James Schramko Podcast

The importance of sleep and how to improve it

The story of how LeadPages and Drip partnered up

In this podcast:

01:18 - LeadPages’s recent acquisition

04:28 - Why keep two businesses separate?

08:44 - Taking over a company

11:47 - Making adjustments

13:19 - What is Drip?

16:57 - Getting to the next level

18:48 - How the partnership started

22:16 - What's happening now with Clay?

25:04 - A myth about CEOs

38:42 - 3 things to investigate if you're considering taking on a business

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Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com, and I've brought back a regular guest to our show, Clay Collins.

Clay: James, thank you for having me back.

James: Thanks for coming back. We've been chatting for years now. I can actually say years, as we chart your stratospheric progress from living in a closet to funded company. I don't mean that literally, I just mean that you used to make little videos underneath the staircase, and hustle a little bit for your marketing podcast, and you did a bit of software, and welcome gates, and video players, and ended up into this lead thing that's blown up pretty big. And now, it looks like LeadPages is moving into some new space, and that's something I'd love to ask you about, if you're willing to share today.

Clay: I'm all yours.

LeadPages’s recent acquisition

James: So what happened between the last time we chatted and now? It seems that you've acquired a business?

Clay: Yeah. I like to use the term acqui-partner, but I think the last thing this space needs is another jargony new term. But yeah, I guess we technically acquired a company called Drip, but what I care about primarily is the partnership that we now have with a new group of people that's building out a new line of business for us.

James: And tell me about some of the decisions that come into this. I'm really curious about it from a business perspective. What would cause you to partner or take over a business unit rather than develop it in-house?

Clay: You know, I think for us, it's about speed and also expertise. I think that some people have more money than time, and some people have more time than money, and we're in the camp that has more money than time. I also think that, we, as a company, have a particular bent, I have a particular bent as a product person. And there was an opportunity to partner with Drip, and that includes the two co-founders Rob Walling and Derek. Rob and Derek have a different set of backgrounds, proclivities; they have a different approach to product. And that is a huge asset to bring to the table. I think for most companies, the only way to add additional, real, founding DNA is to bring some more founders into the team, and we were able to do that with Rob and Derek. And it's been a rocket ship ever since. When we acquired Drip, they had about 1,500 customers. Right now, we're adding about 1,500 customers per month to the platform, and we expect that to continue.

Not just a cross-sell

And interestingly, getting in the numbers here, only 10 percent of those new customers that we're adding are LeadPages cu...

Get a framework for creating videos that inspire people to take action.

In the podcast:

01:30 - Why YouTube is a good place to be

05:20 - If you're not good with video...

07:02 - Can shy people do it?

11:30 - How not to be boring

16:47 - What equipment works best

20:26 - If you want success in video marketing...

27:01 - How to amplify your message

31:36 - To make your viewers stick around...

34:42 - How to inspire action

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Part 2 of the series

Download the PDF transcription and 3 Steps To Making A Statement On YouTube PDF guide

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we're talking about video. We're also specifically going to talk about YouTube. And the reason for that is a friend of mine, Brian G. Johnson, has been entertaining me with his hilarious videos. He's somewhat the expert on this YouTube thing. He's very keen on helping marketers get their message out there to take up that position on YouTube that they should be taking and then getting people to do something.

I like the thing about Brian's stuff is that he's a great educator, and you're inspired to want to do something after watching one of his videos. So I've asked him to come along and talk to us about some of the top tips that we can implement. Welcome to the show, Brian G. Johnson.

Brian: Hey James, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

James: Well you've been cooking up some pretty good stuff over there on your YouTube channel, which is Brian G Johnson TV, and I recommend it. We'll put a link to that in our show notes, and hopefully, people can go and have a look at what we're talking about today.

But you've got a three-part framework that's been a passion of yours that you're sharing with other people. Perhaps we can go through that today.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. It's really my value proposition and something that I worked hard at to be able to... like this is what I do. And absolutely; stake your claim, amplify your message, and inspire action.

James: Why did you feel that YouTube is the place that you should be at at all? Why is it worthy of anyone's time?

Why YOUTUBE?

Brian: Gosh, such a great question. In the land of video streaming, it's such a big deal right now. We've got all these platforms, like, what’s one of the newer live streaming platforms? I go blank, I’m such a YouTube guy.

James: Facebook.

Brian: I think of Facebook as old school, and they've added it on, and I livestreamed this morning. But here's the answer to the question James, I've been publishing videos on YouTube that have gained me clients, that have sold products, that have brought brand awareness to what I do for years. You simply, really don't have that kind of longevity with the content you publish to my knowledge on any other platform except for YouTube. So that's a pretty exciting thing as an entrepreneur - to be able to create a piece of content that you publish today that can be driving views, traffic, leads, sales, and more for years into the future.

Discover how you can partner direct response marketing with e-commerce for fantastic results.

In the episode:

01:18 - Combining direct response and e-commerce

02:44 - What is a direct response campaign?

06:22 - Elements of a good landing page

08:50 - Top traffic sources

11:09 - Using conservative news sites

11:39 - What ad network should you use?

13:08 - Where Facebook comes in

15:50 - Let’s talk conversions

17:45 - One genius way of selling back end

20:17 - Looking at the affiliate element

23:10 - How many emails to send?

26:36 - Drop shipping or in-house?

30:28 - Methods of payment

34:07 - A quick recap

37:18 - An app you might like to try

38:12 - The episode wrap-up

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Download the PDF transcription and E-Commerce Preparation Guide

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we are talking about how to combine direct response marketing with e-commerce. And for that, I've brought along Byron Walker from SurvivalFrog.com. Welcome to the call.

Byron: Thanks James, glad to be here.

James: Byron, I love that you have this great website called Survival Frog, and what we can learn from e-commerce businesses is immense because of the amount of traffic and of course all of the transactions that are going on. We get a high-revenue business that we can learn a lot from if our business isn't quite at that level yet. And even if it is at that level, there's always one or two things that we're not implementing that we could take away from a podcast like this.

Now, you're currently around the $5 million revenue mark. Is that right?

Byron: Yeah.

Direct response and e-commerce combined

James: And what makes your website/business interesting to our audience is that you've combined a lot of the elements of traditional direct response marketing with traditional e-commerce. So I know that our audience here often has a foot in both of those things, maybe they're doing one or the other. But as Jay Abraham talks about, taking ideas from one industry and putting it into another, often you'll get low-hanging fruit. It seems like you've found a nice combination of the two elements.

Byron: Yeah, we really have, and we started with info-publishing. My company's seven years old, and we initially were doing info-products, and that’s obviously a very direct response marketing model. And along the way, we've made a few pivots in the business model, and one was to move to physical products. But we were still doing direct response, so solo sales pages, where that's the only thing to buy and you put them through one-click upsells.

So we're doing physical products just direct response, and then about two years ago, we made another pivot. Well, not so much a pivot, I guess, as much as adding a new element to our business model, and that was the e-commerce site. And we did that because we have hundreds of different products on that site, and that's kind of our long-tail profit with all the people we bring through our direct response funnel.

The direct response side

James: Right. So just to make this clear, what we're actually talking about here, when we talk about direct response, we're talking about targeted traffic to a specific landing page, generally promoting one call to action that will tradit...

12 steps and tips for better communication.

Podcast highlights:

01:46 - Two sides of the connection ladder

03:57 - Have one or two of THESE to be a better communicator

05:13 - Why reach out ahead of time

07:07 - DO rather than SAY

10:58 - The impact of a good intro

14:54 - Why it’s better to be introduced

20:23 - What happens at the bar

22:40 - Less interesting, more interested

24:25 - A framework for good conversation

29:59 - The other side of the ladder

31:45 - A recap

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Download the PDF transcription and 12 Steps For Enhancing Your Communication Skills guide

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today we're talking about communication, and for that, I've brought special guest Michael O'Neal from Solohour.com. Welcome, Michael.

Michael: James, thanks for having me, man. I'm very honored to be here.

James: Well, it's great to catch up, and you've been carving a path with your own podcast. You've had over eight million downloads now, and you've been going for about three years. And I know a lot of our audience are podcasters. So if you are running a podcast, or you attend live events, say you're coming to SuperFastBusiness Live for example, or you're going to one of the many events that are on around multiple countries, which I highly recommend, in fact, that's how I met Michael, then this podcast episode is going to help you enhance your communication skills. So I'm looking forward to this, Michael.

Michael: Me too. I don't know how many of your audience are podcasters, but I'm sort of a curmudgeon, I think most people are doing it wrong, so I'm excited to share some of the stuff that I've come up with. I'm just fresh out of going to a conference this weekend in Vegas, and while I was there, I was sort of taking mental notes about how people connect, and I've been on both sides of that.

Which side are you on?

It depends on where you are on the ladder, but sometimes you really want to connect with an influencer, and sometimes people are connecting with you, and you've got to know what to do with that and how to get the most out of an event. So those are two things I'm very passionate about talking about these days.

James: It's interesting how you said the ladder as an understanding of group dynamics. I know of the first phases is the forming, and then the second stage is storming, so people come together as a group, like in that conference foyer, they're doing the registrations and mingling around. Then they go through the storming phase, which is where people work out where they are in the pecking order. And then they go into the norming phase, where everyone knows their place. Then they go into the performing phase, where they can get the most done.

But let's talk about that ladder for a minute.

Michael: I love that.

James: It's not mine, but it's a great concept to understand if you're building any kind of tribe. And as a podcaster, or running events, or attending events, you're intermingling with all these different online tribes, and Facebook groups, and cliques. Where I met you as part of someone else's tribe, so we all figure out where we are in the position.

Now, let's talk about both sides of the ladder. Firstly, on one side of the ladder,

Discover the secrets behind the 21 million dollar growth of an e-commerce and info marketing business.