"I've Got a Golden Ticket!"

Driving in parking lot style stop and go Los Angeles traffic SUCKS…. usually. I was bummed I had to go to a meeting  because I was eager to watch Nev’s video antics in a course I purchased an hour before about how he made $20,000 by selling a course online. Nev is the main course creator at AppSumo and hilarious. It never feels like I am studying business when I watch his content.  It’s more like an informative comedy routine where I just happen to learn how to increase revenue while I am laughing my ass off. So this time, during my drive from Santa Monica to Hollywood in the 5 o’ clock rush hour I decided to use my smart phone with my beloved Bose earbuds to listen to fresh off the digital shelf  “Course about Building a Course” pictured to the right.

Tony Robbins suggests doing something we love while doing a task we can’t stand will trick our mind into loving tasks we usually despise. My addiction to learning definitely goes into the same bucket as my love for sushi, house music on Pandora and indie movies.

I remember first watching Nev’s “Kopywriting Kourse”. There was one scene where he is talking about how addicted he is to copywriting, so much so that he doesn’t notice a top 10 Victoria Secrets like model sitting on his bed. I know what you are thinking… ‘business…how is this about business?’ The videos ARE completely about teaching us skills to be the best entrepreneurs we can be. He just makes sure  the delivery of the education is engaging and never stale or boring. He actually has a mission that with every video course he wants us to be able to make at least 10x back what we spent on the course in a year and 100x back over our lifetime.

So next time you are about to go postal on the road maybe press play on a cool course first to distract you from the monotony. I know after my supposed 30 minute commute that in actuality took 2 hours completed I was bummed to press pause when I arrived to my destination.

Only this morning, on a business call, did I discover Dustin Maher.  I went to his site to check out who was behind the voice and discovered yet another entrepreneur leading with the results that he has gotten his clients. I had to share this great example. And you can tell they are not some “paid to endorse” or “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” testimonials.  They are from real moms who have used his methods to get fit.  How can you not respect that?

Most “social media experts” don’t have experience growing a profitable business.  Just watch this video…

I recently removed the term “social media” from everything I do. The misuse of that phrase makes me want to stick a fork in my eye, slit my throat and hang myself all in tandem. Self proclaimed “social media experts” don’t go around professing their results like how I got over 10,000 people to tune into a live panel in under an hour or sold over 60 test copies of an ebook without any brand recognition in just a few weeks. They don’t share the upfront truth with their clients that social is about building relationships, not quickie trigger sales. These experts usually go around name dropping some influencer like Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble, speaking some so called techie lingo and boasting their twitter following and facebook friend count.  All that doesn’t mean they know how to utilize the online space to gain real traction for a company. Sadly, most of the time these gurus don’t know to even to ask their client what their expectations are.

Years ago I teamed up with the only social agency I trust, bigMETHOD, (recently acquired by BLITZ). They never pretended to have a crystal ball promising results nearly impossible to achieve. All the momentum they did gain for their clients they were able to back up with analytical documentation.  They were straight up, no BS and it was refreshing. Clients signed up because of their success stories. In fact, the founders rarely focused on building their own brand name. They understood it wasn’t about them, it was about what they were able to do for others.

A few months ago bigMETHOD’s co founder, Greg Cargill, and I were asked to speak on online marketing to members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). In meeting with people at SAG I learned that actors build their career based on casting directors. And commercials were their bread and butter. Using the online social space it seemed so easy just to reach out directly to casting directors and form those relationships. Putting my words in motion I put together a video reel and I contacted a woman in my mastermind group, founder of Friends in Film, to critique it. She quickly said to do it right I need to take Killian’s Workshop.    Upon clicking to Killian’s website I was blown away because he connected more effectively and authentically with his audience than any marketer I’ve seen in a long while and he’s not even an internet marketer. His whole site was based on his students return on their investment. His twitter feed and facebook page showcased results and reported resources.

10 plus years being an entrepreneur I have learned no one  cares who we worked for, what we know or how cool we are. Those components may get us the contract, but at the end of the day what will keep us 110% booked and products sold out will be what we have achieved for others and how much we care. When I read through Killians site I knew, with no doubt in my mind, he’d deliver. I knew he was dedicated to the success of everyone who worked with him. That was proven by the insane amount of referrals he gets and how his workshops are consistently filled to capacity months out. Its incredible, but not surprising. If his clients achieve the results they wanted by working with him why wouldn’t they profusely promote his abilities to everyone around them and take his workshops again and again.

I decided to sign up for his class.  I knew he was someone I MUST learn from. He understood business, he understood customer connection and communication, he understood value and credibility. Plus it would add to my speaking abilities to be the best I can be on stage and a new experience to potentially book commercials. There was too much to lose not to sign up. But as I mentioned before, his workshops are filled solid months out, so for days I pressed refresh on my computer browser hoping someone would drop out so I’d be able to snag their spot. A couple days before class number 1 started that’s exactly what happened and I raced to the billing page before I missed out.

He has been exactly as others have experienced him; to the point, no nonsense, no better workshop for commercial acting than his. Reminds me of Seth Godin‘s book “The Dip”, where Godin emphasizes that there is no point in building a company if your product or service isn’t the best in the world. Richard Branson says that you should be so proud of what you offer you want to shout about it off the mountain tops for everyone you know to hear.

If social media twitperts would focus on sharing what they have achieved for others and less time on their online cool factor this internets industry wouldnt have such a sham name.

The key to all this is defining oneself as being able to achieve X with absolute certainty and knowing you are the absolute best in the world at achieving it. That there is no convincing involved because your success speaks for itself and people would be gravely mistaken to not work with you if they are wanting X. This means if you are an independent without a huge team behind you to support all the work it takes to run a full blown social media campaign then just be excellent at one specific thing. Whether that thing is Facebook brand pages, Twitter engagement, Email list building, pick one. Because each one of these things has so much to it the learning is endless. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. BE a specific thing to specific people who have that need. Care about those people and they will naturally refer others to you. After all, isnt that what “social marketing” is - Referrals.

Go to Killian’s website and study how he communicates with site visitors. You’ll see what I mean.  The easiest monetary investment for a potential client or customer to make is in certainty. To know what they CAN EXPECT from your work or product. That means you must confidently know what you are able to deliver. If you aren’t the best of the best today, that’s okay. We all start somewhere, but from this day forward focus on that very specific skill in order to BE someone of certainty. In the meanwhile be honest about your skill level with those who work with you so that you can build a long lasting relationship.

I was listening to this talk today with Gary Vaynerchuk. His points reinforced what I believe. He said that in today’s business landscape it is a must to genuinely care about the people and companies you work with. Not just their wallets, but their lives. Otherwise you’ll fall behind.

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Tonight I skipped a Friday night on the town in Los Angeles with Silverlake hipsters, Hollywood socialites and Venice Beach Dogtown skater boys to watch a video case study on how a company called AppSumo grew to 500,000 customers in only 18 months. The information in the videos was AWESOME.

AppSumo is like a Groupon for web applications. I discovered the case study as a deal on their website homepage. Though the headline was alluring, the trigger for buying the video series was hearing from Andrew Chen, an analytics and metrics master who Noah Kagan, the founder of AppSumo, raves about in his business talks.  Being that Noah was the 4^th employee at the ever successful financial website MINT and the 30^th employee at the world dominating Facebook, I knew that if he thinks Andrew is worth listening to, then I should too. Andrew is an investor and adviser for Appsumo.

After watching the candid 7 part video interviews I am able to understand what realistic expectations can be set in place for a new business owner growing a company. Noah and Andrew give us many tactics and tips, but I wouldn’t call the videos a traditional “course”.  It’s not a step-by-step micro level how to guide.  It’s better than that.  They give us an overall plan. What the videos share is a broken down, easy to digest, process outline for how to build a significant customer base in a short amount of time. They reveal how to discover and scale working marketing tactics.

They break it down into 3 parts. Phase 1 is the “Hustle Stage” from Zero – 1,000 customers. In the first stage it’s all about defining who our customers are and where they hang out in order to reach them.  What websites do they visit? What content do they read? They remind us if a product or service sucks no marketing will work. The goal is to find out what marketing works for customer acquisition to be on an upward trajectory because they reinforce ‘you can’t scale a flat line’.

Then Phase 2 is the “Puberty Stage” from 1,001 to 50,000 customers where we take what we learned in phase one and review what marketing tactics worked that can be scaled, then test if they perform to meet our long term expectations. In the second stage they suggest focusing on one specific marketing tactic and mastering it so that it is scalable, repeatable and predictable. For AppSumo this was online advertising also known as PPC, Pay Per Click.

Phase 3 is the “Scale Stage” from 50,001 to 500,000 where we have spent time seasoning ourselves in very specific marketing tactics, have enough data to know how much each customer is costing us and making sure we are getting at least a 10x return on our efforts. Most importantly in phase 3 we want to analyze the long-term activity of our customers to embrace how much we can spend to acquire new ones. In the last stage it’s all about data and looking at how people are interacting with your company over the long term. This is called cohort analysis. How much revenue is each customer generating the first week, 2^nd month, 6 months, etc. Compare marketing and site presence to what type of customer was attracted to your company and analyze their site activity. Tweak your company marketing accordingly to what components contribute to a customers who spend the most money over an extended period of time. 

Though I highly recommend checking out these interviews, rather than trusting me take a look at the intro video below to see if it suits what you are looking to learn.

Good Luck!

Sincerely,

“the Girl who Gets it Done”

Part 1: How to Grow from 0 to 500,000

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Have you ever searched for a local business or service and seen google search results that look like this:

These are called Google Places and if you are a local business or service provider with a real address you can grab one of these for free, courtesy of Google.  In fact Google wants you to grab your place page and make it the best it can be so that they can rank you in the search engines.  If you are a local business there is no better way to reach for the top of the search engines than creating a Places page.To claim or create your Google Places page just follow the steps below.  If Google has already created a page for your business you must claim it by verifying that it is in fact your business either through phone or postcard verification.  If Google hasn’t created a Places page yet for your business you can go ahead and do it yourself and let Google and the rest of the world know that you exist.

 Step 1 – Go to

Step 2 – You will see a page that looks like this.  Click on Get Started.

Step 3 – You will be taken to a form to fill out that looks like this.

Fill out the form with all the necessary information about your business and submit your info. for Google verification.  Make sure and watch the video above to get specific details on filling out the form.  Once your Places Page is verified by Google it is eligible to show up in the search engines.  If you are in a competitive market you will need to get reviews and citations in order to compete for a top spot in the search engines.

This guest post was written by Maria Calanchini. For More Information go to mariacalanchini.com

Maria Calanchini is an internet marketing and social media consultant that specializes in small to medium sized businesses.