James Schramko Podcast

Interview highlights:

01:47 – Did growth just happen?

05:01 – When you hit 20 million…

07:32 – Why not spend more?

08:59 – Knowing how big your business is

11:16 – Triggers and reporting

14:42 – Does segmentation come into play?

17:26 – The impact of current events

21:46 – A CEO’s routine

24:53 – Growing pains to look out for

28:34 – Tool/technique recommendations

30:45 – Sources of business ideas

33:45 – An effect of success

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Transcript:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. I’ve got a guest back for the second time. The last time I interviewed this guest, his business was doing around $5 million a year. We were talking about the comparison between direct response and ecommerce styles of marketing and how you can actually blend the two in what he does with his successful business called Survival Frog, and that was episode 491 in August of 2016. Now, here we are, at the time of recording at the end of May 2017, and our guest has almost doubled the business. So today, I’m going to be speaking with Byron Walker about business growth. Welcome to the call, Byron.

Byron: Great. Thanks, James. Glad to be here.

James: Now, I’m interested in the story of how you’ve doubled your store in less than a year. Especially because business growth is a hot topic with both SuperFastBusiness and especially SilverCircle. A lot of the things that I focus on are to achieve business growth. And I think the first thing that we should probably address is, was the growth something that you had planned or has it just happened?

Can you plan growth?

Byron: Yeah. It was definitely planned. In fact, I think a lot of the reason why we’re not only growing but growing in a fairly smooth manner; I mean yes, there’s growing pains and there’s craziness, but overall for the type of growth we’re seeing is fairly well leveled and feels good. And I think the reason behind that is we had already gotten a lot of our basics down, our procedures, documentation, the right people in the right seats. A lot of the things were in place that allowed us to grow. Because I mean growth is great, but sometimes it can cause a lot of damage too. And so we’re growing but we’re also growing where we’re increasing margins. Don’t get me wrong, it is so crazy but it’s pretty well-controlled in our growth. So it was planned and I felt we had a really good strong base before we really started popping the lid off the top.

James: So when you sit down and think about where you want the business to go, who’s involved in that process and what is the process that determines what you’re going to plan and what is the plan for Survival Frog?

The plan

Byron: Again, I’ve got the right people in the right seats. Myself, I’m the CEO, and although I’m out of the day-to-day operations, I’m very heavy into the strategic planning of the company. And so who’s behind that? Certainly, I would take the lead role as the CEO of the company in charting the path to the future and where we’re going.

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

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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.

In the podcast:

03:13 – Our biggest driver

05:35 – Can you be guided?

10:01 – The role of experience

12:33 – The mental side of physical sport

17:37 – That thing called flow

20:30 – Some effective anchors

28:52 – Protecting our emotional horsepower

30:35 – If others can do it…

32:56 – Do you want to be in, or out?

36:45 – Picking your board of directors

41:24 – A quick summary

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Download the PDF Transcription and 12 Insights and Tips for Achieving Better Performance Through Mindset

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, I’m speaking with an expert in mindset. His name is Nam Baldwin from Equalize.com.au. Welcome to the call.

Nam: Thanks, James. Great to be here.

James: Now, we have a mutual friend. Someone who’s been on a previous episode or two on SuperFastBusiness, Brenton Ford. He’s a swim coach, and he introduced us.

Nam: Yeah, great guy. I’ve been doing a session with him not so long ago.

James: I’ve been working with Brenton for many years. It’s been fun for me to get an insight into his world because as we get to develop products and look at how we package his business and sell training workshops, it’s been interesting just to develop an understanding of things like paddling technique, breathing technique, and as someone who’s taken up surfing in the last few years, I’ve been more and more interested in that. I’ve often wondered how some large, old dude can just paddle straight around me on a tiny, little shortboard when I’m struggling to make it out to the back, especially a year or two ago when I was on those Mini Mals as my training.

It seems that there can be quite different results gotten from just changing the way that you do things and especially the way that you think about things. Would you say that’s true?

Nam: Oh absolutely. Thoughts create feelings and feelings create the way in which we perform. The better the state, the better the feeling that we have within us, the better we allow ourselves to tap into the potential that we have.

James: So let’s talk about the things that you’ve been focusing on. From what I’ve read, you are an emotional and stress-control management specialist. You especially help people with breathing techniques. I noticed you help some big-wave riders and some Olympic kayak gold medalists, some footballers and even a world-surfing champion, Mick Fanning. That piqued my interest tremendously because of course he’s so popular in Australia that even regular people would know who he is. They would have seen him on TV, especially yesterday because he announced he’s going back on tour, and he’s ready to take on another world title campaign. Have you been working with Mick?

Working with Mick Fanning

In the episode:

00:50 – Accidental discovery

03:25 – How Wanderer Bracelets came about

04:57 – Fitting the product to a market

06:55 – The SCAMPER method

09:21 – The mindset that makes it work

10:59 – Building the team

13:07 – How important are live events?

16:23 – A couple of essential tools

19:13 – Working the system

21:55 – Some challenges of working remotely

25:35 – The layout of day-to-day

28:32 – A brief call recap

29:19 – Knowing who to hire next

32:19 – SuperFastBusiness Live from Ben’s viewpoint

Ben and other world-class business experts will be sharing insights live on stage at SuperFastBusiness Live 2017 – Join  them

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Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. It’s my absolute pleasure to introduce our guest today, Ben Katzaman from WandererBracelets.com. Welcome to the call.

Ben: Thanks, James. Excited to be here.

James: The reason for our call is in just a few weeks from the time of recording this, you’re heading over to Australia to talk about how to scale an e-commerce business at my SuperFastBusiness Live event, which we’ll also record, in case someone listening to this wants to catch up with that session.

The real story behind your introduction to me is that we were sitting beside each other at a dinner in San Diego at Ezra Firestone’s conference afterwards, and you were just sharing with me this incredible journey you’ve been on with your own business. I said to you, “Please come and share this story with our audience.”

There are a couple of things there. Firstly, a lot of people are, I think, trying to find out what they should do with their life or what they want to sell is a big, common question. In your case, it just was there. It was surrounding you, and you recognized it. So that was one part of it. The second part is, you’re quite a young man, and you’ve scaled a significant business producing hundreds of thousands of units, selling e-commerce, and you’ve got a large team. You have 40 people in your western team, the United States, and then you’ve got 150 people in your Bali team. So that’s a significant impact that you’re having on the universe in terms of creating stuff. So that’s how this came about.

Today, we’re going to talk about what’s involved in growing a business quickly and at scale, but also, and most importantly, remotely. Because you’re not sitting in an office every day, are you Ben?

Why work remote?

Ben: No, I’m not. I’ve got an office in Florida now as we’ve grown. We just opened a full office a couple of weeks ago. But over the last two years since I started the business, I’ve spent a lot of time in Bali, Florida, Hawaii, Seattle, Oregon, San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Austin, New York, Australia, Bangkok, the Gili Islands.

So I’ve spent more time remote than I have been in one place or with one team or the other. And that allows me to spend a lot of time with people I care about and meet people that I would never be able to meet otherwise, tap into new communities and nurture relationships.

In the video:

00:16 – Is this where you’re at?

00:55 – What OLB is

01:30 – The payoff of OLB

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Transcription:

Hey, James here. I promised to make some videos this year. So today, I want to talk to you about the OLB strategy, which is going to help you a lot this year. So what does OLB stand for? I’ll get to that in just a minute.

What’s your current situation?

So the current situation that you may be in this is that you’re handling stuff like your emails, and your email broadcasts and stuff directly. Maybe you’re also editing and creating your content and then syndicating your content directly, maybe even running Facebook ads. Maybe you’re mucking around building your own website and leadpages. Maybe you’re handing customer support via inbox.

What is OLB?

If you’re doing all of these things, then you’re very, very direct. You’re going to find it hard to scale. These things don’t really scale. What I suggest you do is you go the OLB, which stands for One Layer Back. So now, you transfer all these things to somewhere else.

“Transfer the things that don’t scale.”

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So for example, emails and support and looking after customers should be done through a support desk. So that’s one layer back from you. You should also be dealing with a team. Your team should be building your website or an outsourced supplier. And your team should be sending email broadcasts, and your team should be editing and syndicating content. So I deal with them in Slack and in GoToMeeting. So I am one layer back. OLB – One Layer Back.

“Focus on what you really want to do.”

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The benefits

So now, I can focus on the stuff that I really want to do, which is make the occasional video, do the occasional podcast, and then I give it to the team and let them do it. What does this mean? It means I can run my business from a mobile phone. I don’t need to have editing software, I don’t need to know how to use my CRM, I don’t need to know how to build a website, because the team is doing all of that stuff. I can outsource the help of a Facebook expert. I don’t need to know that either.

I need to actually get rid of all of these tasks. I need to be one layer back from the action so that I can focus on the high-level stuff.

So I hope you have more OLB for your year.

If you enjoyed this video, let me know, so I might make you a few more.

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Video highlights:

00:38 – Are you keeping track?

01:34 – Why you should have a project system

01:57 – Make your next year a great one

02:15 – Two programs to look at

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Transcription:

Hey, James Schramko here, and we are filming at Manly where I live, and I wanted to show you this. This is my surfboard. This is a tractor, and it’s the brand of JS. It’s not my name, it’s just coincidental.

Track your progress

In front of the tractor, you’ll see these little bars. This relates to progress. Every time I surf this board, I put a notch on the board. I’m actually creating this progress bar. My goal is to get to the end of this board. Why is that important? It’s important because I need to surf this board a lot to get good on it. I tend to switch boards around a fair bit, and my coach said he’d rather I stay on one board for a while.

So as I learn and develop, I’m single-tasking or single-boarding. That progress bar is showing me where I’ve been. So if I’m getting frustrated, I just look at the bar and I think, well I’ve surfed in big waves, I’ve surfed in small waves, I’ve surfed at different beaches, and I can see where I’ve been. So I’m getting a sense of gratitude for all the work I’ve put in, and I also feel more confident, because the more notches I get on this board, like a Westerner in a gunfight, I’m actually going to get really confident on this board.

“Be grateful for all the work you’ve put in.”

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When I go to big waves or hollow waves over reefs, I want to be confident on this board, and I want to surf well. So if we were to take this as a business metaphor, I do the exact same thing in my business. I actually create a project system. I archive things that I’ve achieved, so I can look back at them and see where I’ve come. I know where I want to be and how far it is. So I’ve got a specific point that I’m measuring to, and then I focus on that task. That’s been really effective for me.

“Look back at things that you’ve achieved.”

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Two programs to look at

Now I’ve been doing some hard work for you lately and reviewing some goal setting and action-oriented type programs because we’re at that time of the year in December where people start releasing these programs so that next year can be great. I just did a webinar about this in my own community.

If you want to check out the links, I’ve put two links. There are two programs that are available right now. I’ve looked through the material, and they’re both good. One I would say is high performance and the other one is good for the general sort of introduction to the topic.

So enjoy the content. Some of the trainings are really valuable, and they’re free. So if you’ll like that, then you’ll know enough to know if you want to get a course on this.

In the video:

00:47 – Is .com still the best?

01:29 – Steer clear of THESE

02:00 – Making a serious offer

03:41 – Stay mindful of your manners

05:15 – When it’s time to buy

05:51 – What you can expect to pay

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Transcription:

James Schramko here, and today I’m talking about how to buy a valuable domain.

I’ve had lots of really good .coms in the past, a lot of two-word domains like SEOPartner, TrafficGrab, and KickingBack.com – some great domains that were already taken when I wanted to use them, so I bought them secondhand.

“Be cool when you’re bidding.”

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Sometimes you’re lucky, you can pick them up at auction, and that’s great. You just got to remember to be cool when you’re bidding. Also, sometimes people have them for sale, and you’ll see a lot of these sites sitting on a broker’s site, where someone’s hoping to make a big profit. So this video’s just to help you to basically buy a domain at a better price.

Should you aim for the .com?

A few things here. Firstly, is .com still good? I think it is. I think it really is the king of domains, and it’s great to have the .com. If you can’t get the .com, sure there are other options. But you’re probably still going to be driving traffic to the .com version. There’s a few examples: Basecamp, LeadPages, ProBlogger – all of these sites didn’t have the .com at some point, and one of them still doesn’t, and it can be a real problem.

If you want to get some basic information on how to value a domain, I recommend DNSalePrice.com. You can go and have a look at the criteria for what makes a domain valuable. Sometimes it’s how old it is. It could be how brandable it is.

Avoid the trademarks

And just on that, please don’t buy domain names that have trademarks applicable to them. Do a trademark search when you’ve got a great domain that you think you want to use, because if you buy someone’s domain that’s trademarked, for example if you bought iPhone.com, then you’re going to be told to stop using that domain, so it’s not worth buying that. Quite often, those domains are sitting, available for purchase, for an unsuspecting buyer.

On making the right offer

If you are dealing with a broker, then there’s a way to go about that. I’ll get to that in just a sec. If you’ve got a private seller or someone’s got the domain redirected somewhere, or they don’t seem to be using it, look up the Whois information and then contact them, and make a reasonable offer. Like a serious offer, not $50. Quite often, a two-word domain is going to cost you thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars. So a good offer, like a thousand dollars, is a nice “Hey, I’m serious and I’m not wasting your time” type offer.

Bond Halbert In the episode: 01:09 – An overview of the book 03:31 – Why Bond is an expert 05:02 – Gary Halbert’s way 07:50 – Where father and son differ 11:44 – How to keep people reading 15:23 – Never-before-covered topics 16:25 – Helping them decide to read 20:33 – The hunt for “that” 22:10 – Letting the formula seep in 24:42 – A simple beginning trick 26:30 – Some smart editing tips 29:18 – Apply these words with caution 30:15 – Should you use templates? 33:59 – Two kinds of writers 37:10 – Are you doing this with your copy? 41:54 – When picking a copywriter… Grow Your Business in just 2 days Click HERE Download the PDF transcription Transcription: James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we are talking with pretty much a legend. Got my friend Bond Halbert on the call. Welcome. Bond: Thank you, thank you very much. James: Bond Halbert, son of Gary Halbert, brother of Kevin Halbert, son of Nancy. I mean, there’s a good positioning in life, really. Bond: I couldn’t agree more. James: And you got some nice kids as well, passing on the Halbert generation. Now, what we want to talk about specifically today is The Halbert Copywriting Method Part III, which is The Simple, Fast and Easy Editing Formula that Forces Buyers to Read Every Word of Your Ads. Bond, tell me about the title of this book. What’s in the book Bond: OK. First there’s two parts. One, we kind of called the title The Halbert Copywriting Method Part III: The Star Wars Launch, because I always say that the power in your copywriting is research. It’s knowing your prospect so well that you can trigger their impulse to buy that will, because you know what to offer them, you know how they speak, so you know what to say. You know when to say it to them. So you know all of that information. “The first draft is the shortest part.” CLICK TO TWEET And then eventually, the second part of the copywriting process is where you’ve developed that unique hook, offer or solution, which usually comes out of the research. And then you put down in words, in a first draft. And usually, that is the shortest part of the entire copywriting process. People think that copywriting is sitting down at a screen and piecing together little elements of copy and stuff like that. It’s not. It’s doing the research, doing whatever it takes for you to get into the creative mindset to come up with that first draft, and then the professionalism comes from editing. And you will hear other great copywriters tell you that, but you will never find anybody telling you how to do the editing, until now. And so I am working right now. I am actually writing Part I, and Part II as well, and Part III was ready first, and it was so needed and it was so new and everything that I went ahead and released that first. And the second part, where I explain the simple, fast and easy editing formula that forces buyers to read every word of your ads, a lot of copywriters and marketers make the mistake assuming that people will read all of their ads.

Danny Flood Episode highlights: 01:12 – The tale of a former insomniac 02:59 – Do you know if you’re sleep deprived? 04:57 – An invention destructive to your sleeping habits 06:39 – Try this productivity hack 08:19 – Quick recap 08:46 – 5 factors to be synched for good sleep 10:02 – What is the circadian rhythm? 13:27 – The sleep toxin 15:48 – Is caffeine good or bad? 19:12 – Practice the process of substitution 21:42 – Reducing your cortisol level 26:19 – You need to eat THIS 27:56 – The 4 brain waves of sleep 29:10 – Have you tried sleep restriction? Restructure your life using the training resources and support inside SuperFastBusiness Membership Download the PDF transcription and 8 Ways To Get Better Sleep guide Transcription: James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we’re delving into the topic of sleep, how to improve your sleep, with Danny Flood from OpenWorldMag.com. Welcome, Danny. Danny: Hey James, thanks so much for having me here. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you. James: Well, it’s nice to pin you down. I know you’re on travel at the moment, and you’re somewhere in the outposts of Thailand, so I’m also glad that you could join us and share some of your insights into how to improve your sleep. You’ve actually got a product on Amazon called Hack Sleep. I know you’ve done some research around this, you’ve got a body of work that presents your findings, and I know that most of my audience sleep, so it’s something we should learn about. Why did you even go down this route of sleep as something you were interested in? Why the interest in sleep? Danny: Yeah, sure. So I’m calling today from Thailand, I’ve been travelling. You might hear roosters behind me in the background from this hotel room. I really was interested in sleep because this was something that I struggled with for so long. I’ve been a personal improvement junkie for more than a decade, reading a lot of self-improvement books. I could stay at the bookstore for five hours and it would just pass by like five minutes. I’m really big on performance, especially mental performance. But one thing that I never really figured out was sleep. It was something that I struggled with. I was always an insomniac. Sleep deprivation tormented me, and I had so many wasted days because I didn’t sleep well at night, and it would snowball because it would be like a psychological effect where I’d get really upset that I wasn’t asleep, I’d get depressed and had a lack of motivation where I wasn’t… I had goals but it was subverting my goals, so I wasn’t giving my best effort to them. I published my first book last year, it was called Buy Your Own Island, and I wrote four books after that, and the last one I wrote was Hack Sleep, and the reason why I wrote that book was, I knew this author, and I asked him, “What kind of books do you write?” And he said, “I write books that I really am interested in and I enjoy,

Boom’s winning products In this episode: 03:12 – The added pressure of a bigger business 05:16 – Something unique about Ezra’s products 07:01 – From dollar in to dollar out 10:21 – Dial in THESE two things 12:21 – The power of conversion assets 13:42 – Winning them back 15:53 – The incredible ‘More of the Same’ phenomenon 18:16 – Essential sequence “bought X but not Y” 22:16 – The plateau before 10x growth 26:43 – Engage and re-engage 30:51 – An example of increasing relevance 35:16 – Ezra’s retargeting techniques 41:45 – The unbelievable impact of the search box 44:14 – Takeaways for the e-commerce starter 45:56 – Price and costing benchmarks 47:18 – What to expect from adding a cart abandonment sequence 48:12 – Case study, what would you do? 48:44 – Are all customers equal? 52:04 – Wrapping it up Want to achieve fast growth in your own business? Click HERE Download the PDF transcription and 12 Tips For HyperFast E-Commerce Business Growth guide Transcription: James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com where I’m bringing information to you. I especially love this podcast medium. One of my other podcasts is called ThinkActGet, and my co-host there is Ezra Firestone. Today, we were going to record an episode of ThinkActGet, except we decided that what Ezra told me before that was far more compelling and we should make a podcast for this show for you because what we’re going to talk about is phenomenal, nothing short of phenomenal. Welcome to this podcast Ezra Firestone. Ezra: Wooh! Ezra in the house. I just wanted to say that about myself. So thanks man, I appreciate it. James: Alright. So we have Ezra in the house. This is going to be weird for some of our regular listeners from the other show because they’re going to hear us having a more concentrated business chat today. Ezra: Sure, sure. James: A few less groundhogs. Ezra: Yeah. If you’re a ThinkActGet listener, then you know we get out there. This will be a little more tactical. James: We do. Less bananas, less groundhogs, more businessy stuff. Now Ezra, I’m about to fly over to see you at your event in San Diego where you have assembled on a little bit of a brains trust on topics that are of interest to your audience, and I appreciate that you’ve asked me to present on a topic of team building. You’ve certainly been needing to build your team, because the core of this episode is about hypergrowth, and in particular, you’ve shared with me some information that you’ve got three main businesses that are on your focus, and two of them in the last year doubled, which is fantastic in itself. But one of them, I think it was nine or 10x, and it wasn’t a small business to start with. In fact the figures, I don’t know if you mind me sharing this Ezra, but you’ve gone from somewhere in the region of $4 million revenue to $25 million dollars revenue...