782 – Feature Updates for Our Favorite Website Platform

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John Lint

Episode highlights:

01:33 – A developer’s view on his product
03:30 – The rule of the proven feature
05:24 – Looking at what’s essential
07:09 – The improvements KLEQ has seen
10:41 – The KLEQ – SEO connection
13:21 – A model of responsiveness
16:44 – A platform your team members will love
18:45 – Access the academy and enjoy these trainings
23:21 – James’s KLEQ experience

Stay on top of the latest and best business tools with help from James

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is episode 782. I’ve brought along my good friend, John Lint, from KLEQ.com. Welcome back, John.

John: Hey, James. Hello, hello, everybody. How are you?

James: Good to chat on a podcast. You’re a regular guest. We talk often about courses, memberships; you’ve been a motherlode of information. Our listeners love an episode from John. You speak fast, you don’t hold anything back, you’re always direct, full of punches.

Today, I actually requested this episode, because as a user of KLEQ for SuperFastResults.com, I’ve been really enjoying learning about the functionality of it. I see how much you do behind the scenes, and I don’t think the public knows exactly what goes on.

A developer’s view on his product

So I wanted to get under the hood a bit. I wanted you to share a few insights from your unique perspective, seeing a whole bunch of people with memberships and courses and funnels. Because they ask for features. They use the tool in different ways, sometimes perhaps, even differently than what you expected when you set out to build the tool.

And as a developer, you’ve always got these choices – Do you allow this feature? Do you not allow this feature? Is it a good idea for just this person? Or is it something a lot of other people would use? Do you want to allocate time and resource to developing it? And then if you do roll it out, does it mean something else gets put on the backburner? Or that it gets to a level of complexity where things start to break? So I know that it must be a tremendous challenge to be in that position.

I know I float some ideas past you that my super user group of very close customers, whether they’re from SilverCircle, SuperFastBusiness intensive, or partners, they are using the platform as well, and they often have suggestions. So can you just take us through, what sort of things would we expect as a user of KLEQ that we could ask for or get consideration on? And what sort of things are likely not to pass into a product update?

And then it’d be great if you could contrast that with how some of the other platforms might also treat this, because I know you’ve got some strong views on what you’re trying to create as a platform. So why don’t you take the mic for a sec and give us a little bit of an overview from John Lint’s perspective?

John: Okay, cool. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think you raised some really interesting points and the way that we try to differentiate ourselves from other platforms, because yes, of course, there’s plenty of platforms out there that will allow you to create pages online, create your website, maybe have a blog, create some type of membership site. But I like to position ourselves as a boutique type of solution, where we are going to be listening and helping our tribe with different things.

The rule of the proven feature

And that’s how we have grown KLEQ to the platform that I use today, is by really working very closely with our customers and with our members. And the features that we develop, there’s a very simple rule: like, I’m open to build anything for our members, but the rule is that it needs to help the majority of our members. So it needs to be usually a feature that is proven.

So from a marketing perspective, from a sales perspective, like if I’m going to be developing a feature, I need to know that this is actually going to help a lot of people. And it’s a proven feature, not just some kind of shiny new thing that some kind of guru is peddling right now, because he’s trying to sell his little tool and platform. And then he’s trying to convince everybody that right now, you absolutely need this to be successful online.

The reality is that you don’t. You need to do the most important things and you need to do them well. You need to make sure it’s easy. You need to make sure that everything is integrated, that your team can use it, that it’s very easy to learn. And you don’t need the extra stuff, the extra fluff that some little guru is trying to persuade you that you need because it’s the secret weapon to be successful online. There’s no such thing. All of that is BS. We don’t care about that.

So if this is going to be a feature that is proven, what do I mean by it’s proven? Well, I mean, like, people like you, James, are using it. Guys who are actually making a lot of money online, guys who are day in, day out, working on their business, and they’re actually using that feature. Not because they’re a new affiliate and making a commission to that little plugin, that little tool, no. They’re actually using it in their business and they have been doing this for years.

And it’s maybe a new marketing strategy or maybe a new way of doing things. Then, most likely, we’re going to definitely get it done. And that’s how we have built KLEQ. That’s how we have added things. Because we see, and we work with people like you, other very successful marketers, and we know what is working. What do we absolutely need to have? And you mentioned the 80/20 rule, and that’s exactly right.

Looking at what’s essential

So we look at, okay, what are the features that we need to have? Well, we need to be able to create pages – check. We need to be able to deploy funnels – very easy. What is a funnel? It’s a series of pages and strategic steps that will allow you to build your list or sell – check; we can do that with KLEQ. We need to have a members’ area so we can deliver online courses; check.

We need to be able to have a membership site, so we can have recurring income, and I’ve worked very closely with you to add a ton of features about that – check; we need to have that. We need to have an affiliate system so others can promote our product – check; we have that. We need to have automation tools and segmentation tools, so we can do things like quizzes, and tagging, and the dynamic content delivery – check; we can do that with KLEQ; you know, all of those things.

We need gamification and be able to create a beautiful experience, reward our members when they complete a course, when they take an action, when they like a comment from someone else in the members’ area. We need to be able to reward them and motivate them to keep them engaged check; we can do all of that. So all of those things, we can see by working closely with people like you and other people or other marketers, and of course, with our members.

And I, for example, I do my weekly Q&A calls every single week. And I’m talking to my members every single week. And of course, I get feedback there, and I get ideas, and I always say yes. Because the idea is that everything can be done online, everything can be done. It’s not like we’re building, you know, a rocket to go to Mars. And we’re not doing Elon Musk stuff here. It’s just a website and we can add anything we want.

So all those little tools that you see out there, all those little plugins, they take no time to build. Everything can be done. It’s just a matter of, obviously, when you have a team, you need to prioritize task and you need to decide, okay, which one should I do first? But you know, if it can be done, it’s usually a matter of weeks. And I think you can confirm that. I’ve built a lot of features for you and for your members, SuperFastBusiness members.

The improvements KLEQ has seen

James: You have. I’ve observed that. I’ll give you a contrast to that, because one of the shopping carts I used for many years still looks exactly the same as the day I joined it about 10 years ago. And they weren’t proactive with features. They did do one thing that was a game changer for me out of the box, which I couldn’t get with Infusionsoft at the time, which I was considering to use for my cart.

And that was to make PayPal easy. And also, Ontraport couldn’t do recurring PayPal. So that’s why I went onto that platform, and it was good for a long time. But I outgrew it and they weren’t able to make changes. Now, when I’ve come along and used your platform, you’ve been very accommodating.

We’ve done things like making the PayPal integration simpler. I’ve had some security questions and upgrade requests from members, which you’ve gone and incorporated and you’ve made this thing like Fort Knox, which is fantastic, in the back end. That was a big job, too. I know that was a huge job for you. But you did it because you were thinking about the long term.

You’ve also been really responsive around, you know, my bread and butter has been forum marketing for over 10 years. And I’m in there using SuperFastResults. I’ve gone with the simplest feature possible, the social wall. And I’ve asked for little changes, you know, things like when people are tagging you, when you want to look at a particular piece of content, when you’re using it from the app, when you want to edit something. And you’ve made all these little changes that just make it easy.

It’s actually joyful for me to use that as the forum owner and to communicate with my clients. And you know, even a mutual friend of ours went in there the other day just to see what’s happening. And he said, “This is brilliant. I love this.” And he’s used to Facebook, so that was a real compliment, because that’s often a big objection from people, you know, ‘My customers want to use Facebook.’

John: Yeah, yeah.

James: What if you can have a Facebook-like experience, but inside your own private wall? And that’s what we’ve done. And I’m just thinking about how many hours you and I have chatted about things that I’m doing. A huge one for me, and it was really like a massive one, because it meant I didn’t have to pay an extra $150 a month for this, and that’s the ability to follow people up if they stopped engaging. That is, like, the number one way to keep a recurring subscription member, is to make sure they’re actually getting involved and using the program.

And you added in that slipping-away feature for me, which, you know, I was sending you goodwill for that one because that was such a critical component. But what I’ve found really good is I’m working quite closely with some people who have migrated from other platforms into KLEQ. And they ask me things, because it’s very obvious to them when they’re changing from one platform to another, they used to do something a certain way, and sometimes they can’t just come in and do exactly the same thing with your platform.

And then I asked you about it. And you explained to me, you tell me, “No, listen, you don’t actually want to do it like that. Because it’s a bit gray.” For example, one of the tools that people were using was on their shopping cart, they started filling in the email address, and the tool would scrape it. And then you could send an email to people who hadn’t completed their cart. That’s a little bit of a gray area, and we don’t want to get in trouble with anyone.

So we showed our customer how to collect the email address before getting to the cart, for example. So sometimes it’s about re-educating someone on the way that something can be done. And we’ve had similar concerns regarding split testing, different pathways for checkouts, upsells, navigation usability, search engine optimization – this is a huge one; you’ve been quiet about this.

The KLEQ – SEO connection

But we have our mutual friend, Gert, from SEOLeverage.com. He’s been asked to do a lot of audits on sites that are KLEQ, because there’s so many in our community. And this guy, just tell us about how willing he’s been to talk to you about what his clients need and about what you’ve been able to change and adapt with KLEQ to make it a really good SEO solution.

John: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, from the ground up, SEO actually is something that I’ve been involved with for a long time. And for those who don’t know me, I’ve been doing stuff online since pretty much 2003, you know, playing with all the different things. I mean, if you think about anything online, I’ve pretty much done it. And, you know, I used to do a lot of SEO back in 2007, 2008. So I know a little bit about SEO from all my time spending online.

So we’ve always thought about that, you know, so we always already had a lot of features. But of course, Gert is doing this as an agency. He’s awesome. He knows a lot. And so he’s into this thing day in, day out, right. So it’s really great to have feedback from people like that who really know their stuff. And he already loved it. And he sent me an email saying, “Hey, you know, I really love it. KLEQ is awesome for SEO. I’ve been working with my clients, and it’s fantastic. But you know, I think it would be awesome if we could add this, this and that.”

And some of the features, we already had them. So I had to just show it to him exactly how it works and how he could do it. But then the others, of course, you know, great ideas. So for example, making sure that the file name of images is kept intact when people upload. And usually in a platform when you upload images, we’re going to do some type of renaming, because that’s how you save the image into servers without getting too techie. But bottom line, and you don’t want to have duplication issues. So that’s why you need to have a unique name.

But you know, obviously, it’s important to keep the original file name, especially if you add your keywords to those file names, right, for an image, because we know that Google and the search engines, they love images, and they’re going to check that. So for example, if you put your keyword in the filename of an image, let’s say you have an image that represents oranges, and you say, orange.jpeg that’s the file name of the image, then Google kind of understands, okay, so that must be an image about oranges, right? So we want to make sure that file name is kept intact.

And you know, of course, I see that, makes total sense. It’s important. So it’s important, it’s best practice. And then going back to what I said, it’s something that’s going to benefit all our members. It’s not a gimmick from some kind of guru trying to sell his stuff. It’s an important feature, so great. I listen to you, listen to people like Gert, I call my guys. Let’s get it done. And I think we did it, what, overnight pretty much? Overnight, and I sent him an email like the next day, and I said, “Hey, man, it’s all done.” And of course he was amazed.

A model of responsiveness

And going back to one of your examples, I use Infusionsoft as my emailing system. I’ve been using them for 10 years. I actually like it a lot. But in terms of responsiveness, these are guys who have a huge team. Obviously, I don’t have that big of a team. But for example, I’ve contacted them, I think four months ago, about an issue, a big issue with one of the affiliate components of Infusionsoft, still not done, still not resolved.

And ask any member of KLEQ, how fast do we fix any issues that may arise? Super fast! Why? Because I look at everything. I take everything personally when it comes to those types of things. Why? Because I run my entire business with KLEQ. KLEQ was not built for members, it’s built for me, from day one. It’s for me, because I didn’t want to have to buy another tool to be able to do this.

So when I started, and I wanted to build my online business, alright, I wanted to have a little system so I could build pages, great. And I already knew some people, some developers, so I started to work with them. Great.

Next, hey, this guy, this top marketer is doing this thing, great. But I don’t want to pay for this little tool that, you know, maybe is going to go away in a few months. So I call my guys, ‘Hey, I want to add this feature, let’s add it to my little platform.’ We did. And then we kept on doing that every single year. And we’re still doing that. Now we’re doing this, not only with me, but with guys like you, with guys like Gert, and we are growing this thing as our platform. And that’s one of the big differences.

This is not just selling a platform. This is a platform that you use. This is a platform that I use. All my online courses have been sold on that; my coaching programs, my services, all of that has always been with KLEQ. So I’m very aware, very aware of anything that’s happening in KLEQ. If there is any issue, I don’t like it. Why? Because it’s probably affecting my website as well. And I don’t want my website to have any issues. So this is always a priority.

And we usually fix things extremely fast – 24 hours, 48 hours, as fast as we can. And that’s when it comes to potential issues. And then when it comes to features, if it’s something that’s super important, of course, we’re going to prioritize it. And if something that is not that urgent, then we’re going to put it in the pipeline. All requests are welcome. We take on board every single request, we have a development queue, and then it’s all about working with guys like you. I mean, how many times do I ask you, James? What would you like to have in the next version? We’re about to start a new version, what would you like to have? I ask you that all the time.

James: You do. I’ve actually asked some of my clients who are on the platform to send me their development requests. I’m doing that because I’m helping them grow their business. I want to know why they want that. I want to know what it achieves for them. And I’ve been going a bit deep with them. I ask them to go beyond the thing. I’m saying, “Tell me what perfection looks like. Give me an example.”

And I’m doing this because when I then speak to you, what’s happening is I’m learning a lot more about this process. I’m learning about what the software can and can’t do. But importantly, I’ve noticed that some people ask for things they shouldn’t be asking for. They’re doing things in a more complicated or roundabout way that is actually not necessary if they knew a simpler way, and then we get to give them a simpler way on how to do it.

And then of course, often you just implement it, and you just say yes, and then it’s done, and the customer is happy. And I’m just getting some really positive responses from these users who have come from other places. Because I’ve been talking to them about not just building a business around what they’re trying to do right now or in the next six months. I’m talking about, what about next year, or the year after that, when your business is doing four or five, or 10 times more volume? You need a platform that can do all the things you need that your team are very comfortable with.

A platform your team members will love

That’s the other encouraging thing, I’ve noticed that their team members are very quickly adapting to the platform, as did my team member, because we started our installations in the beginning of the year. And my team member just took to it very quickly. They enjoy working on it. They’ve been able to utilize support where they have queries, and they get answers.

And of course, you just sort of casually mentioned it earlier, but you actually run training for members each week, live. You get on a call and help them with their questions, whether it’s a technical thing, whether it’s a marketing thing, and I think that’s very generous service that is probably not well-known. But that’s a very high level of support that’s like faculty hours, or access to, you know, an insider tech dev support strategic advisor that they can have on their team in the form of John every week. And you basically answer every question that gets asked, which I think is fantastic.

John: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, we do that every Thursday in Australia, which is Wednesday night.

James: Aside from that, you actually have all these individual trainings that you’ve bundled into the program that I think, possibly the world’s greatest secret. Do you want to talk about some of the topics that you’ve put together as trainings? And I think we’ll also share one that I think you’ve made available publicly to address one of the challenges.

One of the things we wanted is for people who come onto the platform to be able to make sales, because obviously, it helps them stay on the platform, but it increases their success so that you know, everyone’s needs are met. So you put together a whole course on helping them put together their offer page, which we’ll put a link to it, it’s at kleq.com/salecopy. And it’s absolutely free. You’re not charging a thousand dollars. I know a lot of other people would and do, there are people out there who charge $1,000 to teach you how to put together your offer page, but you give that away for free.

Regardless of what platform you’re using, the training will be useful. If you happen to use KLEQ, then you’re going to be able to follow the instructions, and you’ll end up with your offer page for your product. So it’s a very simple process. But what are some of the other trainings that members can look forward to when they log into their free trial?

Access the academy and enjoy these trainings

John: Yeah, so as part of your access, and actually, like you said, yeah, the free trial, you have full access to the academy, what I call the academy. That’s basically our members’ area, where you have all the access to all the courses. So of course, the first course is, like, getting started with KLEQ, a very quick class that you can take to learn the basics and get going. But after that, of course, I want to share and teach our members how to do the important things when it comes to their online business.

So what is that? Well, obviously, if they haven’t done so already, how to pick a niche, how to create their first online course, how to create their membership site, the different funnels and marketing campaigns that they should use to be able to build their email list and sell their products or services. So that’s, for example, how to set up a list-building campaign, how to set up a live sale campaign, limited-time sale campaign, how to set up a launch, you know, don’t you have all these courses being sold for like $2,000? How to do a launch or how to do a video series. You can learn all of that inside KLEQ.com for free. All the content is there.

And by the way, for those who don’t know, like I said, I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years. I used to run product launches that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars online. We were running an agency setting up very advanced funnels for clients. So I know a little bit about how to set up funnels and all of these things, how to set up automated webinar campaigns, quiz campaigns, launch campaigns, all of these things that you might hear about outside that you might end up paying $2,000 for.

Well, when you are inside KLEQ, when you have access to the academy, you have access to all of these courses for free. You need to learn how to build your first email list? There is the List Ignition program. You need to learn how to create content online, maybe you don’t know how to do videos online or things like that? Then check out the Content Creation Bootcamp. You want to learn about how to set up your first online course and sell it online? Then check out Your Course in a Weekend, which is a brand new class. It teaches you super fast how to set up your online course.

You want to learn about funnels, like I said? Then check out the course, More Money Now. In there, I break down all the best marketing campaigns, marketing funnels (if you’d like to use that word) that people are using online; like I said, limited sale, viral share campaign, list builder campaign, book funnels, live launches, automated launches, live webinars, evergreen webinars, just-in-time webinars, weekly webinars, etc. You get the idea; automated and segmentation as well. So all of that is in More Money Now.

You want to learn about how to create your first sales script? Actually, I’m giving you four sales scripts. I give you what I call the value VSL. VSL stands for Video Sales Letter or just sales letter. So value-based type of sales letter. If you want to do a very simple sales letter that just presents your offer, like your product and services, and tells people what it is, what it will do for them, what they need to do, then you can check out that script as well.

You’re running maybe a video series or what’s also called a launch, and you want to have a sales video or sales letter for that launch? Then you get the script for that. You’re doing webinar, you have no idea what to say in a webinar, I give you the entire script of what you should say during a webinar, from the welcome section of the webinar, going to the presentation and doing the close on a webinar. So like that, You can use all of these techniques to create your own sales copy of all of those things. And that’s in the course called Sale Copy Shortcut.

We have a ton of other courses, like Streaming Like a Boss, if you want to learn how to do streaming online, which is what I do every single week. So I show you my process of how I go online, how I stream online, how my members can ask me questions. And you can use the same strategy to run your own webinar. If you want to do a virtual summit, which is kind of like popular these days where people are online, well I show you how to do that in the Virtual Summit Blueprint as well.

So we have a lot of courses. And the way I create courses is again, same way I create features. I listen to our members. Like, for example, I had a lot of members that were asking me, ‘Hey, John, can you share a bit about how you create a sales letter?’ And I created that course. And the course that you mentioned is called My Sales Copy in a Weekend. So it’s basically a super fast way of creating your first sales letter. And yeah, it’s available at kleq.com/salecopy, if you want to check it out, hundred percent for free.

You get access to that course, so you get access to the script, so you’ll know exactly what you need to say. I show you exactly with very small videos on how to edit that script and customize it for your own business. And then of course, as a bonus, you also get access to my weekly Q&A calls that I usually do only for KLEQ.com members. If you just sign up for the sale copy free course, you actually get access to me for the next 30 days, where every single week, you can ask me any question you might want about strategy, business marketing, you’re not sure what to do, you let me know, and I’ll basically answer your question.

James’s KLEQ experience

James: Well, there’s not much else I can say to that. It’s just, I really wanted to put a spotlight on what you are doing there at KLEQ.com. I wanted to talk about that process of how these features come about. We have a very heavy population of SuperFastBusiness members using KLEQ.com. So it’s like this awesome collaboration.

We’ve got some very smart cookies in there, especially the SilverCircle members who are driving multimillion dollar sales, who are coming into that platform. They’re asking for features that others can use and will be powerful. And we’ll put some other shows together in the future, just to highlight some of the new features that come out that could be very powerful and useful if you happen to be on the platform.

Some of them may not be available on whatever other platform you’re using. Some of them may. But what we do know is we’re always looking for, what are the essential ones and John said it before, you need to have your offer page up there, you need to be able to collect the money, you need to be able to deliver what people buy. They’re the essential things. Focus on that first. And with KLEQ, you can do it all with a few clicks. You can go through the training, follow the instructions on getting your offer up there, put your product in there, get it going, start making that income so that you can pay for your tool, and then grow your business and scale it with some of the cool features.

I mean, I was cruising through the features there. And I found this nice one that lets you send out notifications. I hooked it up, and I sent out a notification. And then the next week, I sent out a notification. The following week, one of the members said, “Hey, where’s my notification? I look forward to these.” I was like wow, they love it. And it helps people come back in and enjoy what they’re paying for. The little desktop notification feature is just amazing. It’s a really, really good feature, and so easy to use from my side of it.

And there’s lots of other boosters in there that you can get to as the more advanced stuff. So it will do the really advanced stuff, but you don’t need the advanced stuff to get going. That’s what I like. That’s what I think makes this a truly different tool. We’ve seen tools that don’t allow you any customization and don’t do anything tricky. But they just look nice and pretty. And they’re kind of an add-on or you put it as well as something else. So it’s a bit of a pain.

And then there’s the very complex, expensive things that are just way overkill that you need a rocket science degree to operate, or a full-time team or even a CTO. One of my clients has a multimillion dollar membership. He went down the path of having his own software. He needs a CTO just to manage their tech stack. I mean, that is insane. I can tell you, it’s such a breath of fresh air to be using the SuperFastResults platform for my new stuff, compared to what we had to build to make SuperFastBusiness what it is now.

If we were starting again, I know where I’d go straight away. And that’s what you’ve been doing over time, is building my dream platform. So thank you, John. And I hope that if you’re listening to this, and you want to give it a shot, there’s a very low-risk way for you to do that. Head over to KLEQ.com. Get onto the trial, build something, see if you can turn that around in 30 days, and then you’ll know this tool is the one.

John: Yeah, exactly. And if you need any help, we’re here, the team is here for you at any time, send them an email, or whenever you see them online, contact them via live chat. Yes, it’s a real human being that will be online. So if we are online, we’re online. It’s not a robot or some kind of chat box that analyzes your little keyword that you typed, and that’s going to give you some articles in the knowledge base. We don’t do that.

If we’re online, we’re online. So unlike all these other popular platforms that will just throw you back to the knowledge base, we don’t do that. So if you need any help, we are here. I’m here as well for you every single week to answer any question you may have, so jump on the live streams, ask me, and we’ll help you out.

James: Incredible. Thank you so much, John. This is Episode 782. We’ve been talking with John Lint from KLEQ.com. We’ve been having a chat about feature updates for what is absolutely my favorite software platform. It does courses, it does memberships, it collects the money, it gets you fully hosted, fully secured. Finally, you can just start with the simplest possible tool that can be as complex as you want it to be.

Love your work, and we’ll see you on a future episode.

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