Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Mike Geary: Instantly Hook Your Audience - 063

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

Mike Geary began his first online business on a rough note: only 2 visitors to his site in 2 months. Then, he discovered the power of marketing, which would lead him to sell a million copies of his book, The Truth About Six Pack Abs. In this episode, Craig Ballantyne talks to internet marketing expert Mike Geary, who shares the secret to running ads that grab your audience’s attention. Watch or listen now to learn why putting down your phone might be the best way to grow your business. “When someone first comes across you, they don’t want you to just list the features (of your product). They want to know what’s in it for them.” - Mike Geary Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:57 - How to choose a great title for your product. 12:46 - How disconnecting actually helps you think up innovative new ideas. 14:44 - How to transition from working 12 hour days to overseeing a self-sustaining business. 18:35 - How to leverage your success in one industry to find success in another. 24:37 - What hacks can you use to perform at a higher level, even when you’re busy? “There’s nothing wrong with building a business around something you’re not super passionate about if you’re good at the marketing, or you’re good at sales, and then leverage that to go into something you are super passionate about.” - Mike Geary

I was able to, like I said, cut down to three hours of work a day, you know, hire the right people, make sure everything was taken care of so that I could work less, but be smarter about when I worked and do the highest level stuff. Hey, welcome back to the Empire Podcast. This is an inside look. I'm your host, Craig Ballantine. This is my friend, Mike Geary. You've probably heard Mike Geary's name, Truth About Abs.

He is a fitness empire. Mike, welcome to the show, my man. Thank you, Craig. Yeah, so you've probably never seen Mike because Mike has always been behind the scenes. But Mike, you've built a fitness empire. this empire. Tell us about some of the companies that you're involved with right now. Sure. So my main companies are Raleigh Marketing, and that goes back to selling my first book that I wrote in 2004, Truth About Six Pack Abs. How many of those did you sell?

Over a million copies, kind of phased out in like 2012, 13. Was it no longer the truth about abs? Did the truth change? Well, the truth has changed a little bit. Yeah. But yeah, I ended up just transitioning some other things. I bought a company called Paleo Hacks. I bought another company called Paleo Plan. I started investing in health and nutrition startups. Yeah. Started getting equity in other companies in alternative health, nutrition, fitness, things like that.

And now I'm more of an investor, advisor, and sort of operator, the business, as opposed to sort of a one-man show back 10 years ago. Originally an engineer. Yeah, well, I was a hydrogeologist. Oh, sorry. But yeah, we did a little bit of engineering. So there was a period of time where I was a full-time hydrogeologist and a personal trainer as well. And that's how I eventually transitioned into writing a book and starting an online business. Yeah, so we met in 2006 in person for the first time.

And you were just, you know, cranking up. You're growing really, really fast. But take us through, like, how you figured out how to name your product because I think this is a really important lesson. And then how you work, you balance that full-time job and working late at night to really make your dreams come true. So walk us through the tough years. Yeah. So in 2004, I was still working a full-time job plus the side job as a personal trainer, probably working 60 hours a week. Yeah.

Got the idea from buying a Ryan Lee product. He was a mentor back out to Ryan Lee. Yeah. And to do some, you know, he's buying that product. It was like 300 bucks. I didn't even have any, hardly any money at that time. I was actually in debt. So it was a big investment for me.

But it gave me the idea to self-publish my own book. He also gave me some other ideas like running boot camps and things like that. Those really didn't work out for me. But what stuck was self-publishing my own book and selling it as an e-book online. I was also selling hard copies too, but it was more so e-book. Right. And what happened was it, well, the title. you asked about. So as a trainer, I'd say 90% of the questions I would get were always about

abs or stomach fat. Yeah. And there was all these myths out there. And everybody had the wrong concept of what to do. Do it, you know, a thousand crunches a day to try and get abs, but you're not working on reducing your body fat. So I just just popped into my head that I think I should do a book about the truth about six-pack abs, since everybody has these false conceptions on what they need to do. Little did I know I kind of stumbled on to a great thing in marketing that apparently the truth about anything is like a really good title. And I didn't even know that at the time. I just kind of stumbled onto it.

But I've seen some split tests and things like that in the last decade or so that turns out the truth about is like a really good when it's a controversial topic. Right. Like the truth about cancer is really hot. Yeah, exactly. That's a really good documentary in our world that has done well. So anyway, came out with that book, didn't know anything about marketing at the time, set up a website. I had this naive belief that I was just going to be a millionaire within a couple months. And then it's crickets.

You know, nobody's coming to your site. It's, you know, two visitors in the first two months or something. And I got a little discouraged. And then I woke up one morning and I had made $30 while I slept. Somebody had bought my book. Now, it turns out it was my mom's best friend. Okay. That bought the book.

I thought I actually was going to say, was it your mom? And then I remember your mom being involved in the story. But hey, that's a real sale, right? It was a real sale. And it proved to me that somebody could go to the website. You know, they could either read the page or be, you know, in this case, they were convinced to buy from my mom. But the point was that somebody went to the site, hit, you know, purchase, and sent me money.

How did that make you feel? So, while I woke up. when I figure that it kind of gave me the remotivation to get back at this. But then, you know, that jump started me again where I was like, okay, I got to learn marketing. I got to learn how to drive people to my site because they're not just going to show up. So I started learning article market. First couple of things, like then throughout 2005, the two things I first got good at were

article marketing and search engine optimization. Got it. And back then in 2005, that stuff worked if you did it. Well, it's really hard now. Article marketing doesn't really work anymore in the way that it did in 2005. There were these directories like EZ in articles. Anyway, I was using other big sites, search engine optimization essentially to get my articles showing up in Google.

And I had learned some ways to kind of figure out how to show up on the bottom of every page would be like most viewed. So I was learning some tricky stuff like I could pay for an ad on Google and just run it in India and just pay like a penny a click. And I would see that like the top viewed article would get 3,000 needed 3,000 views. So I would just pay 30 bucks for 3,000 clicks. And now I was the top viewed article on the entire site, which might have 60,000 pages. Got it. That was like a kind of just like a little tactic and a trick that I was.

like oh and then I started getting more traffic and more sales and I was like one of the first things that worked for me and but then I then I learned search engine optimization on my own site yeah started getting pretty good at that but what really jump started my business I mean that you know you're maybe doing a couple hundred bucks a day at that point and I was thinking okay maybe I can make a career out of this I can quit my job yeah so I went part-time with my job I cut down from 40 hours to 20 hours. And now I was going to dedicate more time to. And I figured once I started making as much money with the online business as my full-time job,

I would feel comfortable quitting. Sure. So then I stumbled onto Google AdWords, and that changed everything. I'm kind of a numbers guy. So I started buying some ads. I didn't even realize, like I didn't quite understand the system at first, and I set up some ads. And then nothing seemed to be happening. But I think that was just because they were in the review process.

And maybe like a few days later, they got live. Okay. And I didn't know it. And then I noticed I was getting more sales coming in, but I didn't even know anything about tracking at the time. Got it. So I didn't know where they were coming from. And I actually didn't even know the ads were running and I was spending money.

So three weeks later, I looked on my credit card bill and I had this big, you know, charge from Google. Like a lot for me at the time was probably over $1,000 or something. And then I was like, oh crap these ads got approved and were running and I didn't even know it so then I had to go back oh that's where those sales were coming from because I was wondering where all these new sales were coming from oh wow and I didn't even set up targeting like I didn't know what I was doing so I was getting sales from

India and Pakistan and all these other countries because when you just set it up the default setting is all countries yeah so I wasn't even targeting like US Canada UK like you know English speaking countries and so when I but when I looked at the data and finally figured it out, it actually wasn't that bad. I had, you know, let's say I had spent $1,000 and I had made $800. Well, I lost money, but- But you were doing the worst way possible. But yeah, I was doing everything wrong.

So then I was able to look at everything, figure out the tracking, start dialing some things in, you know, did a little research online, like some best practices. And then over the course of the next year, got really good at Google AdWords and, you know, quit my job soon after that as my business was blowing up. And, you know, probably six months later I was making 10 times more at my online, what I was doing online than at my full-time job that I had previously. And that was a really exciting time period in my life. That was January 2007 when I quit.

So throughout 2007, it was like this new freedom to, I didn't have to wake up to an alarm anymore. You still don't, right? I still don't. It's not your rule for life. That was, yeah, that was my number one benefit because I hate waking up. to an alarm. And I was able to travel the world, work from anywhere, work from home, work from a park, wherever. It was really exciting. So it became a lifestyle business. I had no desire to grow an empire

at that point. I just kind of wanted to make a decent amount of money, you know, sell my product, travel the world, live anywhere, you know, have fun. And it was great. And I did that for a couple years, but then things kept growing. And I was still a one-man show. Then Facebook advertising came around in like 2008 or 2009, I think. And I used what I learned on Google AdWords. I got really good at Facebook. And then, you know, my business doubled again. And now it was becoming like a pretty sizable business. And it was more complicated. Was this around the time that you had like one of the first video sales letters ever? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that was, yeah, I forget. who there was this guy named Keith Wellman,

and he had come up with the idea to these video sales letters for affiliate offers. Got it. So then I took that idea, talked to my friend John Benson, and said, hey, can you figure out how to make one of these videos? Right. Because John's a great copywriter. Yeah. And I'm not a copywriter, and I don't know anything about videos either.

Well, I was a decent copywriter. But anyway, so me and John worked on the copy together, but the technical aspect of making the video is like just, right over my head. Yeah. So I asked John to help me make the video. We put it together and blew up our conversions up. And nobody was really doing them at that point.

Everyone was doing written sales pages to sell whatever their products were, whether it's a book or a supplement or whatever. So that was a big breakthrough. And now I was able to compete even better on Google AdWords and Facebook. And we just, you know, probably 10xed our business that year. Wow. And then I became overwhelmed because now I had this, I had a very sizable business, probably making seven, we were probably even venturing into the low eight figures at that point in gross

sales. And I was still pretty much a one-man show. So I was, you know, paying the invoices and doing, I was doing the content. I was doing the ads. I was doing everything. So I was like the marketing person, the accountant, the content creator, I was everything. and so it didn't take long. I went from having this great lifestyle business

to now just being overwhelmed. And then it took the next few years to kind of figure that all out, hire people, have a more structured business, turn it into a real business. And eventually, years later, that became one of the best things ever because once I hired enough people

and the right people, it gave me more freedom. So now I could go back to that lifestyle that I wanted instead of working 12 hours a day, I was able to cut back to like three hours a day, which is perfect for me. I've found for myself that if I work over that, I get a little too caught up and everything going. And I need a lot of free time each day to just do fun hobbies and be in the yard and go

paddleboarding and play my sports and stuff like that. Do you find myself like coming up with ideas and when the more free time you have and solving the problems? And one of the best things I ever did, was the first time I ever took a week to totally disconnect was at Burning Man probably about five years ago and you're forced to disconnect at Burning Man because at that time they didn't even have a cell signal there or internet so I had brought my computer on the trip with me and had an eight-hour drive from Utah to Burning Man and I worked the whole the whole

drive out there, I worked to get everything done so that I could disconnect for a full week, my first time ever disconnecting in my career. And it was the best thing that ever happened because I had such a clear mind that week that I had all these ideas come to me. And one of those, I was laying in bed on some of the mornings and I didn't want to go out into the hot sun and dust storms yet of burning men. So I was just laying there. in bed doing some reading and these ideas were coming to me. And one of them, it was a hook for one of our sales letters. That Fat Burning Kitchen one? Yeah. And I rewrote the sales letter while I was there. So even though I was disconnected, the idea came to me and I was like, I got to start just, and I didn't

like do all the work, but I got the ideas all down. Got it. And then after Burning Man, we put it into a new sales letter and it like doubled our conversion rate. And that was another big jump start for our business at the time. So it was really cool how just disconnecting for a week where you're not working was able to really have a significant impact on our business and make more sales. So you went to the point where you were working too much, you found yourself in this trap. What was the first step out of that trap where you're working 12 hours a day?

Because a lot of people listening to this are like, oh, I'm grinding, I'm hustling, I'm getting into trouble mentally and physically. How did you say, I mean, you were forced to, but how are you? able to do it. I had to go through the phases to get there and I wasn't able to, you know, I had to grind it out for a number of years. I had to do the 10 to 12 hours a day for 10 years to get to the point where it had enough, like we were safe, you know, we had enough income coming at that point. And I just had to become more strategic and smarter. And that was, that was with hiring the right people, hiring the right team to do everything.

and taking myself out, like not having the weight on my shoulders, like trusting other people to do a good job. And that was the biggest thing that was able to. And I had a little bit of a, like, I think everybody seems in their late 30s I've seen, has sort of like a stress-induced physical breakdown. Yeah, I got my anxiety tax. Yeah, we've had friends that have had,

it seems like somewhere like around late 30s, If you've been hustling for too long, everybody kind of has a little bit of a breakdown. And it ends up being a good thing because you restructure your life because of it. So that's what I did. And I was able to, like I said, cut down to three hours of work a day. Just make sure hire the right people, make sure everything was taken care of so that I could work less. But be smarter about when I worked and do the highest level stuff. What is that highest level stuff?

What happens in Mike's three hour work day? It's all of the high level marketing for our business. So I'm overseeing. Now, a lot of that is doing what I enjoy. If I didn't enjoy it, I would probably hire somebody to do it. Got it. There is certain data analysis in our businesses that I actually enjoy. So I've kept those.

If I didn't enjoy them, I would just hire somebody to do it. Got it. But I actually find things in the data that a lot of people don't, and then I share that with all my other companies. So, like I said, now I've gotten partnership on a bunch of other companies. We have eight companies in our circle. our circle, you could call it this empire that I've built. Yeah. And they all kind of support. They all support each other. They're all in health, fitness, or nutrition, so it's all related.

Yeah. We can all sell each other's products. We can all share each other's content. So actually, that's a lot of what I do too. Not only do I study the data, find the big learnings in the marketing, like a lot of its email data or its ad data or things like that. And I'll be like, oh, wow, this ad did really well. And then what can we learn from that ad? And I'll take that and I'll share it with all my other partners on my other business, say, hey, we ran this ad on Facebook or an email drop. And it did these numbers.

It did really well. You know, let's take this idea. How can you apply it to your businesses? And a lot of times we can find ways to apply those things. And then, like I said, the other thing was, I'm kind of making sure because everybody tends to like to work in isolation. So PaleoHacks is one of my businesses. That business would only sell PaleoHacks products and PaloHex content

if I didn't make sure that we're all working together and giving some incentives to be like making sure we're sharing content from the other companies. And the benefit is that they're going to share your content too. Got it. And so that's one of the things I do too is making sure that we're all supporting each other so that, you know, all ships rise together.

Yeah. So you've got this really great expertise in digital marketing, and you have this real, real passion for health and fitness. So you and I were talking before this. You know, I have less of an interest now in health and fitness, but you're just like even more interested into it now. Talk about this, because people are going to love to know your thoughts on the importance of having a passion or an interest in the business you get into.

How did that keep you going through some tough times? And how does that help you see into the future now to see those trends? coming up? Yeah, so I think there's, so yeah, I love health and fitness. It's probably one of the the biggest passions in my life. So because all the businesses I'm interested in are health and fitness and nutrition, I'm actually really, not only am I, do I enjoy the, you know, the marketing, but I actually really like the content side of it too. Now I don't do the content anymore because I just don't have time. But there's two ways I think about. about this with, for one, you know, advice you always hear is, you know, do something you're

passionate about and it never feels like a job. Yeah. So, you know, if you want to go into like a dog or pet business and you just love dogs, that's great and it's never going to feel like work, but you have to have a strategic business too. Sure. So I think there's opportunities out there. Like there's opportunities to make a lot of money. good business opportunities that you might not be passionate about. Let's say you have

vending machines. Vending machines, I don't know anybody that's passionate about vending machines, but it's probably a good business opportunity if you know what you're doing. Yeah. So take some of those good business opportunities. There's nothing wrong with building a business around something you're not super passionate about if you're good at the marketing or you're good at sales or whatever. And then leverage that to maybe go into something you are super passionate about. So you, as an example, maybe somebody builds a huge business, like you said, around vending machines. I don't know anything about vending machines, but I'm sure it's a strong business. Right. So, and they make a lot of money with that. Well, then just kind of put it on

autopilot, hire somebody to run it, and take that money to then do something you're, you are super passionate about. Maybe you did want to start a dog spa or whatever. I don't, I don't know. Just an example, but that may be a way like so I'm leverage another thing I'm leveraging my success in is I want to get into regenerative agriculture. Okay. It's a big like the kind of the broken food system and, you know, big agriculture and the chemicals used and the low quality food. Like I'm a big proponent of kind of going back to our roots with real agriculture and and healing the ecosystem instead of monocropping and, you know, all of that stuff. So I will be slowly transitioning back into, you know, maybe I'll start investing in bison farms. Maybe I'll start, you know, buying regenerative farms that are doing things the right way.

And there's a resurgence of that. So there's a lot of companies that are, you know, not only the health food movement anymore, but now people are caring about how the animals were treated, how the crops were grown, what kind of soil they were grown in, you know, things like that. So anyway, that's an example for me of how I started with a health and fitness business. And now I'm leveraging that success to try and get into another area that I'm really passionate about. And now I can be an investor for those kind of things. So if I see, like, for example, I was listening to a podcast the other day about what's it called Vital Farms.

It's a pasture-raised egg company. And I really like what they're doing. And maybe I'll somehow work with them. I don't know. But that could be some, you know, those opportunities come up once you've had success in another area. Sure. So you were talking about looking back, you know, the farming is kind of coming around full circle. And you've been doing this for what seems like a lifetime, you know, to be doing online marketing.

So what principles can you tell people listening today that might be new to starting a business that work back then? They work now the same fundamental principles. What do you see the same? Because a lot has changed, but a lot has also stayed the same. What do you see there? Well, I mean, there's fundamental principles in anything like salesmanship. I mean, there's principles there that'll work in any business. Doesn't matter if you're running Facebook ad or you're running a YouTube video.

Yeah, and with marketing, I mean, some of the basic rules apply anywhere. I mean, what's, you know, talk about the benefits. What's in it for the person? Like, don't talk about, like, I'm not going to talk about myself necessarily. I'm going to talk about what my product is going to do for. the person, like they're going to lose weight, they're going to feel better, they're going to jump out of bed in the morning and have energy. Like, these are the problems people are dealing with they don't, you know, when they first come across you, they don't, they don't really, they don't

want me to just be listing the features. Yeah. They want to know what's in it for them. So like, so that's just like marketing 101 and it applies to anything. Cool. And then, you know, looking forward, you know, you've got this vision, you see the future trends coming. What are you really excited about moving ahead. I feel at this point, like, I'm really satisfied with what I've grown, and there's a few other, there's always opportunities knocking on my door now to partner on other companies, help them with their marketing, invest, things like that. I want to continue to be an investor with health food companies, with regenerative farming.

I, you know, I'm just kind of letting it flow and whatever opportunities just kind of have been knocking, you know, down my door. And then I'm in a good position now where I'm able to just pick and choose what sounds like it really fits and something that I would want to get behind and have fun with. Yeah. Well, it's been working for you so far as far. So you may as well keep that going. Last thing we want to give to people, they need to be high performing entrepreneurs.

So you as someone who just absolutely loves the combination of health and fitness and being your best self, being at your best health and being that, you know, three hour a day high performer, what can you tell people who are really busy, you know, some hacks that you you know, give you mental energy or how to start your day or how to sleep better and recover. Yeah, well, sleep is probably, I mean, you know, losing weight and keeping yourself in good shape and fitness-wise, I'd say, is just as important as sleep, although sleep can probably come before that because it can help you balance your hormones. Sure.

So for sleep, you know, a couple of the things I do, make sure I'm not looking at devices because I don't want to look at blue light at night before bed, so for at least a couple hours before bed. So I try and wind down. I used to, I was horrible about this for years. I would work until 2 in the morning. And then my mind was so active that I couldn't fall asleep until 4 in the morning. And I was just on a terrible schedule. Circadian rhythms were all off.

You were on the opposite one to me. Yes, exactly. You were waking up when I was going to bed. Yeah. But now I've gotten a lot smarter with that. I still, I think genetically I'm programmed as a little more of a night out. So I go to bed at like midnight, I wake up at eight. That's just my, it seems to work for me.

But, you know, winding down a couple hours before bed, I drink a nighttime tea that has like chamomile and some other herbs in it that are good for relaxing you. Some, you know, do CBD oil, which is a relaxing thing, things like that. Try and not do anything stressful or that activates my mind too much for an hour or two before bed. Just try and relax and maybe do some light reading or things like that. I do hot tub, you know, things that relax me. Another thing I do during the day, I do sauna. Sona, like aside from exercising, I've become a sauna addict. Wow. It lowers your blood pressure, improves your heart health. You know, sauna users. So how long are you in there and what's your temperature?

I do about 45 minutes. I have an infrared sauna in. my basement that only goes up to about 140 but it penetrates deeper and then at our guest house we have a rock sauna that goes up to about 175 and so it's just a little different i sweat i feel like i sweat more in the rock sauna because it's a little hotter yeah but they both have different benefits and do you just sit there in a meditative state yeah i'll listen to some soothing music sometimes or if somebody's with me we just talk yeah um i also use do red light therapy i'll bring a in my infrared one i'll plug in my infrared light Yeah.

And I don't know if you've heard about red light, but red light, there's a company called Juve that I use their red light and you just shine it on your body while you're in. You can do it any time. I just saw it as a convenient place. Got it. It's supposed to be good for your skin health, for fighting inflammation, for recovery from workouts. And this one's a little controversial, but if you do it naked, it increases, it's supposed to increase testosterone too. So that's not a bad benefit. There you go.

There you go. Well, Mike, thank you so much. I've known you for over 10 years now. I've been super inspiring to me as I've grown my business and just watch you grow yours. So thanks so much for all that you've done for me and all you've done for the industry, my man. Well, thank you, Craig. All right. Thanks, everybody, for being on another episode of Empire Podcast, an inside look at an empire builder. And it's always great to share with you the amazing stories of our friends like Mike Geary.

Thank you so much for joining us for another amazing episode of the Empire Podcast. Now, the greatest compliment that you can give to us is liking, loving, and sharing this episode with all of your friends. So please go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating and then share it online and social media with everyone that you know. And make sure to tag us because we love hearing from Empire listeners. And if you own a business that's doing half a million dollars or more in annual revenues and you know it's got massive potential. And you like myself and Craig Ballantyneying to help you scale it by 5x, 10x, and 20x in the shortest amount of time possible, then you might be a great candidate for the Empire Mastermind Program that we have. To learn more about the Empire Mastermind Program, go to bedroskulian.com forward slash empire.