Entrepreneur Conundrum

Time Stamp01:02:So what led you to become an entrepreneur?03:31: You had mentioned that you approach projects differently than most. I was reading something about that. So can you elaborate on that a little bit?05:19: What are some of the big goals that you hope to achieve in the next one to two years?08:07: How would that goal of moving more from the done for you to your course change your business?10:03: So what's a roadblock that has been stopping you from achieving this goal?11:33: What are you doing to attract more business and to become more visible online?14:51: What is the best advice that you've ever received?17:29: What is the best advice that you have ever given?20:53: What would you like to share that I haven't asked you?23:25: How can people find out more about you and what you do?Mentions & ResourcesDistinctDigitalMarketing.com Drab to Fab ClarkCreativeStudio.comClark Creative Studio FacebookPremature Optimization

Time Stamp of Questions:00:45: So for those that might have missed the first little episode, tell us about yourself.01:28: How did you get started doing that, helping others, realize that?04:41: What's the best advice you've ever been given?08:06: So what's the best advice you have given?10:39: So what are some big goals that you're looking to achieve in the next one to two years?12:15: What would achieving that goal mean to your business?14:24: What would be your biggest roadblock in achieving your goal?17:59: What are you guys doing to get visible, to stand out online?21:16: How can people find out more about you and what you do? Resources and Mentioned ItemsDistinct Digital MarketingEalier episodeHindsight HacKing PodcastHindsight Hacking Facebook GroupCory E Carter.com  NowMyDream22.comClickFunnelsOne Funnel Away ChallengeSusan LiteransonJamie Atkinson - Podcast for Profit Lab, Content Launch Secrets, Offer Blue PrintKatrine Jones - CF Design SchoolHacking Your Why eBookHacking Your Perfect Day eBookHacking Your Goals 

Time Stamp of Questions: 01:24: How did you go from being with all these big marketing agencies to going out on your own?03:16: What do you like most about the work that you do?04:36: What's the best advice you've ever received?05:42: What's the best advice you've ever given?07:06: What are some big goals that you're looking to achieve over the next one to two years?09:25: So with those goals, how would that affect or change your business?11:20: What do you think is the number one roadblock from helping you achieve some of those goals?13:11:  What do you do to get visible online?15:39: What would you like to share that I haven't asked?17:04: Where can people find  you? Resources and Mentioned ItemsDistinctDigitalMarketing.comCyberpunk Geeks Facebook GroupSeymourDigitalMedia.comPower of Eight by Lynne McTaggart 

Time of Questions:01:10: What was it like growing up?02:15: What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?04:08: So what are some of the common mistakes that you see business owners making?05:16: Do you have any tips on how to get out of your own way?07:21: Thank you. What's the best advice you've ever received.08:01: What's the best advice you've ever given?09:45: What are some of your goals that you wish to achieve with your company in the next couple of years?11:32: Do you think there's any roadblocks that are stopping you from getting that stretched out as far as you want to get it?12:56: Weekly self evaluation14:07: What's working for you guys to attract more business?15:51: So, is there anything that you would like to share that I haven't asked you yet?17:33: How can people find out more about you and what you do?Virginia Purnell:Welcome to Entrepreneur Conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Hi everyone. Today, I'm talking with Chris Williams about how he helps businesses scale and grow. Chris has over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship for profit leadership and socially responsible marketing engagement. He has helped creative agencies build wealth and agency owners develop innovative winning strategies. His expertise includes lead generation creative team building and allowing owners to focus on what they do best. Apart from leading his own agency, Chris hosts a private mastermind for creative agency owners looking to scale and optimize their businesses. Welcome Chris.Chris Williams:Thanks, Virginia. Super excited to be here.Virginia Purnell:I'm excited for you today. I'm excited to talk to you about all of the things that you have done.Chris Williams:I don't know. It might be boring.Virginia Purnell:Well, time will tell, I guess I'm sure you have a few good stories up your sleeve.Chris Williams:Yeah. How can I help anything I can do to help your audience? I'm all in. Let's talk.Virginia Purnell:What was it like growing up?Chris Williams:Wow, that's a deep question. And I think this is part of the entrepreneur journey too. So growing up for me, I had a very disciplined family, but a very abusive family. That's that's a deep dive right there, but I, I think, and I, in fact, I know now after years of therapy and, and tons of time spent healing, I know that that part of the hardness of, of growing up and figuring that out and learning to is actually, what's made me really good at some of the things I do professionally, because it's a lot of problem solving a lot of risk management, a lot of those things that you don't want kids to have to deal with, but those traits when they can kind of be turned into a positive thing as an adult can become really positive. So that's a fun question to start with because it's deep, but it's also like, yeah, you know, it was a very disciplined life, but a very hard life. And, and that's, that's part of who I am, right? It's that's life. We gotta, we gotta heal and we gotta grow and we gotta use those things to our advantage.Virginia Purnell:Yes, we each have our own story and it's important. And part of who we are. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?Chris Williams:You know, when I was 11, I, I wanted to cut grass and I realized I could make, you know, 20 bucks a yard. And that was better than anything else I could think of doing to make money. And I would want to buy stuff at the local pet store. I was really into fish aquariums and frogs and turtles and anything like that. So I traded my next door neighbor for a lawnmower. So they had a lawnmower and they hated cutting the grass. So I was like, Hey, if I can have your lawn mower, like, and keep it at my house all summer, I will cut your grass for free all summer. And then at the end of the summer, the lawnmower is paid off. It becomes my property. So I did that. And all of a sudden I was able to like, have a lawnmower, have some equipment that I got five more yards that summer. Cause I had tools now. And then I hired someone, I was 14, so I hired someone to drive me around eventually, cause we couldn't drive at yards that I went elsewhere. And I started learning about people and systems and selling like at a young age when I was 11, I started out and that launched everything for me because it gave me a taste of what could happen with hard work and with structure and with people helping me,Virginia Purnell:That's really inspirational. And it's kind of fun. Like I can like see you out there, like trying to convince someone to, to drive you all around.Chris Williams:I had a 30 year old woman driving me around. So funny. And then I would go spend all of my money at the pet store every day. I'd go back to the pet store and just blow it all and then go back and cut grass.Virginia Purnell:At least you had motivation, right?Chris Williams:Yup.Virginia Purnell:So what are some of the common mistakes that you see business owners making?Chris Williams:You know, I think the most common mistake we all make me included over and over and over again is me. I am almost always the problem in my own business. I think for a while, Oh, it's the person I hired or it's the economy or it's, whatever's coming up in the news or it's the holidays and I'm not getting any sale, whatever, that's, that's all a bunch of bull. What's true. Is that in my own head and in my own heart, I have to decide number one, am I going to go freaking get the work done and do what I need to do, not be busy, but am I going to do the right things? And number two, am I going to stop doing the things I don't need to do? Which typically is 90% of the problem. Just not becoming the roadblock, not becoming the thing that's in the way of my myself or my family or my clients or my, my team succeeding. It's almost always me. That's the biggest hassle of being an entrepreneur is being me.Virginia Purnell:Do you have any tips on how to get out of your own way?Chris Williams:Yeah. Yes I do. So I am always in, I have been, I've been doing this for probably 15 years now. I'm always involved with the coach or a therapist or a mentor or a mastermind group or people that I respect that are actually structurally allowed to speak into my life. So there's lots of categories you just mentioned there, but spouse or partner doesn't cut it, right? Cause they're kind of either too hard or too soft on you depending on the day and how the kids are acting and all that stuff. It's somebody from the outside who can look in at me and say, Hey, love what you're doing, but I'm noticing some trends here. And I think if you just kind of cleaned this up or took advantage of this or stopped doing this, you could really overcome something here. Where, they're in a place where they can really help me. So sometimes that's been a therapist right from healing, from stuff in my background. Sometimes that's been a coach that I've hired for very specific reasons to help me get through something challenging in business. Sometimes it's been mastermind style groups where I could actually hang out with other people like me that were at my same level, and learn together.Those things have been super, super impactful and really helps me grow because they've been honest and they've been pointed exactly where I need to go. And I'm going to say one more thing about the coaching side of that. Anybody listening, I would only hire a coach or a mentor, or going to hire someone or buy into a mastermind or whatever. There's tons of them out there. Lots of really good, what you want to do. Aright. If they just sell how to do it, that's very different. And it's weak compared to someone who's actually done what you want to do and is still doing it, and has, has that kind of proof. That's a really important thing. Otherwise I hear a lot of sad stories of people wasting money with coaches or mentors or whatever that they shouldn't be. Shouldn't they, they shouldn't be selling. They shouldn't be on the market, you know, so find somebody who can help you and get help.Virginia Purnell:Thank you. What's the best advice you've ever received.Chris Williams:Oh wow. Best advice I've ever received. I would say, is being honest with me and being honest with the people around me, honest, and kind. I think those two things: be honest and be kind. The golden rule: do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, is so important. That's kindness. And that honesty that comes with it is just not, not beating around the bush with what's right or wrong for you or others, but standing up and being brave and knowing what you need and know how to say it.Virginia Purnell:Sometimes it's hard being honest with yourself. So I like that one. What's the best advice you've ever given?Chris Williams:Hmm. Wow. I wish I was one of the people who could just roll out quotes constantly and they're like, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna write that down. I would say the best advice I've ever given is probably the stuff we tell our kids, which is to be honest, and to be kind and to love and be active in their communities and to understand who they are internally, spiritually, their faith, their personality, their own head and heart, their skill sets, those kind of internal things. So, knowing who they are as people, and I would say anybody who's listening, same thing, knowing who, you know, who you are and ground yourself. And then be honest about that and be kind as you're, as you're honest, and as you invest in your community, that that's the stuff that makes us enjoy our next door neighbor when they're that way or our fellow family member or anybody else we hanging out with that's, that's the kind of person I want to be. And I think if we're that kind of person as individuals, we're going to make fantastic people as business leaders, we're going to make fantastic community leaders, parents, you know, partners, whatever we are in life. And so many hats we wear. Yeah.That's the foundation.Virginia Purnell:I liked that I had to talk with my son about that this morning. He can't just act this certain way right now and then expect to be a completely different person when he gets bigger. He's laying that foundation.Chris Williams:Hmm. Good advice.Virginia Purnell:What are some of your goals that you wish to achieve with your company in the next couple of years?Chris Williams:Good question. I have two companies, Virginia, you know this. But for those listening, I have a creative and digital agency that works with surgeons and super niche specialties and very unique communities around the United States. So that business is growing and scaling and I work less than 30 minutes a day in that business. I love running a business that grows well and has high profit margins, and that doesn't require the owners work. That's, that's just my thing in entrepreneurship. I love that. I also have an agency that teaches that process to other digital and creative agency owners. So they can do the same thing. We have a mastermind that we teach. We have online training, we have tons of free material in the Facebook group. We have all those different things but my goals surround those two things because I love building profit margins. And I love figuring out how far I can separate money in time.So making a lot of money in a very small amount of time. And that's not because I'm lazy and it's not because I need more money at this stage. It's because I like the machine. I'm not a car mechanic. I've never been a car guy, but if I was, it would be, that's the kind of machine I like to work on. I like working on machines that are business and systems and people oriented. I like building other people. So, my goals all revolve around financial goals and I measure all my financial goals by a month or by a quarter. And then the time goals that are associated with that, just separating out money as far away from time as possible. Getting those two things stretched out as far as you can. I just wanna see how far I can take that.Virginia Purnell:That sounds like a fun goal that I want, that I want to incorporate too. Do you think there's any roadblocks that are stopping you from getting that stretched out as far as you want to get it?Chris Williams:Oh yeah, absolutely. It comes back to me again. And even though I'm good at and practiced at systems and people that helped me, I still am constantly trimming things that I need to stop doing that I know I can train and delegate this thing out, which would free up time to either be more free or go find the next more productive thing I should be doing based on my unique skills and abilities. So there's lots of people in our world around us who can help us do the things we do really well. And for me, my roadblock is consistently like literally weekly. I check back in on how I did that week. I look at what I should have done and I think are all these things on my calendar. I'm looking at my calendar on my screen right now, all these things in my calendar, the things that were really the best use of my time, or could I find someone else who could do these? And almost always, I can find someone who can do them. And then if I can't afford that person because of whatever the profit margins are on my product or service, I forgot a way to sell those products or services at a higher profit margin to a slightly different niche. And, and that way I can incorporate someone in to let them do that work. So I can go to the next step.Virginia Purnell:I like that. Being able to, and it's because lots of people do self-evaluation but they do it in longer intervals. Let's say where you're talking about doing it weekly.Chris Williams:Yeah. Yeah. In fact, to go a step farther in that I don't think through years, like a 12 month year anymore. I think through my year, the way I function as a business person and as a regular guy in my family, our year revolves around 90 days. So every quarter is a year in our, in my, my mentality. And so every week in that quarter is like a month there's 12 full weeks in every quarter of the year. There's that little odd couple of days at the end that we do a bunch of planning and looking back in our business. But those 12 weeks are what are now my month. So every week I consider it, like I just burnt an entire month of my year, every week. Is that big a deal? I want to make every freaking one of them amazing. And I want to crush it again the next time. So I really want to make sure I do it right every day.Virginia Purnell:You must really love birthdays.Chris Williams:I get to have 4 birthdays a year now.Virginia Purnell:What's working for you guys to attract more business.Chris Williams:Ah, yeah. So two things that are really, really, I don't know, maybe I have to go into four things that are really crushing it right now. Cause there's really four things. We're really, really good at getting referrals. So I follow a really structured referral script that I learned, oh, year's ago from a guy named Wayne Cotton. Anyway, I love that referral script. We use it all the time in our agency. We sell high ticket and we get referred to very specific people in our market. And that's been really, really cool. So love getting referrals, do it in a structured way if you're going to referrals, follow a script, ask intentional questions about who you want to work with. Be surprised how many people you can meet and work with that way. They're the warmest best clients ever. That's in our creative agency that works with surgeons. In our elite agency that works with other creative and digital agency owners, we do a lot of free content in our Facebook group and that's been really wonderful. It brings a lot of people in our community and we also have webinar type structure. We have courses online that all feed in from some paid traffic that comes into those products. That works really well if you're dialing on your message, but again, on any of that stuff, you have to know how to sell it organically. And ideally build a referral before you can do well on anything ads. If you're running paid ads, if anybody's listening, running paid ads, you have to figure out the organic human connection before you can replicate that in a paid ad. Otherwise you just spend a bunch of money on Facebook or Google and you wish you hadn't. And then the third thing is Instagram right now, Instagram is doing really well for us. We do a lot of teaching and training and education and ideas on Instagram. And that's really fun. It's a great place to meet people and the people who want to engage with us more, step up and do that. That's been really cool.Virginia Purnell:Thanks for sharing. So, is there anything that you would like to share that I haven't asked you yet?Chris Williams:You know, I think the next thing I would want to say is for anybody listening in right now, use Virginia as an amazing example of someone who's leading in what she's doing and she's creating content. She's creating, not just content that are her own ideas, because it's so easy for us to all talk about ourselves, but she's actually pulling content from lots of other resources like me and so many others. I'm not the best speaker she has in this podcast by any means, she's got amazing people. The thing that she's doing though, is she's sharing and building a space for people to learn and grow. And that's critical if you're going to hire anybody to do any kind of work for you, hire people who are leaders like Virginia, because it allows space in your own agency, your own model to really bring another leader in, not just a doer. Okay?So it's great to have people who just get the job done, but when you have somebody get the job done, who's actually an influencer and a leader. And has that mindset to be forward thinking and building, they're going to build into your team. They're going to build into your clients. There's going to be so much building and value there that you just can't, you can't get by just hiring out a job. It's important to find a leader who actually wants to impact the world and that will impact your business and your clients in a really special way. So that honestly, Virginia, you don't even know I was going to be going that path, but that's, that is the truth about what you're doing. It's the truth about who you are as a person. And so that's what I would, that's what I'd want to say. If there's anything else I could say, that's it.Virginia Purnell:Well, thank you very much. How can people find out more about you and what you do?Chris Williams:Couple of easy ways. Social media handles are all the same for me. Chris Williams, HQ, So C H R I S W I L L I A M S H Q, like headquarters. So @ChrisWilliamsHQ on any platform and then our Facebook group is absolutely the best place. We do tons of Q & A in there. We dump tons of content there. We don't even ask for email addresses. It's just free and anybody who's a creative or digital agency owner in that space will likely be blown away by what's in there. So that's Elite Agency Inner Circle. If you just look in Facebook for Elite Agency Inner Circle and that right there, you can ask to join the group. And if you are in that space, we'll let you in and you just ask questions, we answer them. It's super straightforward. And there's tons of amazing rockstar agency owners in there who are constantly answering questions and helping people grow.Virginia Purnell:Thank you again, Chris, for coming on and for sharing all of your advice and words of wisdom with us.Chris Williams:Absolutely. Virginia. Thanks so much for having me. It's been really fun.Virginia Purnell:You're welcome. Have a great day.Chris Williams:Okay.Virginia Purnell:Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode.Resources and Mentioned ItemsDistinct Digital Marketing.comElite Agency Inner Circle Facebook Group@ChrisWilliamsHQ InstagramSocial Media: @ChrisWilliamsHQWayne Cotton

Times of Questions:01:20: What was it that inspired you to become an entrepreneur?02:34: What do you like most about the work that you're doing?03:42: What are some common mistakes that you see your customers or clients making?05:58: What are some of your big goals that you're looking to achieve over the next one to two years?10:52: So, what's a big roadblock that is stopping you from achieving your goal of growing your agency?14:38: So you've talked about inner work and attracting the companies. Is that the only thing that you do is kind of their law of attraction aspect or is there more that you do to attract or for marketing your business and for getting new clients?16:34: Is there something that you would like to share that I haven't asked you?20:19: Where can people find out more about you and what you do? Virginia Purnell:Welcome to Entrepreneur Conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Hi everyone. Today I'm talking with Olga Fomenko. Olga grew up watching her father build businesses in post Soviet Russia where free enterprise was not even a thing. She inherited his free spirit and started her first business at the age of 17. After moving to the US and working hard on other people's businesses for years, she got a taste of the American dream, decided to become a full time entrepreneur and never looked back. Through highs and lows, she built herself from ground up in the online business space and now is helping others to do the same. Today Olga is an integrator and an online business manager for high net worth business owners. She is passionate about working with virtual teams, building systems that allow business owners to have the life they dream of and all things marketing. Olga is continuously learning and growing and believes that your network equals your net worth. That's why she enjoys being a part of the number of amazing communities of entrepreneurs and business owners. And that is actually how we met and got to know each other a few months back. Welcome, Olga.Olga Fomenko:Hey Virginia. Thanks for having me.Virginia Purnell:Thank you for joining us today.Olga Fomenko:My pleasure.Virginia Purnell:So what was it that inspired you to become an entrepreneur?Olga Fomenko:I don't know if you get inspired to become an entrepreneur or you're born to be an entrepreneur, but I usually say that my story has started with watching a movie and reading a book. I watched the movie The Secret. And then a few months later I read the book by Kim Kiyosaki and she's the wife of Robert Kiyosaki. Her book was the Rich Woman and that's where I learned about, Rich Dad, Poor Dad book. And that's how it all started for me. I mean, that's how I started to pursue the career of an entrepreneur on a full time basis. But I think I was an entrepreneur all my life because I always tried to do something. I always try to start a business. I always try to find opportunities to make extra money and do all kinds of stuff.Virginia Purnell:What do you like most about the work that you're doing?Olga Fomenko:Well, my favorite part of working with other business owners is that I get to really be a part of something bigger. I get to be part of different visions and help other people, other entrepreneurs to achieve their greater goals and greater dreams. And through that I get to learn different things. I get to learn different things. It's not like unlike taking a course on how to launch a podcast or how to launch your book, I actually get to do that with my clients. And that is what's really, really exciting for me.Virginia Purnell:It must be fulfilling to be able to see the business owners reach their dreams and to reach their goals and knowing that you were able to help them get there.Olga Fomenko:Yes, absolutely. That's my favorite part.Virginia Purnell:What are some common mistakes that you see your customers or clients making?Olga Fomenko:Well, you know, we will make mistakes as we're building businesses. Like one of my mentors likes to say, "your business is broken, if you do things right, it always will be.' The mistakes are the parts of the process. And part of the progress. I deal with digital marketing, team building, systems building and in the businesses. So many mistakes that I get to, I would say maybe challenges that I get to solve are around those topics. You know, like people don't hire the right way. They rush into the hiring process, get somebody on board just to get them just because they need help as soon as possible. They don't think through that process. Some people try to rush through launches, not thinking that through, not assessing all of the you know, pros and cons, all of the certain strategies that they pick and that may result and the difficulties or you know, lower results then they expect. So I hope that answers your question a little bit.Virginia Purnell:It does. Thank you. I like what you said about like mistakes isn't the like a bad part cause it's like what Thomas Edison said, he's like, I didn't do a hundred wrong things to get to or make a hundred mistakes to get to the light bulb, or a thousand, he's like, I learned like it was a thousand step process to get there. And I'm totally butchering that quote, but it was something to that effect. Like it, it didn't, he didn't do everything wrong. It just took him the process to get there, to know what not to do.Olga Fomenko:For sure. Yeah.Virginia Purnell:So we kind of talked about you helping your clients reach their dreams and their goals. What are some of your big goals that you're looking to achieve over the next one to two years?Olga Fomenko:Oh, my goal is actually to keep building my agency and keep helping the business rockstars to create jobs and build the new economy. You know, like today's, this is going to be the most important saying for the country and for the world is to build new businesses, create new jobs, create new opportunities. And through my skills, I'm seeing an opportunity to be a part of that. And actually you know, take on more businesses where I can come in and help to create those opportunities and help to grow the bottom line of the businesses so they can afford to bring on new team members so they can afford to scale and you know, and become bigger, better, stronger for the good of the society and for the for the good of the new economy of that we're going to be building in the next two years.Virginia Purnell:It's crazy how everything has shifted kind of all of a sudden, hey?Olga Fomenko:I didn't know. It's kind of all of a sudden because I have been in entrepreneurship full time for 10 years now and I got started a little after 2008, and when 2008 recession was happening, I was not aware of what is going on besides that I moved to California and I couldn't find a job and I couldn't understand what's going on. But once I started to study this and I started to read the books of Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump and you know, all of the real estate guys, I started to get into the understanding that the market goes through the cycles, real estate markets, stock market, all of that goes through the cycles and sooner or later we're going to have a recession again, like sooner or later the market is going to fall and we're going to see that again. And for the last three, four years experts, financial experts, have been saying that the recession is inevitable.We don't know how it's going to happen, but we know it will. So that's why you always want to be preparing because even when we're out, like I know that officially we're not in the recession yet because this crisis is not finished, but once the crisis is finished, we're going to go into recession and there will be time to rebuild and overcome that and brands where you're going to go on the top of a mountain for a little time for a little, you know, period of time and sooner or later another session is going to hit. It's the cycles, the normal cycles of life, like humans are always, even in crisis, the planet always lives in crisis. There's always all of these different crises happening around us, so it's all a matter of being prepared for them and knowing that the next crisis is coming and just make sure that you are built for it. You're built for it emotionally. You're built for it financially and educate yourself about what has happened in previous crises and crises, right? They've been happening all the time. So if you're educating yourself about what has been happening, that it's going to be easier for you to pivot and the new crisis and understand where things go and how you can not just survive it, but actually thrive in the next crisis that is inevitable. Just like this one was.Virginia Purnell:Thanks for that reminder, about like everything has its cycle and yeah, it was, it is inevitable. Like it's going to come. And just to get ourselves in a position, like you said, like whether it's mentally, emotionally, financially, like just get, get ourselves in that position and be aware and be prepared.Olga Fomenko:Yeah.Virginia Purnell:So, what's a big roadblock that is stopping you from achieving your goal of growing your agency?Olga Fomenko:Don't think anything is stopping me right now I am actually feeling in the momentum. I feel terrible for people that are out of momentum and are experiencing all of the challenges and difficulties that came with this crisis. But to me personally, it's been a blessing because what I do is actually needed in the online and the digital world. So I had more requests for help than normal. And I have actually been working on my personal mindset and have been doing a lot of inner work to prepare myself to help all of those people that are requesting our help because nothing is stopping me from achieving my goals. But it doesn't mean that it can't change. And the matter of you know, a few moments because it's, it's really, it's truly inside of you the confidence that you can go through certain challenges and you can help other people. So working on myself has become my main focus for the last few months so I can build my confidence to the level that I can help other people. And you know, like Zig Ziglar, used to say that if you help enough people to get what they want to, you can have what you want. So that is my mantra. I want to help as many people as possible and through that I will get the reaches that I am dreaming of and I have no doubt this is how it works.Virginia Purnell:I totally agree with you. It's amazing how like when you focus on others and on helping others, that you get what you need or you get the help that you need. Like it doesn't matter whether you're low, you're low, just like emotionally or something like that and you're helping others and then you, you feel better. And it's fun how it works that way too in the business world.Olga Fomenko:Yeah. I've seen that over and over again that, you know, we don't want to,and I don't know, like maybe there are people that think differently, but to me it's really important that people that I work with, my mentors, my support group, my coaches, even my clients, that they are confident, they know they can help their audience, they know they can help their clients because if they're not confident about what they're doing, then it's very, very hard to believe them. You know? Like if you don't believe in yourself, then how can your clients believe in you? I, I think that inner work is the most important work that we have to be focused on all of us. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, what you're doing. I think it's the most important thing.Virginia Purnell:I agree. Cause it's like, yeah, like, like you had said before, like if you're not confident in yourself, others around you are going to see it and that's not gonna help you get what you want in essence, right? You're just going to repel the people. So you've talked about inner work and attracting the companies. Is that the only thing that you do is kind of their law of attraction aspect or is there more that you do to attract or for marketing your business and for getting new clients?Olga Fomenko:Well, you know, up until this point for the last nine years, my business was mostly word of mouth. But actually in the last few months I have been working on the revampion of my market and systems and ready to do some lead generation. So I'm an expert at digital marketing, right? So I know what to, how to help clients to create lead generation systems. And it's interesting that I barely had to do it for myself. So now I'm actually revamping my marketing and looking into it from the perspective of let me do for me what I do for my clients and put in some systems in place for organic marketing, put in some systems in place for paid marketing and working on also some information products that will be ready beginning of next year. It's a large project so I'm not really talking about it quite yet, but that that is something that I'm preparing for early on, if that makes sense.Virginia Purnell:It does. Thank you. Is there something that you would like to share that I haven't asked you?Olga Fomenko:Well, you know, it depends on who you are, where you are in your life and your business, which your aspirations are. I know that a lot of people are going to have to pivot. A lot of people are going to have to make drastic changes and what they're doing regardless if they had a job or had a business, or were in school, it really doesn't matter where you were, things are going to be different. I keep saying that we are going to be building the new economy. The economy that existed up until February 2020 is not coming back. We're going to build a new normal. And you know, I heard this from one of the doctors actually listening to, you know, one of those coronavirus videos. And his doctor said a really, really great thing that I love. He said that, I really hope that you don't go to that old normal where we were all locked in our shells, on our screens.You know, like thinking about our jobs and not thinking about our families and our environment. And you know, like this lockdown was a good thing for many, many, many people because they got to spend more time with their families. They got to go hiking, they got to journal, they got to sing and dance. And you know, like while I'm sure many, many people struggled, I also hear a lot of great stories of how people could reconnect with themselves and the planet. My favorite favorite book of all times is the Little Prince and you know, and the Little Prince, there was this really cool moment when his dad said that, if every person would sweep their front porch, our planet would be such a better place. So I believe that if we'll do the in our work and we will think about people that are around us and the planet that this beautiful organism that we were a part of and we just reconnect with one another and create the new world, the new normal, the new economy, the new possibility is I think we totally have a chance to do that as a humanity. And I want to believe that this is why we as humanity were given this challenge so we can actually create something better than we used to have. So that's what I got to say.Virginia Purnell:Such great words of wisdom. I hope that we don't go back to "normal" either and that we do look out for one another more. And we do value, let's say the little things more and our family. Not saying that our families are little things, but just not everything is behind a screen and not everything is so self absorbing, I guess.Olga Fomenko:Yeah. Definitely.Virginia Purnell:Where can people find out more about you and what you do?Olga Fomenko:Well, I am on Facebook. I am on LinkedIn. My site, my blog site is under redevelopment right now, but it's OlgaFomenko.com. And I'm actually sharing a lot of ideas about business building, marketing, social media, team building and personal development, which as you probably know, it's for clarity and my favorite topic. So I pass to do this and I promote personal development all day, every day, every chance I get because that's what changed my life and I think it's an opportunity to change a lot of other people's lives. So that's what I love talking about.Virginia Purnell:Great. Thank you so much, Olga, for coming and joining us today.Olga Fomenko:Thank you for having me.Virginia Purnell:Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through the review and I'll catch you on the next episode.Resources and Mentioned ItemsDistinct Digital Marketing.comOlgaFomenko.comKim Kiyosaki - Rich WomanRobert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad Poor DadThe Little PrinceZig Ziglar

Virginia Purnell:Welcome to EntrepreneurConundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online.Hi Everyone. Today I'm talking with James Hurst about how he incorporates marketing automation in his business. James is a veteran online marketer starting on eBay in late 2000. He is the creator of multiple softwares including ClickFunnels Follow Up Pro, which is a ClickFunnels Affiliate software as well as a creator of Email Slurper 3000, he has created five online courses including make Power Wheels Faster and Build an AWS IOT button slack bot step by step. He is a ClickFunnels dream car winner and a respected affiliate for multiple other softwares. He and his wife Amanda, reside with their four boys in Springfield, Utah.Welcome James.James Hurst:Hey, thank you so much for having me.Virginia Purnell:Thanks for being here today. So tell us a little bit about yourself.James Hurst:Okay, so yeah, like the intro kind of said, I've been doing this for quite a while ever since. I've been selling things since on eBay. And then I got into, I've worked for an agency doing pay-per-click, been doing SEO, I had a local business, so I kind of always had some business going on in some computer aspect of it. You know, website, lead gen and since you can tell even already, I'm like a little bit all over the place. I've kind of settled in a little bit as an affiliate marketer, which is good because that means I can, you know, if I think something's really cool and interesting, I can go check it out, review it, you know, make a blog or make a video post about it and then I can go to the next thing and, and review that.And so I'm kind of realizing that yeah, I don't just have one, one particular niche, but I kind of just, I kind of enjoy, enjoy soaking, soaking up a little bit of everything, if that makes sense.Virginia Purnell:So, whatever catches your fancy the moment, right?James Hurst:Yeah.Virginia Purnell:What inspired you to become an affiliate marketer?James Hurst:Affiliate marketer? Well, one of the big, one of the bigger products that I promote is ClickFunnels. And just this idea of making a sale once and then getting paid for it multiple times on the backend. So a big shift you'll see in the industry is everyone wants to sell a subscription. Seems like whether it's Netflix or ClickFunnels or Active Campaign, most or even Adobe, the Adobe softwares, they're wanting to sell a subscription so they can have a recurring residual income model so they can probably forecast better and everything.And so I figured, Hey, if I'm going to, if I'm going to sell something, why not sell something that people will use, you know, month in and month out. And then if I truly put in enough work and build up a big enough base, then it really is something that I could, I could take, you know, two weeks a month off from work, quote unquote work and, and still have that revenue coming in. That seemed like a very, that's seemed like a very powerful model. Something worth investing. Your limited amount of time into it is doing the work once and getting paid for it over and over again. I think whether that principle, I find itself, you know, in software, if I'm, if I'm creating a software, I work hard once, make a software, sell it over and over again. If I make a YouTube video that's really valuable, it sits there on YouTube and unlike Facebook where you know, the video's gone a couple of days. No, it's down in your feed on YouTube. It will grow, you know, in three years. It's just growing in, in, in views and it's essentially working for you. So this idea of doing work once, getting paid for it for the rest of your life, or at least for a good two, two to five years is something that I've always, always kind of have front and center when I'm working.Virginia Purnell:Well, what's nice about what you're doing, like with affiliate offers versus trying to sell someone a subscription is you did all the work at the front where now it's up to that company to keep those clients there. So you don't have to try to keep them there all the time.James Hurst:Exactly. And there's pros and cons to that too, which means that, you know, some of that's out of my hands. Like if that company doesn't support people very well, you know, or it's too complicated or the support, the support process is too, you know, then it's out of your hands. Whereas you know, if it is my own product and I've actually, one of the things you introduced was Email Sluper 3000 I'm just in the process of changing that from a one time fee to a small monthly fee. So I'm actually getting my feet wet myself as a product owner for Email Slurper 3000 of what's that like to have my own subscription, my own subscription based product. And it's exciting to think about, you know, and this one's only $7 a month. And so I just kind of dream about, you know, even just a thousand people.Like what if I had a thousand people paying $7 a month, then I could count on that. I could basically count on $7,000 a month, you know? And I would probably have some, you know, I would probably know about how much I'm growing at the time. And that's really, it's a really powerful model to be able to predict your, your monthly revenues, right? To have some sort of consistency there, whether it's on an affiliate residual model or whether it's software as a subscription for yourself. And I'm just doing that with ClickFunnels and Stripe. So I just set up, set up a recurring product in Stripe and I tie that back to ClickFunnels. And that's how I'm, that's how I'm doing that.Virginia Purnell:Utilize the platform that's paying you.James Hurst:No, and that's, yeah, typically, typically I don't....it's not a hard and fast rule that I have to be using the product, but it's typically a natural, a natural thing to promote the things that I recommend, you know, as a, as someone that puts my own name on the line for what the things that I recommend I, I'd have a hard time, you know, pushing things that I don't really believe in,Virginia Purnell:Which says a lot too. Because then if other people know that you recommend a product, then they're more likely to trust you too, right?James Hurst:Yep. Yep. And now the tricky thing, like, I don't know if you've heard of Kajabi or not. I have, yes. Yeah. So I have Kajabi as an end user. I've purchased many courses that have, so I know what Kajabi is like as an end user. Unfortunately, to promote it as an affiliate, you actually have to purchase, you have to, you have to be a paying member of Kajabi. And so that, that is it. That is an obstacle is that there's some programs that you have to be a paying member, and have to be able to promote them. And that's actually, in a way, it's a good, it's a good thing and a bad thing because it means that it means that the, the, the amount of competition that you're competing with, with other affiliates is going to be much less because you have to be a paying member to do it.So the trick is if I wanted to be, you know, if I'm paying for ClickFunnels, which does membership sites, and then why would I want to go and pay extra just to be using Kajabi so I can promote Kajabi or do or do a compare and contrast. So at a minimum I would not be afraid to start up a free trial of these softwares. You can, I mean within 14 days or a month you can do a good comparison review, that kind of thing. And actually have a, make an, an opinion about, you know, about the two different softwares. But if you wanted to go all in, it's tempting because I think Kajabi is great too. It's tempting to want to just say, well, I've got to figure out how a way to be, you know, to break even on my Kajabi subscription.Maybe throw, maybe throw a course up in there. And so that's, that's tough. There's another program too that I'm like that it's like, I don't use it, but I want to know about it and promote it. So I bought like sheep, like a lifetime version of it. So I could have access, make tutorials, do you know, do comparisons, and be knowledgeable about the subject. But yeah, it's a lot. It's, it's a lot. Definitely pros and cons to whether you have to pay or not to be able to promote, to be a paying member, not to promote something.Virginia Purnell:Yes. And like you said, like it, put something on Kajabi and then hope to get your investment back out of it. Right?James Hurst:Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause I'm pretty well ingrained. I have, I've got quite a bit of stuff in ClickFunnels so it would be, it would be a ton of work to get everything of mine out of there and I'm okay. You know, I'm kind of, my role out there is kind of to be the guy that does know, Hey, what's better, good job, your ClickFunnels for this purpose, what, you know, go high level versus ClickFunnels. And so as an affiliate, you know, I don't have, I mean I, I've done well as a ClickFunnels affiliate, but to try to, even though there's, we have bias for the things that we promote, I think the best way is to be an affiliate for both products. Do a review and, and be an affiliate for both. Let's say this is my honest opinion of this one. For these people. Here's my honest opinion of this. These ones for those people, I don't care which one you think is better for you. This is, here's my thing and here's, and either one or they're both my affiliate link. You know what I mean? Yeah.Virginia Purnell:So what do you look for when you go to promote an affiliate as an affiliate for a company?James Hurst:So I look for, I look for some excitement around something, right? I, you know, if I hear one person talking about it, that's one thing. If I hear it again and again and again, right? I see, I look, I'm joining the Facebook group. I can see kind of the trajectory of how it's growing and I kind of listen to it on the Facebook group. Are people complaining? Are people asking questions? What's, you know, people are there to support kind of. You just kind of get a vibe for the product and then like Kajabi, like for example, what's my experience like as an end user and just seeing, just basically keeping an ear to the wall on products that people seem to love. Right. And, and it seemed to be growing. I mean if it's not, it's nothing. There's no, I don't know, other than just intuition of, of just keeping your eye, keeping my ear to the wall on and what people are talking about, yeah. For what else I'd like to promote.Virginia Purnell:How do you stand out from all the other competition on the products that have a lot of affiliates promoting them?James Hurst:No, it is kind of crowded at the same time. A lot of people fizzle out too. Man. I, it has been a grind. Like, luckily I love, luckily I enjoy the grind. Otherwise I wouldn't like it, I'm just like, ah, this is not where the thing you do want to throw in the towel sometimes. But yeah, like I've been trying to grow like my YouTube channel and it's just like, it's literally, it's like one subscriber and then two days go by and then another subscriber and it's just, it's like pushing, like pushing the, you know, a rock up a Hill, but in the hopes that someday that thing will start rolling back down and, and gain that momentum. But how do you stand out? So yeah, even just showing up consistently, right. Will will separate you. Like that was really going to be consistent at first.And I had a thing that said, okay, you've got to publish at least one thing a week. Right. Whether it's a YouTube video, a blog or something. I tend to like video. Personally. I'm doing a lot of teaching, I'm opening up softwares, looking at, I'm teaching, that kind of thing. But yeah, I kind of had to commit to myself to show up at least once a week. And if you're really, you know, if you're really going to go all in, you've got to show up. You got to show up daily, right? If you're at the forefront of what you're doing, you should be having cool stuff that you're doing or thinking about or coming up with and sharing that with your audience. And there's also this idea of like when you're first getting started, like you may not be, you may not feel like you're the expert, but like pick that thing you want to be the expert in and start going deep on something.Like I just picked up a tool, I kind of literally picked up a product like a week or like a week and a half ago and I dove in, figured things out and then I made a, I made a tutorial on it. And I'm like on the first page of YouTube for this thing, I even feel like it's some of the best training out there. Like, it doesn't take that much. There's always going to be people that are like behind where you are and ahead of you. And so just don't worry about that, but just help anyone. Just whatever's on, I don't know, whatever's on your mind, you'd be surprised how quickly you can become like, you know, this little mini expert on a certain, on a certain topic.Virginia Purnell:I like how you said not to worry about the people in front of you because there's going to be people behind you that are just where you were not long ago. Right,James Hurst:Exactly. And in this case, like this specific case, like I'm on, I'm like a week, I'm like a week ahead of these people. Like I just, you know, but the fact that I took the time and that's actually a really cool place. It's easy to, Oh my goodness. Someone was just doing a tutorial on the most simple thing and people were raving about, you know, like, Oh my gosh, this is, you know, I was just like, you kidding me? Like I can't, like I almost would've never bothered. Like it seems so simple that why would I bother to make a, you know what I mean? But people need to just completely like step-by-step to talk to me like I'm a third grader or a fifth grader type thing and it's so it's, it's good to kind of make that. So I debated sometimes whether to make tutorials like as I'm learning it because then it's like, so let's say like an unboxing, like let's say I'm going to unbox this thing and figure it out right here, live in front of you so you can like kind of seen any like how hard is this thing to figure out?But instead, instead I think it's better to unbox the thing, get it all set up or take it for a drive and then like not too far out, but like just like a week or two out, then go back and make that video of the review about it. Because once you get a year or two out from the product, you forget what it's like to not know what, you know what I mean? You're, you're, you have a bias, you kind of forget what it's like to not know how to use something. So try to try to make that tutorial, you know, when it's still fresh on your mind when you are confused, you know, much better be able to relate to people when they're just getting started with something. So, yeah.Virginia Purnell:A little bit ago you had mentioned that one of your goals is to grow your YouTube channel. Do you have any other goals or how that you're hoping to achieve in the next year or two?James Hurst:Yeah, so I actually, I have a day job. I'm a computer programmer by day in AWS and it's good, it's a good, safe, secure, you know, job. I've been there five years, great people have been happy there, generous, you know, health benefits and generous paid vacation. Right. And so the, you know, the, a big dream would be to be able to have that stability in, in online marketing space to be able to, you know, typically make that big leap. Right. And I always debate whether I could or should. And then something like, you know, the Coronavirus happens and be like, Oh my gosh, I'm grateful to have so stability. You know, when things are crazy and you know, and, and so in the meantime, you know, I'm paying off, you know, paying off my car that paying off some debt, you know, trying to strengthen my position, my cash position, like with, with cash reserves and savings.And so, yeah, so the you know, a big goal would be to, you know, to go a hundred percent online, but at the same time like I don't want to, I dunno, there's, it's, I kind of in the mix of aye, I don't want to just just work from home and like have a bunch of like clients necessarily and like have 10 bosses instead of one and S but you know, I've been spoiled a little bit in having passive and cause I know what, I know what it's like to have passive income coming in and so in, in some ways the constraint to say, no, James, you have to figure this out with your little, with your, you can't, you can't have having extra time be a crutch, right? You need to think about these things in a way. Like you can, like, yeah, you know, you can't rely on making 40 hours of YouTube content a week to feel, I don't know.I'm trying to find that balance if I don't want to trade my time for money, right. I don't want to trade my time for money. But at a certain, there's a certain amount of that that you have to do to convert it into, you know, an asset. But I, I'm very, yeah, very cautious on, on how I, on how I think about things. So like I can make 40 different YouTube videos or I could make one awesome YouTube ad, right? That hopefully is for converting people for selling and then pushing that out to, you know, on a, as a YouTube ad. And so I'm very, I'm very cognizant of that. So I'm, I think I'm trying in a way that's like, I'm trying to figure out how to do scale things with having some of that security of the job. You know, cause I, there's, as an entrepreneur, you're, you're spending money on things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It's, it can be kind of brutal.Yeah, exactly. And advertising has been, I know the average advertising, like figuring out either a Google ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads, like you know, I, I, I've had some success I've had success and failure with, with ads and so I know that, you know, you gotta get eyes, you gotta get eyeballs on your, on your offers and different things, whether it's affiliate offer or your own offers. But this space, there's a, there's a, it's an extremely long learning curve, which I enjoy. I just recently, like I don't like, I haven't done well with Facebook ads, but I was just like, at the minimum, if someone comes to my site, let's say I have like five or 10 people coming today for whatever reason, visiting my Facebook profile or YouTube, let's say just have five or 10 people a day, no big deal. I at least like James to retarget those people.Those should be like, that should be cheap. That should be cheap ads. And so, and also even before you run normal traffic to your offers, you would want to have the retargeting piece set up anyways. So I'm having like this breakthrough of like at least setting up your pixel and setting up a retargeting ad. And then when that's there, then you can go to the next step, which is try to maybe send some cold traffic or any of your warm traffic that does come. At least you're going to be able to stay in front of them. I don't, I kind of have this other idea, which is I don't have the budget to be in front of everybody all the time, but I should try to be in front of, I should try to be in front of a few people wherever they go. Once they've come into my world, I should hold on to them. And you know, with Instagram and Facebook and Facebook marketplace and how people are interconnected, if they, you know, with the retargeting, they could come in from Google and I could retarget them on Facebook. Right? Yeah. So I think that's a powerful principle, which is at least retarget your traffic,Virginia Purnell:Which is good to think about too, because a lot of people say it's between like 7 - 12 times of them seeing you before they'll actually buy something from you.James Hurst:Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, like I said, you know, I don't have thousands of people coming to my stuff, but for the five or 10 people that are, I should, I should feel like I'm everywhere now. And with today's modern, you know, advertising platforms, that's, that's very possible. There's still, but yeah, I mean there's still lots to learn. I was just happy because the other day I saw an advertisement of myself, you know, I saw on my own feed my own ad. I was like, yes, I retargeted myself. Virginia Purnell:You're doing a good job. Right?James Hurst:So, but yeah, there's so much, there's so much, there's so much overwhelm. There's so many shiny objects. And I actually, I know everyone says avoid them. I kinda like them. And yeah, from Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and making video tutorials and podcasts and blogs and YouTube channels and Facebook groups. And this cool tool in that cold tool. I mean they're, they're all great, but golly, use up a lot of time if you don't, aren't strategic with it all. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You like to share that we haven't talked about yet today? Well, you know, I would love to just, I'd love to just make people aware of a few of the things that you know, I have made. So you talked about CF Follow Up Pro. Basically if you're a ClickFunnels affiliate you get a, you get a commission's report and in the commissions report there's the name, the email, the product that they purchased and it looks like an Excel spreadsheet and it pretty much is a spreadsheet.Right? Well, the stuff that I came up with was I took, if you're familiar with Zapier, I took those, the spreadsheet and I put it into, into Google sheets and from Google sheets I put that into a Zapier, which puts it into Active Campaign, which is my email tool. And those are, this is what it does. Let's say you sign up through my link for ClickFunnels for a free trial that would end up in the report, your email, your name, the fact that you're trialing, and today's date. I take all that information, I put it into Active Campaign, and 30 minutes later I've got an email out to you saying, Hey, welcome to click. Congratulations on your free trial, right? And then I drip out. Then two days later I say, Hey, it's been a couple of days. Just want to check in with you.Have you, have you made your first funnel yet? Are you stuck on anything? How can I help? Right? And then four or five days later, Hey, here's a free training. A couple of days later, this is in 14 days, Hey, show me your funnel that you've made. Here's a free training. Here's a share funnel. Just a few little things, keeping in touch. And what's really cool is I built up these automations that one of the, one of them, what it does on day 15 the email, the email automation, it asks the question, it says, Hey, does this person, does it still say that they're trialing or have they converted over to a paid subscription? Okay. Because if they pay, then there'll be another row in the spreadsheet that says your name and it says, you're on the startup plan and you paid, and I made $38 and 80 cents.Okay. So the automation, it looks at that and it says, Oh no, I don't see another record in here for her. That came through a, it's the last thing I saw was that there was a, that it was trialing, so that flips a switch that branches and it says, Oh, Hey, it looks like you didn't continue your trial with ClickFunnels or whatever with ClickFunnels. Hey, you know what? Something wrong? You need to make your trial longer. Do you need, you know, what did you get stuck on something? It's that. It's that feedback. And some people will, some people will never hear back from right. Other people will reply and say, Oh gosh, I was so busy. You know, they got sick, whatever. I'd love to. If I get this extended or you know, I couldn't get my domain set up. It was just a pain, you know?And so you get that feedback of why are people falling through the cracks? Same thing for a refund. If my little automations, they listen, quote unquote listening for a refund, boom, that kicks off an automation emails. Hey, it looks like you refunded. Let's like he refunded your last month. Did you know you can downgrade, you don't have to cancel. You can, you can downgrade to the smaller plan. You know, maybe they don't know. You're just trying. And so to have those emails going out perfectly that right time, like it's very, very powerful. And that's a, that's a tool I built. The other one, which is really, really cool too. There's a few competitors out there, but the other one's called Email Slurper for 3000. And do you have a, you have a Facebook group yourself? Virginia Purnell:Not quite yet. James Hurst:Not quite yet. So Facebook groups are really powerful. It's a great way to kind of congregate, you know, your audience, right? Whether it's your podcast listeners or people that are buying your tools or that want to get your trainings, things like that. And so a lot of people have Facebook groups and you get three questions as an admin to kind of filter out the spam of the internet. And you could say like, why do you want to join? How did you hear about us? Do you, you know, do you agree to follow the group rules of no spamming, no, no, this or that. What we did was marketers, we took those three admin questions and we said, well, we're going to use one of them to say, Hey do you would like this free training, a lead magnets, enter your email address, okay, enter your email address. And then another question could be, imagine this.Imagine, imagine the question is, do you have ClickFunnels? And they put yes or no as the answer. So now you're getting some market research about you, about your audience. And then you have another third question you could say, you know, what's your biggest, what's your biggest concern when it comes to getting visibility right out on the internet? What's, what's your biggest question about YouTube? So now you're getting ideas about content you can create. Well, where are people getting stuck? They're coming to you as the expert. Where are people getting stuck? What kind of content could you make? Let's say 50 people come in and they all have these top five questions. You can directly speak to them. Okay, so what my tool Email Slurper 3000 does is it takes, most importantly, it takes that email address, it puts it into a Google sheet, which it gets picked up by Zapier.I put that into my Active Campaign. And then I email people, Hey, welcome to this group that you just joined. Okay? And so I have a group that people are literally finding it every single day without me doing anything like just the way it's named, the amount of buzz around it. And people come and join every single day. He emails her, they put their email in email, super picks them up, and I started and I started dripping them 10 emails. This one I'm doing, it just has a little Amazon affiliate link that says a related thing, right? So you're just, you email out related products and services and so I just say, Oh, this is cool. You're welcome. This group, here's a link for this thing the next day. Oh, you should know about this. Oh and here's the link if you want to get it.I just every single day for like seven days anyways, so Email Slurper it. If you hit, if you didn't have Email Sluper, you'd have to copy that email address out of there. You have to copy it out of there manually. If you hit, approve, if you, if you hit approve its just gone. Facebook does not save the answers to those questions anywhere. That's a, that's a big painful moment when someone learns that for the first time that you, you know, if, if you didn't copy those emails, they're gone. So Email Slurper grabs them out of there and puts them into your tool. Here's a really cool thing to do, which I came up with is remember how I asked like you have ClickFunnels, yes or no? Yes I can take, I can take the answer to that question and map that to a custom field in my auto responder and then I can have an automation. What I'm, when I'm dripping them out, I can have an automation say, how did they answer that question if they, if they said no to the ClickFunnels, do they have ClickFunnels? Yes or no? Then I can send them other emails say, Hey, let me tell you about ClickFunnels and here's my, here's my link, right, to get them on a free trial of ClickFunnels.Does that make sense? It does and it makes me really excited. Well good. It's actually, I mean it's actually really cool cause I mean I just love, I love automation. Like you know, just little things like, and it's so simple. Do you have ClickFunnels, yes or no, and then the auto responder says, what do they say to the answer to that question? They say, yes. Okay, well don't bother telling them more about ClickFunnels. Did they say no? Then tell them this, you know, and then your third question, you could also branch them another, you know another way. The key with that question is it has to be something you can't say, what's your favorite color? Red, right. It can't be a free response. It has to be something that I can like, you know, get ahold of and and ask does it stay yes or no, like past to be something specificVirginia Purnell:And then information that you can utilize down the road. Right?James Hurst:Yeah, exactly. And I mean it's great. It's great. Let's, let's say this, they say no to ClickFunnels. I may be, I may be happy to, I may be happy to just do it with email automations. Like, okay, here's a trial ClickFunnels. You should try this, try that. Or if it's important enough or high value enough, you could then say, you could even send yourself an email and said someone just joined your group and they said they're very interested in your nine 97 plan. Then you notify them to get on the phone with this or get over on the Facebook messenger. So depending on the value of that thing, you know you might want to escalate your personal involvement. So those are good tips too.Virginia Purnell:I'm glad we talked today, so it was awesome. How can people find out more about you or find you online?James Hurst:So I'm pretty active on Facebook. Facebook.com/OJHurst, I think is my profile. I have a website, JamesHurst.com and find me there. So either of those two places. I have a Facebook group kind of geared around affiliate marketing and ClickFunnels, that kind of thing. I also have one on live streaming, the live streaming practice with James Hurst. There's just a few of us in there and we just practice that up and try to get better at the live stream, which I think is something everyone should, you know, should get better at and take advantage of. I think live, I think live video is a huge kind of untapped opportunity.Virginia Purnell:I really appreciate you being on here, James.James Hurst:Well, thanks so much. Nice visiting.Virginia Purnell:Have a great day.James Hurst:See ya.Virginia Purnell:Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode. Links of Interest:DistinctDigitalMarketing.comhttps://www.facebook.com/ojhurstJamesHurst.com

Virginia Purnell:Welcome to entrepreneur conundrum with Virginia Purnell where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Hi everyone. Today I'm talking with Mark Stern about how he builds stronger relationships to stand out in the marketplace. Mark Stern is a serial entrepreneur and founder of rough street digital, the custom box agency and live online. Prior to entrepreneurship, Mark was a top ranked strategy consultant from the world's largest consulting firm, Deloitte for the fastest way to its hardest through barbecue and tacos and he lives in Austin, Texas. Welcome, Mark Stern.Mark Stern:It’s good seeing you, Virginia. Thank you for having me on.Virginia Purnell:You're welcome. Great to have you here. Mark, you've done some pretty big things in the online marketing space and I'm thankful that you've graciously consented to this interview to share with us some of those cool tricks, tricks, and tips that you've been able to use to become visible in your space and I'm hoping that we'll be able to share those so that our audience will be able to implement them as well.Mark Stern:Awesome. No, I'm excited to share some, we have some great things that I'm excited to share with your audience.Virginia Purnell:Cool. Just jump right in. So could you tell us a little bit about yourself?Mark Stern:Happy to. So I was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama and I was always raised with the idea that there's this perfect, you know, pathway to happiness. You go to high school, you graduate, have the dream job, eventually go back to grad school and then afterwards it's, you know, pick defense family and the rest is history. That's the fast way to happiness. And I would joke that like, I think I was like the poster child for it because I loved high school. I was president of my student body. Same thing in college, had my dream job, went to my dream business school. I went to Duke university, and was president of that as well. And then I graduated in 2012 with a job that was amazing. It was with Deloitte consulting, world's largest consulting firm. But I find myself locked into a two year minimum commitment to the consulting firm.Mark Stern:And I had just walked out of business school with $165,000 in student loan debt. And at that time for me, like I had those ambitions to want to be an entrepreneur, but based on the situation that I was in, when you work for a consulting firm, anything you produce is owned by the firm. So this whole idea about having a side hustle and addition to your day job that pays the bills, I couldn't have a side hustle because if my side hustle would be owned by the firm. So what I did instead, and I think a lot of people are in this, especially if you work for a consulting firm, or big tech. A lot of companies out there own what you produce. So because I couldn't really scratch that itch, I ended up going to every digital marketing conference out there. I'd read every book and I just dream until I realized I was using that as a form of medicine to address the bigger issue, which is I needed to scratch this edge. I needed to go all in and make the leap into entrepreneurship. So I officially did that in 2018. The thing I did right out of the gate, that was the game changer for me, was launching a virtual event. And so much of what I put out in the marketplace is so much of what you talk about, which is how do you increase your visibility online, and how do you stand out in a, in a way that attracts your ideal avatar.Virginia Purnell:Yeah. It's quite a journey that you've taken on. So you made the leap in 2018, correct?Mark Stern:Yeah, right at the beginning of the year. The second after New Year's Eve, I came back and was like, I've got to do this. If I don't do this, I'll regret it.Virginia Purnell:Kind of like a New Year's resolution.Mark Stern:Oh, unexpected New Year's as a little bit going into it, I didn't know that I was going to come out of it saying, you know, here's my notice.Virginia Purnell:So were you an overnight success when you did it?Mark Stern:I wish I were. I wish I could say I was. You know what I learned was I came from a corporate job that, I mean, it basically occupied my entire mental capacity. So, you know, I think I put a lot of unnecessary stress on myself to say, if I'm making the leap from corporate to becoming an entrepreneur, I need to have the business all figured out. And the reality was when I made the leap officially, I put my notice in January. It took me five months to transition out just because of the projects that I was working on. So when I left in May, I had no idea what I was going to do. And what I learned was that's okay because I knew that once I left, I could release all of the mental capacity from my corporate job and then really get into that zone of creativity to start to figure out what it is that I want to be when I grow up.And what where that led me was I knew that I loved conferences and the simple idea of doing a virtual conference where I can customize the message to who I wanted to serve and really attract them as well as build relationships. And then selfishly I was someone that really struggled initially putting myself out there online. It was another platform that forced me to get uncomfortable because I was trying to put myself out there in the digital realm, which is something that was brand new to me at the time. So I was not an overnight success, but it helped prepare me. I felt like I very quickly flipped on the switch to bring attention to myself based on the steps that I did take pretty quickly. And that was the virtual event.Virginia Purnell:So you had mentioned that it was hard for you to put yourself out there with promoting your company and getting visible online and stuff. What did you find helped you to do that?Mark Stern:So the first thing that I, for anyone in this, one of the easiest ways, especially if you struggle to get traction and take action, is to declare it publicly. So I started posting what I was going to do and I tied it to a specific date. So that was when I said... So I left in May and it was the end of June that I started posting publicly that I'm launching this fall conference in October. Here's the date of it. And I mean by simply declaring it to the public and just knowing myself, if I say I'm going to do something by a certain date, I'm going to do it. Whether or not I felt like it makes me uncomfortable or not. So putting myself in, forcing myself publicly to be in an uncomfortable position, I think was the difference between me taking that massive action in a short period of time. So declare it. And I've done this practice so many different ways and I've tried this again and again and I always find that the best things I put out in the marketplace or when I'm vulnerable and I declare it publicly as then you're on the hook,Virginia Purnell:Otherwise you make a liar out of yourself, right.Mark Stern:Yeah. And that was the other thing is that I didn't want to be, and it's funny because going through the process, I kept on telling people I'm doing this version and this is before everyone started like getting loud with virtual events like they have in the last, I'd say 18 months especially right after the pandemic hit and all live events got canceled. But a lot of people, it was so funny cause when I would declare it publicly to say I'm doing this, I'm going to do a launch, a virtual event, we're going to launch a publication off the back of it and do this, this, this, and this. People would be like, nod their head like, yeah sure you are. And then I do it and they'd all be surprised that I did it. So it's funny that like when you declare things and you actually follow through, like it's part of your brand, you know it's part of who you are,Virginia Purnell:Which is huge because you can build stronger relationships that way.Mark Stern:I mean totally, totally. Because people can find you. I mean any of these things that you do that you put yourself out there, even doing a podcast by just the act of doing this, like you're getting, giving people like a glimpse into who you are and you know what it's like to collaborate with you or work with you or have a conversation with you. So it's just such a powerful means that people are attracted to different personalities. You and I can teach the same thing, but there are certain people that may gravitate towards you and others that gravitate towards me. But being able to put myself out there, I can better attract the people that know that I could be their trusted mentor to serve them and get them to the next level.Virginia Purnell:I know you do a lot with custom boxes. How does that add to visibility and the effect that it has on your customers?Mark Stern:Yeah, it's a really good question. This is something that I've been having a lot of fun with lately and it was something I stumbled upon by accident. I did a virtual event. Most people who do virtual events sell as their low ticket item, the recordings from all the speakers so people can watch it on their own time. I didn't want to do that because I didn't, I just looked at that as selling more education. I want to sell action. So when we did a high ticket online, I think it was a year ago, we instead crafted a custom box and it's, you know, a custom box. It's initially like taking a typical box you'd ship in the mail, fully brand it. So it's like a beautifully branded box and then really tailoring the contents inside for your customers. So for me, we did as a means to say, if you buy our digital product, we're going to send you something physical in the mail to compliment the digital experience.So the idea behind it is to remove any barriers that are preventing your audience for being successful with your product. So if you have a digital course, if you require me to print out my worksheets to be able to be successful with your digital course, you just put up a barrier that's going to prevent me from that could prevent me from being successful because you don't want to take the excuses off the table. I don't want someone telling me that they weren't successful because they don't have a printer at home or they haven't set up their printer to print out those worksheets. So that's kind of why I liked the custom boxes. I continue swag, I continue some workbooks and worksheets and supporting collateral. I can send you a book in the mail. So that's kind of like how we got started in that space.And then we started to do this for all of our products and services simply because what was happening was our audience, as they would get these boxes, they would start to film themselves with the boxes, take pictures with the content, do unboxing videos. They were saving the boxes. So now we were taking up space in their home and it was such a powerful thing that the organic traffic and the social proof that was happening naturally was attracting more customers and we were getting higher conversion rates for our products simply because most people don't do a physical custom box to compliment their programs. They do digital only. So it's an easy way for me to elevate whatever I do because you get this cool everyone getting a gift in the mail and it's just, you know, building upon that just a really powerful, powerful means to do it. So that's where I, you know, we built out an entire business around, you know, how do we make this more accessible to people so they can provide boxes to their audience.Virginia Purnell:That's really cool. Like, cause you're right, like everybody loves getting mail and that's not something that really happens much anymore. Like it used to.Mark Stern:And look at what's happening right now with the pandemic when the pandemic hit live, events got canceled, all mailing vendors are still considered essential. So like the fact that I can't reach you in person anymore, but now I can like how else do you provide the, you know, the way I describe it as everything online is what you see and what you hear. And when we talk about your senses and how you connect with the world around you, touch, taste and smell. You can't do with digital only content. Even this podcast is simply what you hear. If I send you a physical box, I can start to tap into the other senses that you just can't get to when you, let's just say do a virtual event that is only what you see in what you hear. So that's like the, to me, the power of it that really just elevates that experience.Virginia Purnell:Do you think that there is only one niche or one type of business that could benefit from a custom box or is it more encompassing?Mark Stern:No. I think that this is where we're having a lot of fun with it. I think a lot of people look at custom boxes as just sending someone some swag in the mail, in the box. The way that I look at it is it's truly a means to think about, extending the lifetime value of your customer. You can use a custom box to the point of customer acquisition, fulfillment or retention until it kind of gives you some examples of that. At the point of fulfillment, I could send a custom box. It's a networking box to get on the radar of influencers who may be like, like to surprise them in a way to say, look at this thing that this person sent me with a call to action to be, I'd love to do a JV partnership with you or have you on my podcast.Other things you can do for acquisition is we're building out a box right now that's all about client acquisition, so how can I create a prospecting box that has a lot of cool resources so people hire us for what we do at the point of fulfillment? You could do a success box or an onboarding box. I see a lot of people do challenges. Now. A lot of people compliment their challenges with a physical box in the mail. They may have a workbook and a lot of supporting collateral to make you more successful with the digital. So the coaching program that you just purchased. So that's an example of a success box at the point of fulfillment. And then from a retention standpoint, you know we have clients who are using boxes that we call achievement boxes. So to keep you engaged in our world, we may cross something to save.If you, if I teach you sales, if you make $10,000 in sales using our system, I may send you a box in the mail as the achievement, a milestone for you to reach to, to try and achieve, to get that box and get the item that is, you know, going to recognize that achievement that you've done. So there's all different strategies you can use across the life cycle of the customers. So I like a lot of times what we're finding is that when people are purchased for boxes, they're not looking just for a swag box. They're looking for a couple of different boxes to really enhance the experience that they're having with their clients and their customers.Virginia Purnell:I like how you had commented that had mentioned the customer lifetime value because that's really where everything really happens.Mark Stern:That's where the magic is. You know, that's where a lot of people miss out because they fulfill and their customer has a great fulfillment experience, but they don't have the strategy in place to retain them. So they don't really think about retention. Once you've like had a good experience, clients want to buy more from you if they've had results from you. So that's where like the power of like studying those achievement milestones are really powerful.Virginia Purnell:It's another way of continuing that relationship. Like you can't just talk once and expect to stay friends foreverMark Stern:A hundred percent and to give you an example of an achievement piece, like ClickFunnels or the things that they do is if you make a million dollars, they send you a two comma club award in the mail. Like that is an achievement marker. There are people who are invested in the platform because their goal is to earn a two comma club award. Like that is the achievement that they want. So, ClickFunnels is going to keep them active and they're going to provide them with the materials to help them get to that level. But they've given you something to strive for. And now ClickFunnels has launched a eight figure award and then a $25 million award and a $50 million word in a hundred million dollar award. So part of this is they're always giving you those milestones to say, I've created this thing for you to achieve or strive for. That's the power of that. I mean, to me that's such a great market example of the power of achievement to extend the lifetime value of your customers.Virginia Purnell:Thank you Mark. So many good nuggets and things to think about. Is there any last tips or suggestions that you have to be able to keep that customer lifetime value or to be able to be in front of your customers or how to get there and stay there?Mark Stern:Yeah, I mean this is why I think it's so important to like to be very engaged. Whenever we're launching a new product, I'm really hands on with it, especially if it's like a new type of a high ticket program. Oftentimes if it's a course or whatnot, like I like to be directly in our face staying with a group of people and usually give them a lot more attention. So like I like to be very, very hands on at the launch of any new product or offering. And part of that is it lets me see how other people react and engage to it. And a perfect example is right now I have a coaching program that is teaching people how to launch high quality virtual events. And they came to me and said had I not been very engaged in interfacing with them, they wanted more training on Facebook ads, so I get to then go find someone who's great at Facebook ads and I get to give them visibility to this group that's bought into my program. So they're happy because I'm listening to their needs and I'm able to better cater to what they want to set them up for more success. Cause that's, that's what my goal is. If you create a product for your service, I want people to complete whatever I'm offering and get results. So that's kind of like looking at what can I offer them and then just listening to what they're saying and what they're asking for for future products as well.Virginia Purnell:I like what you said, like you want them to stay with you and to finish it right? Like not just read it all. That was nice and carry on.Mark Stern:Yeah. I mean, I think my belief is that people do not want to buy a bunch of products and services and courses from 20 to 30 different influencers in the marketing space or in the online space or whatever their niche is. I mean, I think that people are looking for two to three trusted mentors that they know that their learning style will get them to take action and they know that like if I were to launch a program on webinars or a program on setting up, you know, you're like anything how to set up a podcast, how to do this, that and the other. Even if it's the first time I'm watching it out of the Gates, if they were deciding between me and someone else who really specializes in it, like I want them to be in a position that they're going to say, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to buy from Mark because I know the quality of his products and I know that his teaching style will get me results.And that's, that's the reality is I bought high ticket programs that I got no results out of because the way the influencer taught it, they may be good at what they do, but they didn't teach it in a way that resonated with me and got me to take action. So that's why it's important to invest in what you're putting out in the marketplace simply if you want to truly be in it for the long term game and be that trusted mentor. Yeah, I mean these are the steps that, like, for me that I have to take.Virginia Purnell:Great. Thanks.Mark Stern:And I'm having fun and you're having fun. That's awesome. I'm having fun every step of it.Virginia Purnell:That's the key point right there. Well thank you so much Mark Stern. It was such a great interview. How can people find out more about you and what you do?Mark Stern:Yeah, yeah. People are welcome to retail to me on Facebook, so feel free to hit me up if you want to learn more about custom boxes. We have a challenge, which is custom box challenge.com or done for you, which is custom box agency.com so you can learn a little bit more about what we offer there and if you're looking to launch a virtual event, Rovermethod.com is our do it yourself platform. That is a fun game of fight experience that people want to go learn how to do that.Virginia Purnell:Thanks again. You're welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode.Recommended/mentioned links:Distinct Digital Marketing.comCustomBoxChallenge.comCustomBoxAgency.comRoverMethod.com

Virginia Purnell:Welcome to entrepreneur conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Today I'm talking with Stephanie Blake about how she helps businesses grow and scale via funnels and Facebook ads. Stephanie is a techno geek that helps passionate and innovative entrepreneurs revolutionize their world by enabling them to get clear on their message and past the hurdles keeping them from their dreams. She enables business owners to create an implement, a plan to dominate their industry and live full out in their calling via high converting sales funnels, cutting edge Facebook ad strategy, and killer messenger bot strategy. Stephanie is a wife to red bearded hero and a mother to four extroverted blessings and a lover of all things marketing back to the future princess bride and blue bell ice cream. Welcome, Stephanie.Stephanie Blake:Hey. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to get to be here and chat with you.Virginia Purnell:I am excited for you. Ready to jump in? Oh yeah, let's go. Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?Stephanie Blake:I am the mother of four amazing children and married to a wonderful red bearded hero is who I call him. And I run a digital ads agency. So about four and a half, five years ago, my life completely and totally changed when I decided to make a career pivot. I was already pretty geeky. My background is in network engineering and management, so I love to build computers and make them talk to each other. But I got turned on to the digital marketing space by a friend who offered me a job and I fell into the world of sponsored posts, affiliates, funnels and traffic and landing pages. And I was just so in awe and just to be honest, it was almost like things clicked into place whenever I found digital marketing. And so it was, it's been quite the journey since we started. I started an agency about four and a half years ago called Social Sparrow and we're rocking along.We have an amazing team of eight and we just recently got our two comma club award for earning a million dollars in our agency, helping businesses grow and scale using Facebook ads and funnels. And so I'm just excited to be able to chat with you because it's so much fun to just share the passion that I have for what you can do with your life and your business if you are on purpose and deciding purposely to build the life that you want. Cause I just can't even believe, if you would've told me five years ago that my life would look like what it does right now, I would just not even be able to comprehend that. So it's just incredible how far you can come no matter where you start. Because we started in a rough place, things were not good. And the only reason I got the education I did and digital marketing space, I was working for someone else who paid for the courses. And so I really had no frame of reference for what was possible. And so anyway, so here I am. I'm a digital ads agency owner, and do business consulting and coaching. And I just absolutely love digital marketing.Virginia Purnell:It's so nice. Things can fall into place and then how good they feel when they do.Stephanie Blake:Yes, yes. It's almost like a fish that finally gets into water, right. Or a horse that finally gets its gallup for, you know, it's just, it's an amazing, amazing thing to really have things align and feel great as you're doing work that you love.Virginia Purnell:So what do you love most about what you're doing?Stephanie Blake:I think the thing I love the most is the impact because a lot of people have fantastic offers offline. Maybe they have a zone of genius, but they just can't seem to get it online. And with the right work, the right offer, the right messaging, the right traffic, the right audiences, it, all it takes are these little tweaks and twists and turns and someone can lock into place and it literally changes their life. So for example, one of my coaching students literally went from having around $4,000 a month income with his econ product that he was selling. And he started coaching with me about two months ago and this month was his first month to hit $27,000 in 30 days. And that's a major impact. Like his life is directly changed because of his ability to sell his product to the perfect customer and continue to do that at scale. And so that's, I think to me that's what it's all about. That's what I love the most is whenever you can have that kind of impact to help someone truly make their dreams happen as like there's nothing like it, it's the best.Virginia Purnell:Yeah. Such a great feeling that you were able to help someone achieve their dreams or definitely get one step closer to it. Yeah, absolutely. Especially from such a big jump that they were able to do.Stephanie Blake:Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't always happen that fast. But, but yes, even it's so crazy cause even small little changes and, and what some people might consider to be a small difference, if you're only making $500 online, then all of a sudden you find yourself making $4,000 online. That's, that's a huge increase. And that's a really, really big deal. It doesn't always have to be like a, we're making four and then all of a sudden you're at a hundred thousand dollars. It's just about what will make the biggest impact. And sometimes for some families the biggest impact is just simply being able to cover extracurricular activities and not have to worry about if they have to put something on a credit card or not, or they're not sure if they're going to be able to do X, Y or Z. Right. Because not sure if the money is going to be there, which is where we lived our life before I started my agency. It was really, really, really rough. Not knowing if we could afford to really put our kids in the extracurricular activities or fix the fence that was falling down or you know, all those things that come up. And then the difference being that, okay, you know what, I don't have to worry about that anymore because I can take care of that because my business has grown so much. Right.Virginia Purnell:So speaking of dreams and goals, what are some big goals that you're looking to achieve over the next one to two years?Stephanie Blake:Oh man. I think the biggest thing for me is that I've been in circles in a lot of really amazing masterminds over the past couple of years. And I also had the honor and the privilege of getting to coach inside of the Two Comma Club X program for Russell Brunson. And during that time I coached hundreds of entrepreneurs and one of the things that I loved the most was whenever you found someone who really caught their groove and they created their own ecosystem and these individuals, you know, they started off, they had this idea, they made an offer, and then from that offer they found another problem to solve that was related to the audience that they were already serving. They created another offer to solve that problem. Then another problem came up and they created another offer, solve that problem, and eventually they created their own value ladder.And there's this ecosystem and this tribe that they have. And I started my journey in the digital marketing world as an agency. And because I wanted to be able to scale, I very intentionally niched down at the very beginning. So a large majority of our clients were in our local businesses on purpose 'cause they're kind of a different beast. And so we still serve a lot of people in the online community for infopreneurs and things like that. But whenever I start that way, I am my head down to the grindstone. Like I'm working hard, I'm building a team, I'm learning what it looks like to scale. What does it mean to have employees, not contractors, like all of this stuff. Right. And I never created any info products based off of that because it didn't really fit who I was serving for, what I was doing at that time.And so because of that, whenever this, you know, this year one of my goals was to start to build my own ecosystem. So in the next year to two years, not only am I going to have my agency, but I'm creating ads for beginners.com which is training grounds for people to learn Facebook ads for beginners so that they too can start their journey. And then I really just want to serve and be able to help people have significant impact in their lives and change and go after what they want and see it realized in their lives, the learning Facebook ads and kind of going up that ladder that I'll build to serve people at different levels. So that's my biggest one. I want to look back a year or year and a half from now, and then see the evidence of an ecosystem where I have a tribe that I'm consistently serving rather than just an agency, which don't get me wrong, an agency’s a lot of work. It's not just anything, it's a magnificent, beautiful beast. And I love my agency and it's not going anywhere, but with that agency, I also want to have my own ecosystem where I am serving at a different level in the infopreneur space.Virginia Purnell:So having that ecosystem would that, how would that change your business or affect your business?Stephanie Blake:I think one thing that is really, really smart about having an ecosystem and really leaning into that is because it is, it's one pathway. And if you're like me and your creative visionary entrepreneur, then you have ideas coming at you, you know, a hundred to 200,000 times a day. Like there's always an idea. There's always something you can do. But whenever you build an ecosystem, everything inside of the ecosystem needs to fit right. You can't, you know, I guess you could go back to the ecosystems of you know, just what we're taught in school. And if you were to kill all of the spiders, then the bugs would be overwhelming and dah, dah, dah. And I think along those lines, the ecosystem that you build keeps you structured because you have one person that you're serving all along their journey at different places in their journey.And so I think that that's one of the major benefits of creating an ecosystem yourself, because you're not just serving everybody, which you don't really do with an agency either. But if you're just making these one off products, you're not streamlined, you're not focused. And so I think that's one of the main reasons why I feel like it's just so beneficial to do that because for one, it narrows your focus. And for two, it's going to create a logical way to generate revenue for you and your family. That makes sense. While serving at a really high level and solving real problems, what do you feel like the number one roadblock has been stopping me from doing that? Oh, 100% time. 100% and I think, you know, I can't use it as an excuse because what you want, you will create. Right? But I do because of the agency and what I want to do is to have a thriving agency.And I also want my team to be happy. I also want to raise children intentionally. Right? And so, I also want to be a good wife. So whenever you're really intentionally trying to make sure you're, you're plugged in with your children and that you are being a great wife and that you are taking care of yourself physically and you're thinking about the needs of your team and you're serving your clients, creating new systems and processes. And so I've found that I didn't quite understand how to truly catch a rhythm cause I felt like I was always trying to make it about what I could do every day and find the schedule that included every little bit of everything every day. But in reality, the way my brain works and what I've learned even in this past year is that, you know, batching is a real thing for me.I really kind of need to be able to settle into a, a creative thing that I need to do for a couple of hours for it to really come out of me and for it to actually work out and to be a good thing. If I'm trying to say, Oh, you're going to do that for 30 minutes, you're going to do this for 45 minutes is better. Get up cause you didn't go do this for an hour and then you got to call here and don't forget you're gonna break up that car and you're gonna go back to working on it. Then you worked on it at the beginning like forget it. Like my brain does not really work that way. I really struggle with any type of creative thing if I have that kind of calendar. So being able to literally say this whole week I am going to give my agency the first one hour of my time and then the rest of my day I am going to be working fully on this funnel and nothing else interrupts that until five o'clock whenever I stop working, check out with my team and then I'm my family's.Right? So these big time blocks I feel like are what's really, really helped me have some breakthroughs and I hope to continue to help me have breakthroughs as I'm building this ecosystem. Because time has definitely been one of the biggest roadblocks for me and not understanding how I can make time work for me as an individual. Right? Because what works for one person doesn't work for everybody. So true. So true. We're all individualistic. Right?What's working for you right now to attract more business? Oh my gosh. Okay. So I would have to say that for me it's all about networking. I don't intentionally, like, I didn't know I was doing a thing until someone called it out. They're like, gosh, you're such a networker. And I was like, I have. And it's just, I genuinely love people and I love going to live events. And so typically I meet a lot of amazing people and get to chat with them. And I really have a heart for people. So I just want to try to help. And so what has acquainted over the years is just this a mass of amazing, amazing people. Because I've paid to be in amazing masterminds. So whenever you pay to be a high end mastermind, you get to be surrounded with incredible people because they've done something to be able to afford to be in that mastermind.And so because of that, what's happened is, I have this beautiful network of visionaries who know how to make things happen and have, you know, fire in their eyes ready to go after things, right? And so, and becoming known by those individuals who, you know, have followers and they have needs and they know people who have needs. I think that's one of the biggest things that I've had going for me that was honestly unintentional. Now that I see it for what it is, I'm kind of like being a little more intentional about it. Like, Oh wow, I should go to that conference. Even if I don't need to learn the things that are at that conference, I would love to know those people. Right. And being a little bit more intentional about it without getting gross. Like, Oh, I'm going to meet these people because I have ulterior motives.But it's just so neat to look back and see something that came very naturally to me and it ended up benefiting my business and has benefited me as an individual. Just trying to make a way, you know, make my own space in this digital marketing world. So you've kind of explained what you're doing, let's say in real life, what are you doing to get visible or to stand out online? Okay. Again, one thing I learned to do unintentionally was a year, almost two years ago, I launched a course called bot boss where I was teaching how to use messenger bots. And so many people just had no idea what bots were. And so many people were curious, but very leery of bots. And so I just started talking to different people and I started volunteering to do a free training inside of people's masterclass or mastermind and, and it was just awesome.It was a total win, win. Some masterminds I would talk in, I do a one hour training for them, and some of them I would walk away with somebody who wanted me to do a belt build-out or wanting to buy my course when sometimes it was, I wouldn't walk with anything, which I wasn't really looking for. I was, I genuinely was showing up to give value inside of these, these people's inner circles and masterminds. But as a result, I was able to network and get to know people and become visible through small pockets of people. You know, this one might've had a hundred people, this one might've had 20 people, this one might've had 300 people. But they're all people who are anti-ing up to be inside of a program. Right? And so that really served me a lot. And again, unintentionally, I had no idea the value that I was bringing.Like I thought, Oh my gosh, yeah, I was bringing great value and these people were so thankful that I was willing to donate, you know, and do an hour of my time. And I was like, Hey, isn't no problem. This is fun. And then the value that in turn that came around for me, it was people started following me, checking me out or referring me. I would get tagged all over the internet anytime that bots got brought up because I was really getting out there and, and talking about what I was super passionate about. So if you yourself, you know, know people who have their own masterminds or anything like that, you know, reaching out to them and just say, Hey, I've got this really unique thing and here is what, how it could help your people. I would love to do free training and just offer not to pitch guys, you don't have to pitch.All you have to do is just be you and people are going to see you as someone who knows what they're talking about and they'll reach out if they want something or know that you're an expert in it or they'll remember you later. Great advice. Thank you. What would you like to share that I haven't asked you? Oh my gosh, let me think about this. You know, I guess just one thing I would share is just that I was talking to my group coaching group yesterday and one of the things we were talking about is this entrepreneurial journey and how there are so many highs and so many lows and sometimes whenever we're down in a low it feels like, like for instance the person I had just told you about a minute ago who is selling econ. He was talking about how, you know, just, I mean literally whenever he came into my group coaching program, he literally put the money that he paid to be in the program on a credit card cause they didn't have any money.It was literally a step of faith to jump in. And so he was saying it was so dark and it was so, you know, it was desperate times. It was really crazy. Right? Really a step of faith and we were about how we can get in the spots and we feel like, you know what? I just need to quit. I need to go find a nine to five. Someone can hire me. You know, I tried this entrepreneurial gig, this is just too hard and we just want to throw in the towel. But the crazy thing is, usually if we can get our wits about us and we can actually survey what's actually happening, what you might see a picture of in your mind is when you're climbing up a mountain, right? And you work really hard. Let's say you're climbing this mountain for a good 30 45 an hour, right?You come up, you find a ledge and you sit down and you're like, Oh my gosh, you look up and the mountain, I mean it is still like almost straight up in front of you. There's still so much more to go to get to the top, right? Let's, you sit down and you go to rest and you turn around and then you look down and you see how far you came, right? So it can, you can face one way and it can feel like you're never going to make it to the top and it's going to be so hard and like how could you keep going? But then you look back and you never would have imagined that you'd come that far in the time that it took you to come to that place. Right. So I guess the encouraging thing would be like no matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, just remembering how far you've come.Because whenever I look back and I think about this speedy journey, like I mean I have an 18 year old. Okay, that just blows my mind. I have an 18 year old, my youngest is seven. And I think about 18 years and I think about when he was born in 18 years. And then I think about my entrepreneurial journey and it's only been about five years. Like we're, we're just now coming around to five years where I really kind of put my foot in this industry and then I look now where I am and I know there's so much more to go. I'm like kicking myself cause I don't have an ecosystem. Right? I'm looking up that mountain and I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, I've been sitting here and I've known about these ecosystems, I've coached people to build their own ecosystems and I don't have my own ecosystem and I'm looking up at the mountain and I'm like, Oh, what am I ever going to get up there?Right. When reality, whenever I turned around and looked back down, you know, I look how far I've come at th the struggles, how we, you know, lived in this small house and how we, you know, worked through having my first team member and then having to, having one of my team members quit on me for the first time ever. It wrecked me. I was so, I was devastated. I was so upset. And then, you know, having to fire somebody for the first time, what it meant to lead, how to have my own retreat, like the Two Comma Club stage for earning a million dollars in my agency. Like, like if you want to tell me at the beginning of this journey that I was going to build an agency that would make over a million dollars. Like I just, I would've been like, what?Like that would have been inconceivable. So as, as we've, as I've come up this journey and I look back down, I can have so much more appreciation and understanding that all it's going to take is one foot in front of the other to make it up the other side and to keep going to reach the top right because that's all that was. It was one problem and then you solve the next problem, solve that and then solve the next problem and you just keep going and you don't let those Valley days make you forget about where you've come to get to that part. Right. So I think, I think that's, I guess I could share that because that's been the thing that's just been kind of ruminating with me, just appreciation because it was like two years ago I posted on my profile a picture and it was the two comparison shots, right.Of looking up the mountain and then looking how far you'd come. And I was like, Oh, that's so good. And so just remembering how far you've come, no matter where you are, if you're experiencing the Valley and celebrating, just celebrating your wins and how far you've come and knowing that you have whatever it takes inside of you in order to figure out how to solve the next problem. And then you'll figure out how to solve the problem that's after that and you'll keep going.Virginia Purnell:I like that. Thank you so much. Thank you again for such a great interview. How can people find out more about you and what you do?Stephanie Blake:Okay. Yeah. So if you just basically just find me on Facebook and connect with me there, you can actually go to the Stephanie dub Facebook page and connect with me there. I've got a bot hooked up there and just let me know. You know, what's going on in your business. I'd love to connect and meet you and see if there's a way that I can help you or just learn more about what you're doing.Virginia Purnell:Thank you again, Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode.Mentioned Links:DistinctDigitalMarketing.comMySocialSparrow.comBotBoss.io

Virginia Purnell:Welcome to Entrepreneur Conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Hi everyone. Today I'm talking with Christina Szekeres about how she helps people become financially independent through affiliate marketing. Christina is an international keynote speaker and affiliate marketer for 15 years. She started when she was 14 and had no English, an independent business woman and was born and raised in Hungary and now living in Orange County, California.Virginia Purnell:Welcome Christina.Christina Szekeres:Hi Virginia. Thank you for having me.Virginia Purnell:I'm so glad that you're here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?Christina Szekeres:Of course. I'm currently living in California, but I'm originally from Budapest, Hungary. I was born and raised there and I was born to a, you know, like very poorest in European family and when I was 14, my dad got me an ebook which was written by a female affiliate marketer and she was un affiliate marketing, how to make money with ClickBank offers on Google adwords. And back then I didn't speak any English. I dedicated my whole summer to that book to translate it word by word, using the old fashioned dictionary method, you know, and I was very inspired by this woman because I thought to myself, if she can make money as a woman, then I probably can make it work too. And, and given that my parents never really had money to go on vacations or they barely had any money to pay the bills, I was super driven and motivated to change that, not only for myself but for my family too.So I was always motivated to, to keep going. It took me about three years to find my first profitable campaign back then when I was just a teenager. That was pay-per-view traffic with running a lead generation offer. And then I, you know, from that point on, I, it was always like for me, a breakthrough when there was like a big, big when s**t hit the fan, sorry for my bad words. But when I'm under a lot of pressure, I tend to deliver very good. And, but I was about 2021 my dad does his job and he could no longer provide for the family and that was the point, the turning point in my affiliate marketing career because until then I was just treating it as like a game and like making pocket money. But then when really it got serious because if we're about to lose our home that was behind the beers by like three months and you know, he had a couple of mortgages that he had to pay and that was the moment when I was like, okay, I need to step it up.I need to figure out how to make much more money. I mean I know already that you know how campaigns work and how you can make money with affiliate marketing. I did it on a low scale, but then that was the turning point for me, a big breakthrough, a push when I was under pressure to to be able to provide for the family, stepping in to become the breadwinner. And in about two months I changed the family's life. I turned it around because I was able to pay off all of his dad and I moved my dad to. After that I started traveling with my mom and I moved my dad to the us to keep working for me and now they are both are being retired in California and they are hearing me. So that is kind of like my life story in short.Virginia Purnell:Such an inspiring story. Thank you. So what's the biggest thing that you do to get visible online?Christina Szekeres:That's a very good question and I love that question. Many people today think that social media and like Instagram is the way to go and like to get miserably. Now there are like two different things that we can talk about. One, we can talk about personal branding and the other we can talk about running actual affiliate marketing campaigns. I would say they're two different things for personal branding. What I put a lot of emphasis on is providing value in communities that are interested in affiliate marketing. So I, the way I got, you know, a lot of let's say visibility or like I was put into the spotlight when I was a meeting, I don't know if you're familiar with stack that money, the forum, but it's a big affiliate marketing community.And they had meetups all around the world. And the way my brand started was actually going to these meetups and I met the founders in Hong Kong. So for me, one of the main tactics to get visibility and people to get to know me, to actually go to meet ups and meet people in person. So they start talking about you and I saw her speaking at events that helps a lot and online being active in groups. So I was really active on, on SDN forum. People got to know me and they got really excited when they met me in person. Right? So they could put the username behind the face short put into a face. That's not my brand started. So SDN invited me to speak at their, at their first London event. And there are like 600 people in the room and you know, it, it just came naturally.So I think I was very passionate about it wasn't very well planned out and you know how I am going to have a lot of visibility but it definitely was a passion of mine to travel and meet all the people and learn more from all these people and also provide value. So I kept hopping around from one continent to another just to go to an STM Europe to meet the people who are like people who do the same like I do at flare marketing, right. To share and discuss tactics and then hosting my own workshops in the meantime and mastermind and being active, you know, in the whole whole industry. So whatever industry you are a part of, I would recommend if you're planning to do a personal branding and you're passionate, passionate about, you know, being active in groups and then go to meet ups impression to not just online because that will help a lot for people to get to know you and to start talking about you. So to sum it up, I would say networking in person and in groups, Skype mastermind groups that are grow, mastermind groups, Facebook groups where you want to be active to get any recognition and to provide relief for the topic that you are representing. So I love helping out people when they push the question in our Facebook group and giving value and showing them, you know, my expertise and more and more people will see that and then they will reach out to you for help. So our perfect approach if you're just starting out.Virginia Purnell:Awesome. Thank you so much for those words of wisdom, Christina.Christina Szekeres:Of course.Virginia Purnell:How can people find out more about you and what you do?Christina Szekeres:They can find out about me, by IM Queen consulting.com or if they go to Facebook, they can type in. IM queen, internet marketing queen. And then on Instagram IM FB Queen to to find out more.Virginia Purnell:Awesome. Thank you again, Christina for sharing with us and I'm excited to have you back on the show in a bit.Christina Szekeres:Thank you Virginia. My pleasure, had a good time.Virginia Purnell:Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll get you on the next episode.****Discover More:DistinctDigitalMarketing.comIMQueenConsulting.com

Virginia Purnell:Welcome to entrepreneur conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Hi everyone and welcome. Today I'm talking with Cory Carter about how he helps business owners find the right partners to potentially 10 X their audience. Corey is a leader of leaders. He helps the many reach new Heights in their business and careers while teaching them to figure out their why's, set the right goals, and then work the best strategy to achieve those goals. Corey and his business partner Ron cool, have a podcast called Hindsight HacKing and a Facebook group of the same name that is all about hacking others hindsight to give you a clearer foresight. Welcome Corey.Cory Carter:Thank you so much Virginia. And I'm excited to be here. Really really looking forward to the launch of this.Virginia Purnell:Thanks. I'm excited too and thank you for joining us. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself?Cory Carter:Yeah, definitely. So my story is basically I grew up knowing that the only way to get what I needed or wanted was I needed to work hard for it. And so at a young age, 13 I started delivering papers at five in the morning and literally ever every bit after that I would put in 60 hours a week. You know, as as I was 16 years old going to school, I would just know that I just needed to put in the time and I would get the money back. Right. And so it took me years of doing that until my first son was born that I was always around, always trading that time for the money. And then my son was born, my wife actually hemorrhaged and ended up in a pretty bad state. And I was at work two days after my son was born.Cory Carter:And you know, like I knew at that point I needed to find something, find a different way, find a better way, work smarter, not harder. And so yeah, that kind of led me on this journey of figuring out what's, what's the best way and how do I do things and how can I provide, you know, and serve people and what do I love doing? And all these questions you ask yourself, right. Finding my own why and helping other people find their why. It became kind of a passion for me. So that's really the number one thing. Like I was always working for somebody working, you know, as hard as I can, as many hours as I could to now where I don't sacrifice the family like I once did,Virginia Purnell:Which I bet your wife and kids appreciate.Cory Carter:Yes, yes, absolutely. It's you know, it took me, it still took me another 10 years after that time when I, when I needed, when I was, when my, my wife almost passed and that literally it's now, I mean, my partner Ron, like he always commends me on, on the, I won't, I won't flex. Like, you know, if I'm at home during certain times, like I'll still work hard and do things I love. But yeah, it's definitely made for a much, much better house, much better home life for sure. Well, I'm glad that you can separate the two, the work life and the home life. But one quick question for you. What is the biggest thing that you do to get visible online? Does. It's funny, I could, I could go into a long story on this for sure, but I'll try to keep it somewhat short.So when I, I was, I was always this voyer when it came to social media, like I, before I transitioned into working on all this online business, I literally would have had like a hundred friends on Facebook and their friends and family and even my closest relatives and closest friends, I never interacted with them. I literally watch them put their photos up of them, their lives, and I never put my own photos up. Now my, my wife would put photos up, a boss and people would comment. But again, I was this big Voyager and I never did anything online. And up until about two years ago when we move, we shifted to some online online business and a different way of networking. So if this became this thing where instead of just looking at it as I'm doing this for fun, I literally was like, okay, well this is for work and I can be, it can be for fun at the same time.Right? And so the number one way to that I became visible was literally you just go in, you like certain people's things or you provide a little bit of value here and there and, and before you knew it. And like, not that I've, they're all close friends, but I've got like 4,000 friends on Facebook now. And again there's, there's probably several that aren't real friends, but I think it's so many contacts and connections that just because provide a comment here, provide a comment there. And next thing you know, you're, you're hanging out with someone like a Jamie Atkinson who is, you know, King of podcasts, right? Like you just get in these circles where you provide a little bit of value at the right times. And next thing you know, you're, you're B, you're a little bit visible. Now obviously the last piece to that is you have to publish in some way, shape or form online.So I can go into a group and comment and like and do different things, but if there's no reason to come and watch me follow me or anything on my own stuff, then you know it's, it's irrelevant what you're doing. And so that's kinda like the last piece of getting visible to anything online for sure. So consistency is key. Yes, absolutely. Even with our podcasts, I mean, it's releasing every single week at least once a week. Like that's no matter what we make sure to get it done right. And we've found that we started a Facebook group and just a little bit of the little bit of consistency and posting and providing information. And next thing you know, we're, you know, go from five people in a group to 40 right? Like this and that. And that's not even trying, that's literally just, okay, I'm going to start adding some value and some content consistently.Virginia Purnell:Thank you so much for sharing. I'm excited to have you back for another episode and how can people find out more about you and what you do?Cory Carter:Yeah, absolutely. You know, my favorite thing is definitely the Hindsight HacKing community. So either on Facebook under Hindsight HacKing or on our podcast. That's probably the, my favorite two things that we're doing right now and having a lot of fun with and hopefully providing some value for some folks.Virginia Purnell:Okay, awesome. So thank you again, Cory Carter for sharing with us and thank you to each of you for joining us for this amazing interview. Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode.Discover More:DistinctDigitalMarketing.comHindsight HacKing