Stick Strategies Your Business Can't Live Without with Alex Mandossian - Genius Network Episode #179

The goal though of onboarding is engagement. A disengaged client is not a client. A disengaged client is not an appreciating asset. I look at every client as an appreciating asset.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com Stick strategies are not sexy.

It's not about traffic, it's not about conversion, it's about fulfillment. It's not about the fling, it's not about the date. It's about marriage. Basically, it teaches you how to be polyamorous in a good way. In business with as many thousands of people as possible. Now, it's not boring, but it's profitable. And many people in our information marketing space at Joe will attest to they confuse profit with revenue. And Jim do always talks about that as well, has been a member for many years. You know, they'll do a launch because there's not enough profit to pay for the taxes because revenue and profits are, are confused. Stick strategies are not about revenue as much as they are about profit. So all those numbers, $417 million, you know, and the thing that that's not. I think it's a big deal. There's no one in my family has ever made over $100,000. None either side. And so that introduction is never said in front of them because I know that I'd be very busy doing a lot of outreach with them. And they still don't know what I do. My mother Carol still doesn't know what I do. She lives in Pasadena, California. But here's the point. I did that without scaling. $417 million. I stopped counting then, you know, it just sounded good, so I stopped. But I did it without scaling. There are people in Genius Network that scale like mavens, and they're really good. But I did it without scaling. And because I'm not good at scaling, maybe I'm a control freak, maybe I don't want to hand stuff over to other people. I don't know what it is. I don't mind. I mean, I'm a flawed human being. But what I do know is if you do that without scaling, then what makes that possible are stick strategies. And again, it's not sexy. But I'm hoping to make it sexy because many people treat it like the buck tooth, you know, relative, that no one wants to introduce anyone to, to their other family members. And it's the most profitable division of your company. If you Embrace it. So, you know, I figured, let me start with a shovel to the forehead. What is a stick strategy? Okay, WTF is a stick strategy? Here it is. I like very simple definitions. I like small words. It boosts profits with zero ad costs. What does that mean? That means ebitda. What does that mean? Profit. Pure profit. No customer acquisition cost. Now, quick story. I'm in Manhattan. I'm living in Manhattan. It's 1992. I'm on a bus going on 57th street to where I live on 63rd street in New York City. And I was listening to a Jay Abraham cassette tape, and he said there's only three strategies to grow any business. These are strategies, only three, because you can get new clients. You can have more purchase frequency or buying frequency. They buy more often, like continuity. Or you can increase pricing. Now, of the three, the funny thing about most business people, the smartest ones I know, they always focus on this one. New clients. And that's the hardest one there is. New clients is the hardest. That's where everyone goes on. Why? Because they just want to pimp out what they got. But they're putting this pure pH10 water or wine, if you drink into a barrel that's leaking. And then purchase frequency, that's the second hardest. But it's easier than getting new clients. Why? Because you already have the client. You're just getting them to buy again. But increasing pricing, that's the easiest but of the three. The first two. And Jay doesn't talk about this, And Jay's a good friend of mine, but. And of course, he's been on genius network stages at the big event and other places. But increasing pricing, that is a mindset. Shift new clients and purchasing frequency, that is a marketing strategy shift. So get your shit together mentally. Increase your price at a zero. If you have a coaching for 1000 bucks, what additional value could you bring to it to make it 10,000? Michael Bruce. Dr. Michael Bruce. And Joe knows him. He lives in Manhattan. Used to live here in this area in Scottsdale. And he told me there's a bed for $440,000, and it comes with a doctor himself. Okay, $440,000. My limit was like, I don't know, 10,000. Now I'm thinking, wow, maybe I was cheap. 50,000 for a bet. $440,000. They sold out the 10 that they made. Beyonce has two of them. Oprah has two, Drake has one. Do those people have any disposable income problems? I don't think so. So if you can increase price that's the easiest way to make the sales stick because those people have more disposable income. Now, another lesson. February 2022, at the Big event where Joe came back, I saw Jason Fladyn, who's a good friend, he's a 100k member. He's on stage and he says, okay, he makes things really simple, right? There's only three things that you do, and these are tactics, though, not strategies. Tactics. There's three things any business does. They get traffic, they get conversion, and they do fulfillment. These are three things they do. You want more traffic, more conversion, and better fulfillment. Guess what? People don't focus on fulfillment. Where's the stick strategy? Not with the traffic, not with the conversion. It's with the fulfillment. It's the boring that no one wants to do. Okay, you want to bring the Pampers in your company, let's say your support, and we're going to turn those people into certified stick managers for about $10,000 to make you 100k in less than 12 months. You know, that's the promise, but we'll see. I'm just playing with it, right? And the key point is falling in love with your fulfillment process will boost your LTV lifetime value. So next up, Amazon does not get high LTV via cac. Customer acquisition cost. Right? Customer acquisition cost. What does Jeff Bezos do? He doesn't give a shit about cac. He asks himself, what's the most we can spend on a customer to make our competitors go bankrupt. He'll end up either modeling the product, which is called stealing, and do it through his own brand, or he'll buy the company. That's Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world. So customer acquisition costs, you want to lower that, right? Well, not according to Amazon. What they want to do is they want to pay the most customer acquisition costs possible, so they bankrupt their customers. What a great strategy. Maybe you think that is contrarian. How do you do that? Stick strategies. What's a stick strategy at Amazon? Those who bought this also bought this. Okay? Those who bought that also bought that. That's a stick strategy. Reviews are stick strategies. When you see a bunch of reviews, that's a stick strategy. So here's the key point. Stick strategies are about meaningful fulfillment tactics, traffic conversion and fulfillment. I want you to focus on fulfillment just for the next 20 minutes. And then let's try to make it sexy, right? Let's make the marriage like a honeymoon. Let's make the marriage like it. Like a fling. Fulfillment is super, super sexy. When you see how profitable it can be. And then you can be like a Bezos mindset. If I can spend more because I have more. Why? Because there's no customer acquisition costs. I can spend a lot more because of my stick strategies. Fulfillment will reveal your client journey. What's a client journey? The client journey is every touch point after they say yes. Now, I'm going to teach you one meta stick strategy that you know about, you've heard about. You'll say, that's nothing new. Well, true discovery says Marcel Proust. He was French. I think he was a painter, writer. He said, true discovery is not in seeking new landscapes. It's in looking at the same landscape with a new pair of eyes. And that's what I want you to do. You've heard these things. I'm not going to teach any new concepts. I haven't so far. But just looking at it differently, looking through another lens could be life changing. Now there's something called a pack my bag moment. So what does that mean? Well, some people call it aha moment. Some people call it takeaway. Okay, I was. I'm the son of Carol Mondosian, who I talk about a lot. Been in teaching for 53 years. She doesn't teach anymore. And she taught me one thing is if you could learn something and you could pack your bags and leave the class because that's all you wanted to, you know, hear, you would do it because that's your big aha, right? But you're not going to leave because there's a lot more to learn. And so PMB moment is a pack my bag moment. So what I do is I don't say which of these are pack my bag moments. Instead, I act like Carol and I play manipulative. Here's what I want you to think about. This is a pack my bag moment. Right now, every business has two divisions. Pimping and pampering. Pimping and pampering. When I'm at the Genius Network, when I'm at that event on a Saturday morning to bring in new people, sometimes I get feedback saying, alex, you know, you were selling to art. I don't care. That's my pimping hat. Well, right now I have my pampering hat. Strategies are not about pimping. They're not about getting new traffic, and they're not about converting that traffic. They're about fulfilling the traffic. Fulfillment means delivery. Fulfillment turns touch points into transformational profits. Fulfillment, all those touch points can turn into transformational profits. Every touch point is a Transformational opportunity to turn into profit without pimping. Lufthansa is an airline and they had a new CEO over 25 years ago. And I, and I read it in a book. So I don't know if it's true, but it's a great story, so let's pretend like it's true. There's 73 touch points between the time when someone says hi to a Lufthansa person, airline attendant, or someone on customer service and when they get on the plane and they leave. 73 touch points. All the CEO did is make those touch points into transformational experiences. That's it. And everything changed. What is that? That's called fulfillment after the sale, not before the sale. Stick strategies turn fulfillment into high profit generations. What does that mean, profit generation? You know, I know people from Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, the late Ted Nicholas, the late Joe Sugarman. They had multi generational students that studied from them like three or four generations. Son, father, grandfather. That is stick. Can you imagine? What if you did that seven generations, like a hundred years. Wouldn't that be cool? What's the single most profitable stick strategy? That's what, that's what SS stands for. It stands for something else too, but that's over 80 years ago. Stick strategies that can add a zero to your lifetime value. What is the single most profitable stick strategy? That's not a pop quiz because you probably wouldn't know, but I'm going to tell you. And then there's three tactics within that strategy. All right, now everyone should do this and I'm not going to should all over you this morning. You'll get shitted on probably by employees, friends, colleagues, spouses, whomever, ex spouses. But I will tell you it's a good idea to think about this and rework it because what is the single most important touch point along the client journey? Remember, you've gotten the traffic. It could be a referral, it could be online, it could be just being at an event. You converted the traffic they purchased. And remember, your credit card purchase is an intention, gang. It's an intention. You decide if you want to keep them on. How many problem children have you had over over the years? You know, having customers, right? It's all. The credit card purchase is an intention. Everything. The engagement starts with the stick. So the answer to this question, I believe the single most important touch point along the client journey, we're talking stick. This is the only stick I'm talking about as a strategy. And then three tactics to it, because that was the promise is Onboarding. I guarantee if I audited your onboarding, I get paid $30,000 to audit onboarding. If I guarantee, if I audited your onboarding, I think you would be embarrassed by the time we're done because there's so many more things you can do for onboarding. Why don't people do it? Me included? Because you're exhausted. Getting the traffic and trying to convert, putting your company together, dealing with family, whatever else. And by the time someone purchases, you go, okay, well, onboarding, we'll just tell them what they're about to get, and then onboarding becomes an afterthought. Guess what? Design your onboarding first. Before your ads, before your conversion scripts, before any of that stuff. Design your onboarding first. Joe will remember this. Millennials won't even know what I'm talking about. I think Paul Culligan will remember it. There used to be something called snail mail, and we used to call it direct mail. And in the direct mail package, there was something called the coupon or the order form. It was a card. It would actually fall out. There were copywriters who were paid millions of dollars, many of whom I know and knew. I know them still, but they're not living here on earth. There would be this little car that would pop out, and that would be the order card. Well, guess what? People would do the order card last when it was the single most important card in that envelope. So a guy named Ted Nicholas. I'm Armenian, he's Greek, so we're kind of brothers from other mothers. He's no longer living, but bright, very bright guy. Brilliant marketer, multi, multi, multi millionaire. He taught me to make the business reply card, which is called a BRC. Write that first. That way you won't forget the 800 number which Joe Sugarman created, who he lost recently, and also all the other important information when the brc, the business reply card, is an after lot. Well, in the same philosophy, do your onboarding first, Design it first. So you're excited about it, right? It's like the day after you get married, allegorically. Why not make that like it was the first meeting and your heart is racing and you're telling them what's about to happen, and you just can't wait. Right? And every day is a new day, and you get more excited because you're going to learn something new about this person. That's what onboarding should do. Now, a guy named Niccolo Machiavelli said the ends justify the means. The end justify the means. Many people have said that he Said it in the 1500s, he wrote a book called the Prince. I disagree. I think the start justifies the means. If you've ever trained a puppy, it determines how that dog becomes a great dog as an adult. The start justifies the means. If you don't crate the puppy, you're screwed. If you let the puppy just roam around outside, they'll dig and you'll blame them. It's like a baby. Same shit, different species. If you let the puppy just roam around the house, you don't follow them. They'll chew on the furniture. The point of having a puppy for six months is to do what it takes to make that puppy into a great adult dog for hopefully the next 13, 15 years, sometimes longer. So the start justifies the means. And so that is onboarding. You get to indoctrinate them as a stick strategy. How to think, what to think, and why they're thinking what they're thinking according to your culture. Okay, so question. What is onboarding? Onboarding is the first touch after they order, and it should be ready, not an afterthought. It should be ready to go. Why is onboarding so relevant to ltv? Because it's the single most important stick strategy there is. Because, like training a puppy, you're creating, you're sequestering your new client, customer, patient, member, whatever you call them. So you indoctrinated. Indoctrinate. You indoctrinate them into your thinking. Makes life so much easier later on. I know when someone has a great dog. I know if they were a great trainer. As you know, with a puppy, it's a pain in the ass. I have two kids. If someone has kids here. Now, you know that you can never underestimate the power of denial as a parent, am I right? If you have teenagers, you can never underestimate the power of denial. Right. Well, a puppy, it's like they just want to have fun. And that is a new customer, a new client, a new member. I'll call them a client. Just as a catch all term. They want to have fun. So why don't we shepherd them and usher them in the right direction through this amazing stick strategy, which can really make a difference. How does onboarding work? Step by step? Well, I'm going to give you the steps. There are three of them. The goal, though, of onboarding is engagement. A disengaged client is not a client. A disengaged client is not an appreciating asset. I look at every client, every as an appreciating asset, not as A bag of money. But as an asset, as a friend, I'm an appreciating asset for Joe. Every year, there was no way, no way I could leave. Genius network. Guilt and shame are two worthless emotions that keeps me in. That's a good stick strategy, but you know, that's by the universe, in my own doing and my childhood upbringing, so I can thank my parents for that. By the way. My humor doesn't get any better. So if you're not laughing, it's not going to get any better. And so onboarding. The goal of onboarding is engagement. And the reason you want to engage them, which a stick strategy is. Stick engaged. Right? Flypaper stick, Right? You want to avoid BSO syndrome. BSO syndrome. Does anyone know what not bs? Everyone knows that. What does BSO stand for? Bright Shiny object. Bright Shiny Object syndrome. What's the number one most crippling factor of any mastermind? BSO syndrome. You know why? They don't know how to have a love affair. They just want to fling. And once it gets dull in their mind, it's not dull, it's actually shinier. But they think it's getting dull. They got their own issues. Joe may say addictions, right? And so the way to avoid BSO syndrome, so they go to somebody else and then get confused and then poo poo. Your strategies, tactics, products, services, whatever you have, is to keep them engaged. How do you start that? How do you light the fuse? Onboarding. What is onboarding? A stick Strategy. There's over 108 that Joe and I have taught. This is a stick strategy. This is a stick strategy. This is a genius network charger, right? So your laptop is out of juice. You put this in there. So three simple steps to onboarding. Here it is. Just answered this question. What is the intention of the client journey? Is it to double profits? Is it to be happier in a relationship? Is it to stop an addiction? Is it to build their own mastermind? You answer that question. I can't answer it for you. So that's the first question you got to answer and you let them know. Why is the client journey purposeful? Give them the why. What is the head? Why is the heart? Why is it so purposeful for them? Like why will this journey, which you already mapped out, right? Not so much. But if you did, then you know how to onboard them. Because you can't onboard without a client journey mapped out. Maybe that'll be the next lesson that we teach. So why is it so purposeful? Give them the why. When I say Pack my bag moments. I'm giving you the pack my bag moment. You have pimping and you have pampering division. Your stick people are always pampering. Always. Your support team can make more money if you turn them into stick managers, which we can teach them how to do. That's like a trial close for a year from now. All right. How can. Can the client journey be more strategic for them? In other words, how can they maximize their client journey? So teach them how to get the most out of what they're about to learn. Maybe it's your curriculum. If you're teaching something in a member's area. If you have nutraceuticals or something ingestible, tell them when to do it, how to do it. If it's about sleep, tell them to put an alarm before they go to bed. I know people that wake up with an alarm, but how about going to bed? Same gentleman, Dr. Michael Bruce, he said all you got to do is wake up each day the same time. You don't have to worry about anything else. That's one stick strategy to get better sleep. So if that guy's been doing it and he knows what he's talking about for 25 years, then that's a good tip. So the onboarding formula is intention. It's like, what is this client journey? Let them know purpose. Why is it so important to them right now? Why is it so relevant? And strategy. How are they going to maximize it? How are they going to maximize it? Every single onboarding needs a concierge. So you need a person who's a concierge, who's going to be there. Omni buds person, the person who defends them, the good cop. And they need an onboarding concierge. And the. The important part, the important point, going back to what I already said, is when they made a payment, I don't care if it's 50k, I've gotten 100k, I've gotten 440k from one person in Pakistan, a business. I didn't even know what I was going to sell him. I just threw it out there. And he said yes, right. The transaction is only the intention. When they pay you, that's only the intention. Right? So the most important thing is to get them onboarded. There are declarations expected of them to build membership and community. Clients, customers are not members. Members know each other. Clients, customers, patients don't know each other. Maybe in the waiting area if you're in a doctor's office, but members know each other. Amex American Express. They have different colors. Membership has its benefits. Who gives a shit about Visa or MasterCard or Discover? I mean, it's just another card. American Express, that's a brand. And they charge more money just for the right to charge with different colors. Imagine paying five grand just for the right to charge. What do they have a concierge for? Platinum and black. So here are three micro tactics when people are onboarded. We bring people into a Telegram group anytime they're in a high ticket program for us. We don't go to WhatsApp, we don't go to Facebook because Telegram can edit comments easily. You can't do that in WhatsApp and Facebook. There's too much litter. These are my personal opinions, right? So I love using Telegram for that reason. I have Signal as well, but I don't use Signal because you can't edit. I love making a mistake and editing it, you know, instead of deleting it. So when they come into our Telegram group, the concierge says, all right, please let everyone know where you from? This is a new member, right? They're kind of a little bit nervous. Not what do you do? They don't know what they do. The smartest people in the world can't even utter what they do. But where are you from? They know that. Okay, why are you here? Like why'd you say yes? It's kind of like, I don't know, auto suggestive self talk, you know. You want them to change an identity, right? You want to. They. They're now a Genius network member, not a participant. And then how will you serve? How will you serve this group? So where are you from? Why are you here? How will you serve? That is after you've onboarded them and now they're connecting to everyone else. So first it's one to one with them and then next it's one to many with them and everyone else. Behavior never lies. So the key to this one stick strategy is only one of so many. If you want to hear more, we have more. But the key is behavior never lies. If you have kids, you know this to be true. If you have an ex wife, you know it's true. Or spouse. And if you have a puppy, you know it's true. Cats, they don't qualify. All right? So stay engaged.

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