0195: Hired to Quit, Inspired to Stay: How Focusing on Employee Dreams Built an Exceptional Culture and an Unbreakable Company with Best Selling Author, Speaker, Army Veteran, Recording Artist & CEO Craig Handley

Ea interviews episode 195 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to build a culture in your business that is top notch? Have you ever wanted to build a multi million dollar company? How about multiple? How would you like to pursue your dreams on your terms? Well, I'm excited to have none other than CEO, musician, artist, entrepreneur and former vet and veteran Craig Hanley in today's episode. We're going to be talking about being hired to quit but inspired to stay. We're going to bring him back right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book and eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com Here he is ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Craig Hanley. Craig, how are you feeling today?

Great, great. Doing well.

Glad to hear that. I want to ask you what gave you the inspiration to build your first company?

I kept getting fired. Tough going.

I don't know, I guess early on I was building, I was first writing call center scripts, you know, and phone centers for a lot of different companies. And I was traveling around the country helping them build call centers. And at some point, you know, they take a lot of my advice but not all of it. So I was like, why don't I just build my own company? And somebody along the way mentioned the US Hispanic market was growing like crazy and there were no call center servicing it. And so Listen Trust used to be called Listen up Espanol. We originally built the call center to service the US Hispanic market. And when we built it, within three years, you know, we were, we made Inc. 500's fastest growing private companies in America. We were number one on business products and services and number 27 overall on the list with an 8,000%, 7,996% growth year over year for those first three years in servicing the US Hispanic market. So I don't know. I think just over the years just consulting for other people. At some point it just made sense to try to do it myself.

Was it easy to get going off the ground or would you say there was a level of difficulty?

I remember the first six months, I mean I was building it with my consulting revenues and we didn't have a lot of money. We started with 20 seats inside another call center and we were leasing basically 20 seats. And a lot of people said to get going, you needed to have money orders be a way for them to pay because Hispanics don't have credit cards.

So the first six months we had a lot of campaigns start, but the delivery rate for someone with a money order is less than 30%. And so something would start to build and look like there was revenue. The reality was is there wasn't any revenue. And the restocking fees and the fact that most people who said they buy, didn't buy a campaign would go like this and then like this and then like this. And I made a decision, you know, six months in, I said, we're not doing money orders anymore. This is stupid. And this is either going to sink us or it's going to allow us to swim. And as soon as we made that decision, close rates went up by, you know, from. From a low 12% close rate with another, you know, 25% money orders. We were actually closing 25 to 30% of all calls with a credit card. And I think it was just because we gave people the option that they took it. And then as soon as we said we're going to make sure people have credit cards, that's when it started to really take off. We built the business based on sales principles, you know, being able to sell. And as a result, we tried. You know, there were other companies that also did Spanish, but they couldn't compete. We were beating them by double digit, you know, close rates. And so a lot of our early competitors decided to white label our call center and make us their Hispanic solution. And that's where we saw that tremendous growth is every call center that we started to compete with started to refer all that business to us. And so we went from 20 seats to 550 seats within three years.

How satisfying was that when that happened?

It's funny, as an entrepreneur, I'm built to celebrate victories, but I'm also driven like nobody else. So I think on one level it was good. On the other level, I was like, okay, let's keep going. You know, what are we going to do next? You know, what else do we have to do to make our business bigger, stronger? How do we create a give back and help the world? You know, a lot of businesses have that mindset today that donating 1% of their profit back to charity or finding some way to make, you know, to make the world a better place is important. We thought of that 14 years ago. We really wanted to, you know, do something with the success we were having. So it felt Good. But it felt like. It felt a little bit like Spider Man. Right. You have a responsibility now to try to help, you know, help the world and to help other people. So I don't think we celebrated for long. We wanted to know what we're gonna, you know, how we're gonna continue to make this thing.

Humphrey.

How important would you say contribution is for a business? Are you drawn to companies who are more, I don't want to say ethical, because you can be ethical in business but not care about contribution. But when people are heart centric and contribution focused, does that draw you into them more or is it like a nice thing you, you know, you just think they're doing?

No, I think.

I know for a fact that when they are more heart centric and care about their employees more, that it creates more revenue, it creates.

Better energy around the business and lower turnover for employees. There's a lot of positive things that come from being that type of business that aren't just measured on a P and L. And so I know for a fact that that makes a huge difference in how you run and build a business.

And I know you were sharing that in your book and you talk about inspired to stay. What are the top three things any business can do to retain, let's say, attract better teams and staff and also keep them.

So hiring and attracting better people is a function of your culture, your core values. It doesn't mean you can't hire a lot of people if you don't have great culture and great core values. You can, but a lot of those people are going to leave because you're not hiring people that kind of fit into the right box. So we created a list of core values and we actually hire not based on experience, but based on your values. You could be a great salesperson, but you're not going to get a job at Listen Trust if you don't fit into our values and our core values. So that's where we start. That's how you hire the right people. But the other thing that we learned to do is treat every employee like our own child. If you have children, I don't know if you do, but you probably don't want to force them to work in your business. Right. And so I look at every employee as an individual who has their own dreams and their own goals. And so we spend three days training our employees on how to quit. And in our business, in their free time, we have like a masterclass on how to buy Facebook media or masterclass on how to do a podcast or a masterclass on how to on SEO or building a website. And so we put all these tools in place so our employees could in their spare time, learn how to live their own dream. And so we actually hire them and teach them how they can quit working for us. Now what we inevitably found is that people were inspired to stay because of the type of company that we were. And we also found that the majority of people have three dreams. One, they want to buy a car. Two, they want a house. And the third one, they want a vacation with their family because most people are poor at managing their money. And so they don't get to take a vacation no matter how much they make.

But they always want that time with their family. Right? And so what we did is we put a plan in place in our business. The banks offer credit in a different way than maybe we do in the States because we're in Mexico and a lot of our employees have lived in the US and speak perfect English. But the way Mexico works is that the longer you're with a company, the better your credit. And so because we pay our employees an above average income in Mexico, and because we've been there for 14 plus years, we went to the banks and said these are our average paychecks.

And what we like to do is we want you to guarantee our employees a car loan once they're an employee for six months. And we found two banks that would do that. So at six months you're an employee at Listen Trust, go get a car. At a year, they'll give our employees a house loan so they can go buy a house. And then recently we're now talking with a travel company and we've set up seven levels of vacation property so that if you're an employee at the end of year one, we're going to just give you a vacation. You know, you're going to have to go on vacation because we're not going to give you the money for it, right? So you're going to go on vacation with your family and when you're there two years, it's a better property. Three years, it's even better. And so we're going to up the ante on what you can get for vacation based on tenure and based on performance, right? And so what we've done is we've built program that inspires the people that should leave to leave. Go build a restaurant, go build a gym, go live your dream, right? Don't stick around if this isn't what you really dreamed when you were a kid. But we also inspire people to stay by giving the majority of the people what they really want to have in life, to own and enjoy it. And I think when you do those things, that ties into performance in a big way. All of our employees, they don't want to lose their job. They want to provide the best service they can so they can keep their job. Well, guess what? If you don't perform for our clients, we can't keep you. Right. We have to ask you to leave. And so as a result, our employees put, they, they put a lot more effort into being trained, into learning our training tools, into going through our training programs, and to being dedicated, to learning their craft, of communicating with somebody on the phone and providing exceptional service. Does that make sense?

Oh, it absolutely does. And it's inspiring and very innovative because growing up, the company culture, for the few places I did work and just across the board, it seemed like, don't ask too many questions. You're kind of here, do your job, shut up, and just, you know, don't rock the boat. And as time has gone on, the last decade especially, I've noticed that companies are changing to be more contribution focused. And they're going, what can we do for the employees? And I don't know if I don't want to say. It started with the whole Google culture with, you know, you know, we got good meals, we got beanbags, do what you want kind of thing. Because I've heard from people that present cases on both sides of the story. You know, it lowers productivity and it hires it. I don't know what the real answer is, but clearly it works both ways for both the different companies. And I've never heard of a company, though, come up with not only such a great incentive program within the company, but you're literally hiring. I've heard of the concept. You know, you want to train someone that you do want them to leave you in because you've equipped them so much. But I don't know too many companies that practice it. So it's inspiring to hear that that's what you're doing and it's working. What have you found? You know, you said for 14 years, what have you found? How long did it take to get going? You know, did it take three, four years to get to that point? And what have you found the last three to five years as a result of that? Is the. Did you see a giant drop off in turnover?

It's always been evolving. We didn't start with this program, the Dream Trust. I call it, I call it our Dream Trust program, we also train people on six pillars of happiness. So we talk about relationships, health, wealth, important things, time off. We talk about those important things in somebody's life, too, and train them on pillars of happiness, right? Because life should be more about work. It should be, how do you be happy? You know, and relationships are a big deal. If you don't know how to manage your spouse or your children, that can create a lot of unhappiness. Men and women are different in how they are in relationships. Men have to learn how to be in a relationship with a woman. Women have to learn how to be in a relationship with a man. And those things help lower stress and create more happiness. So we do a lot of those things. A lot of that stuff didn't happen. You know, it started out by coming up with our core values, right? Coming up with what we wanted our company to stand for. And then what are the values that support that? And the way that we did it is we got into a room and we said, if you could be a company that, you know, puts in 100% effort, 100% heart, right? Or you're a company.

A company that.

You know, plays hard, you know, believes in happiness, right? But if you were this company, you couldn't be that. Where does it fall? We went through 30 values that our employees had thought our company was about, and we had to winnow it down to five. You know, so it was definitely an interesting process of going through that. And then you have to set out markers that show you're living your values, right? What are the markers that are going to indicate that those values are actually being executed within your company? That takes a few years, right? For those things to automatically start to be put into play takes a couple of years. And then from there, we just always wanted things to. Always wanted things to evolve at Listen Trust. And so the Dream Trust program was built maybe three years ago.

So it hasn't. Like I said, it's been processed, though.

Well, it sounds like a great program, and I know expert authority, world's listening and probably thinking of ways they can implement this in their business, and it just sounds phenomenal. I wish you the best with it, and I know it's only going to continue to grow. I want to ask you about your biggest transformation from one of your clients. Who would you say is your biggest success story?

We've had a lot. You know, I love that.

That's the biggest problem. All my VIP guests have is I asked for one, and they're like, man, I got to narrow it down.

Well, if you go early days, like the one that spurred us the most was a hair straightener. And I forget the name of it, but they were. They were doing better in Spanish than they were in English. And they would by themselves, driving 40,000 calls a week. And so that in itself was a huge success story. And it was. Again, this is going back 12 years ago. I said, I can't even remember the name of the product.

But more recently, like, we've had clients come in. You know, a lot of people think the Philippines is less expensive now. The Philippines is cheaper, but it's not less expensive.

You know, we recently took.

A lot of seats out of the Philippines for.

Bosley or Hair Club for Men. They're both these two different brands that kind of work together. And they were doing like 12 appointments per day out of the Philippines. But the attendance rate for those calls was around 30%. Because our agents know how to personalize and disarm and build relationships. We were generating around 27 appointments a day. More importantly, our attendance rate for the appointments was around 70%. So we actually, on a cost basis, we may have cost double, but on a value basis, the client certainly learned that we were less expensive than working with another center that was cheaper. And so that was certainly a tremendous success story that we've had.

Well, that sounds huge. I mean, you're talking four confirmed appointments at the 40% compared to the 19.5 at 70%.

If your math is right, I'm going to agree with you. I didn't do the math in my head, but, yeah, yeah, we were. We did really well. And that's why they took all of their seats. You know, we now have almost 200 seats with Bosley and Hair Club for Men, and we started with 10. You know, they were going to test us, and now they've moved everything over.

So you're saying it was double, but you're also talking.

Four and a half ish times the.

The attendance.

It's nearly five. It's. You could. It's nearly four and a half to five times more. The output.

Yeah. The big deal is that no matter what our output, if our attendance rate on the 27 appointments was 20%, then we weren't doing our jobs right. So we had to cover two things. We had to get more appointments, but we had to ensure we created relationships with the consumer that allowed them to feel like they could trust us and show up to the appointment.

See, and that's what I like hearing. It's why I incorporated the Tell Us yous biggest transformation and success story is because, you know, business is up and down. I mean, I've gone through it too. But when you get it right, it can be really, really right. And, you know, six months or one year doing it right can smoke the previous decade, you know, at a job or even doing it wrong or trying to figure it out.

Yeah, I mean, we've had clients that are difficult, had a flower client come in and, you know, they ramped up their staffing and then they decided to negotiate their contract and only wanted to pay for talk time with an agent. But of course, the reason they wanted to do that is because, you know, they had 300 agents that they needed in the center to get ready for Valentine's Day. But of course, they didn't have any phone calls for them until the week of Valentine's Day. So basically they wanted us to support their high growth season. And so they were trying to give us 100,000 when their bill was 280.

So we had clients like that, and they ended up, you know, they ended up not staying with us. And we helped them transition out.

And that was, to me, I feel like it was a rough one. You know, we ended up having a lot of negative energy, go back and forth in that. But we tried to just end it on a positive note, move forward. So there hasn't always been successes. There have been lots of challenges, but.

That'S why you get the successes. And, you know, it's not fun to do something like that. But you can't, you know, can't kill yourself and the company in the process. I tell my clients all the time, our audiences, I go, you gotta have a healthy enough profit that when you quote someone, the biggest disservice you can be is out of business in two to three years because they're gonna fall in love with you. You're obviously better, but if you're not around three, four, five, five years from now, you can't be killing yourself or suffocating along the way.

Right.

That's quite a gap. Also, I mean, that's not even 10 or 20%. That's pretty significant. Out of curiosity, had they just said, hey, thanks for your help and all of this, how much do you think they would have made if they would have not been nickel and dime in the whole thing?

I think it would have done a lot better if they were so caught up in how to avoid paying. They actually created a software product where they were hiding the real numbers because we had built an incentive in forecloses and things like that. And then we had built an incentive in for each of our agents. If there were errors made on the addresses and things like that, we would actually lose money on the hourly. But we found out after that we had agreed to these things that they weren't recording the calls. And we even had one of their customer service managers tell us that they didn't listen to the calls. They just said everybody was doing something wrong so they could avoid paying that part of the fee. And I'm like, so you guys don't even listen to the calls? She goes, we spend all of our time writing up complaints on agents that may or may not exist, but because we don't record the calls, there's no way to prove otherwise. So we just don't have to pay you for that. So they would. Unscrupulous company, you know, and. But I know, you know, from a performance standpoint, we know how to sell. We would have been able to incorporate upsells and cross sells and create additional revenue for them. And, you know, and I just think if you're a flower company, you know, that you have to invest in December to be ready to take calls for February. You have to build that into your model. You can't expect somebody else to build your business for you. And that was. That was what they did in the Philippines and Honduras. And every year they would go into a different call center and do that and basically take advantage of a company to take their calls throughout mother's day and Valentine's day. And then they'd leave and move to a different center. That was their model to build their business up.

That's a horrible model. It's like the traveling carnival. I mean, I would be going, hey, this might take two or three years, but let's get started here. So we can increase it next year. In the next year. But if they had a 280 grand bill, I'm sure it would have been 5, 600 on the low end of revenue, if not a million dollars. And then you take that and, you know, wouldn't. I have no doubt you'd go back the next year and go, what can we improve to take it, you know, to 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 and keep increasing it.

Yeah, yeah, it was too bad, you know, that didn't work out. But, you know, we've had our wins and we've had our losses, and that's just how life is, right?

But you keep getting back up and moving forward.

Business is doing great now where since the COVID hit we're 30% up from where we were before, and things are going great. We're actually looking at some other opportunities to either partner or sell the business. And I've built three other businesses during the whole Covid thing that are all doing really well.

Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you about one of those, because with the success stories, I know you have one of your own with social close. Tell me about that.

I stumbled into it. I. I wrote a book, made bestseller list in five categories, and I wrote down all the things I did well, and then I made a list of all the things I wish I did different and kind of created a book launch, you know, in my own way. But what I realized is that for someone to do all the things they need to do on social media, you need to hire a company to go through all your old content and to create micro content so they can put it out on a daily basis. That alone, depending on how much content you have, can cost. For me, the quote was $20,000 to go through my content, and then they wanted 7,000amonth on an ongoing basis to continue to grab my content, go through and create micro content thumbnails, you know, turn my podcasts into streams for other streaming services.

And so they were going to do all those things for me for 7,000. But then I needed someone to post to manage my communities, and someone else would do that for five grand a month, and someone else would run my LinkedIn and create leads through LinkedIn for five grand a month. And then someone else is going to book me on podcasts for five grand a month, and then someone else was going to. And by the time I was done, it was $30,000. And I'm like, how does anybody. I haven't even bought media yet. I haven't even started to buy programmatic or Facebook media to try to improve my presence. So I built it myself. For me, no idea that it was going to turn into a business. And so I've had a friend post on Facebook that he was looking for something similar to what I built. And I was like, huh? And then as I saw other people posting, the only thing they said was following, following, following. I'm like, maybe I built the business here, you know? So I put a package together and threw a note up on Facebook, and within 24 hours, 12 people had reached out, and within 48 hours, six people had given me money to do it. And I'm like, all right, well, let's try it.

And then while that was going, I was consulting, right? Because I'm no longer really involved in the call center on an operations level. And I would charge somebody $10,000 for marketing ideas. And as I looked into what they were doing, I realized a lot of companies I met with didn't have the execution team behind them. And so I kind of looked at how social close were working with the six clients we had, and I went, you know what? I bet the basis for almost every great marketing campaign is having daily content and good social media. People look you up on Instagram, they look you up on Facebook, they look you up on LinkedIn or they look at your YouTube.

That's where the basis of good marketing is. So if I can create a base for low cost, right? And in my business, I'm basically providing 30,000 for value for about five grand. And I've got cheaper packages and more expensive packages, but, you know, it's really a low cost to kind of build that base. And then I give people the ability to have additional revenue that they can spend on programmatic media or Facebook media or SEO or whatever else they fit. You know, we look at them. You know, I'll look at them and I'll say, these are some other things I think you need to do. But what I did was I said, instead of consulting with people and charging them 10 grand, I'm going to consult with them for free. Because most of the services that they need can be pushed through this new agency I built. And so I started pushing small businesses and other, you know, other entrepreneurial ventures, other needs, like where, you know, I got my agents now doing the big secret has been direct messaging, right? So a friend of mine had a book, he wanted to sell 2,000 copies, and he only had two days to do it to make the New York Times bestseller list. And so we basically created a series of videos, direct messaging, through all his social platforms with the videos. And we ended up selling 3,000 books in two days. He made number seven on the list. Another woman, we had her for three weeks. She sold thousands of books through our process. She also got several podcast requests, and she got several people offering to write about her book. And she got picked up by Good Morning America to go online and do a Good Morning America spot. And so now I'm doing a friend of mine's got a documentary he did. We're booking seats to see his premiere for $20 donation to a charity. And we're now filling up the seats to watch this with him. And then he's going to do a zoom call after one hour. Zoom call to Answer questions after. And so we're using our direct messaging service to create an audience for his movie. And we're working with a restaurant. We use our direct messaging to let people know that they're a fan of the entertainer. The entertainer is going to be there Friday. Can we book a reservation? And we're selling out restaurants weeks in advance when, you know, through this Covid, a lot of these restaurants lost a lot of revenue. So for five grand a month, I've got restaurants doing an extra 50,000 in revenue, you know, through my processes. And as a result, over 60 days, I think we've grown a business from 0 to over 20 people and from 0 in revenue to almost 600,000 in revenue annually. And it doesn't show any signs of slowing down. You know, a lot of people are very interested in what we're doing and how we're doing it and how we can help them. And so that's exciting.

That is very exciting. And congratulations on that. Because what I'm hearing in your voice, I know you have background in musician, you're an artist, and it sounds like you're having a lot of fun with it, which is important. Also.

I'm a marketer, right? I'm a musician and a marketer. Like, if I had passions, you know, those are two things I love to do. I love to help people. And so I love to get on a phone call and then just put them in the hot seat and find out what their problems are and then give them solutions. And then. And now I've built a team that can solve almost all of those problems by giving them the solution at a low cost. And then from a music standpoint, I mean, I do have records right now. One with Alex and Drew, the Chainsmokers. And I've got some producers that have worked with Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande and John Legend, and they're helping me with some songs I've written. And I've got a whole comedy selection of songs where I've kind of put comedy channel out. So I'm doing some live stand up with some music as the base of comedy, which is kind of nice. If people google me, like, they'll see Craig Hanley, the businessman and the entrepreneur. And then I've got a song, you know, that's up there that's completely off the wall. And people like, I don't know how those two personalities coexist. Right? You're serious and you're a marketer and you're a businessman, and then you've got a song up there called. What's one of my songs called? I've got one called Maine that's all about the state of Maine. That one's pretty clean and pretty funny. But for Covid, people asked me to write one and I wrote a song called Paper bag day. And I call it the new hallmark holiday, the $1 role play. And the idea is if you're stuck inside with the same partner, one of the best ways that you can make this Covid experience fun and exciting is to put a bag on your partner's head. Male or female, you know, now you've got multiple partners. So silly, stupid, but it's funny. And I've created all these little music videos that are all comedy based, so. But I love being creative and in my brain just, it's beautifully broken, you know, in ways where it thinks completely different thoughts than most people's. And the path to success is so clear in my head as I'm talking to people. And now I've got a team that I can kind of try to lay that path out. It's usually a 60, it's usually a 90 day to a six month plan. And when I'm talking about it, I think the one thing I got to work on is making sure people know that my 90 day plan isn't going to happen all next week. You know, some people, the expectations are, are a little high because in my head I'm like, okay, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, we can do this. And then I'll just put it all out. But the timing then has to be laid out a little bit better. But everything's been going well, knock on wood.

Well, I'm happy to hear that and congrats again. And I have no doubt that's why we connected and why we connect so well. Because I know, you know, growing up playing piano and alto sax and marching in band and doing all the creative stuff, you know, stuff, there's certain things I look at and it's just like common sense to me as far as marketing and prom promotion and business and certain things. And it's like, how do people not get this? And on the other hand, it's just like, where the heck is that coming from? It doesn't make sense, it doesn't fit business. And it's a perfect segue into more proof as to why I created this. I mean, it really has no rhyme or reason with business. I call it the wheel of whatever. And it always ends up on the question I need to ask you.

At exactly the right spot. It goes into that fun aspect of it. And your question is. You see that, Craig? It's right there. Who's a musician you'd like to work with that you haven't yet?

I've been trying to get Jake Cash on a call. A lot of people don't know who Jake Cash is, but he, he's a writer for Charlie Puth, he writes for Maroon 5 and I've done a few Instagram lives with him. And he says, I love your music, send me a dm. But then he never replies to the dm, you know, so. So I keep trying to get him on, but I'm working with a lot of people in his circle and so I'm hoping I can kind of love to write with him. I mean, it's funny, a lot of the most successful music on the planet, people don't really know who wrote it. Like Evan Bogart. I spent a couple hours on a call with him and he wrote Halo, you know, with Beyonce. I mean, a lot of people don't know the name Evan Bogart. And he's written a ton of other hits. And I had a two hour call with him and he's got four of my records now and he thought one would be great for Black Eyed Peas, one would be amazing with Eminem, another would be great with Pitbull and, and then another record with J. Cole. And so he requested those records and potentially he's gonna, he's gonna help write a little bit on them and get them to the right people. So I think I've written good songs, but I've learned one of my shortcuts is letting other writers who already have won grammys change up 20 to 30% of my lyrics and get some writing credits. And then it becomes their record, my record becomes our record. And I'm really good at. Evan Bogart called me Jingles. At the end of the call, he goes, I'm going to call you Craig Jingles Handley because you're hooks. He goes, nobody's ever written because every song you play me has an amazing hook. He goes, just needs a little work on the lyrics leading into the hook. And part of the reason for that is I write four and a half minute songs and everything has to be two and a half to three and a half minutes today. So I never really thought, you know, about, about how I need to keep my songs to two and a half to three and a half minutes. Because I come from the 80s where every song was four and a half minutes.

Well, it sounds like more great opportunities. And I want to ask you, as far as the DM go, have you ever shot a video message? Like how we're on video now? Have you ever shot a video message instead of just the text in there?

Yes. And the methodology that we're using is the first message is always a picture and less intrusive than a video. And then the second and third and fourth, all those other videos are typically. All those other messages are typically videos.

That's on LinkedIn. And part of the reason. So I've had so much success in what we've done so far that I. There are videos I need to shoot to talk about some of these other things. And so right now I know that we're using a.

Just a regular message and some of the Instagram stuff we're doing, but it actually, we should be using video. I just.

I'm a little bit afraid of the success we're having. Like, I'm afraid it could get too. I mean, I know that I don't want to blow it up. Right? So I'm like, if I start doing things better right now, we're going to have more clients, and if I put too many clients in this funnel, it could be a problem.

You want to make sure it's balanced and you can keep the quality high for the ones you do have.

Yeah, so.

But.

But I shouldn't be wasting my time either and just sending direct messages when I should be sending videos. I certainly agree with what you said.

I was actually asking a little bit for. When you were talking about connecting with the people on Instagram for the recording. The other thing I was going to say is if you got a copy of your book and just straight mailed it to them with a note inside.

Yeah, that might be good too.

I've done that a few times and I've connected with people because of my book that, I mean, they're just. I mean, when you're dealing with certain people, they just get so many messages. Now, it's cool that you already did the Instagram live, but, you know, it's a real issue. You can. I believe you can connect with anyone on the planet, but how do you get their attention? And that's step one. So, you know, kicking it back to. I don't even want to say old school, because direct mail is still extremely relevant, but it's one of my favorite things to do is drop some of my books in the mail and just, you know, all you gotta do is find a mailing address and you can Write anything you want inside of it.

Ideally a great headline with some benefits and a call to action at the end like your phone number. Just throwing that out there for anyone listening.

For everyone listening. It's great advice.

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I'm ready.

These are very quick 60 second answers. I got three of them for you. The first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Networking. I think the more you can connect with people, the quicker you can shortcut business success by learning who you should be talking to, who's already done it and already can give you advice.

Excellent. Like love that. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Well, we talked about marketing. I think for a lot of people marketing's like chemistry, right? If I sit in a chem lab and look at chem formulas up on a screen. I'm probably not going to know how to create the I'm not going to know how to solve the whole Covid problem and create a immunization for Covid. However, these chemists know that stuff backwards and forwards. For me, marketing is what I know and I think a lot of people tend to try to be perfect in what they're doing in marketing as opposed to testing and allowing the results to create the conclusion that allows them to see the path to success.

That is a great expert authority insight because marketing is a test and I agree 100%. Too many people try to do it. Just do it perfect and go too slow with it. You need some data for sure. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Take care of customers. I mean the best way to maximize that value is to make sure that you know.

Their happiness score on a month to month basis. We always want to make sure our customers are 9.7 or above on a month to month basis. I mean I know John Rulin's book Giftology is kind of cool on how to make sure you keeping your relationships strong. We definitely, gosh, I mean our clients have been with us for years and years and years and we do it by making sure that we care about them more than we care about ourselves. You know.

That'S great advice.

Value all the time. Give value all the time.

Excellent. Speaking of books, what are a couple books you'd recommend that have made a big impact on you?

W. Clement Stone, the Success System that Never Fails. I worked and sold insurance door to door for years and that was one of the first self help books I ever read. Went wow. Kind of blew my mind, you know, with all the different cool things that were in there.

God, I've read so many. My friend Vishen Lakhiani, he's got a great book, the Buddha and the Badass just came out and he's got another book from a few years ago that does really well.

He's the president of a big company called Mindvalley and I met him and traveled to 13 countries with him. Before he was fishing Lakhiani he was a young kid with a business doing about 10 million in revenue and wasn't really sure what he was going to do. And now if you look at his empire now he's like Darth Vader, I'm a death Star. Only he's focused on doing good. His business is huge. And I mentioned John Rulin's Giftology. And one of my favorite books, if you're trying to do selling, is a book called Getting to Veto. A lot of people might not know that book, but I thought it was invaluable in how to reach the decision maker in a business and get through the gatekeepers. And so I really enjoyed that book. There's a lot, right? There's a lot of books out there that I think when reading books, one of the things a lot of people mistake is they start to read a book and they try to fight their way through it. For me, I think you should read a book and if it catches your attention, keep reading it and if it doesn't, put it down and move on. And I think that's the way that I get through a lot of books. Because if you don't do that, I mean, I read a lot on my phone, right? If I don't do that, that book title is just stuck there in my phone and I don't even open it up anymore. And so I slows me down in reading. So rather than an individual book, I think advice from an entrepreneur to other entrepreneurs is find books that you can jive with and that kind of flow with you. And then that way you read through them quickly because the book should only take a couple of hours to get through. If it's on your phone for three weeks, shut it down, go to a different book.

That's great advice because you're absolutely right, you shouldn't be hanging on to it forever.

Right.

You have given some great expert authority insights. I thank you for sharing them with us. And I want to know, where would you like people to learn more?

Well, Craig Handley. I mean, I'm Craig Handley on Facebook, I'm Craig Handley on Instagram. I kind of bought all those domains before people were buying domains because I was thinking it was important to have them. The only other Craig Henley I've seen is an artist, an actor from the Ukraine or from the UK. And so sometimes my face comes up with his IMDb bio, but I'm pretty easy to find. And then I got listentrust.com, socialclothes.com and of course, I mean, I have my cell phone in my book. I'm not afraid for people to text me or call me, but if they direct message me on any of those things, then I'm happy to set up calls and to help people. I'm not going to charge people for a hello. I'm more than happy to spend time helping somebody.

Well, you are giving and definitely personable. And one fun question. Do you prefer that they shoot you an image, a text or a video message as that first message?

A video, an image or a text. But I think a video is great because that way I can kind of see who they are and what they're up to. So a video message would be nice.

Excellent. Well, Craig, I appreciate this so much. Thank you for sharing with Expert Authority World. It was a pleasure having you.

Yeah, thank you for having me on. It was good fun time.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24? 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit channel generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now, once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.