*This Is Part 2 of 3, of the New Rules Of Money series. The one where we dive deep into modern business, why most are running outdated models and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.
Automation Utopia. Automation Dystopia. Your choice.
In this article, we get into the nuts and bolts of the business automation revolution, but let’s talk mindset quickly because the world has changed more in the last twenty years, than it has in the last hundred.
If we don’t upgrade our “mental software” from time to time, success and progress will elude us. Whose plan are you following?
The fact is, most end up following a slightly modified version of their parent’s limited thinking. In an age of rapid change, this can be a bad strategy. We are simply in a VERY DIFFERENT time than our parents, so many of their rules (especially economic rules) simply don’t apply any longer. To live a good life TODAY, we need to solve the money problem and turn some of that money into lasting assets. If we don’t do this, we end up living in a quasi-slavery, beholden to bosses, employers and restrictive financial paradigm. It does not have to be this way. It’s no one’s fault, and blame will get us nowhere.
The ironic thing is, most of us are only a few weeks to a few months away from a new financial future. A Proven Blueprint
I have built a career (and floods of business for my clients) using simple digital tools like Youtube, Gmail, and drag-and-drop website builders to deliver floods of new business to my clients. I’m not a social media celebrity, and you don’t have to be either.
“You don’t need to be a social media star to be successful online.”
The problem with popular online gurus selling you the “easy digital life is” that they thrive on telling you what you want to hear, (to get likes and clicks) instead of what you need to know.
Social media has a silly way of bringing to the surface things that are sensational, but not necessarily effective or important. Many “gurus” who preach “free advice” don’t convey to the public what they are actually using to grow their business behind the scenes. That doesn’t fly in my camp.
Making money online with products that you already sell, or expertise that you already have has gotten easier, cheaper and faster.
In today’s technology-driven age, everyone is an entrepreneur, because we are all trading our hours for dollars. PERIOD.
So, whether you like it or not, you might as well become a better one, and the play by play update in Part 3 will help you do just that. First, let’s talk dollars and common sense.
In the new “Corona-enforced virtual economy” almost anyone can generate digital revenue, but it doesn’t really matter "how much you know these days". What matters is genuinely helping others solve problems. These days you can learn high paying skills over the weekend, and start charging for them by Monday.
Are you ready to drop the struggle and embrace your power?
If you want your journey as a digitally savvy entrepreneur, or leader of your department or industry to be difficult, then ignore the rest of this guide. Your decisions will determine your success.
If you like the idea of automating your business and using it to free yourself from repetitive sales and accounting, this is for you.
Going forward, it’s very important that you take 100% responsibility for every outcome in your life because blame is the most toxic agent blocking your road to success.
Successful marketing and sales automation is always a partnership with the client. You are the expert in your business and your input is key.
Matt’s Story
One of our Growth Factor clients, Matt K. who is in the property management business hit gold during his time working with us. About a year ago, he and his colleague started a service that helps landlords track “short-term” Air B&B type rentals happening under their roof.
During his time working with us, they landed a contract with one of the largest property management firms in the country, and now they are well on their way to a thriving business. In my experience, clear thinking, and good planning creates results.
Success can happen faster than ever.
It’s almost like the four-minute mile. Once it’s been done, and the bubble has burst, it creates a wave for others to ride and follow. Have you capitalized yet?
The new rules of money are no exception to this force.
Are you in a place where you want to leverage your knowledge and run a home-based business and start living life on your terms?
Or maybe you own or manage an existing business, and you KNOW it can be done better.
Old business. New Business. It works the same for both. Now that we have the appropriate mental framework in place, let’s get to the goods.
The Second Rule of New Money.
Conversion gold and my “algorithm for trust.”
Conversion is the golden nugget of the internet. That’s the idea of using strategically arranged content to build trust and transform a visitor from "cold traffic" into a well-informed and motivated prospect, or customer.
That concept may sound simple, but why do so few businesses do it correctly?
Buying and selling online happens almost exactly as it does in real life, and it’s been that way for thousands of years.
This is true with one exception, online you can do it way faster, and therefore you can do it way cheaper. Best of all you can clone yourself and your message infinitely. Now all you need is an audience, but not just any audience, the right audience.
Consider the old days.
The REALLY old days. You came to the market, you bought what was available, and you probably heard rumors through your friends about who was honest, and who wasn’t. From there, depending on the abundance of options, you made your choice, for better, or worse. Can anyone tell me how the modern age is any different? It’s not. This is where most fail online. It doesn’t matter whether you use a stone axe, a hand saw, or chainsaw, the job is the same. The problem is, most are using their chainsaw like a stone axe! For someone to give you money over the internet, they need to trust you, aka, they need to believe you can help them solve their problem, or achieve their goal.
The way you build trust and automated buying behavior on the internet happens through a very specific and repeatable process.
I call it my “algorithm for trust.” That means you must understand the pattern of trust-building on a web page, a landing page, a Facebook page, etc. or you will not see digital success. Rule number one of building trust online is digital integrity. Most of you already have it. It doesn’t mean you are perfect, but it means you act in good faith to provide genuine value to your customers.
Online, the best media attracts their customers towards a logical and emotional value-driven transaction. When you do it right, there is zero “selling” required.
When your content is right, there is almost zero selling required.
After registering, the first thing Growth Factor members get is my Growth Factor checklist. It’s my detailed recipe for how we build digital assets and content so they attract a buying audience like a magnet.
This process creates automatic trust with the right audience and leads to the conversion of cold traffic into a warm audience and paying customers. Okay, so now you know about conversion. It’s time to build the “conversion engine.”
What is a conversion engine?
A conversion engine is a sequence of content that turns strangers into trusted allies, loyal fans and paying customers. It can be that simple. Most brands spend upwards of $15,000+ on a website, another $5,000 on videos, and more on custom technology before they make their first dime online. This is BONKERS!
We're Garlic For Agency Vampires
Don’t get me wrong, agencies will bring you into a fancy modern office, everyone will be wearing suits, and you can sign on the dotted line for a beautiful $15,000 website, and they will smile as they take your money.
The problem is that you failed to ask them how many customers this website will bring to your business each month. If you ask them, they will politely tell you that they have NO FRICKIN idea.
The problem with most agencies and digital specialists is that they have a narrow specialization that contains only one part of the conversion engine. That’s like going to the car lot and buying a car without an engine!
In other words, you are paying way too much for one piece of the process. In many cases, a website is a valuable part of the trust-building process, but only if it is built correctly, and it should never cost you $15K.
Keep It Simple In some cases a conversion engine is a one-page website with a 2-minute video, in other instances, it’s a potent five-page website and an email sequence. Every project is unique, and no two strategies are alike.
Now that we have a high-level understanding of trust and conversion (which is 80% of the battle.) Now it’s time to add the traffic. Or you could say, the turbocharger to your conversion engine.
Traffic - you need it to grow. Period. Most brands already have enough of it, and they just aren’t using it wisely. Most startups can get plenty of it if they have the right data, which can be easily obtained.
There are dozens of ways to get great traffic to your business, organization, product, offer, mission whatever. The traffic is out there, every time.
Most people say traffic is too expensive. That’s not true either. You’re just not doing a good enough job of turning that traffic into paying customers. In summary, the way you turn traffic into trust online, sufficient to inspire people to pay you real money, is not impossible, it’s not even difficult. Remember, it’s reliable and repeatable. No guessing, and no gambling. I share in detail how we do this in part 3 of this series.
Think of it like this.
Is making a pizza hard? Maybe if it’s your first time, and you have no instructions, but add a good friend, a proven process and a glass of wine and the whole game is a lot different isn't it?
The Missing Link To Results
The final “Growth Factor” that most brands skip is timing.
You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date. And yet, 99% of websites and marketing that I see out there are built more on a "one-night stand strategy." Guess what kind of customers that kind of marketing strategy attracts?
Out of your existing traffic, there are always a few who are ready to buy, but most are not quite ready yet. This is where your content and trust-building strategy really matters, and where a majority of small and even very large brands fall flat on their face. Not only can a good website and content (trust-building strategy) make a huge sales difference for existing brands, it can also help a small, lightweight home business drive consistent revenue working part-time hours, simply by leveraging traffic, trust-building, and automation tools.
Automation is easier and it will eat the old economy
It’s a lot harder to rely on inconsistent old-school, high pressure, mind-numbingly repetitive MANUAL sales tactics. A good website, built on trust and traffic automation can turn 1-2 salespeople into an unstoppable force, or eliminate the need for a sales team altogether.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big believer in human interaction, and the best brands always use it, but strategically.
Automation will eat most existing brands in the next 5 years.
I believe brands that fail to adopt this, or a similar process in the next 2-5 years are simply going to be eaten by the ones who do. You simply won't be able to compete with their cost to acquire a customer.
Whether you’ve been meaning to lead the charge in your own life and take your mission to the next level, or you want to help your company evolve, learn and grow, the rest of this content us much more practical, and designed to help you do one thing... Multiply your existing opportunity by a factor of 2-3, in the next 4 months.
I don’t care if you work for a company, own a company, or care for someone who does, the information in part 3 will help you see around the corner for the next 3-5 years, and not only that. If you apply it, you may just be able to help create a windfall of business and opportunity for a project, or brand you care about.
I’ve spent the last ten months assembling a team, and a network of trusted service providers so I can help more brands do this more easily than ever before.
To continue this journey...
In this next section, I share my full roadmap that shows how I’ve been able to do this repeatedly and reliably for businesses, startups, and brands of all shapes and sizes.
What’s it going to take for you?
The challenge is, you are already busy, and learning a new skill like this takes a little time. Activating strategies (no matter how proven) must be done in a way that can fit into your life. That’s why you not only need a plan, but a trusted ally that can help you deploy.
I find that most small businesses and leaders who “go it alone” spend at least 3-5 years and burn over $100K before they get this right. Speaking from our results, we are shattering those averages. Once you know the patterns, this can scale for any business, of any size.
It often works even better for smaller lightweight teams and projects. What if I don’t have any traffic or audience?
What if you don’t have any traffic? That’s the easiest problem to solve in the world. Facebook and sites like it will drive thousands of HIGHLY targeted leads to your page without fuss, very inexpensively.
But paid advertising is too expensive. No, your content just doesn’t convert efficiently. Most brands don’t usually have a traffic problem, they have a trust and conversion problem. With the right content and strategy, paid traffic can become logical and very profitable.
Will it work for my business? Experienced digital marketers like myself know for certain that there is an abundant supply of ideal prospects out there looking for products, knowledge, and services like the ones that you already know, or sell. Eliminating The Risk
Most marketing agencies, so-called “experts” charge brands a boatload of money upfront for web assets, but most are what I call “narrow” experts, and they have no idea how the whole map fits together. They are too close to the animal to know it's an elephant. You don't have to spend a lot to see results.
Blind Leading The Blind
90% of all digital marketing spend across the business world today is NOT directly traceable to results, or ROI. I'm a quiet and contemplative guy who likes making complex things simple. In a business context, that means I've been able to repeat massive brand scale projects time after time. Don't trust your brand to an agency who hires inexperienced interns to manage your account.
Consider an unpopular approach.
While the whole internet is touting hustle, grind, and Facebook ads, I’ve been perfecting a simpler and less noisy path for my clients. I find that when you spend your client’s money like it was yours, and base your decisions on good data, results happen naturally.
Solutions For the Rest of Us. It’s literally taken me ten months to “process-ify” my knowledge, but now I’m making this toolset available to small and home-based businesses in a way that’s never been done before. Seriously.
Vaporoize Agency Vampires
Imagine a world where your marketing partners and vendors are actually invested in your success. Instead of locking you into contracts and retainers, delivering BOLD new graphics and buttered up Facebook posts with zero accountability to performance and results. This one-sided game of blackjack remains the standard in marketing today, and the odds aren’t in your favor. We aim to shift the balance.
It’s time to shatter the old model.
Your network determines your net worth. Are you surrounding yourself and networking with new economy experts and accomplished brand builders? There’s no need to bury yourself in tech any longer. The tools have gotten simpler, cheaper and easier to use. What if you don’t have a product? You probably do, and you don’t even know it. People with over five years of corporate experience are ditching the old economy to capitalize on this opportunity by packaging and leveraging knowledge they have gained from the old economy. What about your existing business?
Maybe you’ve struggled to get your business off the ground, or grow in a way that TRULY serves your lifestyle and needs.
If you are an accomplished, or determined self-starter, professional or executive, and you’ve been wanting to deploy digital strategy, product launches, Facebook ads, and leverage social media, you’ll want to consider part 3 before you make your next move.
Part 3: To get the full story visit: GrowthFactorNetwork.com/Free