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http://www.treptalks.com Interview Transcript with Dan Morris
Sushant: Hey Treps, this is Sushant, founder and host of TrepTalks. Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Dan Morris to the show. Dan is an internet marketer and a blogger, and he calls himself the Revenue Generation Guy because he helps businesses generate more revenue through combination of online marketing methods. He blogs about a variety of internet marketing on his blog lettersfromdan.com and today it’s going to be just a little bit about how to go about creating the strategy for your online products that could make it really effective for you to be able to find your ideal customers, help the people you want to help the most and in the process, hopefully create some income for yourself. So really appreciate your time today Dan and welcome to the show. Dan: Yea, I appreciate it man. I love talking about this stuff. It’s fantastic. Sushant: Thank you very much. So let me start off with a more general question. These days, it seems like of course, internet has evolved and there is a lot of software out there that make it really easy for people to go about creating a website, putting out their online products and in any niece if you see, if there’s some demand if you search, there’s hundreds of thousands of people having products. Do you think it is still relevant if someone has something that they can teach someone, should they still even bother putting that online? Because there’s so much noise out there. What do you think about that? Dan: I don’t really think there’s any noise in my opinion. You have the ability to reach a certain segment of the world at any given moment and capture their attention for that period of time. Just because there are other products out there that do similar things, it doesn’t really mean anything because you and I both know that there’s going to be another cookbook that’s printed this year. Somebody’s going to buy it because people of new information, they love new. They all have multiple books on their bookshelves about the same topic and your take on topic is always different than somebody else’s. So what insight and value you bring is what really separates you from the rest and just because there’s something out there, it wouldn’t stop me from creating something new because my audience has come to enjoy [02:42-‐02:47 blank] so we share our insights with each other and the products that we create are valuable within the community. So once you have that community and you have either people you can speak to, you’ve got that ‘know you, like you, trust you’ thing, nothing should really stop you. Just share what you know with the world and if you can make some money doing it, fantastic. Sushant: So anyone who’s starting out in 2013, they should not be intimidated. Like if they have to teach a method and there’s people out there who are already teaching, they should not get intimidated like “How am I going to compete with them?” You’re saying that it’s okay because people want to not only get different perspective, but people are there for you, not necessarily for a product? Dan: Well a lot of that, definitely. But also everyone who has an existing product knows they haven’t sold to everyone. They’ve only hit a certain segment of society and even Jay Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing book, there’s a lot of people who’ve read that but there’s more people who haven’t read that. So you have the opportunity to reach people who haven’t tried what you’re talking about, haven’t
http://www.treptalks.com tested, haven’t read other books. In addition to they’ve read others and now they want your opinion. I think my motto has always been Be the Biggest Small Dog You Can Be. Create it and go. Sushant: So let’s say that someone has something to teach and they want to create an online product, whether it’s an e-‐book or an audio program or a video program or some kind of subscription service; what is the most frequent mistake that you see people making in terms of when they go about creating a product for their audience? Dan: Most frequent mistake. So this kind of ties into our whole concept today and our talk and the most frequent mistake that people make is they think that creating a product is the business, but really the business is the compilation of products and services over the course of your business life. So if you want to be like how to become a blogger type coach, that’s what you want your site to be, you want to teach people to do that kind of stuff, your e-‐book How to Become a Blogger for $3 is like the entry point into your business. It’s not the business, it’s just the entry point. The only thing that you’re doing is you’re separating those people in your audience who are willing to pay for your information from those who aren’t. So the mistake is that people think that their product is the end. Like “I did it. I made a product and I’m out” but really, that should just be the beginning and the rest of the funnel. I mean all the stuff that you do on the back end should almost be created before you create the product because you need to know where you’re taking these people. The How to Become a Blogger e-‐book that you sell, that only takes them so far, like 5 steps. So then what’s step 6? And do you have that set up in your autoresponder all ready before you sell your first book? And 7 and 10. And do you know what products they’re going to need so that you have the affiliate relationship set up and you have those emails ready? So the product itself is never the business, it’s just the entry point and you have different points into your business with all the different products. And each list then, How to Become a Blogger – that list, from your e-‐book, that is your beginner blogger list. Whereas 3 months from now, you might create a product about The 50 Best Plugins You Must Have and you’ll know that that list is for more advanced people, they’re not beginners. You don’t learn plugins on the first day. So there’s different entry points, different ways to serve a community and if you create a product and then you’re just waiting until you create the next product, then you’re missing the whole point and the whole point was “I’ve put a product out there and now I’ve created a community. I’ve created a group of people who’ve purchased the same thing from me and have the same needs and I need to take them on”. Sushant: So just to clarify that a little bit more, let’s say that I am a photographer and I have been doing some sort of photography for the last 10-‐15 years, so I do know a lot about photography and I know that I can help a lot of people who are out there. So what you’re saying is, if you’re just entering into the online entrepreneurship, creating a product out there, you should not try to put all your information in one e-‐book, you should divide it. Is that what you’re saying? Dan: No, no. I’m saying this photographer who’s decided to go online and create a product for the community and this product might be How to Use Filters On Your Lens so that you can soften your sunset, stuff like that. This particular book or product or poster or whatever it is that you make; this
http://www.treptalks.com audio or video, it’s great. It’s a representation of you, paid, in somebody else’s inbox. But that’s not the end. That just means “Great. Now I have a bunch of people who are interested in using filters, so what do I do next? Do I do a webinar? How do I take those people on? I just can’t stop. I’ve got to continue to get that snowball rolling. I need to get them into how to take portraits. My next project, I need to be pre-‐selling the idea that I’m going to make it. I need to survey and ask them; do they have the Cannon or the Reiko? I need to learn what my audience is using”. So going back to the question ‘what was the biggest mistake’, the mistake for me is you just don’t realize that the product is not the end goal. The end goal is the business, it’s the list, it’s growing your community, it’s teaching your community how to become great photographers. It’s not selling a book. The book’s just an entry point. It’s got some great information in it and it might have all the information in the world in it, everything you ever know in one book. I think that’s a silly way to go because you don’t know exactly what your audience was interested in when they bought it if it’s that general. But the idea is “Great, I have basically here’s the product and here’s the next 60 things that I want people to go through after they buy the product”. The next 60 things are what most people forget. They realize “Ooh, I forgot to add my welcome email. I forgot to add my ‘thank you for buying the book’ email. I forgot to add the ‘hey, did you read what’s on page 3’ email. I forgot to read ‘hey if you’re done with this e-‐book and you’re ready to go on to the next thing, click here to go to my next product’”. That whole phone is what most people miss. Sushant: So that’s a very good point. If you’re going online and you have some sort of expertise, don’t think about the product. You’re thinking about the business as a whole. You’re thinking about the lifecycle of a customer. Where your customer is and where you want to take them. And that product that you’re creating today is only one part of that life cycle. Dan: Yes. Sushant: So let’s say that we’re taking that photographer, and now we go a little bit further. So let’s say that I am completely new to online business, online marketing and right now, I don’t have a community. I want to choose that one piece that would be most valuable for me to be able to create that initial community that I can eventually grow by creating more products in the future. How do I go about deciding within that big photography niche, which part I should start off with that would be most helpful for me to create that community? Dan: When people are trying to figure stuff out, I always suggest that they take their Twitter stream and their Facebook updates and they dump them into Wordle, which is a program that pulls out your most common 2-‐word, 3-‐word, 4-‐word, 5-‐word and 6-‐word phrases that you use regularly, and I would call out your phrases that you use a lot. You won’t even know it – what 6-‐word phrase you commonly use, but the real goal is to figure out what questions, because if you’re a photography person, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your neighbor or someone online, as soon as somebody knows that you know something, they’re asking questions. So people have been asking you questions for a long time if you’re a photographer. You just have to figure out ‘what is it that they’re asking me’. What impression are you giving people that makes them think these are the questions that you would know the answer to? And
http://www.treptalks.com that’s basically your brand. That’s your reputation. That’s the brand that you have put out there and when you look at the questions that people ask and the words that you use when you’re replying, you can see what actually has happened with your brand. What do people think you know? So for instance, in photography, if people ask you lots of questions about backgrounds, like for couple sittings, like “I want to take a picture of my mom. What’s the best background for a Birthday picture?” then you know that people think you have some expertise in this area. They think you have a good idea of backdrops and that kind of stuff. So that’s already insight into what people value you for. Now if people already value you for that, then they want your information for that reason, so that’s where you should start. Start putting out the information that people already think you’re an expert at. That’s what they want, that’s what they’re asking you about and that’s what you should deliver. Sushant: And it could also be your experience from your personal 1-‐on-‐1 speaking with people in real life, what kind of questions people… Dan: Yes, most people can’t remember and it’s almost easier to go back through your email, search Gmail for photography, a photograph or taking pictures and see all the emails that came back and what were your replies and what were the questions. But try to get a good grasp of what people think you’re an expert at. And then, I always say go to Wiki answers or Yahoo answers and look for all the questions that people ask pertaining to that topic. So find all the questions that people haven’t asked you that they’re just asking the general public. So now you’ve got a combination of all the things people want to know about this topic and the fact that people think you’re an expert at it. So this is a great starting point. Now the next thing you have to do is figure out “Okay, now that I know that people want to know about backdrops from me, the right settings and where to go to get the right kind of picture frame” you have to figure out in what part of the photographer’s ladder of value or path from beginner to expert, where does that fall. So if it’s backgrounds, that’s not the guy who just bought the Cannon and is trying to figure out how to use the buttons, what the aperture settings are, what the f-‐stop is. It’s not that guy. So your product is not serving the beginner. It’s not serving how to buy a camera. So that means that you can’t have follow-‐up blog posts that are called How to Buy Your First Camera because you’ve attracted a different audience. They have the camera, they get it, they’re past that. So that’s where you figure out “All right, if this is what they want to know, then what are they going to want to know next? What will make them better? Is it the whole process of dividing the picture into thirds and then placing your people in the picture? What information does this level of photographer need for me to figure out my next product? Because in this product, in this product about backdrops, I need to actually hint at and start pre-‐selling the concept that I will be teaching you X-‐Y-‐Z next”. So when they’re reading it, they’re already prepared for the email that says “Hey, did you know that we’re doing a webinar on ‘X’ or on ‘Y’?” and then continue that. Sushant: So does that mean that if you start it at point ‘X’, anything before point ‘X’ is like you’re never going to talk about it or is it that at a future time, once you have created a big community, that is something that you can discuss as well?
http://www.treptalks.com Dan: No, it’s not that you’re never going to talk about it but when you’ve invited a group of people who are experts to a meeting, there’s a good chance that at the meeting you’re not going to be talking about beginner stuff. So to your audience, the blog post that you send them details about, you’re going to continually move them forward, not backwards. So you can write the How to Buy a Camera blog post, but that’s not something that you’re going to send to your product audience because you know their past that, they don’t need that. That would take them backwards. That’s not where they’re going. However in a blog post, you might say “Hey, next week we’re going to be talking about filters. If you know anyone who happens to be getting into photography, I did write a blog post on how to buy a camera. In case you want to pass it on to someone you know or someone who’s just getting into it, here it is” but in essence, you’re still trying to move your audience forward. Now that you have this product called backdrops and you know where that fits in the life cycle, you know the products that those people have already bought before they got to you. The information they got, the webinars they got, the books they read or just things they figured out on their own; you know all that stuff that they’re probably good at. Now you can start to put together those products for a new audience. Like for instance How to Buy Your First Camera, you can create that. That’s not something that you’re going to market to your audience that you just bought your backdrop book. But now that you have a product called How to Buy Your First Camera, you can hint to them that in the future, you’ll be inviting them to a product about choosing backdrops because you already own it. It’s part of a funnel, a longer funnel. You just sort of lay it out on paper. Here’s where they learn, and the next and the next and the next. Sushant: Basically what you’re saying is that once you have established your expertise with a certain audience and you’re moving them along their customer cycle, the people who come before that, either you’re going to create a separate list. Once you’ve created your expertise, can you create those products and create a separate list for these people and put them in a separate progress cycle? Dan: I would want you to have a separate list for every product. For instance, I have a tutoring client and they have a How to do Well in the Fourth Grade CLEP Exams in NYC. So I know that every year that I’m needing new lists just for that product because the people who buy that product this year are in fourth grade but next year, they’re going to be in fifth grade. So I don’t need fourth graders on my fifth grade list. So every year, I need a new list. So with photography, I would want a special list just for the backdrops because I know that they have a certain level, an advanced level. And I also know that they would be right for affiliate offers that have to do with screens and backdrops and maybe even Chroma key, which is green screen stuff. I know they already have an interest in that. The beginners I want on their own list and that list will age. I’ll probably want to create a new list for that beginner product every year so that I’m not always talking to beginners. In year two, my beginner list is now a not beginner list, it’s a level two list. So I want you to have as many lists as possible. It seems like list management would be a pain in the butt, but really with something like AWeber or Fusionsoft, you can send one email to all your lists at once. You don’t have to just write 9 different emails for all your different lists. If it’s applicable to everyone, you can just press the button, include list A, list B, list C, list D or exclude list E because it’s a beginner and this is an advanced level topic. But I would definitely want my lists parsed down to as narrow as I could so that I could match affiliate offers and information to their needs.
http://www.treptalks.com Sushant: Now do you create separate websites for each product that you create, or is it the same website that you bring everyone to? Can you tell a little bit about the website strategy that goes along with the product? Dan: There’s no ‘should’ here because there’s lots of different ways to do it. Lots of people do it different ways. Kajabi has its own website and all his other products have their own website. But if you go to pepsi.com, you’re going to see the pages for Mountain Dew and Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. They have a different brand strategy and they want you to be all inclusive that “This is our brand and this is what we do”. So that’s kind of up to you. I think it’s always good to have a separate sales page. No sidebar, it’s only about your product, has its own domain name, whether it’s a redirect or whether it has its own domain name. It doesn’t really matter. So that you can keep people focused once they get there. For me, all the products and services are on lettersfromdan.com. Now you can go to making money from pinterest.com which is a redirect to a sales page, but it’s really housed on lettersfromdan.com, I really try to keep the management down to as little as possible and I have the same audience for all my products, so looking at the Pinterest product versus Twitter Glitch marketing versus the SEO 21-‐day challenge, for me it’s the same general audience. It’s people trying to drive revenue from online tools. So for me, it works best to have them all in one place. But I do have sales pages, other off lettersfromdan.com but I drive everyone back to the same spot. Sushant: Now what is the difference between a sales page and your main website? Let’s say that you’re creating a photography website for backgrounds only. Do you create that sales page and SEO optimize it for background photography backgrounds? How does that work? How do you drive traffic to that sales page? Dan: I don’t personally drive any traffic to a sales page. I want my traffic to be pretty sold and ready to buy when they click the button to go to the sales page. So if it’s about backgrounds, then I’m going to do some keyword research on photography backgrounds and I’m going to write as many blog posts as I can about different kinds of backgrounds, where the goal of the blog post is to get you excited about the product. So the blog post teaches you, presells you on the idea that there’s a product and there’s a button to go to the sales page. The sales page does not have a sidebar, does not have my other products in it. It’s just ‘here’s the product’. If you’ve clicked the button that says ‘If you’d be interested to finding out more about my backdrop product’, then I don’t want you to go somewhere else. I want you to click on the RSS feed or join my list or check out the most recent comments or the most recent updates. Just stick to the program. Here’s the sales page. So from an optimization standpoint, I’m going to optimize blog posts, articles, videos, SlideShare presentations all about the importance of backgrounds and choosing them, and each one of those is going to have the call-‐to-‐action to go to the sales page and buy the product. Sushant: So the goal of the sales page is to remove any distractions and once you’re on the sales page, you’re basically talking about the benefits of the product, how it can help the customer and its call-‐to-‐ action by hitting ‘Buy Now’ and hopefully that will improve conversion.
http://www.treptalks.com Dan: Yes, and in some cases, you use the word benefits of the product. In some cases, you do not want to use benefits of the product on the sales page and that is evidenced on Amazon. When you click the ‘Buy’ button and you go to your cart or whatever, there isn’t additional information. They’ve already assumed that when you click it and you’re ready to buy, that you don’t need to know the benefits. You’re past that. So depending on how you presell it in the blog posts or in other places, you might not need anything. In fact, freeweeklymastermind.com has a challenge that is a 21 day SEO challenge, it’s like a shopping cart. It’s got the money on the side and just has ‘Checkout’ and that’s the sales page because in all of the things, in all of the videos and all of the blog posts, I’ve already told you what it’s about, what’s in it, what does it do, how long does it take. So when you’re ready to go to the sales page, I’d just have you go straight to the shopping cart because I’m assuming at that point that you’re just ready. You don’t need anything else. And benefits, benefits can detract. Benefits can be like “Well, I don’t know if I need all of that” or “I’m surprised it doesn’t have this benefit”. So benefits can be detracting for sure. It just sort of depends on how you have your funnel set up. Sushant: So that would come into more of the expertise of copywriting and how to write a good sales page that would convert and probably would involve testing different things and things of that nature. Dan: Oh yes. Sushant: I have a little bit of experience in ecommerce and there’s a technique that they use on ecommerce, final checkout pages where they remove all the other distracting buttons. Amazon is definitely a good example of that. So do you know of an example or something that you have done yourself where you have applied this strategy? You were talking a little before about write it down. Write everything down on a piece of paper. How do you go about creating the strategy? Are there specific questions you ask? What is a step-‐by-‐step method where you can sit down, have a piece of paper and map this thing out? How would you go about doing that? Dan: In every strategy without exception, the goal is to figure out how does a person buy your product, whether it’s at the book store, whether it’s online, whether it’s at the library. How is it they go about getting that information in their hand? In every product, in every price point, there are different objections. It’s a different process, different things to overcome. So you have to figure that out. How does your audience come about buying? I’ll go back to the tutor example real quick because I use a tutor because most people grasp the idea of a tutor. So when we first got in touch with our tutoring client, she said she wanted to be number one in Google for tutoring in New York City and stuff like that. So we were thinking that through, wondering if that made sense and decided that we were going to interview 20 of her customers. We found out a lot about the buying process for a tutor. For instance, you don’t hire a tutor until your teacher calls you and says “Hey I think your kid is having a problem learning”, something. The teacher brings it to your attention. It doesn’t really happen otherwise. There’s really hardly any instances where people are buying a tutor outside of having problems unless they’re looking for some sort of academic excellence at the end of the SAT and they need extra help. So this teacher calls the parent and says “Your kid is having problems in math” for instance. The parent does not go out
http://www.treptalks.com and hire a tutor. When you’re SEO-‐ing something, if we’re looking for ‘are you having troubles with math’ as the keyword or even as the messaging on the page, nobody’s going to hire us. It’s the wrong messaging because of the wrong point. The reason that is, is because on that first phone call, the parent decides that they’re going to sit down with the kid and see what the problem is; is there a distraction in school, is it eyeglasses. That’s where we’re at. We’re at “Hey, what else can we do to help you”. So then the teacher calls back a month or two later and says “Your kid is not getting any better” and then the parent, and if you do the SEO for tutoring and if you put on your page “Have you learned that your kid does not have an eyeglass problem or is not distracted but is still not learning”, you still have the right messaging. You don’t have the right strategy because it’s not the right point. In this point in time, the parent’s thinking “After school, I will personally spend time or my husband will or my wife and we’ll sit down and help the kid go through some stuff” and then when that doesn’t work, then the parent says “Wait. We’re going to take away the Xbox, we’re going to take away the iPad. You’re just going to have to work on this until you get it. We’re going to work on flash cards and we’re going to work on all this other stuff. And then we’re actually going to ask the teacher if they would mind helping the kid in the school or is there somebody in the school that they could get extra help from after”. It’s only at that point that the parent decides they need to hire a tutor to come to the house. So the SEO, the strategy, the marketing isn’t “Is your kid having trouble with math”, it is “Have you already taken away the iPod? Have you checked the glasses? Are there no distractions? Have you helped with the homework? Has your husband done flash cards at night? Has he been getting help at school? Has none of that worked? Then yes, you’re ready for us”. So now I know, from the strategy standpoint, what my messaging needs to be and where I need to position my product for my audience. I grasp the things that it takes, the triggers before they’re willing to even spend money on a tutor. I know what they’ve overcome, I know that they’re desperate, I know that things are harder than I originally anticipated so with every single product, I need to figure out; what is it that causes that sale. For a Hershey bar at the counter at Kroger when you’re buying groceries, to see it there, even though it seems like it’s just an impulse buy, the fact of the matter is for the last 90 or 100 years, Hershey has been proving over and over and over and over again that their chocolate is safe, that people like it, that you love it, that it’s not melted; they continually do what it takes to make sure that when you’re at the register, that you can grab it without having any objections. But if I take Dan-‐O chocolate bar and I stick it in the same spot at the register, it’s not going to happen. People are not going to grab the Dan-‐O chocolate bar because all those other objections haven’t been overcome in your head. Just like “I don’t even know. Is that going to be that crappy Halloween candy chocolate? Does it have white dots on the bottom of it?” You don’t know, so when you’re doing an online product and let’s just say it’s keyword research, what is it that an online marketer has to have gone through in order to want to pay for keyword research? So my strategy is “What kind of things am I confirming for them? Yes I know you’ve tried using the Google Adwords tool and it didn’t work. Yes I know that you’ve been blogging for 5 years and you’re still not getting traffic. Yes I know that it’s expensive to buy a keyword product, but here is why it will bring you value”. So once I grasp that concept, that human “How do I buy things”, then I can start to quickly go to the actual strategy of “Okay, we know how to position it. How do we confirm for them the things they know? Have we overcome the objections that they have? How do we prove that what we’re providing is going to
http://www.treptalks.com solve their problem?” Then we’ve got something to work with, no matter what the product or the service is. Now we’ve got a base from which we can develop the strategy before the strategy, after where we’re going to market, whether we go in forms, whether we use SEO, whether we use Facebook; at least we know what it takes for somebody to buy our product and we can deliver that in a sequence. Sushant: And the best way to go about doing that, you said in the tutoring example that you spoke with some of their clients, is that the best way to go about it? Like 1-‐on-‐1? In person? Is there a way to do that online? Dan: I don’t know of any better way than 1-‐on-‐1, and when you can’t get 1-‐on-‐1, you’ve got forums, you can search for the phrase, in quotes, “Powered by Vbulletin” and then you can put your niche, keywords or keyword research. And then Google will return to you all kinds of forum posts about keyword research. So then you can go in and see what people are talking about. You can actually read their problems and all that kind of stuff, which you cannot do without taking that step. You just can’t see that. You can ask them in person, that’s fantastic. Otherwise, try to find places where people feel free to speak and are using their own words. Sushant: So the most important thing is the most important starting point is really to understand what problems a customer goes through, what challenges that they have, what previous solution they have tried to solve their problems, how they have not worked, and once you have understood all that sequence, it will be easier for you to create that strategy. Dan: If you don’t understand your customer, you just do basic marketing, then yea, you can’t really create a strategy. You can only guess. If you understand, then you don’t really have to guess. You just have to apply. Sushant: So let’s say that I have understood this basic concept of how my customer makes that purchase and what are some of the challenges they’ve gone through and the problem. What are the next steps after that? Dan: So the next step for me, is laying it out on paper. Here is the process; how do I react at every single level of the process? When somebody is searching for having trouble with math, how do I give them the information that they need to overcome that? And then point them to the next step in the process. If you’ve already tried this, click here and we’ll show you some techniques to learn flash cards and stuff at night or schedule it so you have less time. If you’ve done that, then click here and wondering about what options are available to you through a public education system. What kinds of tutors will they freely give you? And if you’ve tried that, then click here and let us tell you about our services. Sushant: And basically, you do that through your blog post. That is the best way of doing that. Dan: I do that through the blog posts and then that whole process is always on site. Every single website always has that process laid out. So if you get to a blog post, it’s going to say ‘click here’ and take you to
http://www.treptalks.com the next one. If you get to that blog post, it’s going to say ‘click here’ and take you to the next one. I already know steps that you’re going through mentally. I just need to match that on mine. Sushant: So basically a person lands on a ladder and you’re directing them one step at a time to your sales page and you’re removing all of the distractions on the sales page and basically the customer feels that they’re understood, they feel that you understand their problem, you have a solution for them and they’re ready to make the sale. Dan: Exactly. Sushant: Okay perfect. That makes sense. So that makes a lot of sense. Now you have created your first product, you have taken the customer to that ladder and made your sale. You’ve created that first community, first group of people. How do you know that you’re ready to create that continued product? You’re ready to take them to the next level? Is there 36:39 or is there something that tells you that now your customer has learned what you’re teaching them, now they’re ready to take that next step? Dan: If you are an expert, if you know something that you’re ready to teach, then you should grasp the timeline behind how long it takes to learn things. So for instance, if you’re doing How to Become a Blogger and you first teach them how to upload WordPress to their website, you should know that that doesn’t take very well and that your next thing needs to be really quick; how to write a post, how to add pictures to your post, how to embed YouTube videos, how to get them using WordPress. So those kinds of things should be easy for somebody who knows something about the subject to figure out. Now there’s always the part where ‘how do you have time to develop all the things in the order that they need to be developed in the right time frame’. So that part, when you’re a beginner, you should ignore to some degree because five years from now, you might have 20 products; one for each step of the process, at which time, your timing will have been perfected because you’ll know how many emails they need between if some people weren’t ready and you sent the email and said “I’m not quite ready for that yet”, you’ll know to add an email giving them 3-‐5 more days or 7 or 20. So today, on day one, the goal should be ‘let’s make the product and then figure out how do I continually make this audience, the audience that just bought my product, how do I make them smarter’ because every month that you don’t send them an email, this reduces your open rate and makes that time and the value of your original product just futile. You sold 100 and then 85 opened the first email, and you wait a month and now only 45 open the second email, and you wait a month and now only 13 open it. So you’re burning time. So your goal should be if I’m going to create this product, how am I going to educate these people continually for the next 6 months? And what steps are they going to need in those 6 months? And can I create a product from any of those steps? Those are the kinds of things that should be working out. Sushant: So basically after you have released your first product, the email list that you have, you’re trying to keep in touch with them either through sending communication through email, through blog posts, through by creating free webinars and basically you’re nudging them slowly, you’re answering their questions that they may have from their initial product, and then you’re slowly nudging them towards that second product.
http://www.treptalks.com Dan: You’re slowly nudging them towards excellence.
Sushant: Towards excellence. Dan: Towards them becoming an expert in what it is that they want to learn. So at some point in time, there’s going to be more products for you to teach them bigger concepts. But other times, you’re right, it’s going to be blog posts, it’s going to be more interviews like this where I send my audience to this interview on your site because I know they’re ready for this information and I’ve already created this product with you. So why would I recreate it? I just need to figure out where does this interview that we’re having, where does this fit into the lifestyle of my customers so I can go back to my email system and say “Oh good, between X and Z, I’m going to create a new email about talking to Sushant and I’m going to put a link into this video, and then tell people to go watch it and then have them come back to the forum and talk about these concepts. So each thing that we do becomes an asset. Some of these are product, like this could be a product, or for you it is a product. For me, it might be ‘go buy Sushant’s product because in it, there is an interview about this particular topic’. But over time, you’re going to fill in all the holes and you’re going to have time to do small products here and small products there. You can have time to do interviews. And the great thing about knowing the customers lifecycle, how they’re learning, is that if you have it laid out on paper and in your head, and then you go to a conference and you just happen to meet a guy who’s really good with tripod angles and you know just from your own funnel and your own knowledge of the customer thing that “Whoa, that would be great. If I could just interview him while I’m here, I could put that email into my cycle at email #72 or email #61 or whatever, and I should take advantage of this right now because I know it would be useful for them”. So if you already have that churning in your head, you can take it take advantage of so many more things that you couldn’t take advantage of without thinking it through. Sushant: That makes a lot of sense. So five years down the road, and of course you said at the beginning, you’re trying to build product at your own pace. But five years down the road, you’ve already figured out the whole funnel and new people are coming in and they’re automatically moving through the funnel and it becomes like an automatic process. That’s the whole point of creating the business. Dan: Yea, it should be as automated as possible because you’re really trying to get leverage, so that you can take your brain and get the knowledge out of it, put it into a sequence and then leverage the automation so that you can use your brain for a new thing. You can’t be using your brain for the same thing every day or you won’t get to the next level. Sushant: That makes a lot of sense. Now, is there anything else that I have missed, that I have not asked you, anything that you would like to add in this context? Dan: Anything? I mean, we could talk about… Sushant: Well, in relation to this topic particularly.
http://www.treptalks.com Dan: So another thing that we probably didn’t talk about, is once you understand this process and you might actually be able to really hone in and just become an expert on one thing. You might be the guy that is just like the tripod expert of the world. You know all the camera tripods, the gorilla, the tall ones, the short ones, the ones that stick to the walls and windows. You just might be the guy, the to-‐to guy of photographers when it comes to tripods. As niches that sounds, there is a battery store. Right? You can go to Batteries Plus and that’s all they have is batteries. So you could become the guy and when you know that and you know the lifecycle of a photographer, then you know the kinds of things that your photographers need to learn before they buy a tripod and after, when they’re buying the expensive ones, the stabilization ones or the ones you use on a boat that allow the camera to stay level even though the boat’s rocking. So you know where people are in their sequence when they’re about to buy these things. So that means that you can go find the other entrepreneurs on the planet who are serving your future audience right now. You know that they’re experts in photography and they’ve achieved some level of knowledge and they’re on B6 Forbes. So you can go leverage those forums. You can talk to those owners about “Hey, how about we do a webinar about tripods together. Your audience will become my audience. I will be able to sell them tripod information and you’ll make a commission”. And then you also know that when they buy a tripod like the kind on the boat, you know that where they’re headed, what kinds of mastery and level of expertise, which you can go search the World Wide Web for people who serve them at that level. At that stage, action photography or adventure shots. You could say “I’m the tripod guy. I’ve got a great list of people. I would love to send them your way. Do you have a program we could create where I can make some revenue off of your teaching them how to use these fabulous tripods” So kind of an odd example, but I think you get the point. Sushant: Yes, so basically it doesn’t end with your knowledge only, but then you take and you leverage other people’s information and other peoples’ knowledge and use it to create partnerships and affiliate models to really help more people and also create generate more revenue for yourself. Dan: Yes. Sushant: Perfect. Well I definitely learned a lot. I think the information that you shared was really, really valuable and I think this video itself could probably be sold for something, although I’m not doing that right now. But the point that I’m saying is, the information that you’ve shared, I definitely found it very valuable, it definitely opened my mind a little bit to not think in terms of just product, but creating a business. And that is something that I had personally not thought about and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people who are out there that are just starting out haven’t thought about their businesses in this way. So again, really appreciate your time today, Dan. Now if someone wants to get in touch with you, someone wants to buy some of your products, hire you for consulting and things like that, what is the best way to get in touch with you? Dan: Well on Facebook, there is a group called Free Weekly Mastermind. I would say that it’s probably the best place to start. It’s a highly engaging form on online marketing topics. And then, across the nation I do a blogging workshop series called Blogging Concentrated. It’s at bloggingconcentrated.com
http://www.treptalks.com and I think we’re in 6 cities this fall, we’re 9 cities next spring, and we’ll be all over the country. So I’d love to hang out with you for a day at Blogging Concentrated. Otherwise, my home base is lettersfromdan.com and there’s a ‘services’ page and events and all kinds of great blogging information. Sushant: Well perfect. Thank you so much again, Dan for joining us today and really appreciate all the information that you’ve shared and thank you again for your time today. Dan: Hey, thanks man. I appreciate you having me on. Sushant: Thanks. Have a good day. Bye.
