How Persuasion Strategist Bushra Azhar Grew Her Business To $40k/Month In Just 2 Years

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to bacon wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

All right, this is Brad and welcome back to the show. If this is the first time you've ever listened to the show and you've just stumbled across it and you're like, what is this thing that appears to be so awesome that it just sucked me in, well, this is my platform for having amazing conversations with intriguing people and getting to pick their brain on, you know, what's working in their business, in their life and getting them to share with both myself and you as an audience and ways to improve their business and their revenues and their profits and taking interesting approaches to all of the above. And that's why I do what I do. And if at any point during the show or afterwards you've got any questions, you've got any feedback, you want to tell me how awesome I am, flattery will get you everywhere or you want to give me some constructive feedback, tell me how terrible the show was and pepper it with some compliments in the middle of it, you can always send me an email to askbradacon wrapped business.com and by the way, I'm looking for a new business book to read. So if you've got a business book that you've read, it doesn't have to be business, it can be personal development, lifestyle, just something kind of nonfiction and inspirational or educational. Send that email with that recommendation to ask bradakenwrappedbusiness.com and if I read your book, I'll mention your name on the air the next time. So today I have got a very interesting guest and I received an email from a mutual friend of ours suggesting that I bring Bushra as her on the show. And that's the name of the guest, Bushra. She is over in Saudi Arabia and it is about 10pm her time and it's about noon my time. So if she doesn't fall asleep during the during the episode, then we're gonna have a really good one. That being said, what I was really intrigued by was the splash that she's been making with her brand, with her offering and with her actions online. Especially starting from nothing two years ago and growing an email list of 22,000 people with a buyer list of about 4,000 in two years with very little help from the outside, very little investment. She did it all on her own and she did it in a big way. So her big expertise is the psychology of persuasion and her website is called thepersuasionrevolution.com and so immediately, I love all things persuasion and kind of as a copywriter, a creative consultant, as a master in neuro linguistic programming, you say persuasion, you've got me hooked. And when I went to look at her website, one of the things I absolutely loved was how creative, fun and engaging it is. It's definitely not dry. And you can tell just by reading through that and subscribing to her list that she knows what she's talking, talking about and you cannot ignore her. So we're not going to ignore her either. We're going to bring her on the show here in just one second and find out how she has done so much in so little time and what advice she has for those of you out there who may want to do the same. All right, without any further ado. Bushra, are you there?

Hey, Brad. Yes, I am. It's not very often someone calls me intriguing, so I'm definitely here.

I don't believe that for a second.

I live a thoroughly unexceptional life. So when you said intriguing, I was like, oh my God, I should have recorded this. I'm just gonna ask you to get that snippet.

Luckily it is being recorded, so.

Luckily, yeah, lucky for all of us. I'm just gonna flash it in front of my husband again and again every single day for the rest of his life.

There you go. Well, and to my audience, so she just says, I'm not intriguing or whatever. So the headline on your webpage is the only place on the Internet that makes persuasion sexy, classy and fun. Okay, that's intriguing. So I think, I think you call you intriguing. Darn it.

Okay, okay, thank you. I accept it. I accept that honor. But I'll be honest, this new headline, I'm experimenting with this headline and testing it out and so far it has led to a lot of emails. So I get a lot of emails from subscribers, genuine ones. And then I get a lot of emails recently where people are asking me for dating advice and I'm like, okay, maybe I need to revisit that headline a little bit.

That's a good point. That's a good point though. Are you getting emails from men or from women on that?

Okay, so yeah, like about, you know, four females and one Man. But the man was really desperate to the point where I'm thinking I should just date him myself because he looks really desperate.

Well, you know, maybe you could splinter off into a. Into a kind of a dating dating course using persuasion too.

Not the person. No, no, not the right person. I have no idea how it works. And I cannot navigate the shark infested waters of dating world. I can't.

So I started off. I started in that world. It was really funny. And so I was dating my. I had a girlfriend back then. She's my wife now. And I was dating her for maybe a year and a half before I got into that world. And I found kind of a niche in the whole world of dating and pickup artist advice that was not being extrapolated or it was not being taken advantage of. And that was like how to do magic, like bar tricks to impress girls. Because they were talking about it in the whole dating world. Yeah, if that makes sense. If you remember that everybody's talking about, yeah, do bar tricks. But guys who would go out and learn magic tricks or take a deck of cards to a bar, they would look like idiots. So I created a course. Like, I literally took about two dozen magic tricks that you can really learn on YouTube. And I just reframed it as these are the bar tricks that you would use if you were, you know, talking to girls. And so I got. I never had a real big dating advice course. It was just always like a little, like a, you know, just my own little addition to that market. But I got to know it really well. And yeah, it's a crazy market, I gotta tell you.

Oh, but what a brilliant, genius idea. Oh, my God, I'm totally tempted to break into that market. Or I can just send those emails over to you.

There you go. There you go. Well, you know, I imagine the female. The female advice market is probably a little less crazy than the men's is. Luckily, I sold that business about four or five years ago, and I was really happy to get out of it because it just wasn't where I wanted the waters that I wanted to play in anymore. But that being said, more back to you, this is not just about me. Okay, so you're in Saudi Arabia. Your backstory, you were doing corporate consulting or something. Give me the quick backstory because I.

Don'T want to get into the really juicy stuff. Okay, so I'm in. I'm a pre med student turned accountant turned banker turned assistant professor of accounting, turned a vice president of a bank turned a corporate consultant turned entrepreneur so interesting. You know, it's like the only thing that I'm consistent in so far has been my marriage, which is lucky for all of us.

Well, you're a true entrepreneur. You're all over, just like, just like.

So the very last thing that I was doing before I started this business, which I started as honestly just an experiment. I just wanted to experiment with this whole online thing. I was doing corporate consulting. I had, I was making six figures in, in consulting, corporate consulting in Saudi Arabia. And I. And then when I started, about six months after I started my online business, I also started a small business advisory firm with another partner. So I basically had kind of two businesses running at the same time, an offline business and an online business. So I built the entire, entire, my entire online business while still working in consulting. I only quit in March of this year after my business was about very close to a million, no, not close, close to about a half a million dollar mark. That's when I decided consulting, you know, it's not worth my time and effort. So I had to wrap up the firm and dedicate my time fully to online business.

Okay, cool. So then what made you decide? You're sitting there, what was the decision? Where you're like, alright, online business. I'm going to be a persuasion expert. Why that? Where did that come from?

So I did an idea mapping, you know, typically what people would do, I did an idea mapping. One of the things that I was doing in consulting, one of the things that I was known for in consulting was that I was really good at closing contracts. We would, you know, close a million dollar contracts and you know, Saudi Arabia is a country with a lot of money and I was working with some of the biggest Saudi companies. And what would happen in our firm was that if someone was going out for a pitch, they could not go out unless I've had a chance to sit with them and review their pitch and you know, kind of give them pointers on the pitch. So I was already doing it. Like you. I was very. I've always been a student of persuasion and negotiation. So I've read about 305, no, not 307 books on persuasion and social psychology. And you know, some of these are even medical journals, not just books. So I'm obsessed with this whole idea and I was using it in corporate consulting. So it was one of my strengths. But I don't have a psychology degree, I've never practiced. Like you, for example, I don't have a master's in linguistics, but I was always interested in the topic. So when I started to dabble into this online world, which kind of started as an experiment, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to try it out and see how that works. So I had nine ideas that I started with. I validated all nine of them. I was left with two.

How'd you validate them?

So I did a lot of. I have this process that on our teach, which I basically call it cash spotting, which is, you know, you basically go where the cash is. So I had these ideas and then I kind of, you know, stocked the. Stocked people who were already doing it, looked at courses, bought a few courses just to kind of see A my interest in the idea and B, how much money realistic I can make with this. And honestly for me, the more important thing was how, how much does it excite me. So I'm originally an accountant, so one the ideas obviously was to do kind of an accounting finance for non financial managers, that kind of a thing. And I tested those out. But even though there's a lot of cash in that niche, it just didn't excite me as much.

Yeah, you get bored of it way too quick.

Yeah. So this was. So then I was left with two ideas. When I started the persuasion revolution, I had two ideas. One was to teach persuasion and negotiation to business professionals. Kind of similar to what I was doing in my corporate consulting work. I was training associate consultants on how to be more persuasive. And second was to teach psychology of persuasion to basically entrepreneurs. So these were the two that I went out with and I had a very interesting process of validating, kind of choosing between these two. So what I did was I did a ton of guest posts. Some of the guest posts I did for my first niche, which was I wrote for publications like, you know, Glass, what is it called, Women 2.0 and Daily Muse, which are basically focused on business professionals. And then I'd a bunch of guest posting for publications that were focused more on entrepreneurs like copy hackers. And then I saw the response. I judged the response from these two types of guest posts and hands down, I got such a great response from the entrepreneurial market versus the business professionals market. So that's when I decided, okay, now this is what I'm going to go with. So if you go back to my original website, when I started it had two sections, offline persuasion and online persuasion. But after I did a bunch of guest posting and I'm crazy like that, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to test it out and see what happens. So for my business professionals market, it was very interesting. I wrote this piece called how to deal with something about negotiation and persuasion in the workplace. And that post got really popular. It got picked up by Inc.com it had like 3,000 shares.

Where'd you originally post it? On your website or somewhere else?

No, I guess posted on Daily News.

Oh, okay, cool. And then again, then it got picked.

Up by Ink and it got picked up and it was like, it was massive. And I was really pleased and really happy. But you would not believe this. I did not get a single subscriber from that post. And then I did another guest post for Copy Hackers, which is one of my absolutely favorite blogs.

Yeah, that's great.

It was about basically eight down and dirty persuasion tactics for your website. Something like that.

Down and dirty guide to turning your website on persuasion power.

Yes, thank you. Okay. You know about that. So I wrote that. And that one guest post not only got me my, I don't know, 10 of subscribers right off the bat, but it also got me my first paying client. And that was really, you know, the best validation that I could ever ask for. Even though it's a bit unconventional, that's not how people typically validate their ideas. But it was amazing. That one guest post got my first paying client and got me my first paying client. So it was interesting because she reached out to me and she said, oh, you know, I'm looking for your Work with Me page, and I can't find it, so how can I work with you? And I was like, oh, I don't. Okay, I don't. Not only do I not have a Work with me page, I don't even have a PayPal account.

So you had to go quick and create those.

I like. Okay, I'm just going to quickly create a PayPal account because it never occurred to me that things would manifest so quickly, things would come alive so quickly. I was just doing it as an experiment. So that was interesting.

Nice. I love now, so what kind of a client was that? What did you end up doing for them?

So she wanted to. She. So she wanted me to work on one of her landing pages and a few emails, something like that, kind of review, review and revision. So it was nothing. It was $500.

Okay.

But. And again, how did I know about that $500? I didn't even know. I just quoted a number and she sent me the money.

Like, damn, could have been a thousand.

It could have been a thousand. But I had no idea what I was Doing. I'd never done this kind of thing. I had no idea people would actually pay other people to do this. And it's interesting because I, when I started this online thing, I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. Not a single soul knew that I was doing it. Not my husband, not my parents, not my boss, friends, anyone. So when I got my first $500, I was, I had to tell someone, right? So I went and told my husband. I was like, someone just sent me, you know, $500. And even though it's not a big amount, right. I was, I was making a lot of money. But this idea that someone who does not know you, they've never met you, they actually would trust you enough to you money, it was completely alien to me. So I went and told him. He was like, why are people sending you money on the Internet? What are you putting on the Internet? So you are questionable pictures of myself on the Internet.

Right, Exactly. That's the first thought, right? What are you doing?

Why would people send you money? So I had to kind of like, okay, take a step back, let me explain. This is what I was doing and just started as, just as a side project and it blew up.

It looks like a great article and it looks like it's exactly what I recommend that a lot of people do, especially in the very beginning, is to, is to guest post and get your stuff out there on other people's websites. Was that a big strategy of yours going like, in order to build your list from day one, like is just getting it your content out on other people's sites?

Yes, I did it a lot in the beginning, but then I have slacked off a little. I think it's a brilliant, beautiful strategy and I highly recommend people do that because it can of allows you to build your authority by association. So it's not just traffic or subscribers. It's also because you're. If you are. If, if Joanna from Copyhackers is going to put me on her website and I absolutely love her, I think she's a genius. If she's going to put me on her website, I am authoritative by association. So there is also that element that you become authoritative by association. So absolutely. I don't do it enough now that I don't have time. It's grown big and now I mostly just use paid traffic because now I have the money to spend.

Exactly. So tell me about, let me jump over to. So you start, you started to see this work and then you put up the offer and then your basic Offer in the very beginning, what was your very first paid product that you created?

So, okay, so by paid product, you mean a course.

Yeah.

Or you mean. Okay, so my. So I started in about July of 2014. That's when I, you know, I really started. And my first course came out in October. So till. From July till October, I did a lot of. I did a lot of free work, which I know a lot of people say is not a great idea, but.

A lot of work.

A lot of free work. So I was. I did a lot. So I did about 100 free website reviews in three weeks. Because my idea was that if I want to break into a market where no one knows me, no one knows me on the Internet, no one knows I exist, so what is the best way to get people to notice me? So I did those. I offered those 100 website reviews. That was one of the things that I did. And about. Out of those 100 people, more than half of them ended up working with me after that website review.

You bring up an interesting point. I want to kind of sidetrack there. You said a lot of people say, don't do that because. And are they telling you not to do fee? You didn't say free work. You said fee, F, E, E. Right.

No, I said free.

Okay.

I did say free. So it was absolutely free. Yeah, no, I think.

I still think that's. I think that was spot on. And a lot of people will say that, whether it's for fee or for free. Like, oh, you know, you're trading either time for dollars or you're, you know, you shouldn't be giving this away. And I think you have the exact right. The exact right methodology. Too many people sit around and wait for somebody to pay them. When you recognize that, look, I don't have. I don't have recognition in the marketplace. I've got to do this. And you said, how many of those ones turned into one?

So about. Yeah, about. I would say about 60%. More than half, Definitely.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

So how did you do? Like, you. Where did you announce that you would do these?

So I was. So I was enrolled in two courses. Okay. I was enrolled in one course at the time, two courses at the time. And I just basically shared that. No landing page, no nothing. I just said, you know, I want to. And I came. You know, I was very honest. I was like, I'm just starting out. This is my passion. This is what my. I'm really good at. I'm really good with words. I'm really good with taking your sales argument and making it more persuasive. That's my strength, that's what I do. So if you have something, if you have a piece of copy, or if you have a sales page or an opt in page or a homepage that you want my eyes on, I can revise it for you and make it more persuasive. Let me know. And what, what I did was not only did I not just do a review, I basically did a screencast video. I revised the copy all for free, I didn't charge anything. And each video was about 25, 30 minutes. And I did hundred of those in three weeks. So I got about 80 testimonials right off the bat. So just even if those people had not become paid clients, just the fact that you're just starting out and in three weeks you have 80 testimonials of people telling you, this is how my sales improved, this is how my conversions improved, this is how my email open rate improved. Just those quantitative, kind of quantitative testimonials made a lot of difference. So. And I could, and I had the permission to another thing that I did after this and I didn't. So this is how I used it. So I did those reviews, I got the testimonials, I got some of them to turn, become paying clients. And then I also created a lot of before afters.

That's great.

And I use those in social media consistently. On Twitter, on my own Facebook page, everywhere. I would just do a before, after and sometimes I would kind of do a quiz. I would say, okay, this was the before copy. This is version A, this is version B. One conversion. One version converts 62% better than the other. Guess which one. So it created a lot of hype around my work. You know, it was not like, you know, test me out, pay me and then test me out and see how great I am. I actually had evidence. I showed them. This was the before, this is the after. This is my work. So that really helped me get a lot of buzz around my work.

I love that. So then, now your courses. Let's talk about what you're doing now. What is your business model now?

So now right now it is about 95% courses. I'm only working with a very small handful of clients one on one. My courses are. So I have something called, that I like to call launch stacking, where I have so kind of going a little bit nerdy on you.

Do it.

Excuse me.

Let's nerd out.

Talk nerdy to me.

Exactly.

So the way I've structured my business is that I believe in something called the dread to dream journey. So the dread to dream journey is you need to imagine your potential buyer at the dread stage, where they are dreading a lot of things, and then the dream stage is basically where all their dreams are realized. If you want to take someone from the dread to the dream, in order to take that journey, you can't just take them from the dread to dream in one full swoop. Right. You can't just take them from dread to dream right off the bat. So what I recommend doing and what I've done in my business is that I believe in creating 20% improvement product, then a 40% improvement product, a 60% improvement product, and then a total transformation product. So the way my launches are stacked is that I have a 20% improvement product. What that does is that it takes them from the dread state 20% closer to the dream state. It doesn't solve their problem 100%. It just improves it 20%. So it just gives them that rush of, oh, something in my life is becoming a little bit better. 40% improvement is a 40% improvement, and then obviously 60% in total transformation. So I have products ranging all the way from $25 to about $8,000. And all of these products are on this dread to dream journey. Some of these are 20% improvement. Some of these are total transformation. Some of these are 60%, some of these are 40%. But the idea is that what I think the mistake that most people do is that they create a lot of 20% products and they don't have a total transformation product or end up creating a ton of total transformation product. But if someone to just test them out, someone just wants to kind of dip their toes in their business, they have no way of doing that. The only way they can work with them is if they pay for a $2,000 product.

Yeah.

So that's how my business is structured. My portfolio of products has all these 20%, 40%, 60% in total transformation with price ranges to match. So if someone. And that allows me. That has allowed me to create a buyer base of about 4,000 people. Because. Because it is really easy for them to say yes to a 20% product. It is not as easy for them to say yes to a 60% product, but it's really easy for them to say yes to a 20% product. Because the price is low, the resistance is low, they feel they can achieve it. The believability factor is high. So that's how my business Is structured.

I love that. How many products do you have in your catalog right now?

So right now I have. Oh, okay. The active ones I have about six. The ones that I have played with are about 10. But some of these I have killed because again, going back to the dread dream, when you launch a total transformation product, sometimes your 20%, 40% would cannibalize the total transformation.

Right, That's a good point.

So you have to kill some of these. So I launched a lot, but I've killed some of these because now I have a few total transformation products that do not that. That require me to kill the 20%, 40%.

Exactly. Now what of all your products, what is the. What's your best seller? What's the most well received?

The one that I sold right now is because it's made me a lot of money. It was. It's called sold out launch. And I basically it's the first time that experimented with a high priced product.

I so is about how to launch a product or a course?

It is, yes, it is about. And the data, the launch program, the dime a dozen. So when I launched it, I was like, okay, I'm going into a really crowded market and I am. My first battle would be how is this different from other courses? Because there are so many launch programs. So I tested. I launched it as a. Purely as a test again just to see. And it is a total transformation product because it has everything that you need to do to just go from no idea to launch. So it is. Is a complete transformation. But it did really well. I launched it in June. I made about $700,000. About. Yeah, yeah, it did really well. It was the first time I launched something of this value. So it was the price point. Yeah, the early bird was 1500 and the full price was $2500. Okay. So yeah, so the sales were about the total sales. And then I also had a downsell. So the total sales were about 670, which is a good number considering, you know, I'd never done anything like this.

No, it's amazing. Did you do that with a lot of joint ventures too? Or did you do that mainly off your list?

Not just my list.

That's amazing.

Yeah, I don't do a lot of affiliate promotions, so I. It's purely my own list.

Okay, now did you. So a launch product that's a. That can be a very big comprehensive product because there's a lot of little details that go into that. Did you create the entire course before you sold it or did you sell It.

It.

And you know, it's like, okay, we're going to sell it and then every week you're going to get something dripped out. So you create it after you sold it. Which one?

So, yeah, so it wasn't ripped out. I typically always sell before I create. Always. So the first thing I do is I write the sales page, then I test it out, I sell it, and then I create it. But in this case, sold out launch was a little bit different. And that was basically the kind of the point of differentiation for sold out launch that I accepted right off the bat. I came out. And again, I think that's something that more people on the Internet should do. This idea of appearing less than perfect, I don't think enough people do it. And I think one of the reasons Solar Launch did so well is because I came right out and I said, I've created a program on launches, but I'm not an expert in everything. So what I have done is I brought on faculty members who are experts in their areas of, you know, whatever their areas are. And I would get penalized for that either.

You never get penalized for that.

That. Yeah. And because again, you know, even though I get absolutely fantastic results from Facebook ads, but I'm not a Facebook ad expert.

Do you hire somebody to write in your Facebook ads or do you do them yourself? Right.

No, I do it on my own. I do it on my own. But I do a lot of, you know, seriously, my, My, my trial. I like to say this trial and error is my religion.

Oh, yeah, I. Yeah, absolutely. That's. Well, that's, you know, they said marketing is nothing but guessing and testing, guessing and testing. So with the Facebook ads. So that's the majority of your.

Yeah, that's the majority of my traffic.

So what are you doing there? Are you sending them straight to a webinar registration page or are you sending them. What's your Facebook strategy?

Yeah, so I only run Facebook ads when I'm launching. I don't run Facebook ads throughout. I used to have an evergreen funnel, but I had to kill it because it was cannibalizing one of my other products. So I will probably activate it again. So when I am doing Facebook ads. Yes, I run those to webinar page and then from the webinar I sell. And webinars have been absolutely fantastic for me to sell. Again, everything that I've sold in my business has been through webinars. I haven't done any other. Any other sales strategy. Only through live webinars.

Yeah. Daniel It's a remarkable way to sell and grow your business. So what? And then you work with a handful of clients one on one, like high end consulting as well. Are you looking to do more of that, less of that? Does it matter?

Yeah, so I'm doing now I'm doing so because I did sold out launch. One of the things that I realized in sold out launch was that even though I priced it at 2,500 and it was completely do it yourself, there would still be people who would say we'd pay you any amount if you would work with us. And I was like, you know what, that's interesting. So now next month I'm doing a sold out launch live in Madrid where I'm bringing people in. They're going to work with me for two days on their launches. And so that's the kind of work that I do. And there would be a few follow up calls with me, but basically I'm bringing my entire team. I'm bringing those people in. We'll all stay together two days, you come in with an idea and you leave with your launch, your ads, your graphics, your website, everything. Done.

What are you charging for that?

That. So it's. Yeah, yeah, no, no, I do. It's already sold out.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, so it's, I did, I wanted to do early bird 6000 and full price 8000. But I sold all my spots in Early Bird so I didn't get a chance to do full price because I sold all my spots. I didn't even get to send an email. I just mentioned after a webinar and then I, I, I had nine spots. They were all gone.

Nice. Yeah. So have you ever read Perry Marshall's book 8020 sales and marketing?

No, I haven't.

I would jump on that book immediately. It's one of my favorite business books of all time and it's.

Sorry, let me ask you, Perry Marshall is the guy who's behind Swiss Army Method, right?

I don't think so. Unless it's something new.

He's the one who looks around for. He wears spectacles. He looks like an accountant. Right? I'm an accountant.

I don't know if he wears tacticals. I know Perry. His main thing has been on Always the ultimate guide for AdWords. That was what he made. He was, he was the most famous AdWords.

I'm gonna buy it right off. Right. As soon as he finishes call. I'm buying it because.

So one of the things, so the book is so remarkable in everything that it talks about. I mean, it's really about the, the 8020 rule as well. Right. But one of the key things that he presses upon is the 8020 rule with your prices and what your customers will pay. So, so you know, if you have 100 customers, you know the, you know there's, there's 20 at whatever price, 20 of them would have bought a much higher price product, at least double. And then 20% of those, so what is that? 4, 4% of those 20 would have bought a price like double what the other ones paid. And then at least one of those would have bought an ultra premium price. And he goes, you know it. And he says it, it works and it is kind of true. It's like a natural law. There is always something out there that somebody wants to give you money. Like somebody who's dying to give you money. And a great example that he used was, do you have Starbucks over in Saudi Arabia?

Yes, we do. Cool.

I wasn't 100% sure. Nice.

They're addicted to Starbucks. Saudis are addicted to Starbucks.

Yeah. So the one of the illustrations that he used was at a Starbucks, you'll oftentimes see like a $2,000 espresso machine for sale. Like, who goes into Starbucks to buy a $2,000 espresso machine? I'm going in to buy a four dollar cup of coffee. But he said they recognized it. There only has to be one person per month or whatever, per week, whatever buy that. But they wouldn't put it in there if somebody didn't buy it. And somebody always buys it it.

I love that.

Right. So making the ultra premium offer, there are people out there, especially your biggest fans, who are dying for that. I've got a client right now, he sells a $200 a month software and you know, for mortgage and real estate people. And I was like, have you ever thought about offering a high end mastermind? And he's like, ah, they wouldn't pay that. They're, they're really cheap. I was like, well let's, let's try it out. So we just engineered a little email campaign and he's already sold with one email and four phone calls, he sold four $5,000 packages for like, come to my office for two days for $5,000 to a notoriously cheap market. So there's always people out there. I always try to tell my clients like, you know, they're willing to spend the money.

Absolutely, I agree, I agree.

So what is a, what's big picture next? Like what's a, what's another big goal of yours? Besides just growing your business and what you're doing.

So, okay, so things, I don't know whether you know, but for me, for my business, one of the things that really allows me to keep trying new things and launching new things is that 10% of my revenues, all my revenues, I use them, I used to work with street children in Southeast Asia to feed and educate street children. And it was okay because it was 10% of, you know, a small amount. But now that I'm making so much money, 10% itself is about a six figure amount. So now I'm at that point where I am looking at starting my own nonprofit because honestly, I'm not comfortable handing over $100,000 to just a random charity, you know, so, so that's one of the big projects that I need to look at for 2017. I have the amount set aside. I need to find a way to invest it. I'm also looking at creating. Again, I, even though I live in Saudi Arabia, I'm originally from Pakistan. And in Pakistan people are, you know, it's a poor country. So there are people who live in less than $2 a day. So the idea behind, even for my business, the idea behind having these low ticket products is because I want. So I have a $25 membership program. And the reason that I created these is because I want to give a chance to those aspiring entrepreneurs in those countries that cannot afford $100 product, cannot afford a $2,000 product, but still have access to high quality business trainings. So one of the things that I'm working on right now and something that I'm in the process of working on, I already have the volunteers is that I'm creating really high quality business trainings in all, almost all languages. And it's going to be for $5 for everyone who wants to sign up. So I have volunteers from Brazil, I have volunteers from Sudan, I have volunteers from, you know, who would be able to do it in Spanish. So I would do the core training, I would do everything. I would do it in English. And then I have people who, I have people from India who are willing to do English it in all regional languages from India. So I want to create this again, it's because, again, one of the, it's. The one reason is one reason they can't take all of these, our business trainings is because of the money. The second reason is the language.

Yeah.

Yeah. But they do want, starting an e commerce store does not require you to speak English, but they need to understand what, how to do it. So I have, right now I have about 52 people who are. So 52 languages are ready to go who are willing to volunteer, give their time to me and work on that project. So that's something that I'm really excited about doing and it's coming really soon.

That's amazing. I love that. So are there any other nuts you're trying to crack? Any other things that we can help you with? So if there's anybody out there listening who may have some insight on starting a nonprofit, that'd be great. But what else can we help you with?

If you have a language that is not widely spoken and you want to be a volunteer, I would love to have more people. I've had volunteers for languages that I didn't even know about those languages, but people are. And it's amazing because, you know, I only speak my mother tongue, which is Urdu and English, so. But there are people. I know someone who speaks six languages. Oh my God. I didn't even think it was possible to know six languages. And she wants to basically volunteer for all six languages. That's amazing. Wow.

That is amazing. I love that. Absolutely love what you're doing. Well, this has been fantastic. When I realized that we were going to be doing the interview, I subscribed your list. I enjoy your emails. I look forward to continuing to watch what you're doing and how you're doing it and potentially learn a few things myself. This has been great.

Thank you so much. My favorite topic is me, obviously, like everyone, I love talking about myself. Thank you so much for giving me me the opportunity to talk about myself.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, I love, I love the. It's a very inspirational story as well. For anybody out there who's kind of got an idea of how to get out there, validate it quickly, put in some work, build the start to build the audience. And like you said, when even in the very beginning you did some guest posts and you just started going there to start to build, that's how you built your initial base. Right from there, you probably started doing some advertising, but it wasn't until you kind of validated that that people wanted to hear what you had to say. And that really is a good reminder to everybody about how to start. There's no push button, easy solution to starting, but getting out there and seeing what the market wants and putting yourself in front of them in a way that engages them. Your site, the persuasionrevolution.com definitely does that. I encourage every single person who's listening to go check, check it out, subscribe, watch what you're doing and pay close attention because you've done big things and I expect a lot of big things from you.

Thank you so much for your kind words. I would love for you people to join. If you're not. If you are just a disclaimer, if you are offended by cussing, or you're one of those who refer to their undergarments as unmentionable. You may not like my website a lot.

They're not listening to my show anyway.

They won't be listening to your show. So. Great. We could be covered. We're good.

Exactly. You've also got a new podcast that I saw the Persuasion show, available on itunes.

Yes. Oh, my God, yes. And yeah. So we will probably be talking soon. I probably go and harass you to come talk to me because I want to also give you the opportunity to talk about you because I'm pretty sure that's your favorite topic too, 100%.

One last question. Okay, so besides Selena Su, who introduced us, who else do you really look to as a mentor, either in person that we might know or people that you really look up to? Who are some of the people out there that. Some of the influential folks that have made a big difference in your life?

So. Okay, that's a kind of. That's a loaded question. Because I'm not a huge believer in mentoring and when someone. People reach out to me and I mean, oh, we want you to mentor. I was like, you know, you have no idea how fucked up I am, trust me. And I think that's what the problem really is. You know, human beings are fundamentally flawed. Right. And a lot of things that we do, a lot of things that we say, a lot of things that we advise are normally due to their own selfish self interest. That's just my opinion. So I like to. I like to take. Take bits of wisdom from different people and see what works. I'm a huge. Like I said, trial and error is my religion. I like to try out new things. But I would not just say someone is.

Is there somebody out there that's a. Like a thought leader, if nothing else, that you. You read everything they put out or you really like to learn from?

Yes. Yes. So. So yeah. Okay. So let me just. I think that's. That's so. So someone, for example, Laura. I don't know whether you know Laura Belgray. Laura Belgray is a. She's a friend. She's awesome. She's a client. She's a friend. And I'm a huge fan. She' Joanna Webb from Copyhackers Ramit Sethi. These are people that I watch them closely because I love how they do business. It's a little bit different from what people typically do. So yes, these are the kind of people that I watch closely. I open their emails. I enjoy the way they engage with their audience.

I love it. I love it. Well, for all of my listeners, go to the persuasionrevolution.com and in the show notes of the episode you'll find links to Bushra's social media site, Everything podcast and I suggest you go subscribe, check it out and follow along closely. Bushra, thank you very much for being a guest on the show. I've really appreciated it and it's been really cool to get to know you and hear your journey.

Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure. And see, I did not fall asleep.

Sleep, see, Exactly. But that's coming soon, isn't it? In the next hour.

I'm so glad we do. It's in the next like 30 seconds. I'm so glad the camera is not on.

Yeah, that's great. All right, guys, thanks for listening to the show. Best thing in the world that you can do to support me besides sending me large sums of cash for no other reason besides you like the show is to review it on itunes, take a snapshot of of that review, send it to me or just share the show on social media, tag me in it, say, this was really cool. This is some bacon wrapped business advice if I've ever heard it. Let us know what you think. Tag myself, tag Busher in the episode and keep on listening. I've got some good episodes for you coming up and look forward to sharing them with you. Talk to you next time.

Thank you.