658 – 6 Essential Phases Of Online Business – The Membership Series

Podcast: Download (Duration: 35:01 — 32.2MB)

Get Notified Of Future Episodes Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Blubrry | Gaana | TuneIn | Deezer | Anghami | RSS | More

John Lint

In the podcast:

02:01 – Get this right or else
05:30 – When you’re just starting out
07:39 – Now you need people
10:02 – Multiple means of attraction
12:03 – From visitor to lead
14:21 – Always on topic
16:39 – The client/customer phase
20:48 – A formula that sells
23:45 – Make the price ridiculous
25:25 – Delivering the product
27:50 – What everybody should do
31:01 – A principle of never-ending improvement

Need guidance in your business journey? Get help from James

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, on episode 658, we’ll be talking about six essential phases of your online business. For this, I brought my friend, John Lint from KLEQ.com. Welcome to the call, John.

John: Hello, everybody. Hey, James, nice to be back. Seems like we haven’t talked in a long, long time. I missed you, man.

James: Well, it’s been three weeks. And in that time, we ran the SuperFastBusiness Live event. You’ve sent me some teasing pictures of the great waves you’ve been getting over there in Thailand, which is not known as a big surf spot. But having seen the pictures, I was just thinking about looking up airfares, and stuffing a board in my bag. It’s been tiny here.

Of course, we love chatting about membership sites. This is part of The Membership Series. And you’ve been running some training for your members, which you do very actively. And in the meantime, I’ve been doing some research as well, in order to improve my membership. And I’ve actually been interviewing some of your KLEQ customers recently and gathering data and research around how they use the membership, what sort of challenges they’ve had prior to finding your software and where they’re at in the process.

I think today’s episode is going to be really valuable no matter where you’re at in your online journey. Whether you’re starting from scratch, or whether you’ve got something really established, there’s going to be something in it for you. Let’s start with the first phase. And that’s the market phase. And why don’t we just introduce what that phase is, John?

Get this right or else

John: Yeah. I mean, this is actually the most important phase – nothing else will matter if you don’t get this right. And the problem is that, you know, it’s not very sexy. Because a lot of people like to think about, hey, which funnel am I going to build, I want to do a webinar or an automated campaign, all that cool thing. And people want to bypass the market phase, which is all about identifying what is it that your market wants, identifying their problems. Because our job, and we talked about this before, and I always remind my members, you know, because when someone comes in, they get all excited. Obviously, KLEQ.com has a ton of features, and we can do some really cool stuff. But nothing will work – whatever campaign you select, whatever feature you’re using – nothing will work if you don’t do the first phase, which is market, if you don’t do it the right way, if you don’t understand what your market wants, who they are. You might have heard this before, what keeps them up at night, what are they struggling with. Because our job is to offer solutions to problems and give them the shortcuts to solve those problems.

James: It really can’t be overestimated, really. Like, this is a big phase. I’ve just engaged some help from a copywriting friend of mine to revamp what I’m doing with SuperFastBusiness. And as part of that, this is the start of the start, I’ve compiled a document for him. And in this document, I have put absolutely everything. He’s said to me, it’s a gold mine, or a treasure trove. I’ve put survey data from my event customers, from my SuperFastBusiness membership customers. I’ve asked them things like, what’s the best course they’ve ever done? I’ve asked them things like, what one thing would they advise me to change? I’ve asked them what their biggest challenges are, I find out everything about what business model they have, their revenue level, team size. I’ve also gone and got analytics from both Google and from my reporting tools to find out age, demographic, location. I’ve found out my average sale value, my average lifetime customer value, my traffic sources.

I have a whole bunch of other stuff, like how long they spend on the site, what’s the most-viewed content, what sort of social media comments do they have, how do they respond to ads, which campaigns work the best for us. I’ve also done little tour videos of the homepage, the sales page, inside the membership. And all of this goes under one sheet. And that’s the starting research document that my friend will use to go and construct the correct overall messaging for the solution that we’re providing. So I just want to stress this. We didn’t start with, here’s my product I want to sell, now I’ve got to go find some customers. We’re starting with my existing and previous customers and prospects, and everything we can possibly find out. And as Alexi said, in the recent presentation at SuperFastBusiness Live, which was so far the number one rated presentation, he said, You can never go too deep knowing about your customer.

John: Hmm, yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. And that reminds me as well, you know, you are hiring a copywriter at work with a lot of agencies to run Facebook ads and all that. And that’s really always the number one question because, you know, if you are a copywriter providing services, or if you’re doing funnels for people or some type of ad agency, that’s what you want to know. You want to know, okay, well, who are we going to talk to? What do they want to listen to? What should be our message? What are the words that we should use? And what are the problems that we should highlight? So that they feel okay, well, there’s a solution there. That’s interesting to me. Let’s go there.

When you’re just starting out

So these are awesome things that you mentioned that you can do with your own customers. But if you are starting out, you might be wondering, okay, well, I’m starting out, I don’t have, like James, you know, a ton of members and stuff like that. Well, you can do the exact same exercise by listening to the market, by going to other people’s websites.

So if you’re thinking about entering, let’s say, the weight loss market, what would I do? I would visit every single weight loss website, I will go to their website, I will read a ton of articles, I will try to find the most popular articles. Why? Because that’s what people like. And then you need to figure out well, why did they like it? What was it about? What was the topic? Read the comments. People are going to say, “Yeah, okay, that was awesome, but I struggle with this.” Take notes. This is gold. “I’m having a hard time doing this.” Take notes. That’s gold. All of these things will help you.

Watch every single sales video, take notes, build what I like to call a swipe box, basically. So a swipe box is like a folder on your computer, or whatever tool you want. Just build that up. And yes, it’s not going to be overnight, you’re not going to do this in a day, and you’re done. This is something that we do all the time, right? Subscribe to other people’s email newsletters; pay attention to the emails that they send. What words are they using? Why are they saying this? Why are they reminding people that hey, this sucks, we don’t like that. Because they know that this is a pain. People are frustrated with this situation or frustrated because they are trying to solve a problem. All of that, again, it’s gold, and ammunition that you need to start understanding what people want, so you can do the other stuff that we’re going to talk about. Build your list, creating an offer that converts, and ultimately you have a successful business. But nothing will happen if you don’t do that phase.

James: Absolutely. You know, my friend also wants email addresses of clients, so that he can reach out to them, ask them questions. He wants to interview me as well to find out, you know, what’s special about what we’re doing and what I bring to the table. And combining those things will really give him a true sense of what the product is, for him to then go and start crafting the right messaging. And that messaging will end up being translated across all the next few phases, which, I guess we’ll move into the next phase, which is visitors.

Now you need people

Now you’ve identified your market, you need to get people. You need to access that market and have a bridge between the people in the market and you. So there’s a few ways you can do that. Certainly, if you’re familiar with SuperFastBusiness, you’ll know that I publish this podcast, which we distribute across iTunes, and we put it on our website and Stitcher and a couple of other podcast-type services. We also put it up to Facebook, and to YouTube. And we put a lot of videos out. Every day, we put videos out. And they go across to LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and on our website, even inside our membership for existing members. And that might seem a bit strange. However, members have great opportunity to talk more about whatever the video is, in depth, with me the creator. So it’s kind of like the director’s cut, where you get a commentary and the post-viewing interview with the person who made the film. I’ve been at a few film premieres where you can do that. It was great.

John: Yeah.

James: So that’s the visitor phase. It’s basically getting the eyeballs and having people raise their hand, as my friend Dean Jackson would say and show that they are interested in what you have because we’re going to move to the next phase after that. So comments around visitors.

John: Yeah, so this is actually very important. And a lot of people think about this, which is all about attracting people to your brand, to your site, to your environment, right? To attract people to you. But the question that I like to remind people is that you need to decide how you’re going to attract people to you, and who do you want to attract, because you don’t want any kind of visits, right? And that’s why I like to remind people to always keep the end goal in mind.

So with our six phases, the end goal will be selling access to a membership, or selling the access to an online course, whatever your business model, whatever you decide to do. But at the end of the day, we’re going to sell something, and that something is about a specific result, for example, SuperFastBusiness is all about growing your business, right? So okay, we know that that’s going to be the end goal. We want to attract people, of course.

And if you look at what James does, and that’s why James and I are recording this podcast, we want to attract people who are interested in that topic. So that’s why all the content that James creates, that you create, James, you know, your videos, your social media, podcast episode, all of that, is related to the topic, the end goal, basically. Super important, because that way, you know that you’re going to be attracting the right people to you. And then the job is to just invite them to take the next step, which is with the next phase that we’re going to talk about.

Multiple means of attraction

But attracting can be obviously with content, like you said. It can also with paid advertising, if you want to do that. It can be by doing pretty much what I’m doing right now, which is guest blogging, guest podcasting, guest vlogging, whatever, going to someone else’s show and being a guest on that person’s show, which is a very powerful strategy, if you’re just starting out, because it’s going to give you velocity, right? You’re going to get speed, and you are busy now talking in front of an audience.

So if you’re starting out, and you’re wondering, hey, okay, I want to build, maybe, my podcast, well, keep in mind that that’s going to take some time. So if you have a good topic, if you are an expert in something, if you can provide value to someone else’s audience, then a great strategy is just to jump into someone else’s platform – podcasts, YouTube videos, social media, whatever, and then provide value to them. And that’s really a great way to attract people to now, your brand, to now, your website, so that you can then do then the next step that we’re going to talk about.

James: Yeah, so it’s good not to be dependent on just one source here. But certainly, you would start with one to get it going and then fire up a few others. That’s why, if you stack a few modules together, if you end up having podcasts and videos and guest posts and you transcribe things and you attract SEO traffic, and you do want to run some paid ads and boost the most prolific content, the highest converting content and get more exposure if you want to build up your remarketing pixel and turn that on when you have special offers. You want to do a joint venture, you have some affiliates promoting your product, then all of these things combine to create a wall of traffic that is not single-source dependent. So I do know some people who only get traffic from Facebook ads.

John: Right.

James: And there’s a real problem with that when the Facebook ads stop working, or they get a bad score, or their account gets blocked, then they’re out of business. And it’s super dangerous.

So harness a few different platforms. But pay attention to your analytics and discover which ones work best for you, and of your content, which content works the best. I’ve got lots and lots of content now, but I can tell you the top few posts that drive the most sales. And we take those and we promote them to our sidebar so they get put in front of more visitors, and we optimize our process that way.

From visitor to lead

So the next phase of the six essential phases of online business is the leads. That’s converting that visitor into an opt-in. Now there’s a few different ways you can do this. People can opt in these days to different things, and we did an episode about that. They could be opting in to get desktop notifications; they could be opting in to be a subscriber on your Facebook page, they could be subscribing to your YouTube channel; they could be subscribing on iTunes. They could put their email address.

And I will say this, the email is still the number one conversion tool that we have going for us in our business. It’s a great way to have people put their hand up and say “Yes, please send me information. I’m interested in what you’ve got to say.” So it’s probably worth talking about the sorts of things you could offer in exchange for an email address. In my case, there’s often cheat sheets and transcriptions available on the podcast episodes on the website. So for example, if you go to Episode 658, Six Essential Phases of Online Business, you’ll see there’s a transcription of this episode. And also, the six phases will be extrapolated out into a handy PDF download guide, and my team will prepare that. It’ll be highly valuable, and all we ask in exchange for that is an email address. And when people opt in, that’s turning the visitor into a lead. And now that’s something that we can work with strengthening that communication, and hopefully being able to solve that person’s online business challenge with one of our solutions.

John: Yeah.

James: So far, it’s all working really well as a concept, from the initial idea of the market through to the problem that we’re hoping to solve. It’s all moving quite seamlessly at this stage.

John: Yeah. And so you identify their problems, you created some cool content, you’re tracking people based on that topic, like, that promise. Hey, we’re going to help you solve those problems. Now they’re on your site. So then the next logical step is, Hey, do you want more solutions? Do you want a cheat sheet, a one-page document that’s going to show you how you can get those results? Well, the only thing you need to do is to enter your email or name and email, right? Or, Hey, do you want to get access to this crash course or to this video or to this webinar? Why? Well, because it’s going to help you get more results, right? We know that you are struggling with this problem, well, just enter your email, it’s a hundred percent free, and you’re going to get a solution to that problem. So all of that is related.

Always on topic

And you will see that as we go through the six steps, you will see the relationship between all of them, and the fact that we are always on topic. Very important, because when I talk to members, I see sometimes, they understand, yeah, they need to be on my list. Well, okay, I’m going to give them a cheat sheet, a report about this. But really, they’re trying to sell a course that is completely different, you know, about a different topic. And that’s not what you want. You want to attract the right people who are interested in this topic, you want to invite some of them to take the next step about the topic so they want more results, right? They want to get more solutions about that topic. And then later, we’re going to obviously offer our programs for sale so they can get even more results. But everything is on topic.

And like you said, Yeah, you can offer your strategies. Awesome, right? One-page document. Perfect. And if you guys pay attention to this, it’s a brilliant strategy, because it’s the next logical step. You know, you’re listening to this podcast, I’m talking kind of fast, I have an accent. We’re talking about different things. So maybe you’re thinking Hey, John is cool, but whatever, maybe I just need to download these documents. And then I can just look at it once in a while and I’ll get the idea. Perfect, right? It’s the next logical step for that content that we’re creating to attract traffic. You can do this with some documents; you can do this with just a video, if you prefer to do that. If you want to go more fancy, yes, you could do that with a video series; you could do that with a webinar, if you wanted to do that. If you wanted to create a mini-course, it doesn’t have to be crazy big, but a mini-course, like a crash course. You could do that. These are different lead capture strategies. But the most important point is that you want to make sure it’s related, and that it’s offering the next logical step. It’s offering a solution to a problem.

And by the way, as an extra tip, when it comes to lead capture, you actually want something very specific. You want to solve a specific problem. And you want something that is going to be easy to consume. For example, if I tell you, Hey, enter your email, and I’m going to give you a 300-page book that’s going to show you exactly how to build your list, versus, Hey, enter your email, I’m going to give you a one-page document that shows you everything you need to do to build your email list. Which one are you going to go for? Most people will go for the one-page rather than the 300-page book, right? So try to keep it short. Try to keep it on point, targeted, and delivering a specific result and solution.

James: Nice. And you can also have a waiting list. That’s been quite successful for both of us in the past.

John: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. A waiting list is just that, right? It’s the next logical step. Hey, it’s not available now. Enter your details, and then we’ll let you know when you when it’s available. So, nice and easy to set up.

The client/customer phase

James: The next phase, of course, is when someone becomes a client, or a customer, depending on which definition you prefer. I’ve seen both, and I’ve seen arguments for both. People like Jay Abraham say they use the word “client,” because it’s someone who’s under your care.

John: Right.

James: And John Morillo says use “customer”, because a customer, you know, is more a case of a product, so you could actually sell the business, whereas a client requires customization, personalization.

John: Interesting.

James: So whatever you want to call it, let’s just roll with clients for now. Certainly, at the moment, I do care for a lot of people, and I probably couldn’t sell the business the way it is because I care too much, one of my bosses said once, but that’s okay.

So this is where we make a sales offer. And this is where I’m investing in my business right now to optimize it, because I’m going to refine and tune my message as best I possibly can to match my target audience and to make sure I’m solving their challenges, because I’ve strengthened up and I’ve skilled up and I’ve improved the level of people I’m coaching. I’ve gotten significantly better results for people than at any other time in my life, so it’s time to update that. In fact, I’ve never really sat down and written a sales page yet. Everything I’ve built to date has been off just a sort of a temporary thing. And there’s a lesson in that. Can you imagine I’ve gone 10 years in a membership, with a temporary sales page?

So you know, even at a reasonably high level, there’s always work to be done. This is where you want to differentiate yourself, figure out what makes you a little bit special or different to the other options, choices that the customer has, they could go ahead with out there, including doing nothing, which is a Dan Kennedy thing.

It’s good sometimes to have deadlines, or a strong reason why someone should do something about it now. It’s nice to point out, what happens if they don’t take action, to sort of magnify the problem a little bit. There’s a few other core elements. You want to have lots of proof. If you’re making any claims or statements, you need to be able to back it up. You definitely need to be relevant to whoever you’re communicating with. And you want to perhaps challenge a common myth or a problem out there and make that the enemy that you’re going to overcome together with the customer.

Remember to put in some admissions or you know, facts, things where people are looking for the catch or what’s wrong with this; if there is something, you could actually point it out. You know, like, for example, I point out to people that my program is not an easy, magic, push button, automatic riches program – they would actually have to participate and do things; there is work involved to get a result. That’s kind of a damaging admission, to factor expectations. But for my right prospect, for that visitor who turned into a lead who wants to become a client, that’s quite appealing to them, because they see, well, at least it’s quite honest.

John: Yeah.

James: If there are bonuses, that’s a good thing to put in there as well. And remember – and this is really important – be extremely clear with people about what they need to do next, because a lot of sales offers either don’t really ask for the order, or they make it so ambiguous, you’d have to guess what to do next. And ambiguity is a real enemy.

John, I went to renew my driver’s license yesterday. And one of the questions on the form in Australia, it’s really hard to know whether you’re supposed to tick yes or no. And I was almost embarrassed when I went up to the counter. And I said to the lady, I’m sorry. But I didn’t really know what to put here. I wasn’t quite sure what the question was asking, by the way it’s worded. She goes, Oh, don’t worry, it gets everybody. It’s the worst question ever, and it shouldn’t be there. And I felt a bit of relief, like, it wasn’t just me.

John: Yeah.

James: So you got to be super explicit about what to do and where to go. And then it’s always good to recap and summarize. And of course, and I’ve created entire trainings around this, don’t just leave it up to the sales page, because you’ve got possibly a two to five percent chance they’re going to place the order on the spot. You definitely need a follow-up sequence, cart abandonment sequence, some kind of remarketing, to help some people who weren’t able to do it right then and there. Maybe they didn’t see there. It’s always good to have the ability for them to contact someone in your team or you, to ask questions and to get contact or to validate that you’re actually real and that you’re going to follow up with them.

A formula that sells

So there’s a few thoughts I have on turning leads into clients. Maybe you’ve got a couple of things to add there, John, because I know you’re supremely strong in this particular area. Because having spoken to some of your clients recently, they said you gave them a formula, and they followed it, and they instantly started making sales. My hat’s off to you.

John: Okay, well, thank you. Thank you. I think you nailed it. Obviously, you’ve covered a ton of super awesome points. Something I want to emphasize, because we can talk about a bunch of other awesome strategies.

And by the way, when someone becomes a KLEQ.com member, I give them access to a special class that I called More Money Now. And in More Money Now, it’s all about, I’m breaking down over 10 campaigns, funnels that people are using these days to make money online – to convert, to basically start selling their products. So I show you exactly how to do a launch, how to do a webinar, how to unlimited sales. I break down the strategy; I show how to set it up in 10XPPRO.io step by step; all the pages are set up. By the way, with our one-click funnel install technology, you can press a button, the entire campaign is there, and I’ll also show you how to set it up in whatever emailing system you’re using. So it’s a pretty cool class.

And we can spend hours talking about strategies and tactics and all of that stuff. And I’m really passionate about it, I really like to build funnels and do things like that. That’s really cool. That’s the sexy part. But again, nothing will work – your sales page won’t work – if you have not identified the stuff that we talked about at the beginning, right? If you don’t know what motivates someone to take action, if you can’t tell them, “Hey, this is why you should buy that, so you can stop struggling with this problem,” if you don’t know that, then I can teach you whatever strategy you want, it’s not going to help you. You’re not going to get any conversions. Right?

So with that said, I think you nailed it. It’s all about creating an irresistible offer. It’s all about making sure that you remind them at the beginning, right? Well, this is the solution to that problem. These are going to be all the benefits. This is the reason why you should get in now. Well, because you’re going to learn this, so you can get that result. And it’s all about the result, by the way. It’s not about, Okay, you’re getting you’re going to get 15 videos, and I’m going to teach you about this topic. Okay, great, but why? Why should we learn about this topic? Ah, so I can get these results? Okay, cool. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Always like that, reminding people about the benefits. And then as you go through your sales template, your sales letter, you’re going to be making enough, or you’re going to have a call to action, right?

And the beautiful thing is that, when you really start analyzing all offers, they will always follow the same formula, the same type of template. There’s some key things that you mentioned, by the way, already, James, such as you know, destroying the price, such as adding bonuses, such as removing the risk, reminding them that it’s available for a limited time. When you think about companies like McDonald’s, it’s always about, hey, buy one, get one free – for a limited time. So if you can do that, great. Give them a reason to take action, right now. Super important. Tell them what they need to do. Like you said, click here now; click on the button below this video now to get access to the program. Really spell it out, right?

Make the price ridiculous

Think about the different ways that you can add more value, so you can differentiate yourself. So that once you present the price, you want them to think, hey, this is ridiculous. The price is ridiculous. Right? You want to have a ridiculous price. And by the way, this is the same work that you should do whether you’re selling something at $47 or $2,000. It’s always the same process. Because, you know, sometimes I go on websites, and they asked me Hey, buy this for 27 bucks. Okay, great. Yeah, 27 is cheap, or whatever. But what am I going to get? What am I getting for 27? It’s not because you tell me 27, I’m just going to put my credit card out and buy, right? So I need to know why. What am I going to get for that $27? Okay, I’m going to get that result? Okay, it’s easy to consume, it’s easy for me to get that result? I’m going to get this, this and that? Okay, yeah. Now, 27 sounds cheap, right? Because when you made an irresistible offer, you showed them everything that you’re going to get. You told them that there’s actually, maybe, there’s no risk, because maybe you offer a money-back guarantee – that’s up to you to decide if you want to do that.

But the process is the same. Whether it’s a cheap item or a $2,000 course, or maybe your yearly access to a membership site, it’s always about following the same steps. So that’s a beautiful thing. Once you master that, once you spend time learning these things, then it’s going to give you so much power. Because now you know that pretty much, you can create a good sales letter or a good sales video for whatever you want to sell in the future. Because it’s always the same steps, the same formula to follow, to make sure you remind someone, Yeah, that’s why I need to take my credit card right now to purchase, because I want to get that result right now.

James: Perfect. And I’ve heard from your members how available you are to help them and to tune this up, because you know that having a great product on that platform means they’re going to stick around, which is good for you and good for them. Everyone’s happy with that.

Delivering the product

Well, you’re a powerhouse on this topic, I could just let you loose on this for hours. I have to rein you in now and talk about your next favorite thing, which is delivery. You’ve made a sale, now you have to deliver it. Thankfully, in your platform, KLEQ.com, you can take the money and integrate it with the email system and then give them access to their product, whether it’s a guide or a membership or a course or whatever, right there in the platform. And it was all easy and fully hosted and everything. So like, it just eliminates – I like your word, John, “destroy”. It destroys the technical challenges involved in this. That’s excellent.

In a non-technical perspective, I’m going to say this, make sure that you deliver on all the promises you made on the step before.

John: Yeah, exactly.

James: Because sometimes we see a mismatch there. I’ve heard this saying that it’s easy to sell stuff, and sometimes it’s hard to deliver. So you can make all the promises in the world that sound very appealing. And if you look for some of the websites online, where people are unhappy, or making an issue about it in forums, you’ll often find that they feel they didn’t get what they paid for, and they were unhappy about it and they took to the streets.

You know, I’m thinking about this in my own context, for the last week and a half, our internal air conditioning unit has been faulty. And it’s very hot here right now. I phoned up a company to ask them to come and have a look at it. They advertised in my area for the brand of air conditioning that I have, and the guy asked me for some specs, take some pictures and send him a message, which I did. And then he didn’t follow me back. And then I phoned him the next day and I said, “Did you get the stuff?” He goes, “Oh yeah, sorry for the delay. I’ll be in touch soon to see when I can come around.” And then nothing. So I contacted a competitor who booked me in and came around, and they’ve half-resolved it now, which is good. But I actually feel like I want to leave a one-star review for that first one to save other people being mucked around, because we lost three or four days of cool air. You know, with a newborn baby, it’s not ideal. And he gave just terrible, sh*tty service. In fact, to this day he’s still not contacted me back yet.

John: Wow.

James: It’s appalling when people make promises, so his offer online is ticking all my boxes, but his fulfillment of that is atrocious. So you got to deliver on your promises. And it’s such a core premise, and that should be a part of any normal person’s value system. But sadly, it’s not. So make sure you deliver on your promises, folks.

What everybody should do

John: Yeah, and, and I think that some of the things that you do are awesome. And this is something as well. It’s really an area with a lot of opportunities, and you don’t have to do crazy things. But what I like to do, what I would recommend everybody to do, especially in these days where, you know, a lot of people live online, there’s all this social media, just be a real person. Be a real person, you know, like, meet people, do what James does, send them a personal video. Be a real person that they can contact.

For example, I do a welcome video whenever you join KLEQ.com. I also do a personal strategy session with every single member that joins. Whether you take the $1 trial, the free trial, 30 days access, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to get a free strategy session with me where we can connect, we can talk about your business, and we can really map out what is going to be important for you so that we can get clarity on your next step. This is an easy way for you to take some of your time, yeah, but by doing this simple thing, by being a real person, you’re going to stand out from your competition. You are going to be completely different.

Very simple to do, and it’s something that you think, Yeah, but John, you know, isn’t everybody doing that? No. Actually, I can tell you that there are a lot of people not doing that. That’s something I learned from James. I’ve been doing that, it changed KLEQ.com, the way that we onboard people. And that’s probably why a lot of people are switching back to KLEQ.com, why people are staying with us. Because yeah, they get that connection with me, they get to get to talk to me, I am online every single week. I don’t outsource that to someone else; I am online live answering any kind of question you might have. And yeah, it’s taking some of my time, but you know what, it’s really worth it. Because that’s how you can really build a long-term successful online business. And you can really, like I said, be different from everybody else and and really care about your customers. Really make sure that they understand, Yeah, this guy’s for real. He’s not there just to take my money and then go and chill out at the beach. He actually cares. He wants me to get result. He’s available. Great. So do that little thing, and it’s going to be very easy to deliver something really awesome.

James: Yeah, well said, mate. Of course, it really helps if you have things like recurring solutions, and you have other ways you can solve problems for clients. If they buy one thing they might want another, there’s all sorts of things you can do here, and it’s probably an entire episode. Upsells, downsells, cross-sells, integrated sales.

For example, I’ve got clients of mine who will be a member of SuperFastBusiness, A member of SilverCircle, a member of the Maldives mastermind, and will come to SuperFastBusiness Live. So there’s like, four separate products, someone could be a member of all of those, there’s many people in two or three of those. And that’s just creating an integrated suite of solutions that might appeal to a person because they’re in different modalities, different locations, a different level, you know, if you’ve got everything from a small, live-aboard, week-long activity for just 10 people through to an event with 150 people there or, you know, a forum environment with almost 500 people, or a group performance business coaching environment with 35 people, so different players, different modality, different way of approaching it, but they could all make sense for someone.

John: Yeah.

A principle of never-ending improvement

James: So beyond that, the delivery side of it, let’s assume that’s going well, you get to a stage where I’m at. You know, 10 years into it, I’m in the improvement phase. I’ve actually improved my business continually, using a Kaizen principle of never-ending improvement. I’m just constantly finding the next link in the chain and making it stronger. And there is no start or end, it’s a continual process. I made a commitment to myself when I quit my job that I’ll always improve my business. Because as Peter Drucker said, the key to business is marketing and innovation. So it’s falls under the innovation category, which is why I’m bringing in some expert help now to get my message even clearer. I’ve got Greg Merrilees from studio1design.com, he’s redoing my design style guide that my team can use across all our assets. And he’s also redoing the SuperFastBusiness website. So I’m very excited about that.

So if I combine design, good design, easy to use, nice to process, and I combine a great communication piece, then it should help me solve more people’s problems. So it’ll be good for them and good for me. And that’s an example of how you would innovate and improve something that’s already working. And let’s hope every listener gets to that phase, where you’ve found your market, they’re visiting your site, they turn into leads becauses they’re opting into something and then they can become a client. And then you deliver everything, they’re very happy. And now you just want to improve that machine. It’s a perfect place to be. It’s the phase that you’re at, and the phase that I’m at. And there’s always going to be that onus on staying up to date and updating things. But if you do, it’s a great life.

John: Yeah, it’s awesome. And that’s where you close the circle. And, you know, you analyze what’s working, you tweak things up, you improve things. This is all about checking your analytics, checking what people are resonating with, because you know, people change; contacting your members. And that is going to give you ideas about, hey, okay, well, now I can attract people that way. You’re going to maybe attract people from another angle, right? Then, oh, I can offer this thing to build a list who is interested in that topic. Okay, great. And now I can sell access to these other things. So now you’re closing the circle and everything repeats, right? You’re going to do everything, you’re going to deliver, provide awesome results, and then get people to become repeat customers, repeat buyers. And then again, you’re going to analyze what’s working, what’s not working, make tweaks, and on and on and on. And that’s how your business doubles, triples, grows and gives you the freedom that you want.

James: Perfect. So that’s the six essential phases of online business.

John: Yeah, awesome. Awesome.

James: Well, that’ll be a nice little guide at Episode 658. I encourage you, work on each one of those, and you’ll have a strong business, if you work on tuning your marketing, getting the right people looking at your message. And don’t feel like you need a huge audience or a massive list. You don’t.

John: No, you don’t.

James: You don’t need a big list or audience at all to have a great business. Just make everything relevant. Get the right people coming to your site, the right offer for those people, the right package that makes sense to them. Deliver it in a way that’s mind-blowingly good, and then improve it. What a wonderful business.

John, it’s always a pleasure to have you on board, and I love everything you’re doing over there at KLEQ.com. I also want to thank you. You gave away a year’s membership at the recent SuperFastBusiness Live 2019 event, which was very generous of you. The lucky winner is basically lined up for success if they go through these phases. You can’t imagine them finding any of that challenging when they’ve got the right tool at their disposal. And thank you for also being so generous to our SuperFastBusiness audience all the time.

John: Thank you. Thank you. It’s awesome. I love SFB, great community, great people, a ton of them are becoming members, and they are helping me as well improve KLEQ.com. And thank you for your support, and thanks for having me again on your podcast.

James: Until next time.

John: Yup.

Leverage the business training and expertise inside JamesSchramko membership

Try out the all-in-one membership and course features of KLEQ.com

Get all our episodes when you subscribe on iTunes

Share on Facebook

Tweet