MaryEllen Tribby | The Secret to Sustainable Business Growth

The first thing is accelerated failure. Everything you do is not going to succeed. So fail fast and move on. Don't fall in love with your product your copy right? If it's a loser, cut it loose. So many entrepreneurs instead will make an excuse. Oh it's the economy. Oh the mail was on strike. Like they make excuses cut it loose. Don't fall in love with it. That's number one. Number two is ride the wave. And this is where you need to understand your numbers.

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What if the fastest way to scale your business is by learning to fail faster? This week I sit down with Mary Ellen Trivia, True force in the world of business growth, multichannel marketing and conscious leadership. Mary Ellen has scaled multimillion dollar businesses, led major media companies and built her own thriving ventures, all while raising a family and living a life of intentional balance. What I love about Mary Ellen is how she pairs strategy with soul. She's as sharp with the numbers and marketing systems as she is passionate about living a balanced Life where success and self care are not in opposition, but deeply intertwined. We dive into some powerful themes today. How to break through your next growth ceiling. How to lead your company with data and decisiveness, and how to craft campaigns that not only convert, but create momentum. We also talk about what it really means to fail fast and why that just might be your greatest growth strategy. Whether you're bootstrapping your first business or leading a high growth company, this conversation offers a roadmap for scaling without losing your center. Let's drop in.

My name is Dr. Flev Mahl, the founder of Hardmind Institute and your co host for this session. And I'm very happy to be here.

Today with Mary Ellen Tribbey. Welcome.

Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm always a little reluctant to ask our guests to encapsulate their origin story in just a minute or two, but we do have a lot to cover today and so I am going to ask you to kind of do that or at least highlight some aspects of it. So you have led and scaled multimillion dollar businesses, a number of them. You've been at companies like Forbes, Weiss Research, your own company, early to rise, and building your own company. I mean, you've gone back and forth, I think, from building your own company to consulting to build other companies, to working in the corporate sphere and, and building your own company is a big leap. So what made you decide to leap into the fray and build your own company, which you've done several times?

Well, it was really interesting because coming from a very corporate background in New York City, I was in hardcore publishing. This was way before Internet marketing. Even info publishing was a thing. So like you said at Forbes, Times Mirror Crain's New York business, and you know, I don't want to use the B word, you know, for being bureaucratic, but there are a lot of layers, right when you're in that kind of situation. They're big company, big budgets. But the beautiful thing about it is that for me, I learned each channel of marketing one at a time. Because when you're in those companies, you don't wear a zillion hats. You come up through the ranks. And, and there were, you know, there were years where I only worked on direct mail and I became an expert in direct mail. There were years when I only worked on insert cards in magazines. There were years when I only worked on outbound calling. But it was all direct response. And so then when I moved to Florida, I went to Weiss Research, and I was so fortunate to work with Martin Weiss, who is a brilliant man. But what I saw there was the exact opposite, where Martin wore many, many hats. So I was really fortunate that I knew so much about direct response marketing, so many channels. I was able to take so much off him. And so it was really me, Martin and Clayton Makepeace, one of the world's best copywriters, who we lost several years ago. And so I learned so much from then. And then when I went to early to rise, you know, it's the. Working for an Agora company is the closest thing that you can have besides starting your own company. And I really ran it the way I wanted to run it. And so I loved doing it, I loved teaching. And what we did is we taught people how to start online businesses. And then, honestly, one day, and this is a very long story, my husband, I thought was going to be bad news, which was that I had a breast cancer scare. And for three weeks, we kind of went back and forth. I didn't tell the kids. The kids were real small. We just went back and forth, going to doctors this and that. And the day I found out that I did not have breast cancer, I was perfectly healthy. I said to my husband, I'm starting my own thing. And he said, yes, you have to. And I went in the next day and resigned from what was the best job I've ever had. Making a lot of money, running things the way I want it. But I knew at that point I wanted to teach working moms how to have a better life. And I knew I could do. I was the person because I had three kids, because I had was running very large companies. And so that is really what got me going on, starting my own company. And when I left Agora to start working momsonly.com People just asked me to consult. I never planned on having a consulting company, but people knew what I had done, and they just kept asking me to consult. And that's how my consulting company was born. So really what we did is we started a media company, which was mededge, that incorporated info publishing, consulting, speaking, and book writing.

Wow, that's quite a story. Yeah. And while such a broad experience, I almost don't know where to start. You've been all over the place here. I hope we have aspiring entrepreneurs in our audience. I hope we have some leaders from corporate, because I think there's a lot for everybody to learn here, as well as maybe entrepreneurs that are pursuing the venture capital route.

But I suspect the majority of our.

Audience are bootstrapping entrepreneurs.

And as you know, entrepreneurs run into.

Various ceilings and major bumps in the road. Often it's, you know, maybe you're a solopreneur and you're trying to figure out how to finally build a team, you know, and you're just, you're surrounding yourself maybe with some helpers, but you don't know how to break out of that.

Mold of doing everything yourself.

Or maybe you've gotten beyond that, you built a team and you're hitting that kind of three to four million dollars.

A year in revenue ceiling where things.

Have to change for you to keep growing. The whole notion of being able to scale and all along the way, as an entrepreneur, we have to change.

Now we bring in different people with greater levels of expertise, people that know.

How to do things we don't know how to do. But we still have to run the company as it gets bigger and bigger, it gets more complex.

So we have to grow and evolve.

So I wonder if you could talk.

About, because I know you teach this.

A lot, and how you help entrepreneurs.

Break through these various barriers where they.

Have to change, the game has to change in order to keep growing and keep scaling.

Yes. And the first thing that I always tell people is everybody has the same 24 hours in a day because you run, you know, a million dollar company and you and somebody else runs a $10 million company. That person who runs a $10 million company, they don't get any more hours in a day. And really what it comes down to is for successful people is spending that time doing the right thing, Right? Like entrepreneurs, again, they think they have to do everything, when in reality they have to, what I like to call, like the three Ds. They have to decide what to do, they have to delegate, delegate, and they have to duplicate, right? Like for me, there should never be one person who can do your graphic design. There should never be one person who does your copy. And a lot of folks, especially all the entrepreneurs I know in this, you know, information marketing or digital marketing space, they think they're the only one who can write copy. And this is a really good example because somebody should never write copy for their own product, right? That person should be the copy chief. You need to have someone writing your copy who can explain it, who can get to the pain points, the benefits, as good as you can, right? So you need to duplicate your talents. Can't just be you, but often with those 24 hours in a day, if you really looked at what you needed to do, you would say, do I actually really need to do that what would happen if I didn't do that? And that's what people don't do first. They jump without looking at the reality of the product or the campaign and what's going to make this successful. And a lot of things are done that really don't need to be done.

So I have a question about that. You know, so I think for a lot of certainly solopreneurs and even entrepreneurs with a small team maybe think, oh, that's all well and good, yeah, go get myself a really good copyright. They cost a lot of money, right? There's always that tension of as you build out your team, especially if you're really, you know, hiring really good people and hiring people that are smarter than you are in various roles and have the expertise, you know, you can see what was maybe a very profitable business to begin with starts to become a lot more challenging as you grow that team and your profits begin to evaporate. And so an ebb and flow, I guess, of being willing to invest and figure out what's the ROI on this, you know, how long is it going to take hiring that copywriter or hiring this other person to get those to pay off?

But I am going to have to.

Go through some risk and some ebb and flows and profitability. I wonder if you could describe that journey for entrepreneurs, because I think we all find ourselves in those places and it can be scary sometimes.

Yes, and that is true. And that is why you need to find a copywriter who will work on royalties, right? So basically have them write that piece and then if it works and you roll out, then you're paying them based on rolling out. And if you're rolling out, that means it's working, right? And the other thing about hiring copywriters, and most people don't understand this, ask that copywriter to do the right work. It's not just a sales letter, right? It's a sales letter and then it's five swipes and it's five subject lines and it's five ad ads, right? Like, they don't slice and dice up that long form copy, you know, and any copywriter who wants to be one and done. It's not your person, right? That's not your person. I have to understand how to hire them. And you know, and I always say, you know, ask people, ask for recommendations. Anyone who is starting their own business should be in some sort of mastermind. And it doesn't have to be the $30,000 a year mastermind. It can be a local mastermind, you know, Entrepreneurs, you don't have to go to loan, even if you're starting right. There's so many resources. Ask who you should hire. Ask what are the questions I need to ask this person. What are their duties? Right. You know, if you were hiring a copywriter, what are they going to do for you? What are they going to do for you? You know, when I had Clayton, I paid Clayton, one year, $7 million, and I loved it. You know why? Because we were making so much money. So anybody who thinks in your company, oh, you're paying them too much money, and if you're not doing it the right way, maybe you are. But if you're doing it the right way, you want to pay them a lot of money.

Yeah. Especially if it's based on some incentive basis like that, like a relative. Because obviously, if they're making money, you're making even more. So you have grown a couple of companies, as I share in your bio, in some pretty extraordinary ways. From one from 8 million to 26 million in 15 months, another from 11 million to 67 million in just one year. I mean, that's extraordinary growth under any conditions. And so what are some of the. I mean, we've talked a little bit about that, just in the sense of a copywriter, but in broader terms, the whole issue of scaling and the challenges that you run into. How can we scale rapidly without scaling ourselves into trouble pretty quickly?

The first thing is accelerated failure. Everything you do is not going to succeed. So fail fast and move on. Don't fall in love with your product, your copy. Right. If it's a loser, cut it loose. So many entrepreneurs instead will make an excuse, oh, it's the economy. Oh, the mail was on strike. Like, they make excuses. Cut it loose. Don't fall in love with it. That's number one. Number two is ride the wave. This is where you need to understand your numbers. So, for example, when we were at Weiss and Clayton was our copywriter and he was basically working on royalties, they couldn't mail before I got there, more than 10,000 pieces a month. But when I got there, because I understood what, what my numbers would do, we went from 10,000 pieces a month to 50,000 to 100,000 to 300,000. We got to a point where we were mailing 3 million pieces a month and he was making a royalty on every single piece in the mail. But why we were able to do that is because I knew what we called back then doubling dates. And this is going to matter because I'm going to turn it over to online terms. So a doubling date essentially in the mail means, you know, at what point can I double those results? So if we were mailing a number 10 envelope, your doubling date would be 10 days. So wherever you were at 10 days, you would double that, and that's where you'd end up. Hence, I didn't have to wait 90 days for results. I waited 10 days. If we were mailing a larger piece, what we called a tabloid, hence the looked like a tabloid that you see in the markets, that kind of piece. I knew our doubling date was 14 days. So again, I didn't have to wait 100 days. I waited 14, and then I was able to go. So basically, by.

Excuse me, by your doubling date, are you talking about you could double your investment, the cost of double your results?

I'm sorry, my goal for the mail was 100% ROI, right? And if I knew at 10 days I was at 50, 60%, I was golden, right? And so I didn't have to wait. But most people will say, oh, I have to wait. My goal is 100%. So they're not moving till they get to 100%, right. And that's 90 days out, as opposed to 10 days out. So I was able to go. So you have to ride that wave. So I know that when I put something online, that my doubling date is essentially 40 hours. That. Right, because it's online. So I can look where I am in 40 hours and I know where I'm going to end up. So I don't have to wait a week. I know my doubling date. I can ride the wave, and I know my long tail. So it's all about understanding those numbers and really analyzing your data. Right? So the next time anybody puts anything, you know, online that you're going to send out, look where you are after a day, after 48, you know, 48 hours, right? Like, where are you? And look at the difference of where you are so that you know that you don't have to wait those extra days. That if you have. If you test with 100,000, and after two days, if you've got a list of three or 400, now you can go to the whole list because you can go five times, right. Essentially, you always like five times those numbers that you mail initially.

So if you have the data that shows something's working, put your foot on the gas.

Yeah, you ride that wave. We had a promo for early to Rise that did one promo, did $17 million. And it was the best promo in Agora history until, of Course, Porter Stansberry crushed it like three years later, but it was $17 million on one promotion.

Let's shift that into there may be people in our audience doing direct mail marketing and advertising, but a lot of people are doing digital marketing today. They're advertising through meta, through Google, through YouTube, and maybe they're on LinkedIn, which is pretty expensive, but they're in a lot of different marketing channels. I wonder if you could talk about multi channel marketing, which could include other means of marketing. Other times we advertising or direct mail. But this is all multichannel approach to marketing.

Yes. And so this is what's really important, what people should know, that basically people who use two or more channels, somebody who responds to you in two or more channels, are essentially 50% more valuable to you. Somebody who responds to you in three or more channels is a hundred percent more valuable to you. Okay, but here's what you need to do when you're doing multichannel marketing. You need to make sure, regardless if you've got a Facebook ad, you're on Instagram, you're putting something onto your own list or renting list, that you keep the tone and the feel of that marketing consistent. Because people need to see something on an average 3 1/2 times before they respond. Did you ever hear when you're driving your car and you hear a commercial, a 15 second commercial, and then the next commercial is the exact same commercial. Right. Like we've all heard that. And so that is because people need to hear it over and over. So that's why multi channel marketing is so effective. You know, keep it, don't confuse your audience, keep your offer the same once you've tested it and you know what your control is, Keep the colors the same, keep the tone the same, you know, because basically you're talking to the same person, the same prospect, just in different channels.

So I know a lot of your marketing work is neuroscience, informed, brain based. So what you're talking about, by keeping the branding consistent, by taking the tone consistent, the colors consistent, the messaging consistent, you're creating an imprint in that neural architecture possibility for them to make a buying decision. Yes, absolutely.

That is why when people do those big launches that everyone's seen, that swipe copy is very, you know, is often very similar. Right? Because, gosh, I got this email yesterday that said this from so and so, then I got it today and it says the same thing, but it's from this person. And then I got it, you know, again the next day and it's from this person. Well, they Must all know something, right? So that is why that they give you maybe an option of two or three swipes if you're involved in something like that. Because they want to keep it consistent and because people have to see it multiple times in many ways.

I mean, this may not be true across all marketing channels, but in some ways marketing channels have become more expensive. There's really high demand for them. I remember when we did our very first online summit, we got Facebook or meta leads for 46 cents. They're quite a bit more expensive than. And often people have a lot of budgetary pressures and so forth. And when you're even an early stage or even a later stage entrepreneur, you can be really concerned about profitability and budget and so forth. So I wonder if there's one marketing channel or marketing strategy that you feel is particularly strategic, particularly leveraged, and maybe often overlooked that entrepreneurs could have in their award chest to really get traction.

I'm going to tell you my absolute favorite thing to do. And so many people don't do this. They go to Facebook. My favorite marketing channel is renting dedicated email lists and sending them out with your offer. And I want to share why. When you are doing ads, look at all the competition on that page, right? When someone's doing ads, there's so much competition for the reader's attention. When you are renting an email list and then putting your copy your message in there, when somebody sees that the only thing they're looking at on their computer is your message. Okay? In this, I don't know if people know who Russell Brunson is. I'm sure they do. And he wrote this because he interviewed me a few years ago on his podcast and he put this in his book and because he was new to him that basically people are always trying to do new offers, new products instead of expanding their universe. Once you have something that's working, you rent these lists and you go out with your offer. And the beautiful thing, it's all numbers, right? You're going to find out before you mail from this list approximately their open rate and approximately their click. You're going to know from your own list what that opt in page can do. So you can do the math on that way before you decide to mail. So you are going out there with, you know, with some risk, but not a lot. And the reason people don't do this is because it's a bigger upfront, right? Like you're going to have to spend 2,000, $2,500 to rent a list depending on which industry you're in, I'll just say if you're in that personal development niche, you can get a really nice list for about $2,200 with over 200,000 names. You should have no problem breaking even on that list within 30 days if you do it correctly.

So I have a question about that. You know, personally, in our. We have our own list and we also work with a lot of affiliates where they mail for us. Right? We also mail for affiliates. But renting a list, how do we do that? In today's world of privacy sensitivity and spam concerns and all this, how do we actually rent email lists in order to mail out without ending up in those kind of problems?

Oh, easy peasy. Basically, there are list brokers, and that is their whole job. And basically the list that they're renting to, you have all agreed that they could receive third party communication, and the list does not. Now the list doesn't come to you. You send your copy to the list broker. The list broker then mails it for the list owner. Okay. Nobody should ever give their list away to anybody. Right. That's bad. But every list you rent, their community has said that they will receive third party communications.

I see. I got it. So you can't really upload massive list your own email provider anyway someplace. These email list brokers are similar to affiliates in a certain way, except they're not working on a commission, they're just upfront charging a fee.

Right. You know, a long time ago, I was working with Rich Sheffrin, helping him with some campaigns, and he said to me, oh, Mary Ellen, we did a reciprocal, I won't name the company. And basically we did so Well, I made $60,000. They got 30 grand, and we got 30 grand. And I said, richard, that's great, but do you know that list is on the market for $3,000? So when you rent a list, basically, you pay what you pay and then you get what you get. So if you pay 2,200 and you make five grand, fantastic. Right? And some are going to be bombs. They won't all win. But once you test and you have list history, and this is so important, people don't keep a list history. And you should do it not just with list rentals, you should do it with affiliates as well. Right? You should have a spreadsheet that has every affiliate mailing for you what the open rate was. I mean, we'll get to those metrics later, you know, with all this data on it. So you build a list history and Then if your affiliates are working, then go out and rent a like list, right? A list that's like that, that you can rent and Instead of giving 50% away, you're renting it at a flat fee and keeping what you get.

Well, we are going to get into the metrics now, so I'd like to talk further. You've been referencing it all along. You referenced in that doubling date before and when you're doing the direct mail. Let's talk about the importance of data and doing data driven marketing of all kinds. Whether it's multi channel marketing, all our efforts in marketing, data driven. So can you talk about the kind of data we need to collect and how we really make data informed decisions?

Yes. And this is one of my core values at my company is to know your results. Okay? Know your results. Okay. So first of all, too many entrepreneurs get caught up in the cool factor, I kind of call it, right? When in reality you should be able to manage your business like on the back of a napkin, right? So if you understand your open rates, your clicks, your conversions and your cpl, you don't need all these fancy charts and graphics. Like it always cracks me up when everybody wants to put something in a chart and like I just need it, you know, on an Excel spreadsheet, that's all I need, right? So if I know that I can predict and make my assumptions all day long, okay, Those are the numbers you need to understand. You know, the other thing I always like to say first to people because before you're marketing is that you need to understand what I like to call keep your door open number, right? Keep your doors open number how much money do you need to make every single day so that you are covering your hard cost and then your variables, right? But mostly, you know, if you've got a budget of X amount of dollars per marketing for a month, you know, your rent, you know, the salaries, you know, employment tax, you know, all those little, you know, your software costs, how much money every day do you need to make to just to break even? And most entrepreneurs don't know that number. And that's really important because you know, if you don't know that just knowing your opens, clicks, conversions and CPLs, it's not enough, right? Before you know what you have to make a day because then you're gonna need to know exactly what you, how many emails you need to send every day or how many direct mail pieces you need to send every month, right? So you have to know that number first. Make sure you do. And Then you start out, then you go back to your marketing numbers and make sure you understand what they are.

Right?

So knowing those numbers you're referencing can really help us budget and target our marketing efforts. What about further testing to really test what improves those numbers? Right. How can the copy, the color of an ad, the style, the. So all the variables that we can tweak testing to get the best numbers possible.

Yes. And honestly, for me, you test things that scream. You test things that make a difference. You are not looking for, you know, a half a percent here and a 1% here. You're looking for a good, at least a 10% lift, hopefully 20, 25% lift. That's what you're looking for. And so basically, most entrepreneurs don't test enough, right? So if you have your control, right, you have something that works, then every time you mail, you should be taking 20% of your mailing and turning it into a test. Okay? But you don't do 80% control and 20% test. What you do is 60% control. The next panel is the same size control 20% against the test. 20%. Because you need to measure those, the 20% to the 20%, not 80% to that 20%. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

So that's really important. That's what people will do. They'll just go test and they'll be like, oh, this thousand quantity, you know, beat my control of 99, you know, or vice versa. Right. Whatever that is. Of 99,000. No, they need to be of equal sizes to test so that all that. And this is extra work. Right? And that's why people don't do it. Because now instead of mailing one list or, you know, size, you're mailing three lists. You're creating three list inside of keep or marost or whatever you're using. Okay? So you have to, when you start and you go out and get a CRM or an email service provider, make sure they have the ability to test.

One of the things we test in business is price testing. I know you've been involved in, I think, both B2B and B2C businesses and some B2C businesses in the sort of personal development space, even supporting working moms and things like that. As these businesses and these niches develop, there often can be a lot of saturation and kind of race to the bottom and everybody's price testing and the lower prices keep winning because everybody's lowering their prices. How do you work with that? Because at a certain point, the niche is not going to be viable if you just participate in that race to the bottom, right? So you have to find some way to combine price testing with how to fundamentally position your product or your service, right, in terms of price, yes.

And a lot of times it is not, you know, about the price as much as it's about the perceived value of something. So for me, especially if they're already your customers, right, and you want to, you know, have them keep buying, you know, the first thing is a whole mind shift of this is not an email list. This is a community of like minded folks who have trusted you to help them solve a problem. Right? And one of our very first core values is to love, respect and protect our customers. So getting that through your, the entire team's mind is a must. Everybody must think like that. Now if you have a customer and you don't want to lower prices, add something onto it, right? They're already your customer. And if you have a digital product, what harm is it to give them something else with that higher price? Yes, it's a little higher price, but they're getting twice as much now. So I would much rather keep my higher price and add on to that, to bundle something onto that as opposed to lower the price on something new I'm going out with.

So what have you found when you're doing AB testing with various kinds of offers? What have you found are some of the most critical things to test?

Well, basically price is always good. But I know, like, honestly I know my community so well, so I know where their price point is. So the best thing that you should be testing price on is actually on an upsell. So many folks don't have an upsell. All right? And now if someone has just purchased a product, your upsell product should be, it should be about, it could 50% of your, the initial product, right? And my upsells now, they come in about like, they're at like 7 69-71% of the folks will take that upsell. So what does that do to your average unit of sale? It just bumps it like crazy. So test that. Because the beautiful thing is you have the initial buy. So test that upsell price. It's not just about the initial price, but the upsell price. And you could test. So what I would do if you have never done this, I would take the price of the initial product. I would test a product that's 10% higher of the initial product and then I would Test one that's 50%. And again, see, that's what screams. I'm not saying 10% and 11%. Right. I'm testing things that screen. And so you've got people who have already made that purchase. They know they like, they trust you. But the bottom line is they have to also say, I believe this person can help me. And that's the main thing there. That piece that most people miss, they always do. Know like and trust, but know like trust. And I believe this person can help me. So that upsell needs to be how can this really help the customer as the original product should be. But this is real perceived value. And with that, we always say we could easily sell this for twice as much. Right? Easily. But since you've already purchased this, we want to make sure that you get the most out of it.

So I want to circle back to testing in just a moment. But the upsell, you mentioned some very high upsell rates. So what are some. And you just mentioned a little bit how you're positioning that upsell. But what are some other elements in terms of the alignment between the initial product and the upsell or what are some of the other elements that lead to successful upsell besides pricing?

Definitely, like you said, the alignment. Right. That you want to take this to the highest possible level of success. This is going to get you there. Okay, that is going to get you there. Another thing that we have that is what we always call the agora one step removed is because our business is neuroscience and soundtracks and so everything for your brain. We have the best possible headphones and earbuds that you could buy anywhere. Right. So now that's a very. Actually a really high price because we're all about frequency and you know, of the soundtracks, so many headphones or earpods can't deliver that. Right. So if you want to get the most out of this soundtrack, this set is what's going to get you there.

That's creating another question for me. But I want to finish off on this testing. So from what I heard you say, probably testing, doing a B testing with things like the color of the call to action button or other things like that. Do people have tested and you can read and there's controversy about what color is the best and this and that. But those things are probably going to give incremental advantages. And so you're really focusing your testing and the time and effort that it takes to do this kind of testing, as you said, on things that are going to scream a difference. Right. So a lot of that stuff that where you'd be testing colors or structures or they may be value if you're A huge company and you can, you know, get. Micro improvements are going to make a big difference. But smaller entrepreneurs, you probably need the things that are really going to make a big difference. Is that what I hear you saying?

Absolutely. And this is what I just want to say to everybody is that again, when I say screen, you test things at screen. For example, never ever blend the color of your Buy now button to make it look pretty. Right? So if you have a red, white and blue page and then you've got like a navy part and then you have a red button in there, what you're doing is you're blending and you're trying to make it look pretty. Direct response marketing isn't about pretty. It's about effectiveness. So just go for the orange button. I'm telling you now, if you have a pink page and you put that light pink, you know, Buy now button, because you think you're going to women and they like that. No, could the orange button, right? If. Did you ever go to Amazon and not have an orange button? Right. Just put the orange button. Don't blend those colors. You make that CTA screen, You make it pop. Like when people send me their pages to look at them and I just like, no, it's not about blending. It's not about looking pretty. It's about being effective. And just simple things like that. I'm telling, like right now, just change your buttons. Change them to orange. Unless your pages aren't right. But the other thing that people do is you'll see this in copy a lot, especially on headlines. It's really bad. People will have a headline and they go, in, out, in, out, in. And that's not how your eye wants to read something, right? I wants to read a nice inverted triangle. Take that headline, make sure it's an inverted triangle. You know, test it tomorrow on your page, right? Like that, you want. Readability is the most important thing on a page. And when your margins are like this, like your brain just. It doesn't like it, so it opts out essentially your brain. So you've got to make it readable. The most important thing of any page, a sales letter, a landing page, a order form, it doesn't matter. Readability.

We have a very successful affiliate partner who does a lot of testing and very kindly gathers their top affiliates together once a year and shares a lot of their research. And so funny, they did a lot of testing on styles of sales pages. And the one that won out was what they called the ugly sales page.

It was just clear information with the.

Orange button kind of thing and it.

Wasn'T pretty and it beat everything else.

Yeah, absolutely.

Really interesting coming back. You mentioned the earbuds and the headphones and so forth because you're selling digital products that people are going to listen to, right? What about people who are selling digital products and you know, have built a customer base and you know they're. What about adding physical products now and getting into E commerce, Right. You know, obviously the earbuds and the headphones almost sound like a no brainer, right? Where people need the quality. You know, if you're listening, if you're kind of doing some kind of a, you know, neurofeedback type meditation device that requires headphones, you're gonna want good sound, right? But there could be other things. If you have a community, you may want to start to market swag of various kinds. You might want to create a supplement line. You might. It's a whole different business to get in to have physical products and E commerce. But does that make sense for an entrepreneur and you know, do they have to maybe a whole different business model to master? I don't know, maybe it could just create confusion or something. But I'm curious about your thoughts about that or where you've seen people be successful in that way.

You really, again there, you really need to know your numbers. And don't over order, right? Don't over order. But the other thing that you can do is you can dry test and you can also find partners who have that product, right? So find a partner who is selling that or someone become their affiliate and see if it resonates before you go out and spend all the money on it. You know, it's. That's the cheapest R and D you're ever going to do, right? So even like gosh, clickbank, right? Like clickbank, there's a zillion orders on clickbank. Go find something there, right? Go. You know, if you're in brain and maybe you want to test lasers, right? So red light therapy or whatever, you know, there's plenty of people who create that who have affiliate programs. Become their affiliate first and find out if your audience really likes it. You know, doing that as opposed to doing a focus group or a survey, right. Is so much more effective because if you're doing that kind of survey, no one's opening their wallet, right? So they can say whatever they want to say. But if you send that out in the mail, right. And then even if you're only collecting 10% or something on it, it's only There for research, it's okay then. And if it's a huge hit, then do your own product. But do that first.

That makes a lot.

And you know, same thing with, you know, supplements. There are so many people, you know, Daniel Amen has great supplements. Right. So if you want to go out there and start a supplement company, go to Daniel, he'll give you a good break. Buy something in bulk, it doesn't have to be a lot. Right. You know, and send his supplements. See?

Very wise. So we've been talking, you know, in some ways about how to expand and our existing customer base, but we've also talked a lot about acquiring customers. And acquiring customers is very expensive. And some of us don't focus enough on two things. One, how to increase our customer value over time, our customer value over time in terms of how they upsells and cross sells and additional products, high ticket products and so forth. And then the other thing is customer retention. And sometimes the two of those can seem a little bit intention. Sometimes our effort to sell more to our existing customers can cause some customers to leave because they don't want us to keep trying to sell them things. But we want to keep our good customers and keep them happy. So I wonder if you could talk about both those things and then how you balance the two of them.

Sure. Because they're both equally important. And again, you know, in the old days in New York you would have different people doing, you know, new business acquisition compared to retention. And we don't because we need to know all the numbers. We but with keeping customers, you know, we do things that are only for our customers. Right. Like we hold what we call coaching cast calls where we focus on a very specific topic and our customers can come on, it's free, we do it at least once a month and it's adding such value for them. They come on, ask questions live. Right. And sometimes it's on trauma, like the topic, sometime it's on procrastination. You know, we always have a very specific topic and we send that out, you know, a week in advance so they can put it on their calendars and man, we'll have hundreds of people on this call. But then we will always do something for them. Whether we're launching something new, we will give them the discount because it's a pre sale. We might not be able to go out with the new products for a week after that. But we'll say right now you're going to get X amount of dollars off this. Again, they are customers. So what if they're getting 20 bucks off an $89 digital product. They're already customers, right? And so we know what we can expect off those calls. And that is key, what you said the first time, which is understanding the lifetime value of your customer. So if you're starting your business six months in, you should start looking at lifetime value, right? And then do it again at a year, do it again at 18 months, do it again at 2 years and understand what that is. Because if you understand what somebody's going to bring you within two years, now, you know that maybe you know, you know that cpl, right? That's a very cost per lead. That's a really, really important number. But you also know that, you know, just because you can get names in at $2.34 doesn't mean you can't go to a different channel. Now might cost $5 a name, right? Because I know with my dedicated email list how much it costs me exactly to get new names in compared to what it cost me exactly if I go on meta, right? And frankly, the meta names are always more expensive. But if I know my lifetime value, so what if they're more expensive? If I know I'm still going to end up at x dollars after 24 months, so what, right? So understanding the lifetime value of your customers is key. And start it at six months if you're starting your business now.

And what are some of the other keys to customer retention? You talked about adding value. You provide monthly coaching calls which really support them in what they're trying to do. What are some of the other ways that you really work at customer retention?

We send them customer support videos throughout their journey. So our flagship product is called the holisting solution. And actually, if you do this product correctly, It'll take you 10 years. Some people might be done in seven or six. But if you're doing this correctly, where you're spending the correct amount of time on each level, it'll take you all that time. So basically sending them videos of how it works, answering, you know, having FAQ on those videos at all times, we send them support letters constantly. Not just a thank you. It's not just thank you for buying this product. If you need anything, call us. We contact them, how are you doing? We will say, you know, we'll ask them to fill out little, you know, little surveys that aren't, you know, for new product. It's on, you know, how did you feel after a month? How did you feel after two months? And we'll give them options right so that constant communication, you know, again, it's not looking at them as a list. It's looking at them of a community of like minded folks. It could be your mother, it could be your grandmother, it could be your brother, right? That's how you have to think of your community. And if you don't think, if you only think of them as a list, it's. They're not going to last.

So if we're, I mean people are highly sensitive to emails these days. On the one hand, I hear you saying communicate a lot with your customers, communicate very proactively with your customers and provide them lots of support and resources, small surveys, all these kind of things. That's a lot of emails. You're going to drive some unsubscribes with all that. So how do you balance engaging your community for retention versus, you know, undermining retention because of the volume of content? Tommy, how do you figure that out?

Because we always have content that is not promotional. So we had started, you know, we always have what I like to call an inbox magazine that goes out. It's essentially value driven and it's written like, you know, when you write to your folks, you're writing to one person at a time. Like I am never going to say dear, you know, subscriber or dear this. I'm always going to say dear Fleet. Right. You know, dear Frank, dear Mary. Right. And one person at a time. That's one will always send a content piece every week. Another content piece that says what do you think? You know, this is the topic. And then I just want to know what you think. Please reply to this email and let me know your thoughts. People love to give opinions, right? And by doing something every once in a while that is so personal. We have one that goes out from our product development person and he's in charge of our client services. And I told him like about my pick, like I'm a tennis player but I started playing pickleball and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And I told him, I said just do an issue on pickleball, right? Just do an issue on pickleball. People love it. Make the subject line, do you want to play pickleball with me? Kind of thing. Unbelievable opens. People responded like crazy. Actually, studies have shown people who play racket sports. It's great for your brain, right? We notice that if you play a racket sport, hand eye coordination, it's great for your brain. And we worked that in like that study into the piece, right? So it was pure value, it was fun and people replied like crazy. So it doesn't always have to be, you know, about, you know, brain science forefront. There was brain science worked into this because it's so good for your brain and your body. Right. But it was just fun. So keep it fun with them.

And part of what maybe a subtext of this, I don't know. But, you know, if you're doing your best with your communications and make very value added, very personal, really, you know, you're having a conversation with your customers who you love and you're really truly value, then the ones you're going to keep and they're going to respond engaged with that are probably going to be your best customers anyway. And the ones who would unsubscribe because they don't want the emails, they're probably less likely to be your best customers. Is that an assumption or if you found that to be true?

Oh, I know it to be true. Right. Because what we will do is one of those numbers we'll record on our spreadsheet is unsubs by promotion. And every once in a while what we'll do is we'll look at that person, see how long they've been with us and how much they bought. So you spot check them right now, if you're getting all these unsubs and they're all incredible buyers, then maybe your communication isn't the right communication. But just that's all you have to do. Just take those unsubs for the week and spot check them.

And you mentioned before that you have this monthly coaching call where you post a topic a week ahead of time so you can put on their calendar. And then you come on, you're presenting something, ask questions, and it's a huge value add for your customer base. And then you said as a reward, I think you implied that as a reward for attending, they get a discount on maybe a new product coming up or something. You pitch that at the end of that coaching call or absolutely. You.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Yep. Every time.

Yeah. So as long as you've added the value up front, you feel you could give it into a pitch that people will appreciate not. It doesn't diminish the value they got from coming to that coaching call.

That's right. And here's the other thing that's really important is that we'll always do those calls most we'll do them on a Wednesday, we always resend that on a Friday, and then we'll give them through the weekend at that price until that Sunday night at midnight. And then we'll generally have launch that product to everybody on the Tuesday at the higher price.

I want to talk a little bit about balancing our life as an entrepreneur, our personal life. I know you help help mothers with children be successful in business and entrepreneurship. Just one last question on this customer retention, customer base, what about recurring revenue and membership programs? Do you have any highlighted words of wisdom around the value of creating membership programs, subscription programs?

I think everybody should have some kind of subscription program. And it's tricky because of the content that you have to add. Right. So that is the hard part about the, you know, kind of reoccurring revenue. But now, like, for example, we just launched an app, right. A year ago, I guess a new app a year ago, and it's fantastic. And so again, with our best customers who are already in our inner circle to retain them, they get 50% off that app. Right. If they buy the yearly package, okay? So they get 50% off. And then we have a yearly and monthly price for everybody else. And the beautiful thing is that when we write to everybody about the app, we'll say, and remember, anybody who's a lifetime member, you're going to get 50% off. So now people who aren't in that lifetime membership are like, wow, they're getting 50% off. So let other people know about the special things that somebody's going to get. Right? So that's really important. You know, we're actually working on a streaming service now with some of our products, but I really like the idea of, you know, and again, you know, if you're thinking about selling. Right. You know, if you're building to sell, well, having reoccurring revenue is, you know, almost a must. Yeah.

When you're in the end of our time and I want to talk about or ask about how people can find out more about your work. And I know you have a wonderful free gift offered to our audience. But first of all, if we could just touch a little bit on one of the really challenges can be a real challenge of entrepreneurship is balancing our growing our company, or what I like to say, succeeding in business while we also succeed in life. Right. So that our entrepreneurial journey is not putting our kids in therapy or not leading their divorce, not ruining our health, but we can balance all that. So I know you teach that. So what are some of the core things you teach around that?

And this is so important, and I'm just going to preface this by saying I have been married for 28 years to one person are both our first marriage, our oldest Daughter graduated law school in May, passed the bar in October. She's an attorney, has her first job, and she's 26. Our son is an incredible entrepreneur. He's 24. My youngest is a D1 college tennis player at Tulane University.

So my kids are incredible. Like, they're such nice, compassionate people that I just. They. I'm in awe of them. And this happened because we worked at it. Right? But. And this sounds very counterintuitive, and it was very counterintuitive to a lot of the moms I worked with, and it was counterintuitive to actually even a lot. Some of the men that I've worked with, coached over the years is as an entrepreneur, you have to put yourself first. It's kind of like, you know, are like, oh, no, I'll skip lunch. Oh, no. You know, I'm not getting my nails done. Oh, no, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that. You know, really what you're doing is you're, like, burning out yourself. Plus, you're teaching your kids how to be a victim as opposed to a leader. Okay? So by putting yourself first doesn't mean you're putting everybody else behind you. It just means you value yourself as much as you do anyone else. The other thing that I do is, for me, it's not about a balanced lifestyle. It's about a blended lifestyle. So the way I live my life is by having purposeful activity. Some of that activity yields me money directly, other yields me money indirectly. I play tennis three to four times a week. That yields me money because after I'm done playing tennis, I am ready to go. Like, I am ready to go. And then the other thing is. And I wish, like I said, I knew about these things earlier, but for the last nine years, I work on my brain every day. Better brain, better life, right? If your brain is strong, then you can get the things done that you need to get done, right? So I meditate every day. And again, it goes back to that. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. So if people are saying, I don't have time to meditate, it, well, do you have time to. Are you watching, like, an episode of Friends every night? You know, what are you doing with that time? It's about how you spend that 24 hours. Because watching, you know, an episode of Friends at night might, like, nice, it's light, but it's not doing anything for your brain, right? It's not doing anything for your business. So it's really a matter of priorities.

But you take your own medicine.

Yes. Wish, like I said, that I knew about this when I was in my 20s, you know, but thank God I do now. That's, you know, wonderful.

Well, this has been illuminating. I mean, I'm just, I'm going to go back and watch this and take notes, and I hope any of our audience will. And of course, we're making the transcripts available and so forth for those who want to have this going forward as a resource. I know you have a free gift for our audience, and where can people access that and where can people find out more about you and what you do and your services?

Yes. And so I want to say that we created a brand new soundtrack for entrepreneurs. It's called the Entrepreneur Success Solution. So please just go to holosync.com.

Solution. It is a free track. This one is 15 minutes. And so please get that debt free. Please use it. And you, I'm telling you, if you use this for a week straight, 15 minutes, you're going to feel a difference. You use it for two weeks, a month straight, you're going to feel a difference. Just use it every day. Entrepreneurs have a lot of stress, right? So this is the Entrepreneur Stress Solution. Everybody has 15 minutes in their day to do something great for themselves.

Wonderful. Thank you. And your basic website where they can find out more about your other products and services.

Oh, CenterPoint with an e.com right? CenterPoint.com. it's really. We have. And what I'm saying is we have so much free stuff up there to test out, right? So please give it a try. There's plenty for you to test out without spending a dime that could change your life, change your business.

Wonderful. Marilyn, Trippy. Thank you so much. Thank you. This has really been illuminating. I can't wait to go back and get the transcript and just start highlighting and taking notes and really applying a lot of these insights in our own business. So thank you so much.

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Thank you for joining me on the radical responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open into transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you. Take care.

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