The Amy Porterfield Show

I've got a question for you. Ready?

What do Apple, Lululemon and Morton's Salt all share in common?

Take a minute to ponder each brand. What imagery does it conjure up? More importantly, what feelings do those images create inside you?

When I think of Apple products, I think of elegant, simple design and the feeling of effortlessly getting stuff done. Lululemon brings back that sensation of looking amazing when I'm working out (even if my workout itself feels less than amazing). And Morton Salt? I think of my mom's kitchen cupboard, which feels warm and nostalgic and makes me want to go bake cookies.

Here's the answer to the quiz: all three of those brands share the power of fascination.

Fascination, as my podcast guest Sally Hogshead defines it, means an intense focus.

"When you’re fascinated by a person or a brand, you’re completely consumed in that moment. It’s that feeling you have when you’re working on a project and you’re totally in the flow. You feel creative, you feel confident, you feel focused and energized by what you’re doing. Or when you’re out at drinks with a friend—the time flies by, and you seem to be building epiphanies together in your conversation."

Click here to listen to the full episode with Sally.

For years, Sally's day job was helping big name brands like Nike and BMW find the perfect words to describe themselves. The first half of that search was understanding what they offered to their customer base that nobody else did; the second half was knowing how to capitalize on that uniqueness and capture it in language.

At a certain point, Sally realized that nobody had really brought that idea over from products to people. Business owners were all about finding the right words to get customers fascinated with their products, but they weren't finding the right words to help people understand who they are and how they add value.

These days, she parlays her understanding of what works in advertising world into a training to help entrepreneurs understand how people perceive them through their communication.

I know that I've talked a lot with you about webinars this year. The fact is that I've been learning a ton about them myself, and every time I learn a new technique or crack the code on a revenue-boosting system, I can't help but pass it on to you!

This week, though, I'm doing something a little different. Rather than walk you through a step-by-step system, I'm going to focus with you on one very specific strategy that I learned from Tim Paige, the host of the podcast Conversion Cast and the leader of all LeadPages webinars.

Today is all about an engagement strategy that I've just begun applying it to my webinars. I’ll be sure to let you know how it's going, once I really get it off the ground. But I'll be completely honest with you: it's a little awkward, in the beginning. I've done a lot of webinars, and I still am finding my sweet spot.

The thing is that Tim, in addition to being a pal, is a true webinar ninja. This man has done 410 webinars to date! (Who knows--he may be up to more, by the time this episode airs.) No joke--his application is pending for the Guinness Book of World Records for most webinars done in a 12-month period. This is a guy who really knows the ins and outs of webinar success.

So when he tells me this strategy is worth working through, I believe it!

Listen to the full episode to get all the details on this amazing strategy from Tim Paige.

You can also check out Tim putting this revolutionary engagement strategy into action--just click here to join his latest webinar.

EPISODE FREEBIE Get Amy and Tim's Engagement Focused Webinar

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We all know how important engagement is for our webinars. There's nothing worse than crafting and delivering a dynamic, informative presentation only to hear crickets during the Q&A.

Scratch that--there is one thing worse: delivering your presentation and seeing only a faint dribble of sales by the time you log off for the day.

What you're looking for is that special spark that sets fire to your content and gets your audience fired up in response to it.

Early on, I wanted to test the idea of taking every opportunity I could throughout the process of presenting a webinar to look over in the questions box and start answering questions live as we went, as long as they were relevant and weren’t off topic.

I found in answering questions, not only did I see a 98% stick rate (98% of the people that joined the webinar in the beginning stuck around all the way until the end) but in one split test I also saw a tripled revenue from one webinar to the next." Um...did you get all that? A 98% stick rate and a 300% revenue increase?

I'd say this strategy is well worth trying, wouldn't you?So how does this work? If you're like me, you may be already thinking about how taking questions in the middle of your presentation will interrupt your flow. What if the questions make me get ahead of myself? Am I allowed to not answer questions if they aren't on topic? How is this supposed to work with replays and automated webinars?

...And just what is it about this strategy that makes it so incredibly powerful?

Listen to the full episode for all the answers--it's a short but intense masterclass on a single technique that is a true webinar game changer.

Do you want to see Tim’s webinar engagement strategy in action? Click here to check out his special LeadPages webinar and pay close attention to when and how he asks questions and engages with his audience.

EPISODE FREEBIE Get Amy and Tim's Engagement Focused Webinar

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As you are building up your business and starting to see some solid success, sooner or later you're going to arrive at a certain point.

A point where you, as the founder, brand visionary and chief hustler, cannot do everything alone.

This is the moment where you need to hire some people.

Not just anyone will do, of course. You need to build out a dream team inside of your business so that you can spend more time in your areas of genius, the areas that you really excel, the areas that you love to spend time in where your skill set is the strongest, so that you can make a bigger impact for your audience and on your bottom line.

There is nobody I know who is better at this dream team creation thing than my friend Melanie Duncan.

The first thing you should know about Melanie is that she runs a multiple-seven figure empire. In other words, she's an authority on this whole online entrepreneurship thing.

The second thing you should know is that the ways she's developed her business are, in large part, the result of her amazing hiring system. She has a process for hiring that is extremely unique--it takes quite a lot of effort and focus, but it's allowed her to find amazing people that are the perfect fit to support her business. And let's be honest, when you love the people you work with, everything seems flow a whole lot better on all fronts.

But what's even more to the point is how her hiring system has also changed her perspective on hiring. I’ve seen her go through the transition of hating to hire to absolutely loving the hiring process. And as we all know, loving an IMPORTANT process you used to hate is a cornerstone of achieving the success you want.

If you're ready to dive into Melanie's amazing system, click here to listen to the full episode now.

Below, I've got the bullet-point version to get you primed for what you're about to learn.

Over the last few weeks on this podcast, we’ve been doing some intensive tactical trainings.

We’ve talked about adding upsells to your sales promotions, adding bonuses, when to add them. We’ve talked about the mindset of list building, and then we’ve gotten really specific about what you need to do to build your list.

Today I want to step back a little bit and look at the big picture and look at our team and how we’re running our business and setting things up. I thought there was no one better to do that than my new friend, Dale Partridge.

You probably already know Dale, either from Sevenly (the company he founded that became one of the fastest growing social-good startups in history), or from his many keynote speeches and feature interviews on the topic of doing business with integrity, or maybe from his recent book People Over Profits.

Dale is a creative leader whose mission is to influence an industry to rethink the models of how we do business today. And I invited him on the show today to help you (and me) learn about how to set a solid foundation for our long-term success.

One thing Dale's book really dials into is the importance of recognizing the pivotal moments in our businesses when small decisions could have major impact.

Dale went into business for himself at 18 years old...which means that even though he's still a young man, he's old in entrepreneur years. Within that time, he says, his whole mindset around business shifted from making major profits to making a major difference in people's lives.

"In the search for purpose and meaning I wanted to create a company that was more than just putting money at the bottom line. It wasn’t until I really shifted my thinking from how to make a million dollars to how to help a million people that really pushed me into business."

This is the core of Dale's "people over profits" message . . . and what I really want to stress in today's episode is that it's never too early in your business to think about how you're prioritizing people against your profits.

When you're in the early years of building our business, you're all too aware that every interaction in every business relationship matters. You're hyper-focused on bringing real, personal value to your customers with your unique talent and expertise, because you know that it's the key to your success.

But Dale points out that greed, dishonesty and customer contempt are not relegated to big corporations . . . that's just when they get caught in a big way. It's super important, he says, to set the foundation of your business integrity in these early years, while you're small, and learn how to self-correct in those moments when it's easy to make small compromises.

"I don’t want to be the most successful person that nobody respects or that nobody trusts. And I don’t want to create the biggest company that has great products but people don’t really connect with it."

Dale has done some impressive research on the most successful companies (and the ones who fell the hardest) of the past century. According to his research, the companies (and leaders) who really stood the test of time have seven core beliefs in common:

Listen to the full episode to hear Dale explain more about how these principles show up in online business practice, and how we can train ourselves to build businesses that uphold them.

"Whatever your dream is, make sure you crush on it because it’s not about you, it’s about them."

In the end, Dale says, our businesses' potential for growth is dependent on the integrity we build into our relationships with clients, vendors and colleagues. It can take real courage to honor a long-term relationship over short-term convenience. But that kind of courage is what creates a brand that really stands the test of time.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

First of all, can I just be a little corny and express my gratitude for all of you? It's hard to believe we're up to 85 episodes of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast . . . and with those episodes have come lots of free weekly giveaways, 17 interviews with the biggest names in online business expertise, 1.6 million audio downloads. Oh, and one very exciting mention on MSNBC as a Top 5 Online Business Podcast!

I am truly thankful for each one of you in this little community of go-getter entrepreneurs. Every time you opt in, leave a Facebook comment, write a review of the show or share this podcast with your friends, my heart is genuinely touched. Nothing makes me happier than to know that what I'm sharing is valuable and helpful to you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Whew! Okay, on to business.

1) Masterminding and finding a business coach.

EPISODE 85 Sign Up for Amy's Free Masterclass: How to Create a Wildly Profitable Webinar (Even If You Don't Have a List)

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2) Finding your marketing vehicle sweet spot.

This one is about platform. I’m going to show you what it looks like in my business and how it made such a huge impact. Then I will give you some actions to start investigating this in your business.

3) My partnership.

You may or may not know that I actually have a business partner. I’ve never really talked about him much, and I want to share with you how that happened, when it came about, why it came about, and what it looks like in my business (if you’ve ever thought about maybe adding a partner to the mix). This one will be really transparent. I’m going to share things I’ve never shared before, but I think it's time for me to talk about it. Click here to listen now.

4) Affiliate partnerships and my philosophy around affiliates.

Again, I’ve talked about this in past episodes but I’m going to put a little more personal slant on it in this week's episode, end give you some tips to build you own affiliate partnership strategy.

5) Consistency.

If there is any marketing lesson I need to be even better at and really focus on more and really take seriously, it’s consistency. We’re going to talk about that, what it looks like, and how we can add more of that to our business.

As I look back on my past 6 years in business, I feel incredibly thankful for these lessons, as they have shaped my professional and personal life tremendously.

EPISODE 85 Sign Up for Amy's Free Masterclass: How to Create a Wildly Profitable Webinar (Even If You Don't Have a List)

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Don't forget, if you want to learn how to create a five-figure webinar (even if you don't have an email list) you can sign up free for my webinar training. Click here to sign up now.

If one of these lessons really resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it! Talk to me on Facebook or Twitter and tell me which one you’re going to focus on.

Have a wonderful holiday, everyone. Thank you for being part of our tribe.

Mastermind Opportunities:

Each of these mentors have offered mastermind opportunities in the past but their masterminds might not be currently accepting new members at the moment. Do some research to learn more about each.

James Wedmore's Inner CircleJamie Tardy Jeff Walker Fabienne Fredrickson Victoria Gibson's Breakout Success Mastermind The Shine Academy Natalie MacNeil's Conquer Club Leonie Dawson's Glow Academy