James Schramko Podcast

Discover content marketing tips and how you can put out valuable, effective content online - without losing your sanity in the process.

Podcast highlights:

02:51 - Two perspectives collide

06:47 - Stories waiting to be told

09:24 - When you can't spend all day writing

11:16 - Writing by talking

13:06 - Content you can repurpose

16:48 - Have THIS written down

18:34 - What should your content look like?

21:47 - Telling your whole story

24:07 - An opportunity to collaborate

29:59 - How tuned in are marketers to empathy?

32:57 - Avoid this content marketing mistake

35:27 - Maybe they haven't purchased, but...

37:30 - The value comes back to you

39:14 - How do you stay on topic?

Part 2 of the series

Learn high-level business concepts while relaxing on a boat in the Maldives. Click HERE

Download the PDF Transcription and 9 Tips For Easier, Better Content Marketing

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, I have a special guest back for his third visit.

In the previous iterations, we talked about, in Episode 451, How to Find and Train Your New Content Manager. And in that episode, we talked about finding a medium that suits you and we talked about simple processes you can use to get content out on your website so that people find you. And in Episode 457, we talked about leveraging guest content. We revealed the fact that you can't be a master of everything, and you need to get some external resource and pair that up with your content and really power up your campaign.

So today, we're actually talking about how to succeed in content marketing without spending all day writing. We're going to continue developing this topic, and I would love to welcome back my special guest, Kyle Gray.

Kyle: Thanks so much for having me, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

James: Kyle, you are an entrepreneur, you've been helping startups and small businesses grow with their content marketing especially. And you've been creating scalable content marketing strategies. I think that's important, because when we initially hear about blogging or content marketing, I'm sure we have this vision that we're going to be sitting there with a blank screen, thinking about what can we write. I'm sure most people's campaigns stop right about there, before they dive back into their email, grab another course or hop onto Facebook, and it's all finished.

What I love about what you've been doing is you're good at creating these step-by-step processes and templates that have been helping people automate and delegate what they're doing with their content. And you've even been teaching entrepreneurs and startups in places like the University of Utah, where I think you're currently located. But you do tend to travel around. Right now, though, you've parked yourself for more than five minutes so that you can do this podcast.

Differing content writing philosophies

Kyle: Definitely. Yeah, it's interesting to see how many different perspectives all kind of collide when people are t...

How do you take the stress and needless effort out of content marketing and content creation?

In this episode:

03:20 - The background on AppBusinessBrokers

05:14 - A forecast for mobile apps

06:22 - Why many people sell

09:54 - The arrangements buyers look at

12:33 - Can businesses do without capital injection?

14:34 - A red flag for buyers

17:00 - The multiples involved

19:10 - Can transactions go sour?

21:53 - New trends for buyers

24:55 - What buyers must validate

30:27 - When you don't have the cash...

33:31 - Prepping and payment for legal agreements

36:01 - Avoid this mistake

The complete presentations of SuperFastBusiness Live 2017 are inside the community. One of them is "How to Grow your Business Strong to Sell It."

Download the PDF Transcription and Things To Consider When Buying An Internet Business PDF Resource

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we're covering the topic of buying a business. We've got plenty of episodes on SuperFastBusiness about selling. And for every one who sells a business, someone has to be buying that business, so I've brought on a specialist in this field. Eric Owens from AppBusinessBrokers.com. Eric has been selling businesses and facilitating transactions for people with internet, e-com, SaaS solutions, mobile apps and has built up a fairly good reputation. I actually originally got referred to Eric from Ezra Firestone, another great friend of our SuperFastBusiness community. Welcome to the show, Eric.

Eric: Yeah, thanks, James. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah definitely, Ezra's a cool person. I'm glad he connected us up way back when.

James:  You know, Ezra has, I think, started and sold quite a few e-commerce stores. And originally, when I was looking to enter into selling my businesses, I asked Ezra who's good at this. And he sent me your details, and we had a conversation, and you sent me over a checklist. It turns out I was able to just sell the business myself. But I think that was through probably a fortunate scenario of both the business units that I sold, I ended up selling to customers of mine. So I already knew the buyers, which took away a huge part of the equation from the point of view of a broker. And also, I'm pretty comfortable with buying and selling from my previous experience, so that I wasn't worried at all about the negotiation phase or the pressure of making offers or the scrutiny. I've seen it all before in high-pressure sales environments.

So, two of the factors that I imagine are very appealing about a broking service were not present for me. However, if I didn't know the customer or if I was uncomfortable buying or selling, I think a broker is going to become a really great asset for someone in that situation. Is that correct?

Eric: Yeah, definitely. I mean like you said, if you have, with your experience with negotiating and selling to someone you know that definitely helps with a couple of those factors where most business owners don't have that negotiating experience or being able to value their business and know what's a good deal and what's not. And the buyers they may work with, you know, they don’t know who they are, really, so...

Got your eye on an existing online business? This episode offers helpful business tips for making that purchase.

In the episode:

00:38 – It’s not about you

01:25 – Finding common ground

02:18 – How to treat big shots

03:22 – Beware of THIS

04:24 – When to approach a speaker

05:05 – Are you the person people want to be around?

05:59 – When invited to dinner…

06:53 – A big no-no

07:46 – What you can offer

08:39 – How to be recognized

09:17 – A way to bridge conversation

Access the complete presentations from SuperFastBusiness Live 2017 inside SuperFastBusiness membership

Download the PDF transcription and A Checklist For Meeting People At Live Events

Transcription:

James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, I’m going to be talking about live events.

I just ran my live event, SuperFastBusiness Live. All of the presenters there were fantastic. A lot of them I’ve met in person at other events, and quite often, in other countries. So today, I’m going to share with you some top tips on how to network better when you go to a live event.

“How to network better at a live event”

CLICK TO TWEET

Be interested

The first tip is be interested rather than trying to be interesting. So a lot of the people at events generally gravitate towards a bar. Wherever there’s food or refreshments served, that’s where people go because they’re away from home. So you’ll find people congregate there. And rather than trying to be very interesting and have everyone notice you, instead, be interested. Be curious. Ask questions.

“Rather than trying to be interesting…”

CLICK TO TWEET

But just be low key as well. You don’t need to be over the top. You don’t need to stand out and be the class clown. What you want to think about is this is a very long-term relationship. And first impressions are important. But you’ll have more than a few bites at the cherry, and I’ll explain why in just a minute.

Find things in common

One thing that I do when I’m meeting someone is I find things that we have in common because that makes it comfortable to have a continued discussion. Where did they go to school? Where do they live? What things are they interested in? What type of careers have they had? What are their passions or sports? What sort of family situation have they grown up with? So there’s all sorts of common ground you can find. Fairly quickly, you’ll find friends who you have in common.

These days, it’s even easier with things like Facebook will actually tell you who you have in common. So if you know the person, and you’re trying to establish contact, have a look and see who you have as mutual friends because they will be common grounds for you. In fact even better is to get an introduction from one of those friends if they happen to be there at the event. It’s way better to get introduced by somebody than for you to have to go up cold.

Leverage live events by meeting and connecting with the right people.

Video highlights:

00:20 - Your three customer groups

00:40 - Where banks and telcos get it wrong

01:57 - The 100% example

03:05 - Your second important customer group

Boost your business growth with help from the SuperFastBusiness community

Download the PDF transcription

Transcription:

James Schramko here, and today I want to share with you which group of customers you should pay the most attention to in your business. And it may not be who you think.

Let's say there's three groups of customers, for simplicity. There are first-time customers, then there's the regular customers who you see fairly often, maybe they've been there a while. And then there's the super customers, the VIPs, the ones who buy the most, they've been there forever.

Your priority customers

So of those three, let's hope that you can serve all of them really well. But if you had a choice, there's one group that you want to pay particular attention to. First and foremost of course, that is the VIPs, because they've proven that they're loyal, they spend the money, and like banks and telecommunication companies and finance companies always get this wrong, they're always looking for new customers and they burn their existing customers. So I always give the best prices to my existing customers. I give the early bird notification to my best customers, and I suggest you do the same.

"Banks and telecommunication companies always get this wrong."CLICK TO TWEET

Knowing the best

How do you know who your best customers are? Look into your shopping cart or your email system, do some lead scoring where you assign points for your best customers so you can pull up a list of your top customers.

You should at least know your top 10 customers, and your team should know your top 10 customers. In our team, we used to use a little tilde sign to distinguish who is a VIP customer. So we'd always make sure we look after them extra specially.

OK, who's the second group that you should look after? If you can't look after all of them, let's say you have thin resources, I'll tell you. The very, very most important group to look after, as long as you've looked after your VIPs, is actually...no wait. I want to tell you about something I did earlier.

The coffee shop experience

I actually went and bought a coffee today, from a coffee shop nearby. Now I used to go to this coffee shop, it was a different brand, and I go to a couple of coffee shops around Manly fairly often. So over a year, I could buy quite a lot of coffee. Over four years, which is about how long I've been here, I've bought a lot of coffees even though I have a coffee machine at home. I like to go and leave the house.

"The experience that counts for a lot..."CLICK TO TWEET

I went to this brand new place today, and it was my first experience with them. So just to put that in perspective, 100 percent of my experience with this shop is happening when I make that first purchase.

Discover which types of customer you should look after the best.

Discover how the right thinking powers stellar performances in sports and in business.