Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - This is Why Your Business Isn’t Scaling... - 097

Episode Date: May 4, 2019

Is your business not producing the kind of revenue or leads you think it should? Well, a successful business is more than just a product leading to a sale. In this episode of Empire Show, Bedros and Craig will teach you all the things your missing; such as marketing, systems, and a fully functional website. Watch or listen now to discover what it takes to take your business to the next level!     “If you’re a suspect to them, they are never going to become a prospect”   “If it’s not mobile friendly, it will never convert” - Bedros Keuilian   Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:01 - How to create an irresistible offer; and how it can inject more profit in your business 5:55 - What you need to do to market your business, and how it can lead to a massive growth 10:06 - The trick to turning traffic into conversions 12:02 - Why the layout of your website will be the difference between a lost lead and a sale 16:00 - How important systems and structures can be to scaling your business     “You can’t start a business without that irresistible offer” “They want their problems solved” “What’s in it for me?” - Craig Ballantyne   Follow us on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian / @realcraigballantyne Buy Man Up: https://manup.com/   Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow

In every community, there's an intersection that gets more traffic than less. There's a shopping mall that's probably a little more rundown that people don't go to anymore. And if the difference is, well, I'm going to pay 50 cents less in that crappy or shopping center per month, right, or per square foot. But you're getting 80% less traffic. What's the point? I'd rather you take the more expensive place. How to Scale Your Business. Welcome to The Empire Show.

I'm Badros Kulian. This is my co-host, Craig Ballantyne. Hey! And the number one question we get on the show is, how do I take? scale my business. And so Craig and I are not only going to share our experience of scaling businesses, because we've got some pretty badass track records ourselves, but also how many of our guests who have appeared on the show have scaled their businesses. So Craig, when someone says, hey, what are the big factors of scaling my business? What do you typically share with them?

Well, listen, you know, one of the questions that we got in was, you know, somebody said, what am I missing? And we, first of all, we really appreciate all your questions. So keep on sending them in because we do need some good ideas for the show. But the people, person asks, you know, if I choose a product and I create networking channels and I advertise and I give generously, like, you know, go with a giving hand, what else do I need to do? And it's a good question because that is simply not all you need to do. There's a whole lot more to it. And if we go back to the very first thing, you know, choosing your product or creating your product, you actually have to figure out how to sell it first. And it really comes down

to creating that irresistible offer. You know, with, you know, Fit Body Boot Camp you have an irresistible offer. Back in my fitness days with my home workout revolution, I had an irresistible offer. And so, you know, what are some of your ideas for helping somebody come up with that irresistible offer? Yeah, that's a really good question. So typically, when you're going to come up with an irresistible offer, you might want to do what Tom Bill you did, right? He looked at the marketplace of all these different protein bars and supplements. And he said, what is missing? Where's the vacuum? So typically, when you're looking for the irresistible offer, you kind of got to look for the vacuum.

So our friend Mike Whitfield, for example, said, hey, where's the vacuum? What's his irresistible offer? There's all these follow-along workouts, and every vacuum seemed to have been filled. But he found one because he said, look, if you take my workout finishers and attach it to the back of any workout that you do,

any program that you follow, the last three to nine minutes, as a workout finisher, you'll burn more calories and stimulate more muscle. And he created a vacuum and an irresistible offer that produces an outcome. And what Tom Bill you did was, he goes,

look, there's all these protein bars out there. But they don't taste good, which is why people don't eat them, and they keep grabbing the Snickers bar or the Kit Kat bar. So he decided to help create a bar that was healthy for you and taste great that would compete against the Snickers and the KitKat. Hence, Quest Bar was created and filled in a vacuum, right? The irresistible offer there was, taste as good as a Snickers bar that you're going to eat,

but it's much healthier for you. protein. Hey, can I tell you my favorite irresistible offer in the snack world these days? Bang Energy drinks. Have you had one? I have not yet. Okay, so Bang Energy drinks, there's Monster, there's Rockstar. Bang Energy drinks comes along with all these. First of all, they have really funny names. One of them is like Rainbow Unicorn. Oh, I would drink that. Yeah, and then Blue Raz and all this stuff and Cherry Blade Lemonade. So they're totally different than the classic, you know, plain stuff that the other companies have. And then they're all talking about how, you know, there's absolutely no sugar in them. I know most of the same. I know most of

the other ones have diet ones, but none of them have sugar, but they have like a dozen different flavors, and it's just a different spin on it. And my friend Luca, our friend Luca, who introduced me to them, was telling me how they're growing, they're the fastest growing energy drink out there today. So it just goes to show you that even in a crowded marketplace where you think, like, hey, you go into a store like 7-11 and there's already monster, there's already rock star, there's no more room for another person to come along. There is if you fill that vacuum. Yeah. And so that's what you have to have. You can't start a business without that irresistible offer you can't scale something that isn't

going to sell really well so that's the first place to start and then once you have that then you can start going out and getting traffic right and to that point and you know you look at that marketplace of energy drinks right I mean holy cow from Red Bull to monster to everything in Mountain Dew right Mountain Dew and I mean these are some big brands with tons of money but Bang Energy drinks comes through and by the way we will have the the founder of on the show because it's worth doing a kind of a reverse autopsy of his business, right? But he comes through with something fun and different.

One, he's using social media and all types of influencers. They're not super jacked. Some are super jacked. But every trade show he does, it's like a full-on rave concert that's happening. Oh, really? Yeah, every trade show that he does, it's not just come sample our bang energy drinks. It's a fucking party. And they're raving and they're going nuts and all these guys and gals, right?

Having a good time and dancing and break dancing and all this shit. And it's unique, it's different. He's using social media platform because those are things like the shows that he puts on. He doesn't just do a sampling of the drink. He puts on a show, and it's so like eyeball-catching for social media platforms. And then he keeps the brand fun.

And so that's what no one else was doing. Everyone else was saying you get longer energy, you get five hours of energy, you get six hours of energy, you don't crash at the end. Okay, we've heard that enough. He hasn't talked anything about that. He goes, look, bang energy drinks, they're fun. You're going to have a great time.

And look at the cool fucking names that we have. And it's funny, because I ran into somebody down Jason Capital's high status event the other day, and they had a bang, and I was like, all I want to know is what flavor it was. It was like, what kind of crazy flavor do you have down there? That's it. Because there is literally a dozen that they have. Love it, love it. All right.

So now we have this Erosisible offer. It's starting to sell. And it's like, man, how do we get some traction and traffic for this? So obviously there's the, you know, you got your email list, you got your Facebook ads, your Google ads. What do we need to do to scale this thing? Yeah. Where scale is concerned, I'm still the biggest believer in buying traffic over using influencers and social media postings.

And here's why. Those things, I believe, are great ancillary or add-ons that you could do, right? Get two dozen, three dozen people. And hell, get our friend Dan Fleischman, yet another person we need to have on the show, get Dan Fleischman to introduce all these influencers to your product. That's great. But that is not as predictable as paid traffic to a targeted audience. with your irresistible offer. And so where paid traffic is concerned,

remember, you may not have the email list, but somewhere somebody already has your customers. So what publication, what apparel shop, what newsletter list, what supplement company already has your customers, and are you willing to pay them to do an email drop? Are you willing to pay Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Google to do pay-per-click ad campaigns?

Are you willing to do arbitrage ads? Are you willing to do fractional ads on different sites like MSNBC and all that stuff, depending on what your product? Mike Geary was a master of that. And Mike Geary was on the show here as well. Now, I love the advice that you used to give people on our mastermind when we had our beginner online mastermind. You would say, hey, listen, just start with $5 a day, $10 a day. Because a lot of people get super intimidated by Facebook ads. But Facebook is really the best place to start because of the targeting.

You get to target all the stuff that you know. plus you get the look-alike audiences you can bring in from your email list. So is there anything else you would add to that advice that you gave years ago to just get started with five or ten bucks a day? Yeah, I mean, it would still be start with five or ten bucks a day. Obviously one of the biggest things you want to do with most of the products, whether it's apparel, supplements, e-books, a franchise even, right? Yeah. What do we do? We want to retarget to the people who've already visited your page.

Traffic's already coming to your page. Odds are they're not going to convert the first time. So you can take that audience and retarget to them by putting it. a pixel from Facebook and Google. Those two platforms alone, if you run Facebook campaigns and Google pay-per-click campaigns, you've now got Google pay-per-click search, you've got YouTube, you've got Instagram and Facebook, the four big platforms on the internet covered. And how awesome is that? And if you put a retargeting pixel on your website and now you start adding your email list, even if you only have 100 people, 100 customers or 100

prospects, add your email list to Facebook and say, look, I want you to target you to target your get a lookalike audience. Facebook has got the algorithm to say, all right, these hundred people have this in common. Here's 1.8 million more just like them that might be interested in buying your product or service. And so start with $10 or $15 a day, scale as you go. And of course, the magic formula here is if you're breaking even, you're winning as long as you have a back-end product or a continuity recurring product to sell, right? Absolutely. And go back to the Frank Kern interview that you did, which is really great in so many ways. And Frank talks about running traffic to great content videos on Facebook and then retargeting those viewers with more

direct aggressive ads is another way of using Facebook. And by the way, the whole model there and people are like, wait, why would I do that? Why would I spend money to take traffic to a video where I don't sell anything? Because first, people don't trust you. You're a suspect. If you're a suspect to them, they're never going to become a prospect. So you first want to show them that you actually know what you're talking about, that you're an authority on the topic, again, whether it's apparel, whether it's lifestyle, supplements, a franchise, follow-along videos, content. Give them content first to win the no like and trust factor. Once they now go from suspect to prospect mode, you can now sell them whatever product it is by retargeting the people who watch that content

video. Yes, it's a two-step process, but it's almost a sure bet versus just taking cold traffic and trying to sell them on something. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. All right, so now we've got the irresistible offer. We're running traffic to it, and we've got to tidy up our conversion. So traffic and conversion. Our good friend Ryan Dice has made this saying very, very popular, traffic and conversion. That's really what it comes down to. So what is this conversion? How do we improve conversion? What is this with copy and sales and all this sort of stuff? Yeah, so think about this, your website, because most of you were watching this right now or listening to this right now, are probably going to sell something off a website, right?

And so your website, and by the way, 89% of the people are going to buy it on this device, their mobile device, and if they're going to buy it on their mobile device, whether it's a Samsung phone or an iPhone, is your actual website formatted to appear nicely on these phones? Mobile friendly. If it's not mobile friendly, then it's probably not going to convert. And by the way, what are the elements of conversion? One, is there a compelling headline that very quickly says what the product or service is?

If the compelling headline is not there, then you're probably going to reduce conversion. Right. People got to know exactly what your page is about. Shall we tell the Get Fit While Ironing joke? Oh, you've got to tell that. So way back in the day, when Beidros and I were running one of our first masterminds, a guy contacted me and said, Craig, will you look at my website? And his website was called Get Fit While Ironing. without the ironing.

And I looked at it, and there was a picture of him with an ironing board, and I was like, you know, I don't think this is going to work. And he said, I knew you were going to say that. And of course, because it's just not a compelling offer. It was probably the silliest thing that anybody had ever showed me. Now, for other people, though, is that what they do is they put these websites together where you land there and you, like, what's this website about? Is it a fitness site?

Is it a site about just a person? It's just a giant picture of you and your ego's in the way. So you really need to have that compelling headline. It's not about giant images because people are going to land there. And if they don't see what they like, they're going to bounce. And so if you have a bounce rate that's really high, that's going to destroy your ability to actually make sales. Because they've got to go through the sales video or the sales letter or whatever it is in order to get to your irresistible offer, which you created. Because if you don't get them down there, there's going to be no sales.

So that's definitely one of the first things. You know, the number one factor on your website that's going to increase conversions when people hit your website and by conversions, meaning people take out their wallet and make a purchase, is a promise to solve a problem that the person who hit your website has.

If I get on your website, I don't want to search for the solution to my problem. I want to be smacked in the face with a video or a headline or copy or an image that very clearly says, hey, dude, you have this problem, here we sell the solution right so if it's a as Craig said it's a very ego-driven website where it's your picture and your accolades and I have to scroll to find

the solution fucking you ain't scrolling I'm out yeah so our best-selling program in the fitness world was six minutes to skinny dot com I mean just okay domain I understand what this thing is about domain solves the problem right and then you get right into the video sales letter and it's just worked like gangbusters because we weren't trying to be fancy you're cute oh man you've seen this all the time in the fitness is people have a last name that makes for a nice rhyme or something in a gym. It's like, oh, just don't, you know, Ron Strong Fitness.

Like, nobody cares, you know, nobody knows what it means and nobody is going to buy just because you have a cute name of your business. No, what people want is not to know more about you, they want their problem solved. What's in it for me? Oh, you hit the words out of my mouth. What's in it for me? Your website has to be about it. Yeah. Now, by the way, and now that we know that it needs to be about what's in it for me, as in the person who hits the website,

and needs to obviously have a promise to solve a problem that the person has, then there has to be compelling proof. Because think about that, the person who hits the website, now I go, oh, wow, this thing is promising to solve my problems. Well, I'm human, and therefore I've experienced liars, right? Right. Where people go, hey, I can solve your problem, but then they really can't. So you better back that promise up with social proof, testimonials, right? there better be testimonials. Like in the best case scenario, you would have the Rock and Oprah Winfrey saying on your website

that I've used Craig's product or service and it changed my life. And I think Craig Valentine is an amazing person. That's what the Rock and Oprah say all the time. All the time. All the time. Just go follow them. You'll see. But if you don't have the Rock and Oprah, who is the next best thing?

Could be just any customer or client who has purchased something from you? Ask for a testimonial. The more compelling testimonials and case studies you have of clients who have gotten results using your product, the more you're going to squash doubt and increase conversion. Yeah, and if you can get a testimonial from somebody who's exactly like your best customer, you know, the people that come to your site the most often, you know, like if Mrs. Jones is your customer and she's 43 years old and has two kids, you want to get lots of testimonials from women who are 45 who have three kids because then Mrs. Jones will say, wow, that woman

has more kids than me and she's older than me and if she can do it, then I guess I can do it too because, again, it eliminates all the objections that people have. Now, one thing that I was thinking about recently, we met a guy named Jason Fladley, and we both used his webinar program. It might be another good guy to have on the show. And one of the things that he teaches is that you have to get testimonials in case studies earlier in your sales message. A lot of people would leave these things for the bottom of the page or late in the webinar,

but he really front loads them because that's the objection. Like, why hide that, right? Yeah, exactly. Why hide that? Just might as well front load the test. testimonials because he knows that everybody going to watch a webinar or a video sales letter or a website is coming in there with doubt and skepticism. So you might as well come out with the proof with guns blazing. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So we have an irresistible offer. We're

sending traffic to it. We have a high converting sales page now. I mean, those three things alone allow you to scale. But if you want to keep your business sustainable, you have to have systems in place to deliver the service, to make sure the customers are happy. And if you're in a recurring revenue business, you have to have systems in place to maintain those customers. Otherwise, you're leaking all the customers out as many as you're bringing in, and you're not making profits. So systems, I mean, you, I mean, here at Fit Body Boot Camp, 800, almost 1,000 locations, you have all these people. What are the real integral systems to making this machine continue to run? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, where a franchise is concerned, I mean,

you think about someone's paying us over $30,000 to buy into the Fit Body Boot Camp franchise model, then they're going to go sign a lease, right? They're paying us monthly. franchise royalties. They're going to have to build out that location that they signed for. So there's a lot of financial commitment. So they're buying it with the idea that, all right, there's almost 800 locations that are rocking and rolling. I want to be 801 or 802. For that to happen, we have to do our part. We make the promise of, hey, look, this is a model that works and we've proven it hundreds of times over. But then we hold their hand where the system is concerned. When that prospect, the franchisee is handed over from the sales department into our operations

department, they're assigned a support person, and that support person goes through every single system, the system of finding the right location in their community. Because, look, in every community, there's an intersection that gets more traffic than less. There's a shopping mall that's probably a little more rundown that people don't go to anymore. And if the difference is, well, I'm going to pay 50 cents less in that crappier shopping center per month, right, or per square foot, but you're getting 80% less traffic. What's the point? I'd rather you take the more expensive place. And so Our job is to help them find the, we have a system for finding their location. We have a system for helping them negotiate their lease.

We have a system for finding the right team members. We have a system for their grand opening. We have a system for problem solving when they're, oh my gosh, things are going wrong. The city is asking me for a conditional use permit. We have a system. And as long as you have a system to put out of fire and create solutions, it's not to say that you're not going to have the problems. The whole quest of being an entrepreneur is someone just dumps a world of problems on you

and your job is to solve through them systematically. It's to have systems to solve through so that you can build confidence in your franchisees. That goes for info products or supplements as well. If you're selling a container of fat burners or protein powders or protein bars, let's say, well, do you have a system to sell them on a continuity, maybe have a container of protein powder show up every month,

or maybe bulk order? Hey, look, if you buy six containers, you get a 15% discount, right? If you know the lifetime value. Or, by the way, people who, Amazon, does this all the time. Hey, people who buy this particular supplement also look at this and that. Like the other day I bought a holster for a gun and it said, by the way, people who buy this holster also buy these magazines and it showed me extra magazines for the pistol that I have

at home, right? I thought that was pretty cool. I was like, you know what? Yeah, I could use a couple of extra magazines and I purchased them. So what's really cool is if you have a system, whether it's automated through technology or through humans, right, like in sales, for example, but when we're selling a Fit Body Boot Camp franchise, we have a system where we ask the prospect on the other line of the phone. We go, look, we know you wanted one Fit Body Boot Camp location in your area code or zip code.

Great. Do you mind if I do a search to see if there's any other territories available near you because you might be interested in being a multi-location owner, right? They go, yeah. So we've got that system to upsell them into multiple locations if they're interested so that someone else doesn't come in the future and take those territories from them, right?

But everything has to be system. driven, whether it's an upsell or continuity on your website or even, you know that if someone buys this particular six minutes to skinny and then they take all three upsells that you have in your funnel, that might be the trigger to motivate a sales guy to call and go, hey, look, Craig is going to have a two-day retreat in Tampa, Florida. It costs $2,000 because that might be that, hey, they bought the front-end product, they bought all three upsells. They are a perfect candidate to pay $2,000 for a retreat. That system of a salesperson picking up the phone, making that sale, getting them to the retreat

and taking a $500 commission is mandatory. You've got to have that. You're adding value to the customer's life and you're adding profits to your bottom line. Right, because you have to have the profit, the upsell systems in place in order to scale. Because sometimes you're not gonna be breaking even. You're gonna be a little bit lower

when you're running the Facebook traffic. So that's where we were. We were exactly break even with that offer, but we had a recurring offer in there as well that almost everybody took. And that allowed us to have more money after the end of 30 days so that we could plow that back into the the advertisements to scale that offer. Dude, that is a great lesson for you to share.

So let's just break that down real quick. So what Craig's saying is he had the six minutes of skinny info product. Yep. Right? And that was selling how much on the front end? It was only $27. $27. And you had, was it two up sales or three up sales?

We had three up sales. And then we had a continuity as well in there for just $7 a month. But when you do $100,000 plus orders, you know, that adds up. And so we had that in place and it provided that slack that then allowed us to, okay, great. And after 30 days when the rebuild comes in, we're making more, you know, now we're doing more than break even so that we can put more money back into the ads. And our friend Joel Marion, who was on this podcast as well. I mean, that guy was the master at getting people to buy, you know, 63 bottles of protein.

Right. Like I came for one bottle of protein and I left with 10 boxes of protein bars. How did that happen? Because that guy is a master of putting. those upsell systems into place and writing great copy with irresistible offers and mastering conversion so that he had all of that in place. I mean, dude, let's go back to your six minutes of skinny for a second. I mean, if you're running Facebook ads, then let's say it costs you $27 to get a customer.

And of course, the product is $27. Technically you lost money, right? Sure. Because you, or you broke even. Right. But by the time you pay the salaries and everything, you do. And by the time you pay the salaries and taxes and all that stuff, you actually have lost money.

So you were willing to lose money for up to 30 days. knowing that if that person got on board with your recurring continuity program, because you probably know the lifetime value, meaning how long they're going to stay on board at $7 a month, which was, how long, like over eight months, would you say? It was six or seven months. Six or seven months, right? So you know the average client is going to stay six to seven months,

which doubled the amount of money. All of a sudden you go, hey, I'm willing to make money on the back end. And if you're willing to make money on the back end, that's where the millions are. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So we've talked a lot about tactics and strategies, but there's still something that has to happen because a lot of entrepreneurs get to this point where the success happens and then they self-implode. Yes. And so it's really the last two are leadership and fixing your own mental blockages.

I love this. Yes. Walk us through the man-up short version here because that's really what has to happen in order to scale. So leadership is the limiting factor. Like leadership is the limiter and here's why. When you're starting any business, supplement company, franchise, it doesn't really matter. An info product, apparel line. you can handle it all.

You, maybe your spouse or your business partner and maybe an assistant or two, an employer too, right? But all of a sudden you find yourself growing, making more money, all good problems. You're like, hey, this is all good problems. But then you as the leader become the bottleneck. Because you haven't taken on the leadership role, you've just been a workhorse.

Everybody around you is working at a lower capacity than you. And so instead of solving the problem, they come to you with the problem and go, hey, boss, what do I do? We need sales copy. We need to pay more taxes. We need someone to do payroll. And you become the bottleneck.

And I remember clearly when I was the bottleneck in Fit Body Boot Camp, the year was 2011, 2012. There was sales copy that needed to be written for our World Conference. And so I would plow through it quickly as I could, which means I'm doing a shitty job of writing sales copy, which means we didn't have enough franchises at our World Conference, which means they didn't hear the vision, mission, and values that we're building for them

to be able to fully commit to Fit Body Boot Camp. And so leadership is always a little limiting factors. So one, you've got to build leaders around you so that instead of people coming to you with problems, they come to you with there was a problem, here's how I solved it so we can continue to scale. Like that's effective leadership. And of course, the best way for you to build your leadership muscles is to go by manup at manup.com and you're going to learn all about entrepreneur leadership. And then fixing the mental blocks, people who have these mental blocks of success, of self-sabotage, of poor belief systems, a broken road.

relationship with money. I mean, keeping the e-break on. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. The e-break. Like, in your life somewhere, you have that emergency brake pulled up. Like, if you get a Ferrari, but then you slightly crank up that emergency brake in that car, the Ferrari is not going to perform the way you want it to and tell us you, you see, you drop that e-break. And that might be, again, limiting beliefs. That might be in your association with money. It might mean the people that you're hanging out with are negative and toxic and critical. and you've got to fix those mental blocks. Absolutely.

Absolutely. One of my favorite quotes about leadership that I've come across recently is that leaders don't create followers. They create more leaders. And that's what we need in our businesses to help them scale. So, B, this was awesome. This really shows people. I mean, that was like an entire weekend seminar

of how to scale your business in one short podcast. And I will say one last thing. Yes, sir. I cannot wait to go to a bang, energy drink rave. Oh, man. That's all I've been thinking about for the last 20 minutes. It's like I've never heard of this and we need to go. I'm going to put one of those little mini glow sticks in my mouth, drop some acid with Frank Kern, and go nuts.

There you go. There you go. That's how you build your empire, a little glow stick and acid with Frank Kern and Badros Koolian and Craig Ballantine's formula on how to scale your business. Hey, thank you so much for joining us on the Empire Podcast Show. The best way you can thank us is to leave a five-star review on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast platform. And of course, leave a comment and share this podcast with a friend. And if you'd like to grow your business to the highest level of success, go to bedrosecoolion.com forward slash empire and fill out the application where you can join myself and Craig Ballantine in the Empire Mastermind Group.