Funnel Genius Hawk Mikado On High Converting Marketing Funnels

All right.

Welcome back to the show. This is Brad Costanzo, obviously. Who else would it be? I mean, I'm gonna do that again. Okay. Welcome back to the show. It is about. I think we are about a week and a half before Christmas at the time of this recording. And I hope all of you listening by the time this comes out have either had a. An amazing Christmas and holiday or are preparing to and. And getting ready to kick off 2017 in a very, very big way. I know I am. And I know this is a fun part of the time of the year where everybody gets to focus on, you know, how they can achieve more this next year than they did in the past year. And there's a lot of reflection and a lot of finding ways that we can improve the efficiency of our business and, you know, get more customers, make things run more smoothly, take ourselves out of it where we can. And if there's any thing that I can do to give you guys any insights into what I'm doing, or if you have any questions that get really specific, whether it's about today's episode, which I'll get to in just a moment, or about anything else, you can always email me directly ataskbradaconrapped business.com by the way, I am reading a handful of new books that I wanted to tell you about that I'm. I'm absolutely loving, and I'm always looking for more recommendations. So some of the books I'm reading right now by my friend Mark Manson, the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Amazing. Open by Andre Agassi, which a couple of my former guests, including Dan Martell, recommended. I'm also. Shoot, what else am I reading? A couple of fiction books, and another one is called Deep Work by Cal Newport. I keep on seeing a lot of people recommend that. I love getting book recommendations. In fact, I got several of these books after putting a post on Facebook just the other day. Book. But what I would love for you to do as you're listening to this is send an email with your favorite business book recommendation to ask brad@baconratbusiness.com and if I read your book, I'll mention it on the air. So without any further ado, let me get to today's guest. We've got Hawk Mikado on the line. Hawk is the owner of InvertStrategies.com, which is a funnel and marketing agency. You guys by now probably know what funnels are, right? I'm guessing if you've been listening to this show, unless this is Your very first time you've heard that term before. But Hawk is one of the leading experts in online offline marketing and sales systems. He's built over seven profitable businesses in the mid multi six and seven figures. He's an entrepreneur, an adventurer and a family man. He's got a very big giving heart. He lives here in San Diego and he dedicates his time to helping companies increase their revenues and their employees and get them fully focused on their passion and confident about their path. Hawk, welcome to the show.

My brother. Thank you so much for having me on. Brad. I'm excited.

Yeah, it is good to have you. As I said offline, it's kind of funny. San Diego is a really small town. It's a, it's a. Especially in the world of digital marketing. It's funny that we haven't probably run into each other in the past, but our friend Nick Byerly from Billion Dollar Body introduced us and he said that you guys have been working together and know each other. He goes, man, you got to talk to Hawk. He's doing some really cool things. And in the area of funnel marketing and whatnot. So tell me a little bit more about, a little bit more about your business, then I'm going to kind of dive in and find out some of the cool stuff you're doing.

Yeah. So we want a funnel marketing agency. We focus on building funnels especially for people who have high ticket coaching, consulting, speaking, anything that can really make an impact in the world. When we created our company, we wanted to make sure that every client we worked with was truly here to make an impact with the products or services they're offering. So we make sure that when we're talking to someone and they're looking to hire us, that we're actually qualifying them to make sure that they are here to make a big change in the world and they want to make a lot of money doing it.

Cool. So yeah, you primarily work with, it sounds like thought leaders, experts, service providers, coaches, things like that. That nature, is that your sweet spot?

Yeah, it is. Cool.

Now do you, do you sell a course, do you do this as an agency done for you or what's the primary business model there?

So our, the core of what we do is as an agency done for you, but we also have a mastermind group where it's actually kind of a combination of we're going to teach you how to do it, but then we're going to do it for you. Because let's face it, our, if you're not an Internet Marketer, you shouldn't be doing marketing.

Correct.

So knowing and understanding what should be done is really important, especially as a leader. Growing your team, growing your community should know what needs to be done. Doing it yourself is not necessarily the most effective thing to do. So we want our clients and our community to focus on their genius, and we focus on ours.

Nice. So what or when did you get. When did you start Inverted?

We started Invert.

Yeah, Sorry. Not to be inverted. Invert.

No worries. We started Invert Inc. In. It's been about three years. Cool. About three years ago and just developed it since then. I actually started out about 15, 16 and a half years ago now in my own marketing company and more as a consultant. Worked with family businesses to start with and worked on friends businesses. And then about 2008, which was a really great time to get into consulting, I started to help people with their marketing as more of a consultant role. And then three years ago, my wife and I decided that it was time for us to actually create something real and something big and change people's lives on a bigger scale. We partnered up, hired a couple people, and since then, we've hired over 25 people and have a growing team.

Oh, nice. Is your offices here? Have you got kind of like, part of your office is virtual? Part of. It's like, in house or how have you structured your agency?

Yeah, so everybody actually is an employee in our company. We have some people here in the US and then we have an office in the Philippines where everybody in the Philippines goes in there every day. So kind of a hybrid between traditional agency where everybody comes in house and an outsourced agency. But we want everybody to be part of the culture. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is our culture in our company. Have a lot of fun. Luckily, in the Philippines, there's no laws about. There's no regulations on what questions you can't ask. And we have team members. They do a group interview with people because it's the team hiring new people. And they'll ask. They'll be like, when was the last time you had sex? And like, that is serious.

They'll do that in the interview.

In the interview. It's just to see how they're gonna react.

Wow.

And like, I had. I had nothing to do with. I didn't know that this was happening. But when we went over there and we. And they were conducting the interview, I was like, whoa. And it was just like a. It was a hilarious thing. But it also lends to the culture because they're talking about all sorts of things that, you know, most companies don't necessarily talk about. It's just a great way to, for everybody internally to get along to, you know, be relatable. If they're not, if they're not open, they're not really a fit, and they're obviously a little too serious for us. That's great though.

Like, yeah, I didn't know that they did that. So it's your Filipino team. This is them when they're interviewing new people to come join them, they're asking that.

That's great.

So what are the functions? You're your Filipino team. What are the. Some of the primary functions that they do for the clients versus what you guys do over here?

Yeah. So here in the US we focus on strategy, identifying exactly what needs to be done, how it needs to be implemented, you know, flow, where we're gonna drive traffic, all that sort of stuff. They build the landing pages, they've. They drive the traffic, they do all the social media management. And one of my favorite things because, and this is one of the things that sets us apart from a lot of other companies is that we do funnel follow up. So if somebody opts into your funnel and we're working on a higher level, then we will actually reach out to them by email, by text message, by phone, and by Facebook and LinkedIn, depending on the market. And then we use that to set them into a, get them into a strategy session, invite them to a webinar, whatever the goal of our client is. And that's so powerful because it creates real engagement versus the passive engagement that most companies are, are doing. And there's nothing wrong with the passive engagement. It's automated, but we get, we get really, really good results.

So it's kind of, it sounds like it's a manual process, but obviously. So when the leads come in, do they like, for instance, does somebody over there that, you know, lead comes into the funnel? And with high ticket funnels and things like this, I know that, you know, people typically aren't getting tens of thousands of leads a month.

Right.

So it's easier to do. But so are you saying that they'll go in and individually contact them like via email and social, etc.

Oh, cool.

I like that.

Yeah. So it's a, it's a personal touch. And we get, we get complimented on it all the time. Because, like, I appreciate the fact that you reached out to me personally versus the, and we have, we do have ways to automate the personal touch.

No, you know, it goes it goes far. It goes far. There was a, there's a guy that I followed and I was actually just going through his, just his funnel and I know I opted into his, I opted into his autoresponder and I was just kind of watching what he was doing and it was interesting because, you know, one of the first or second emails he said, okay, just reply back, reply back, something like, I'm ready to get started, something like that, right? And I was like, okay. And I know it's actually a really good strategy with email marketing for if you can get a reply to your autoresponder. It goes very far to, you know, white listing your email. And the autoresponders like it because you're, you know, if it's Gmail or Yahoo or whatever, it's saying, oh well, if they're replying, this is a real email address. Don't send this to spam. So I know that it's a strategy for that. But what I was really impressed by what he did is I replied, yeah, let's get started. And then he emailed me back and I think it was a, it was a screenshot of my reply back to him and he did a short video, like a 30 second video that he sent back to me manually saying, hey, Brad, thanks for replying, I think that's awesome that you took action and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here's what to expect. And I mean, he probably did this for multiple people. I don't know how many, you know, how big his list or how often that was, but I was kind of laughing like at how effective that was because I mean, it showed me that, yes, he's really reading these. He's taken the time to reply very personally and I kind of wanted to give him a virtual fist bump going.

Yeah, that was good, that's awesome. I like that.

Yeah, it was really cool. If I can find the email still, I'll forward it to you, I'll show you what he did. But okay, so let's, let me just addressing the audience real quick. So guys, if you, as I mentioned before, if you don't really know what a sales funnel is, the super brief, the super brief description is it's the process that the customer comes or the lead turns into a prospect turns into a customer. And whether it's a simple funnel, like a Facebook ad to webinar registration, to schedule a call, to get on a sales call or whatever, that's a very minimal funnel. But funnels can be big, they can be small, etc. I don't want to belabor this, and I'm not going to ask Hawk to give us the 101. If you, if you want more information on that, go to his website, invert inc.com or. There's a plethora of resources out there. What I really want to do next is dive into kind of what's working. What's. What are some of the aspects that have changed. What are some of the big challenges that you're overcoming? Hawk and I call this bacon wrapped business on purpose. These are the sizzling hot business ideas and the cutting edge things that you don't really just read about on blogs and whatnot. So I kind of want to get into the meat of this. Is that cool?

Yeah, man. Straight away.

So let's talk about right now. What is some of the most effective strategies that are working for your clients who are coaches, consultants, service providers.

You.

Know, in order to generate these leads and customers? Is there a, has there been a formula that has been working really well for you guys?

Yeah. So we, first of all, creating a celebrity brand. First of all, we are not a branding agency in any way, shape or form, but creating a celebrity brand around yourself. So. And I didn't coin this myself, but I got called the funnel genius and I decided to own it, and I'm the funnel genius. So if you need anything with funnels, like, you can literally type my name into Facebook. And in certain groups, if you type the word funnel, my name will show up on the top of the list. Even though you're not typing my name, it'll show up. So I like, do little things like that that make it so that every single time someone types the keyword that they're looking for and you have a solution to that, your name comes up. So it creates instant credibility. It creates instant recognition and people are able to identify, hey, this person can help me. I started getting tagged by all sorts of people who had absolutely no idea who I was. They're just like, oh, I think Hawk can help you. And that is one of the things that works really well.

Okay, so stop right there because I got to ask you this. So I typed in funnel on the social graph search on Facebook, and yes, you are number one. It says Hawk Mikado, parentheses, the funnel Genius. What kind of sorcery is that that it shows up first? But however, that may be because we're friends now, So I don't know, because we're friends, it may come up first. But is there anything, Is there actual, like optimization, like SEO optimization inside Facebook that you can do or.

Oh, yes. Facebook is just another search engine. It's just like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, all of those. Every single one of them are just a search engine with additional engagement components. I probably used the word funnel so many times. That starts to come up. And also when I changed it so that it says the funnel genius there, that's going to rank every single time I've ever posted anything, it's going to add an SEO element to that. So it's definitely. That is definitely one of the things that helps. I mean, there's a. There's literally. It's. It's. It's the hundred little things. Oh, yeah.

They all add up well. And by the way, so I do know, like. So this is interesting. I have another Facebook account that I logged into on a different browser and I will say, so what's interesting, because we're friends, it came up number one. Right. However, on the one where we're not, you come up your. Your Mastermind group Funnel Genius. Mastermind group. That's yours.

Yep, yep.

That comes up number two. So. And then your. Your other one is down a little bit. But still, I can see that it's pretty highly optimized. Cool. So moving on. Celebrity brand creating that. So something memorable, something to be known for. What, what, what else? Keep going.

Yeah. So this is something. This is actually a traffic hack that I am kind of new, but works really well. It's not really a new concept. It's just new for what I've done. If you go onto my Facebook page, like my personal profile, and you go in. If you scroll down, I think it's a couple scrolls down now, but you'll see. I gave away free plus shipping funnels from. From Tony Robbins and Exact and Brendan Burchard also gave away real estate funnels. And I also gave away.

You hacked their funnel and said, here's the funnel that they used. If you want it, you can get it.

Exactly. And we can actually instantly hack any clickfunnels page.

What do you mean instantly?

I mean I'm like magic.

Nice.

It's a pretty plus. We also have a team that goes and hacks non clickfunnels pages. So we've literally in our account, actually, if you scroll up on the page there, you'll see that we have over 3,000 pages in our account. Those aren't including the ones that we've archived because we archived a lot of ones that got duplicated. We have over 600 funnels that we've hacked.

Oh, wow.

Nice. So Some of those are just templates. So we try to keep all the templates in one funnel. But yeah, it is really powerful to be able to so give something away that's so valuable that people can't not say, I want it, absolutely. And then don't give it to them on the page. That's the key.

What do you mean, don't give it to them on the page?

So if you look in the comments, it's like, okay, at pm, I'm going to PM you with the link.

Yes.

So comment here, which ranks your page, which ranks it up. It becomes viral to Facebook. It becomes viral because it's got so many comments. And then you go in and you PM every single person. And I wait. I don't do it right away, but I wait until the posts, the people reply, you know, new people, it dies down. And then I go and I reply, send everybody. Somebody on our team sends everybody an individual message with the link to do it. Which is an opt in, by the way, not a direct link. Yep. And then I comment and I say, you know, basically I sent you a PM and I sent send that up and it bumps it right back up to the top and get a bunch more leads.

Oh, cool. I love that. All right, so, okay, so cool. So then they, they opt in for your stuff and then now they're in your funnel. What about with your clients? Are you doing primarily straight Facebook ad, for instance, to webinar registration? Are you going to content first? What seems to be working best for you?

Facebook ad to webinar registration or to an opt in of some sort. And then from there we can obviously pixel them and do all that so we can retarget or just directly connect with people. We've also been using a new format specifically for webinars. It's a storyboard webinar video, no audio on it. So it's a sequence of images that uses the slideshow functionality in Facebook ads along with a store, an actual story. And the video itself plays and brings them through the story of what they're going to learn on the webinar and just creates massive intrigue.

Okay.

I don't know if I'm, I don't.

Know if I can visualize, which go back a little because I'm familiar because I know you talk about slideshows, like how you can do an ad where there's multiple images.

Yep. So you cannot do up to, you can do up to 10 images in those, set them. And so the first thing it says is free webinar. And then it gives a little bit on what you're going to learn. So you're going to get the inside scoop to funnels, funnel hacking and making money with funnels. Secret number one is we're going to show you how to make your funnel go live in three days. Secret number two, you're going to is you're going to learn how to overcome the 99% of funnel failures. Secret number three is you're going to learn how to actually drive traffic to be profitable. And then from there we give a couple more pieces of like. So we're going to get you out of the pain of not knowing how to be profitable. We're going to get you out of the pain of not knowing what to do to get launched quickly. And you're going to learn how to create profitable funnels in less than a month. And then watch this webinar.

Cool. So you're using the slideshows almost like bullet points of what they're going to get by opting into the Cool.

We lowered our costs by about half. We increased our conversions by about 40% and overall it was really powerful. We were able to make that a lot better. And you can see an example somewhere in my feed there as well.

Oh, very cool. I like that. So, okay, taking them to the webinar and then are most of your clients doing the webinar to a phone session or straight sale or what are you seeing a majority of the people who you're working with do?

A lot of them are going straight to some kind of sale for a course, whether, you know, somewhere between a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand. We've done a couple that are to that phone call, but we like to get them qualified in first.

Right on.

And it's basically like if you're even, if you're even remotely interested in working with me one on one, you have to buy this anyways.

Exactly, exactly. So what about people who come to you and say, all right, I am really good at like, I'm an expert in health, nutrition, fitness, you know, like Nick and Amanda or, you know, just anybody else. I'm just using them as an example. Somebody comes to you, though, they don't have a webinar or a sales video or that piece of content that helps them sell. Do you help them create that or. They typically need to do that part on their own and then you take care of everything else.

Yeah. So that we, we do everything from. We help them build the entire thing. So we designed the entire funnel, all the landing pages that Go in it. If it's a webinar, we actually help them craft their webinar using the perfect webinar system. And we actually, we are even figuring out ways to leverage that for our clients so that they can actually pump out a lot more of them.

Bingo.

And we have a boot camp coming up, which is really awesome, where we're actually going to in a day, we're going to teach people the system, build their slides for them, and then they're going to leave their understanding exactly how to present their webinar and how to deliver that result.

As far as slides go, are you seeing, I don't know if you're measuring this or seen super basic slides, you know, almost the ghetto slides with no real design versus the really well designed out beautiful slides that one is converting better than the other.

That depends on the market. Right. That's the best way to say, yeah, millennials, Gen Z do not, for the most part, do not like slides that are unappealing. Right. So they have to look sexy.

Just black letters on a white background. They get bored.

Yeah, yeah, get bored. And also, I mean, even if you have pictures in there, like, but if you have like gkic Dan Kennedy, like his pages are ugly. Yep. Let's be frank. Well, actually it's not be frank because that would be frank Current. No, I got a joke, I got a laugh. I got my first laugh.

I like it.

But the pages are like, from like aesthetically pleasing. They're ugly. And his market is older and they actually don't want the more aesthetically pleasing ones because to them it looks so complex, it looks unknown. It doesn't look like something that they're familiar with.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I had done some split tests back in several years back and it was funny. These were on video sales letters, not on webinars where it was just the really basic white, you know, white background, black letters, words only, no text, versus having much more, you know, beautiful slides. Now granted, I did not, I was not taking into account the demographic of the market, etc. It was just kind of A, you know, A versus B. And I could never get the highly graphic elements to convert better than the just the plain old, what they call the ugly video sales letter that everybody hates. My only conjecture was that it would bet it was because those slides with no pictures are almost trans inducing to where if, if it's interesting, you'll watch it and there's nothing to get distracted by because sometimes people try to make them too ornate and too visually appealing and people Stop listening to what you say, and they're looking at the pictures.

So.

But on a webinar, things can be a little bit different. And it also depends on your branding. If you're trying to be a premium brand and you're trying to, you know, if you've got a great brand everywhere else on your website and then you come out with a really crappy, you know, presentation, there's. There's no congruence there.

Yeah. And we. That's one of the things that actually, video sales letters, alternatively to a webinar, actually do convert better when they're playing. It's just text on a screen, and you might still put it in your color. So, like, we have a video sales letter. It's blue. The blue background, because the page background is blue. And then the text is gold because the text on the page is gold. Okay, that's. That's, you know, what about, what about.

In the ads are you finding. I mean, I hear so many conflicting things about, for instance, video ads. Right. Some people swear by them, some people absolutely hate them. Have you got any opinions on video ads in Facebook?

You know, going back to the market? Does your market like videos? Do they not? Do they care? Do they have the time? Also, are you good on video?

That's a great point, by the way.

Like, that's like one of the things, like, oh, you know, I put out this video and nobody watched it. Therefore, video ads suck and they don't work well. It's like, are you engaging on video or are you like, hi, my name is Hawk, and I have this free webinar for you if you want to get it. Or, like, you're like, hey, I'm Hawk. It's Hawk Mikado. I'm a funnel genius. I've got something absolutely incredible for you. This webinar is going to change your life, make your business grow, and help you make money with funnels online. Those two things are very different. And a lot of people, like, they don't even realize they're monotone. I did videos for the longest time, had no idea I was monotone. And then, like, my wife is like, you suck on, like, you're so lively, but you're like, hey, this is Hakmi Kado. My name is. You know, it's like. And it was like, I had high energy, but, like, no voice influx.

That's key. That really is key. And you're right about that. It's funny, you're one of the few people, because I say that a lot of the times, too. Like, yeah, video is great, but you suck on video. You should not be on video. Like, some people are great, some people aren't. So it kind of depends. I've also heard, and I don't have data to back this up, some of my media buyers that I work with say, talked about just video ads being not as good for initial. The initial ad the first time they come across you, but great for branding and retargeting. And once that person has already maybe opted into your funnel, doing a video ad to kind of help continue to build rapport now that they've kind of already seen you, because they're not necessarily great for immediate conversions.

I could see that. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. We do Facebook lives all the time, and when I do a video, it's more about educating and bringing awareness to something. So, yeah, that makes sense. And then also, if you do it as a page, anytime somebody likes your page or likes the post or they comment on it, if they comment on it, you can actually send them a direct message, which is something that most people don't necessarily know about. And if they like it, you can invite them to like your page, which has a lot of benefits.

So are you saying if they like the ad setting up, to automatically send them a direct message?

It's not automatic. You have to go in and name it, comment on it, and say, I'm sending you a pm. And then from there, you can actually send them a message. Anytime somebody comments on a post, whether it's an ad or not, you can send them a direct message from your page.

Oh, I got you. Yeah. Because you can't send direct messages unless they've commented on your page. Like that. Right, exactly.

Or they send you a message.

Right, exactly. Yeah. Okay, cool. Awesome. Short copy versus long copy. In Facebook ads, have you been testing to see what has been working better?

It depends on what you're asking him to do. I find that. So I've got a bunch of friends who are all Facebook. They all teach on Facebook ads, and we test all their stuff, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And it's not that it's just for our market too. It's not that their stuff doesn't work, because it works awesome for them. We found, like, webinars, the storyboard, the origin script from Funnel Scripts. Absolutely. One of the best things you can do for a webinar.

Nice. So go through that and then add that to your webinar, because that's not the. That's not the webinar script. You're saying take that piece, get it fully developed out, and then add that to it.

Oh, no, as the copy for the ad.

Oh, as a copy for the ad. Okay. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah, that is.

Yeah. So it's, it's a little longer, but it's like, you know, I was like, I think my, my ad is something like I was struggling to make even $25,000 a year. And. And this happened, and that happened, and then I found funnels, and now I make a lot of money, and it's all because of automation. This, that, and the other. If you want to learn what I learned, I'm teaching you on this webinar.

I love it.

One of the things that helps make your ad cost less is when we do link clicks, we don't do conversions, which is something that's interesting. Sometimes we do, we'll test to see which one costs less, actually get an opt in. Most of the time we're actually finding link clicks is actually costing us less these days.

So you're saying what you optimize the ad for?

Correct. And then if you do it on link clicks, not on conversions or any other type where it's impression based, the click more, where they say, the see more part, where they have to keep reading every time someone clicks that Facebook considers that socially relevant and it boosts your relevancy up, which means it's seen more, which means it costs you less.

Yeah, that's interesting you bring that up. So let me, let me kind of repeat that and to my audience, I'm sorry if we're geeking out and losing some of you, but this is why you hire this stuff done if you don't want to learn it. Right. But so, so like you said, if you can write a slightly longer copy to where you can get that C more on there, and then somebody clicks it, their Facebook will say it's more relevant and then start to charge you less. So that can be really good. I also have heard recently, I've not just recently, I heard this and I know that Facebook has recently made these changes to where now you can start to run, I guess, retargeting ads to, to people who have just interacted with your ad, you know, whether they've liked it or whether they've done anything else. And there's various different interactions. So when you're building out your ad and I was listening to a podcast with somebody else saying that one of the things she's doing is writing more, longer ad copy up front and then retargeting all the people who clicked see more. Although when I was looking for that as a. As an option to run retargeting to, I didn't see that as an. As an actual selection. It may have just been anybody who's interacted with my ads. So have you seen anything like that? Is that kind of new to you or is that sound familiar?

I have. I actually have seen that as an option. It's. It's. I think it's under the connection thing. I have seen it.

Okay.

And it's based on post engagement, so somebody I don't know. I haven't actually played with that. That element.

Yeah, it was really interesting because. To let them. Yeah. Because you. Once you. They do that, you at least know that they're a little bit more engaged. Even if they didn't click on their ad link and go off and check it out. Now it gives you the opportunity to talk to them slightly differently. Right. So that's cool. I've been wanting to dig into that a little bit more for some of my clients, shifting gears on the agency. What's been, you know, what's been the most challenging part about building an agency out? Because I know that sometimes now you're, you know, you're managing a lot of the internal people and a lot of the internal processes and procedures. Has that been. Has that been. Yeah, what's been the most challenging part of that? What maybe has been some of the things you've done that have really helped to make that work.

So we. We found ways. New ways of packaging the same products and services. And some of those things that we did kind of. Can I cuss on here?

Do it. It's not the radio.

Perfect. All right, cool.

I don't give a shit.

So, yeah, some of the things that we put out there totally fucked us to be 100% on us. And we used to offer. As a service, you could. Instead of hiring me and my team on top of it, you could literally just hire my team. And it worked really great in the beginning because we were actually. We only resell that to current agencies who need to scale. And they're like, hey, we need somebody to help us come in and do this. We started selling it to other people who did not know anything about marketing. They had come up with this marketing plan that they said, oh, yeah, I know exactly what I need to do. And then, like, a couple weeks later, they're like, hawk, I need you to look at it. I'm like, well, you didn't pay for me. You paid for my team.

Yeah.

So if you want, I'm happy to come in and look at it, but you have to pay for my time.

Nice.

And like me to me to do this. And like a strategy session with me can range anywhere between 5 and $25,000. So it's like, you know, it's like, that's like, oh my gosh, I don't want to spend all that to get the strategy in place. And so we got rid of that service.

Okay. So that was kind of like a white labeled service where they could white label your team in essence, but they don't get you. But that got to be a pain in the butt, Is that what you're saying?

So the white labeling side of things still works perfectly fine. It was the companies, it was the coaches who got a plan of action from a mentor of theirs who did marketing and told them to go implement this themselves. That was like, we got that more than once. It was like, oh, yeah. My mentor gave me this awesome plan. All I need to do is build these landing pages and get this up and drive traffic and do all this. Can you do it? And I was like, well, you can hire me. And it's this much. They're like, well, I can't do that right now. Well, you can hire our team. Cool. They can help you. And not everybody knows. I think one of the biggest issues with that was not everybody knows how to communicate with people in the Philippines.

Yeah, that's true. Could be a challenge.

So, yeah, I've traveled the world and really gotten to know different cultures have gone over there. I know how to have a conversation with them and I know how to delegate tasks to them. And if you ever outsource or you're ever working with somebody in any country, Even in the US but especially in non US countries where English isn't their first language, you have one task, not a list of 10 tasks.

You have one task with explicit spoon fed detail.

Yeah. Like literally, like, like you open your browser.

Yes.

You're gonna type in my email, you're gonna type in my password, you're gonna click login, you're gonna go like that detailed.

Yep.

And a lot of people didn't get that. We tried to explain that to people and then they would send over a list of 100 things that need to be done. Mm.

Yep. Nope. Made that mistake many years ago. Learn. Learn the hard way.

Yeah. So we actually got rid of the. It was considered a virtual market. A lot of people called it a virtual assistant services. We didn't want to be a VA service. We decided to get rid of it because our average customer value is around 15,000 and for that it was around 5,000. Spending the same amount, if not more energy to acquire a customer. That gave us 30 of the revenue. It just didn't make sense. So that was a challenge, I guess, to broaden the scope is adding in things because customers are asking for it and you can deliver it and you know you can deliver it, but it's not your core brand, your core product, your core service. Focus on what you focus on.

Have you ever read Built to Sell by John Warlow?

I'm not. So I highly recommend it on my list.

Highly recommend it. And one of the reasons it kind of dovetails into this, where the entire book ends. It's almost like a story. It's a fictional story about an agency. So it reads real. It's a fun read because it's not just talking to you, but it's talking about how a guy started a marketing agency and he was trying to be everything to everybody. And it wasn't until he really productized his service to where I think it even got down to where maybe it was just, I can't remember this several years ago, but to where it was just like logo design or some aspect instead of a design shop. Like, hey, we'll design your printers and we'll design, I mean, I'm sorry, your flyers and this, that and the other and everything. He's like, no, we just became like logo and. Or something else. And by focusing so narrowly on what, what he did and productizing his service offering, he was not only able to make the entire business run more efficiently, make marketing and getting clients a lot better, but he actually made it so that he could sell the business because it was so systematized and process based and somebody else could come in, buy this business. And it's not totally dependent upon, you know, tons of moving parts and customized services where it's kind of crazy, but it really kind of makes you focus at times. Like, yeah, how much of my service offering can I productize versus have it like, you know, custom or whatever? So it's always in the back of my mind when I'm doing service based stuff, I think.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm gonna go read that because that's a, that's a. Listen to it actually. Yeah.

Are you, are you more of an audible guy or a reading reader?

I am the audio. I have the audiobooks. My wife likes the physical books, so I buy the book, I get the Kindle and then we get the Whisper Sync audio book next to, you know, with it. And yeah, so my wife and I will listen to it on the drive to work or to the office. And then where's your office?

What part of town?

So we have a couple places we work out of. We have one in UTC La Jolla, actually, technically two in UTC La Jolla. And then we're actually working a little closer to our house. We use a co working network.

So which one do you use?

Yeah, we use Regis. Right now we have a pretty awesome deal with them. We signed up a long time ago, so makes sense for us. And we can literally pop around to any location in the world and it does. Unlimited amount of coffee. So I'm always wired up.

Exactly. That's the best way. Anything else that you're doing? What is a. Let me ask you this question. What is a strategy that you've been doing that almost pains you in the gut? Like, oh, man, I don't want to reveal that on the air. But you have to, because I'm asking, is there anything that's just that you're like, all right, I'll do it. But this is going to make me sound so amazing to these people that they'll rush out and call me.

All right, that's a. That's. I'm actually fairly open with our processes.

Cool.

I'm trying to think of something. The most recent one is the instant funnel hacking. I can't. It's not that I don't want to share that. It's that it would actually probably get some people in trouble and I don't want to have to deal with ramifications for that. Other than that. One of the things that you can. Well, it depends on your market, but groups. Creating a group. And this isn't like. Absolutely.

Okay.

Actually, you know what? I'm going to share the how to. I don't really want to share this.

That's why I asked.

Sure. You get all these people, like, oh, I'm going to think. And anyways, there's only five listening.

The only person who listens to this is my mom and dad. So don't worry about it.

All right. And then like five of the other people. Yeah. Anyways, so you can go in, into your profile and you can set nicknames and other names in your profile and it makes you searchable. So I shared that at the beginning. Just told you how to do that. It makes you searchable. And you can have up to 10 of these. So you have your primary one. But then you have other search terms that people type in. So nice. That way, anytime someone types that. And what's really important, though, this is more important. It's less important that you have this up there for brand recognition. It's more important that you're in the groups with the people who are looking for your services and are typing those keywords.

Oh, so they're in the group. And then. Okay, by the way, so I'm here now.

I'm in.

I'm on my Facebook profile. I went to the, you know, update info. I'm on the about section and it says details about you. Other names. So, like, add a nickname so I can put.

Add an other name.

Yeah, other name. Cool. Let's see. Maiden. Other. So I go other. And then I could type like best, you know, or, you know, whatever.

Whatever.

I want to like, funnel. Genius is probably. Probably what you do or something of that nature.

So you bacon wrapped. You could do bacon wrapped business. And then anytime anybody types the word bacon wrapped or business in into a thing, your name will pop up.

Nice. I could write podcast host. So if somebody's in a group and they're looking to get on podcasts and they type in podcast host, that will bring me up as a searchable figure.

Yep. Cool.

See, that's good. I like that.

I like that one. That's one of them. I had another one and then we kept talking and I don't remember exactly what it was, but if I remember, I'll let you know. Cool.

You were saying. I know you were saying something about groups, but that may have been the one you're talking about. You're an admin of a group, right?

I am just one.

Or you got more admin?

A lot. A lot of groups, actually.

Really?

Yeah.

So keep you pretty busy or do you have team members helping to kind of moderate that stuff?

We do have team members helping moderate it at this point. But even if it's just. Even if you have one group and a client of ours, she is the mompreneur coach. She helps coach moms who are entrepreneurs that want to go from under just under six figures to six figures and into seven figures. So. So her ideal target is right around that 100k mark. We said, hey, you need to figure out what you want to be called. She's like, I'm a mompreneur coach, but I don't know what I should be called. I'm like, that is what you should be called. A mompreneur coach. Her name's Jessica Yarbrough. And she created a group. She just sent me a message. I think it was yesterday or the day before. She's like, I already got 200 people in my group. Literally, this was like three days ago. She posted stuff. So she's like, I already got like 200 people in my group. And now I'm trying to figure out, should I also add in my friends who. And should I add in my friends and should I add in women who are not moms? It's like, well, you're a mompreneur coach, so add in your friends who are moms. And then you can reach out to the individuals who are or not and find out if, you know, you can ask them some questions, find out if they're a fit. That was really powerful for her. Her group is growing a lot faster because she has a lot larger of a market, too. So anytime anybody types mompreneur into Facebook, into the search function, and they see a group, now, they can go collaborate with other mompreneurs. And it's a tool. It's a lead source. There's so many things that come out of that. And I recommend having your own group as well. It's one of the. One of the things that we have every one of our clients set up is a group that they can help moderate and just add massive value to.

Now, do you tell. When you tell them to start off, do you tell them to start off by. Because one of the things I personally hate is when people add me to groups that I never asked to be a part of. Do you tell people to do that, though, because it's effective, or do you tell them to fill their groups in other ways?

So there are a couple things you can do if you're going to add somebody to a group. One, add only the best people that you really know. And that would be like, oh, yeah, I would love to be in this. And if you have any doubt in your mind, ask them exactly like, hey, I'm starting this group. I think you'd benefit. Are you interested in joining? And they'll either say yes or no. And don't feel bad if they say no, because totally fine. And then once you get about 100 people, I notice that people automatically start to join. So if you can get 100, even if you have to pay to get traffic, you can drive traffic to a group through an ad, Even if you have to pay to get traffic to that group to get people to go in, then do that. And then also on every single. For all the advanced people, when you're creating your thank you pages and I recommend going back to every single thank you page that you've ever built and adding in an element that says join my group. We get hundreds of people who, they go through our opt ins, they click in, they go, oh, there's a group, I should join it. And I'd rather have them in a group than just have their email because I can directly engage with them on Facebook. I can't directly engage with them on email. Email is, in my opinion, and I know there are tons of people who would scream and yell at me for this, but email is probably one of the least useful things, sorry, least effective things that you can get from somebody. But it's one of the most useful things because you can use that email to retarget someone. You can use that email to go and grab additional information. You can take that email, you can search them on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google and just about every other platform. And then from there, now you can start to have a real conversation with them.

Right. Well, and especially email today versus email five years ago is, I mean, even less than that. There's a massive, massive difference. Email is still like if you have an engaged email list who is anxiously awaiting, they open every email you've got. It's still the best way to, you know, to typically get them to take action. But building that engaged email list is harder than ever because of deliverability issues, because of all the, you know, the various Gmail filters. And it seems as though email service providers are doing everything they can to make, you know, marketers messages go through less and less and there's a lot more noise in the system. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, and I know you're not encouraging anybody to neglect their email. Obviously it's. But it's becoming much more of a delicate art form in order to get that email list to be highly responsive. So.

I would rather have a comment on a post because I can send them a message from my page than I would an email address which is really powerful.

So Hawk, what's a nut you're trying to crack right now? Whether that's a person you're trying to hire, a skill you're trying to learn, resource you're trying to get a person you're trying to meet. Tell me what's going on in your business right now when you and your wife are talking about what's a nut you're trying to crack?

So we have two awesome things that we are working on. They're actually completely related. 100%. But they're two components. So we have Funnel Magazine, which we haven't talked to about up to this point, which is a little bit surprising because that's all I'm talking about.

I like to ask the other questions.

Funnel Magazine is a magazine completely, 100% dedicated towards people who want to see what actually works in funnel marketing and what actually works in online marketing and getting those insights from real people who have real results. Because I'm tired of seeing all of this stuff on Facebook and LinkedIn and my emails. It's like, you should do X, Y and Z. And I'm like, well, that doesn't always work. And telling people. Or even worse, it's like, I use clickfunnels. I love clickfunnels. Russell Brunson's awesome. He's actually on the COVID of the first edition of the magazine. He's sharing some really incredible insights. And he's promoted other webinar platforms like everwebinar and whatnot. But clickfunnels actually has an auto webinar functionality. And I see all these people like, well, you have to integrate this function. You have to integrate WebinarJam with your Infusionsoft and then click up, connect your Infusionsoft with your ClickFunnels account. And then you can literally do this in one step. You click a button, you launch your webinar funnel inside of clickfunnels, and you have an auto webinar funnel. Your emails will send out from there. Everything, little things like that. And it's just one example. Cool.

And you've really liked it. I am a ClickFunnels user, but I've never used their auto webinar feature. I typically personally use Everwebinar and Webinar Jam, but I hadn't used the one out of ClickFunnels. You really like it, though?

I personally love it. Cool. And I know that there are some people who like, if you want some of the advanced functionalities, but if you're new in creating webinars, you only have to be new in business. If you're new in creating webinars, clickfunnels will by far, like, blow you out of the water. There's not a hundred things that you have to do. Like, I, we've set up Webinar Jam and every webinar for clients, and those things are a pain. Like, and I get, like, there's some really cool things that come out of that. Don't get me wrong. Like, there are reasons you do it.

But sometimes you think Doing more than is necessary. Right. Yeah. Keeping it simple is always really, really the key to it. And then improve off that if you need all the ninja little tricks and tactics.

Yeah. And we've actually found that almost everything that you want to do inside of WebinarJam, except for the polls. And there's like two or three things that are inside of WebinarJam that are not inside of ClickFunnels, which can be added from another service. And it's literally just a small integration. It's not this entire elaborate system. For 10 bucks a month for most of our clients, do you use all.

Their features like the Actionetics and backpack.

And all that stuff? Cool. Yeah. One of the things that we're realizing more and more every once in a while we have a client who doesn't need actionetics, but then they go and they're like, oh, I want to do a webinar. And doing a webinar without Actionetics, you can do it just to get basic things done. But when I want my metrics, I want to know exactly who has been in, who's watched it, who didn't, who missed the offer, who's registered all of that. I can actually set all that up in actionetics where it's not available. If you don't have that functionality, obviously there's pros and cons to both. Excellent.

Cool. Funnel Magazine. How do they get. How do people get Funnel Magazine?

You go to funnelmagazine.com and it'll send you to the pre registration page. You get a free digital copy and then if you want to get copy shipped to you, we'll ship to you for free. Just cover the cost of shipping and handling.

Love it. Love it. And if people want to talk with you or your team about working with you, what's the process?

So best way is Facebook, send me a message at M Me the funnelgenius. Or you can just go to facebook.com and find me.

You said M Me the funnel?

Yeah, it's Messenger. The Funnel Genius. Yeah. So Facebook.

It's not just Funnel Genius.

I have both, so don't worry about it. Yeah, the Funnel Genius goes to my personal page. Funnel Genius goes to our business page and then Hakmikado goes to me. Not to make it anyways perfect. So yeah. Or you can also go to facebook.com the funnel genius. It'll bring you to our page. You can hit message there. If you go to M Me brings you to messenger, which is a pretty cool tool.

Yep, exactly. Awesome. Well, Hawk, this has been great. This has been a great conversation. You've shared some really, really cool stuff. Several of these things here, as I said, they were brand new to me and I look forward to putting them into action. And I hope all of you guys listening feel the exact same. Hawk, I hope we run into each other here sometime soon here in San Diego, which should be sunny and damn it, it's all cloudy and rainy, rainy today, which is rare. But for my listeners, if this has been overwhelming to, I guarantee it hasn't been underwhelming for anybody. But if it's been overwhelming and you're like, this sounds really, really cool, I kind of need to figure this out. Feel free to hit Hawk up at the information provided. All that information will be in the show notes. If you would like to potentially chat with me or get a second opinion on the marketing strategies that you're doing in your business, whether it's lead, you know, lead generation or conversion or you name it, and you are looking to grow, grow your business, do not hesitate to reach out to me. You can send me an email@askbradaconrackedbusiness.com and for everybody who is listening to this, whether it's prior to the new year or fresh in 2017, I hope everybody has a happy, productive new year. And Hawk, thanks for joining me.

Yeah, thank you for having me on, Brad. Appreciate you.

Okay, see you guys next time.