” Now, it immediately resonated with me because again, it’s a speaking platform that I enjoy. I thought, I’ll get to talk to people. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time, speaking and talking to people.

So I went on to, just did it myself because in between the drip feeds from yourself, I was on my own. I had no one to talk to about these things. I would go online and try and work these things out myself because at that point I wasn’t part of SuperFastBusiness membership. And so I was out on my own. And I just watched Pat Flynn talk about how to start a podcast and I just followed the steps myself and implemented that and bought a podcast mic and away I went. Now our podcast is extremely popular. Certainly within the rheumatoid arthritis genre, there is no other podcast, and mine’s very well-known and most people’s first point of contact. The first thing they say when they meet me or they email is, “Hey, I’ve been listening to your podcast,” or “I love your podcast.” And although you know, when we release them, you know you don’t necessarily get that many comments on iTunes or reviews and stuff and you don’t necessarily get that many comments under the post. But boy, it’s having an impact and you’re really much more than you’re actually aware of when people say they listen to them on the treadmill or in the car or whatever.

Now the podcast enabled me to then generate more of my own traffic, because I was putting up blog posts to accompany each one of the episodes just as you taught me to. And so then I was having SEO traffic and our website gets 300, 400 visitors a day organically, unique visitors, which is a large amount of people given that rheumatoid arthritis is a huge topic around the world and although if you’ve never heard of it or you don’t know anyone with it, it affects about two percent of the world’s population. It’s a gigantic number of people. And we just get a tremendous amount of organic traffic just through podcasts that I’ve put up, and what I took it to the next level and then I started recording the video of the podcast and then I put those onto YouTube. And so then I was getting more traffic by having not just the audio on iTunes and the Android platform but also on a split screen on YouTube. So then I was expanding that.

And then I was able to promote post these on Facebook and reach so many more people on Facebook and find that it was able to pay for itself when I would advertise on Facebook and this was reaching a huge amount of greater audience. This now takes us back about two years ago at this point, or two and a half years ago and then you said to me, and again, this is not just blowing smoke up your butt, this is just how that history went, like I wasn’t talking to anyone else. And you said, “OK. Now you got to start a membership.” And I said, “Well, funny you should say that because I’ve been looking at the scientific studies and the studies,” which I’m very strong at because before I got into comedy I was a scientist and I loved reading you know evidence-based reports on what works and what doesn’t for people with this condition, is that people who had support networks where they spoke about their condition, and in a different study where they wrote down what was bothering them about their condition on a periodic basis, so speaking about it and writing down your feelings about it, clinically improved their symptoms. So just by getting the stresses and the emotions out of them and connecting with someone else, even who didn’t have the condition, help them.

And so I thought you know what, that totally works for my audience because that will help them.That will actually get them better results and it will help because I can then communicate with them every day without their emails getting lost in the pile of other emails that are coming in. I need a place away from the clutter of email and off the noisiness and silliness of Facebook where I can actually have really quality conversations and let people talk to each other, because everyone with this condition feels lonely because unlike something like cancer, another horrible condition, when you have at least what I’ve observed with those unfortunate folks who’ve had that condition, the community really get behind them and support them. And there’s a lot of awareness about them with that condition and it’s a real kind of, ‘Come on, you can do this, kind of support.’ But with rheumatoid arthritis and other sort of these silent autoimmune conditions, instead that’s kind of behind closed doors. People are saying, “What’s wrong with that person? I’m not sure. They don’t seem right. I know they’re on a lot of medications.” They look OK, but it’s quite a different energy. And no one talks about it in the way that the community talks to support someone with certain other conditions.

And so now we have a platform after I spoke to you about how to implement this. And we now have several hundred members who are able to all communicate with each other and myself and I have followed this up with your guidance and hold monthly training calls with them, create new content and have a really, really strong community vibe going on inside our membership. So now, we still have the two offerings for people who’d like to do it themselves. They have now a continually updated sort of course format, which is a do-it-yourself. And then we also have the option of being part of our community, where you get all the materials but you also get the coaching and also the community side of things, which I believe is the greatest place to be anywhere on earth if you have rheumatoid arthritis, is part of our community, because the default is that everyone improves. And with this condition the default is that everyone worsens. And so if the default is that everyone improves, that is quite the extraordinary place to be if you have this condition.

James: I was sitting next to a lady in London who told me she went off morphine after following your program, for the first time in 16 years or something. Massive transformation. I’m not exactly sure of the number but I remember just being gobsmacked at the change. Even her family can’t believe it. I was like, ‘Well that’s good.’ You’ve definitely got me eating more baby spinach, that’s for sure. Because I’ve got osteoarthritis and that can be debilitating or even a year ago, I couldn’t even turn my neck. But to understand more about things like inflammation and gut bacteria and things, this information is not easy to come by.

When I was in the doctor’s office, I said, “So what can I do about this?” And he said, “Nothing, really. Just do some yoga. No tablets or whatever have got any double bind success, etc.” Those bone joints things. But no one explained it the same way that you did and it’s been great to get that advice. So you’ve got this community that helps people. And it sounds like in your business, from what I know about it, that you’re leaning more heavily now into recommending that as the solution for someone. That’s really where they should go. Like just go straight to that solution and get a serious result. Do you see a difference in the results someone is going to get from being a member of the community versus just buying an e-book?

Clint: Oh, absolutely. Because people fall off the bandwagon, especially if what we’re talking about is something that’s quite challenging. And our program, I’ve always maintained, is the challenge because you’re dealing with something that is an extraordinary enemy. And so you need to have the the biggest, most powerful weapon in your arsenal to be able to have equal and opposite power against that. And so you need to take massive action, and you need to follow the steps diligently and be very compliant.

And it’s hard, because if family members are all into their cheese pizzas and oily Thai foods with shrimp every other night, and I’ve got people eating some very basic foods that may include sweet potato and quinoa and buckwheat and at a later stage some brown rice and lots of salads and things, you know our taste buds can be acclimatized to all of the oily, meat-based foods and processed foods. And it’s like an addiction and it can be like something that seems virtually impossible to shake.

So with an e-book, you’ve kind of got to have incredible self-discipline. But with our membership, you’re able to get support from other people, encouragement. And when people see the results of others, it’s hugely inspiring. And sometimes they just need me to just say a word or two, just a couple of sentences like, “You’re on the right track. Don’t worry. I went through that a thousand times.”

And so yes, the results are no doubt about it, are far greater for people when they have the the ongoing support. And I maintain that that’s the best place to be. And it’s also I’ve experienced this from a point of view of doing one-on-one consultations, which I’ve tried to back away from a lot more recently and that’s because I would see people improve immediately after I spoke to them for a period of time but then, you know, I might not hear from them again or they stopped reaching out for information. And I just wonder whether or not, what they’re up to, and I can’t sort of keep an eye on them or know that they’re getting that, the frequent touch points, you know.

James: Yeah. Well, you’re a genuinely nurturing person. And I know exactly what you mean. Like at any one time, I am connected to all of the members of my community. I’ve got, I don’t know, there’s over 500 in SuperFastBusiness who I’m having a lot of discussions with. And then in SilverCircle, there’s dozens of entrepreneurs there that I’m chatting with. But if I don’t hear from them, my system starts hunting them down. I even send them a personal video because I want them to get a result. This is what this is all about.

But while we’re on that, let’s talk about that. So you’ve pretty much said, “Look, the best way to get access to me is to join this membership, because I can keep an eye on you and make sure you’re getting along right.” So you’re pretty much sharing your time now with a bunch of people. Let’s talk about some of the things you’ve done to reduce your overwhelm. Because I know at one point, the first phases of having a membership, until you get it right, can be very hard to manage. And it is a very common, recurring theme by the way. I’ve been through it. Others have been through it. Their first sort of thought is that they have to answer every post. But there are efficiencies that can be gained through certain tools and through certain systems. If you could just share a couple of those, what sort of things have you implemented since you started the membership to make it more manageable?

Managing a membership

Clint: Well yeah, I’ll tell you a story on that. So around about three months after we created it and we promoted it to our then list of about, I don’t know, three or four thousand people, we had a reasonable uptake and we had, I don’t know, 15 to 20, around about that members. And then after that, things were kind of quiet and I kept talking about it. And nothing really happened in terms of membership growth. However, the amount of questions that I was getting was extraordinary. I mean it was like everyone finally saw this opportunity where they could ask me anything they want and it was absolutely overwhelming. And so by that point, now we’re going back about two and a half years, I had joined SuperFastBusiness membership and one of the first things I posted inside there was, ‘Hey guys, I’ve just started a membership and I can barely leave the computer because all that is happening is just this endless stream of questions, just constant questions.’

And I’ll never forget, one of your members, I don’t know who it was but I could go back through the archives. He just said, “Dude, what are you complaining about? Use every one of those for content creation.” And I thought, ‘OK yeah. I’m kind of maybe not seeing what’s so great about this and instead I’m complaining about it.’ But what’s great about this, I thought, ‘OK. If all these guys are asking these questions, everyone else must have these same questions.’ And so what I started to do was talk about these things on the podcast, create content around these questions. And yet the questions just kept coming and coming. And I actually confessed that one night, I said to Melissa, “Honey, the number of questions is out of control. All I’m doing now is just answering questions in our membership.” And I said, “I’m going to stop it. I am going to stop. That’s it. It’s just too many questions and I can’t keep up.”

And I went and sat down at my computer. That night, I was going to like tell everyone, ‘Look, I can’t keep up.’ And we had one more person join. Just one more person that joined during the dinner. And I thought, ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow.’ And I woke up the next day and maybe there just wasn’t quite that many questions the next day, and I thought, ‘OK. I can get through this,’ and maybe another person joined. And then it was like God intervened or something because there was just this turning point where the questions started to reduce in number and the members started to increase in number. And it started to feel like this was going to work for me.

And I created FAQs and I was able to link people who ask the same question back to threads of the same content. And other people then started answering each other’s questions. There was three ways in which I wasn’t as depended upon as what I was initially. I also then created some onboarding techniques so that when people would join, I created some training videos. So I said, “Hey, thanks for joining. You might want to check out these simple videos to show you how to do some things around our support forum.” And they would watch videos on how to start a journal, and how to reply, how to create a thread, how to contact me directly. And these little short, one-minute little video screen recordings made a huge difference as well.

And so then I was not answering any questions that was related to how to use the actual software, which was about 20 percent of the silly questions I was getting at one point. And so slowly, this turned into something that got off to a very clunky start and consumed a lot of my time and made me frustrated into something that now is absolutely enjoyable for me. And I log in every day, and I get goose bumps when I read people’s comments. I’ve called out to Melissa several occasions and said, “Honey, you have to come and read this,” and there will be pictures people post internally of how their joints are now straighter at the elbow or they’re moving their foot. Little videos of feet moving, people doing postures they couldn’t do, whatever it might be.

And yeah, I actually really enjoy going in there now. And we’ve got some really incredible sort of super users and they answer everyone else’s posts and often I just have to say, “Yep, as per Ellen,” or “As per Doug,” or “Yep, as per John.” Whatever. And because the comprehensiveness of their answers is so great that I can often just piggyback those. And it’s just fabulous to be able to know that I can serve people in this manner and I’m not sort of worried about whether or not people are consuming my one-off products.

James: Is it nice for you as a business owner to know that you can cover your own food and accommodation and family needs for next month and the month after with a fair degree of certainty and that you’re able to support a small team of employees now without having the feast and famine that you may have experienced as a comedian?

Clint: Yeah. Certainly in the early days of comedy, and then I worked out that you could charge BHP and all these other major corporations a lot of money to do the same jokes and get 10 times as much cash. That was when I was just going from gig to gig. Comedy sometimes just doesn’t have that same fulfillment as what it does to actually change someone’s lives. So I notice this most when I give my keynote presentations. You know, afterwards, I’m swamped with people, and questions, and handshakes and stories of other people’s lives. But after a standup gig, you might just get some drunk guy walking out saying, “That was funny, mate.” That’s the whole extent.

James: Or even worse, “You’re not even that funny.” So at least now, you can say to someone when they come up to you after your presentation, you know, if you want to get more help, this is where you can take it to the next stage. And you’ve got something to offer them that is valuable to them and it’s also supporting you to be able to support more people. You can reach more people on Facebook. You can hire someone to help you prepare your YouTube edits and craft your blog posts and publish them. You’ve gone from Clint to having a little team now. That’s been a significant change.

Clint: Yup. Again, all through your direction. With the help of some of your key contacts, I’ve been able to put that team together. So we’ve got two offshore staff, absolutely awesome. So surprised that the things that I so egotistically thought that I would not be able to get someone else to do, they’ve been able to pick up and take off my plate.

James: That was a big hurdle for you, wasn’t it? There were a few pivotal discussions. I remember one in particular was this, like, you’ve got to get other people to do this and you felt you were the only one who could do it, which is what most of us do. And I think replacing yourself with things that you are good at is one of the hardest things to have someone get help helping you, and the other big one was you were telling me that you were running a few ads and getting great results. And I said, “Great.” What did I say to you, Clint?

Clint: Run more ads.

James: Yeah, run more ads.

Clint: Like, why are you only running them at that level? Why don’t you scale that up to a factor of 10? And I said, “Because I wouldn’t be able to handle the customer service if I did that.”

James: Right. That’s the marketing capacity see saw. So basically, from the time you had an e-book to now, you’ve been working on improving your marketing and improving your capacity and you’ve built more leverage into your community so that you can get around and help the members while they’re helping themselves. Actually, I’ve even got a post inside SuperFastBusiness, which teaches membership owners how to leverage the coaching within a membership so that it doesn’t get you down. And I call that phase that you described and Kevin described that on a previous episode, crawling over broken glass. That little crossover period when you switch from one-time products to recurring memberships, where you might feel there’s too much work for not enough reward. But if you get past that, it tips the other way where you get less of a workload and more reward. But the net result is you have more members, which means you’re improving more lives. And whether you’re teaching people to build their business stronger like I am or teaching people how to live longer or just simply to even live, it’s a super cool thing to be able to reach more people and to take an idea and turn it into something valuable in the community is amazing.

Clint: Yeah, thanks mate. Well so much of it is I’ve got to thank you for because you know, I’ve said all along, you’ve just been my sole direction on all of these things. And it’s genuinely turned into something that now is helping so many people. And yeah, I’m in such a ridiculously blessed position where I have just every single day someone tells me how their lives have been turned around or their family member or something and I don’t exaggerate with that. Literally, it’s just like there’s hundreds upon hundreds of Facebook messages and emails and stuff. It really is extraordinary. And yeah, I would not have been able to have this reach had we not had our little drip feed conversations, which have turned into more of a steady tap flow over the past six to 12 months.

James: How would you describe SilverCircle and SuperFastBusiness to someone listening to this, if they’re in a similar situation, like they’ve got something, but they’d like to magnify it?

SilverCircle and SuperFastBusiness described

Clint: Well, the way that I use SuperFastBusiness is using your metaphor. I’m the shopper that goes to the store to get one thing. I go into SuperFastBusiness and I go there because I want to watch one of the recorded trainings that you’ve posted in there, or I want to actually reach out to one of your members who I’ve heard on your podcast, or I want to download one of your frameworks for doing something that I want to do.

And then I use the SilverCircle platform for similar things but to contact and get direct coaching with yourself. I feel that if I’m in the SilverCircle environment, I just feel like I’m playing the big league, like I know that the information that I’m going to get in there from yourself and also from the others who just like I described it the other day on one of your coaching calls to me, it felt like I’m in year seven and everyone else is in like year 12 and I’ve got to try and work out ways that my business can reach more people as well. And that’s where I feel, with SilverCircle, it’s like, all right, you’re playing at that level now and you’re going to get the best possible advice that you could get anywhere. And it feels, yeah I feel privileged to be part of it. And the information I take on and implement as well as I can.

James: Yeah. We have a classic example of just sharing best practice. You’ve shared something with us that other members using the same platform have been able to implement straight away and that’s where you actually learn a lot from your customers as well. Do you find that sometimes your customers are out there in the marketplace looking at things, researching things, bringing back to the membership ideas that are also useful for you and can be leveraged?

How members help the community

Clint: Yeah, and this one’s quite like a micro example. But what just popped into my head was that some of our super members as well, some of the super users who just want the absolute best experience for everyone, they’re suggesting to me little software add-ons to our software so that they can speed things up and we just implemented one the other day, where people are sometimes asking questions and the threads already exist in a slightly different format but probably answers the question. And it just suggests, ‘Hey, maybe this thread’s what you’re already looking for,’ rather than someone creating a new thread and maybe not getting the same comprehensive replies because some members feel that they’ve already replied to it elsewhere.

And so you know, just that little add on was something that was suggested to me the other day and we implemented it and it’s working great for our members. So little things like that, learning from them in that way but also, like it’s incredible the education background from some of our members who can assist with stuff that’s going on on the inside. And to be more specific, statistics, like how much people can improve by reporting their blood tests when they first get diagnosed and then right before they start our program and then three months and six months into our program.

So one of our members provided me with a spreadsheet that does good calculation for it, and suggestions of switching away from a platform like Google forms and onto Survey Monkey or a few other options and basically put together a case study for me are ways to gather and then actually present the information to create a stronger argument as to why it’s so important to follow our program because of the data associated with the results, not just these anecdotal testimonials. And yeah, I’ve got several people helping me with that kind of project.

So our members are given back so much as well. That’s why I say I really enjoy having a membership. Plus, when you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got a wife and two kids and they’re sometimes the only people you talk to for a couple of days, it’s fun to talk to other people in your membership because it’s so much different than just answering some emails or creating some content where you’re staring at a computer screen or a phone. I like it. It keeps you social as an entrepreneur. I just think it’s just a fun and genuinely good way to help people.

Wrapping up

James: Well, this is great. So I’m just going to wrap up. I’m going to summarize a couple of the key points here, Clint. Your first step was to create more value and you’ve done a lot of other things and they’ve included things like making sure that when people arrive into your community, they’re getting the relevant information. You started a podcast to get the word, out to push episodes to people’s phones. You do blog posts, which get you SEO. You’ve done YouTube videos. You have Facebook campaigns for the most successful interviews. You speak. You write. You continue to create recordings to make more value ongoing. You certainly approved and screened your affiliates and probably cut them out at some point. But you could have them, but you’ve just got to be selective. You’ve got peer-to-peer contribution happening. You’ve built a team. You’ve got better reporting. You’re learning things from your own members and you’ve got somewhere to socialize. And most importantly, you’ve gone from a little side project to having your own full-time gig, which gives you a lot more freedom and choice in your life.

So thank you for being a part of my world, one of my members who’s contributed greatly to the other members. And despite your best efforts to help me be slightly funnier, you know, we’ll get there eventually. But it’s really good for you to come along and share this. You didn’t have to, but I think there’s a couple of factors here that are really important to pay attention to. Some of the numbers we’ve talked about in today’s episode are quite humble and achievable numbers. We’ve talked about small email lists. Small amount of visits to a page. You do not need a list of 500,000 people to create full time self-employment. That’s really a big message I want to get across. And we haven’t focused on other numbers in this episode, but we know that Clint is doing just fine and enjoying a SilverCircle level of business.

The other thing that’s important is this works outside of the business space. If you’re in a market that is in a different industry, in this case, it’s a health market, all the same principles will apply. I’ve got multiple case studies of people in different markets where the exact same process works. So be encouraged by that.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with somebody. Give us the ratings on iTunes perhaps. Clint, I want to thank you for coming along and sharing. You didn’t have to. I do wholeheartedly recommend PaddisonProgram.com for anyone with rheumatoid arthritis or even, you know, I reckon, it’s been helpful to me with a different kind of arthritis, the same sort of ideas of eating better and questioning traditional information, because I think you’ve just taken it to the next level and I’ve certainly been a beneficiary of your nutrition guidance, so thank you for that.

Clint: Oh, you’re welcome, mate. There’s more we can do too, so we’ll keep on you.

James: Thank you. Well, I’ll hold my feet to the fire. Well, Clint Paddison from PaddisonProgram.com. Thank you so much.

Clint: Yeah. Thanks, James. Appreciate everything you’ve done for me over the past five or six years, mate. I look forward to learning a lot more from you in the future. You’ve certainly been the most outstanding mentor that I could have asked for. So, thanks very much.

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