Online Marketing & Business TECH Made Quick, Easy, & FREE

Technology is one of the first places people get stuck in modern business. It doesn't matter if you're a coach who does face to face sessions, an educator with a digital teaching platform, or an affiliate marketer selling someone else's products. Businesses run on technology. But I hear you. If you're one of the many who have been overwhelmed by it, you may have thought that like having a website, automated emails, digital content delivery and digital sales funnels have been out of your reach because you're not tech savvy yourself. Or maybe you haven't been able to hire to do it for you. Or maybe you just thought you didn't have enough time to get it all set up. Or maybe you have it set up but you're not making any money from it. These are all things we'll address in today's episode. Most importantly, you'll leave this episode knowing how to get all the tech fundamentals you need set up quickly, easily, and even for free. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I am your host, Andrew Donovan. Alright friends, let's have this technical conversation. This is an episode that will be very practical for you and I hope that it will leave a lot of you feeling a lot easier about your business. So technology is something that people ask me about all the time, especially there's certain generations, but it doesn't really matter. There are certain people who just have a hard time with technology. Now I think it's simple to say that modern businesses run on tech, right? There are certain key components to any business. It doesn't matter if you're running a brick and mortar store, if you've got a massage venue, if you do face to face business most of the time, or if you're all online. I mean, obviously all online businesses run a lot on technology, but every modern business uses technology, whether it's social media or email marketing or, or just having a website or some kind of digital presence so that people can find you online. Now, when it comes to technology, I found that people get really tangled up because there are so many options, there are so many platforms, and those platforms are always changing and evolving and their relationships with each other are also frequently changing and evolving. And sometimes this gets a little bit overwhelming. So one of the scenarios that I see pretty often is someone will tell me they have a business and they have a website, and anytime somebody tells me that, and that's where they start by explaining their technological setup as having a website. I almost always know that they're not really making any money thanks to their technology. You see, having a website doesn't actually produce income. It also doesn't necessarily automate anything in your business. If there were a specific list of things that you should get from, from your technology, well, it's really simple for me. Technology should do a few key things. What they are is, number one, technology should give you more time because technology allows us to automate a lot of things. So, for example, a lot of entrepreneurs have a lot of coaches and the kind of entrepreneur that I work with, they have digital downloads or different kinds of freebies that they give people in exchange for their information. And, and I meet so many entrepreneurs who manually email their digital freebies. So maybe you have like a PDF or an ebook or an instructional video. And yes, I meet, in 2021, I meet so many entrepreneurs who manually email their freebies to customers or to prospects. And so they're spending a lot of their time doing something that really should be automated. So more time comes when technology is set up properly and then working for you. And when you do it well, and it's done a strategic way, you can be asleep, you can be on vacation, and it's still manning a lot of the operations of your business. When you hear about companies that have great operations teams, those teams when they're human teams, like in my companies, one of our businesses, we have an incredible operations director that this guy that we work with and love, he spent years developing his skills and to be able to manage operations really well. Well, technology is very similar when it's set up right, it's well trained, it's well set up, it's well thought through, it's strategic. And that's why it can automate a lot of the operations in your business so that you don't have to pay a human being to do all those things so that you're not spending a lot of time with which is your most finite resource, manning those operations, such as manually emailing somebody your digital freebies. Okay, the next benefit that technology should be giving you is more connection. Now, I see people all the time who spend the bulk of their technology time in their business on social media. They're responding to DMs, on Instagram, responding to comments on YouTube, DMing people. I mean, and none of that's good, bad, right or wrong. It depends on the kind of business you're doing. But when you have technology set up really well, it will actually foster more connection with the people that you serve. And the way that it does that is let's say that I have somebody come to my website. If my website is set up really well, it doesn't just tell people, I'm Andrew Donovan, I help coaches and educators build their online businesses and reach more people from a mission focused approach. It will allow them to connect with me in the way that they're ready for it. If you've heard any of my previous episodes on Ascension models, your technology should facilitate and move people through your Ascension model. If you don't know what that is, go watch, go listen to episode 11 on my podcast and I'll give you a really great discussion about Ascension models. But going back to technology and connection, even when it comes to your social media, so many people spend the bulk of their business time trying to create content on these different social platforms and, and they think that's them using technology to grow their business. But fundamentally nothing actually happens in your business until a lead becomes a prospect and a prospect becomes a paying customer. And all of that is varying levels of connection. So it's not really enough to be growing 10,000 followers on Instagram. What really matters is how you're capturing those leads and turning them into prospects where you own the content and you're able to nurture the relationship through a automated email marketing, through weekly email marketing, where you write the emails or you're posting new content, or nurturing people through blogs, other platforms of other ways of digital content, digital connections. And technology should make all of this happen systematically and seamlessly. Okay, and then the third benefit that you should be getting from technology is of course, more profit. When technology is working for us, it not only frees up our time, it and allows us to connect more routinely and even strategically with our people, but it also helps us move those people through our Ascension model, which means that they're being taken from lead, which is a random person on the Internet, to Prospect. That's a contact that you own and you're nurturing the relationship from prospect, then to customer. Someone who has whipped out their credit card and are happily paying you for your information, your products, or your services. Okay? And so those three benefits again are more time, more connection, more profit. Now, let me ask you a question, my friend. Is your technology setup producing all three of these things for you right now? The answer for most entrepreneurs is hell no. My technology is making me pull up my hair and making me yell at my children. So let's fix that right now. Okay? So I'M gonna spend just a few minutes going over crucial tech components that you want to start with and that you really must begin with. And if you find yourself spending a lot of time and experiencing a lot of stress because you're involved heavily in technology and bits of tech that aren't these four main components, I invite you to pause whatever is taking up all of your time and making you frustrated. And I invite you to follow a very simple strategy that I'm going to outline for you that will let you come back to the fundamentals, ensure that your tech fundamentals are set up really solidly and they're a great foundation for the rest of your business. And I'll even show you how you can get started with all of this for free. Okay. Depending on where you are in your business right now. So first let's talk about these crucial components for technology. There's a lot of places where you can spend your time. You can be focused on getting those little social proof popups on the bottom corner of your website. You can spend thousands of dollars hiring someone to design for you that coincidentally could produce no money. I've met so many entrepreneurs who spend thousands of dollars on tech setup, web development, and their website produces no profit for their business. And I think, ugh, this is so clunky how you've done this, and I don't say it like that, but there are smarter, easier ways to go about it. Alright, so the four crucial tech components that you must have for a solid tech foundation for your business are. Number one, website. That, of course, that's your website where you send traffic to. That's the website where, when people say, where can I find your business? That's your main hub. Okay. The website, just so you know, is supposed to be a hub for your sales offers. If a website is created, well, it will direct traffic through your Ascension model. And the reason why I get so I want to pull my hair out when my clients tell me that they spent thousands of dollars having someone build a website for them and they're still not making money is because I know that they have a website that might look pretty. Maybe it has buttons that work, you can click on things, maybe it's got a great about page, maybe it tells people what you do. But if it's not sending people to your paid offers, converting prospects to leads to traffic, it's not a very good website. All right, so your website is the first component and it's meant to be the hub of the offers that make up your Ascension model. Really? Okay. The Second crucial component is email and CRM. Now, a lot of entrepreneurs have an email platform like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact. And all of those email service providers also serve as the CRM, the customer relations manager, where you store all of your contacts, you organize them into email lists, you tag them based off of the activity that they've done in your business. Have they attended your webinar, did they buy this product? Did they upgrade to this product? Have they not bought in a while? Have they not opened your emails in a while? Okay, so the CRM keeps all of that information organized for you. And then because the CRM and the email provider work in tandem, they're usually the same platform or the same bit of technology or service. Then you use that organized contact information to email, to communicate, to market to different people at the right times. Okay? So that email and CRM, that's really where the connection is meant to happen. You know who to connect with at what time based off of how you organize the contacts and you get to market to the right people at the right time based off of when they came into your business, where they came from, why they came. Now I may have overwhelmed some of you listening to this episode with that little bit of information alone. Because yes, a robust and well organized CRM, it has a lot of detail in it, but you don't start really robust, alright? You actually can start with one email list that's just your general email list where you put all of your contacts and that's who you send your regular emails to, and that's who you send your marketing launches to. That's who you launch your products to. Whenever you have a new offer, a new level from your ascension model, a new product to offer people, you can just start with your general email list. You don't have to be all fancy pants. It takes years to really build out your CRM. All right? And when it's all built out, I mean, that's how companies grow from five figures to six figures to seven figures. With the businesses that I've started, we started with zero contacts every single time. And then we built them out to hundreds and then thousands and tens of thousands and so on, right? The third crucial component you need for your technology is of course, sales funnels. Now there are different terms for these. You've heard click funnels, you've heard lead pages, landing pages, which is really a landing page is one is a piece of a sales funnel. A series of landing pages is actually a click funnel or a sales funnel. I use the Term marketing machine, because I like the vernacular machine means there's different components all spinning together. Whatever term you use, it doesn't matter. They're all the same thing that I've just described. And what these things do, these sales funnels or click funnels or marketing machines, they are responsible for turning traffic from one type of traffic into a different type of traffic. Essentially, they're responsible for taking your leads and prospects and turning them into sales, into paying customers. And then ideally, when they're set up really well, they don't just sell one thing at a time. You start by selling one thing and then you add on different things to enhance the offer or to enhance your customer's experience so they get more value and you get more profit, more revenue. Make sense to you? All right. The fourth and final crucial component for technology is digital content. You're going to have videos, you're going to have maybe digital course content, ebooks, PDFs, different kinds of written material, like on a blog different. I mean, all your digital content, it needs to be organized well, and then your digital content manager will deliver content to people efficiently. So if I send out an email and my email says, watch this video, well, the video needs to be somewhere on the Internet, right? And when people click on the video thumbnail in my email, something needs to happen that allows my viewer, my follower or contact to actually interact with my video. Okay? And same thing goes with, like your freebie downloads, Your eBooks, your PDFs, the digital content manager will organize that all for you. And then it will allow people to get access to the content they need, whether it's paid content, like your digital course or your virtual memberships, or free content, like when I say download my digital freebie or watch three video tutorial, all of that is managed by your digital content service. So those are four things I said to review. Website, email, and CRM, sales funnels and digital content. And if you're getting caught in some bit of technology that isn't those four things, without those four things being totally solid and grounded, and producing the three main benefits I mentioned before, which are more time, more connection, and more profit, you need to come back to home base. All right? You need to come back and reorganize. And let's make sure your foundation is set up. If you don't have those four things set up and they're not producing the three main benefits, but you're currently spending all of your time making videos for YouTube or trying to get lots of followers on Instagram or trying to figure out how to set up evergreen offers or make fancy evergreen webinars. You need to put the pause on all those things. Come back to home base with me, all right? Because let's say that you succeed in getting 10,000 Instagram followers and it takes you a couple of years, but you don't have your home base set up. Well, here's what happens. I've got quite a few friends who are big social media influencers. I'm talking about people who have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. And most of the friends that I have who have gotten really savvy with some bit of technology like TikTok, some kind of social platform, Instagram. In my companies, we generate way more revenue than my friends do through their traffic that they generated. Because we have our home base set up, we've got our four crucial components. So an easy example is I've got quite a few friends on Instagram that have tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of followers. They make money by saying, here's my affiliate link. Buy this product that I recommend, or through paid sponsorships, but they don't have any way to capture traffic. Instagram owns all the traffic, and that's a totally different conversation. But they don't have any way to capture the traffic formally. There's not a flow of traffic that takes their leads, which is all the Instagram followers, to prospects, which is a contact they own, an email address in their CRM on their email list, and then a formal way to systematically market to those contacts that they now own their prospects and turn them into paying customers that are their paying customers, versus someone else's paying customer that they collect an affiliate commission for. Do you see what I'm talking about? It's not wrong, but it's not very efficient. And they're leaving tons and tons of money on the table. Plus, when something changes on that platform, they could potentially lose all of their traffic and lose all of their revenue. So when you have your crucial components set up the way that I've been describing it, when I have someone that starts following me through some form of traffic online, Facebook, Instagram, doesn't matter. I, as quickly as possible convert that traffic from a lead that's somewhere on the Internet, somewhere on Facebook, for example, into a prospect, a contact I own, it's in my CRM, on my email list, and then I can formally market to that contact to that prospect, and I convert way more of them into my paying customers, and I can continue marketing to them in the future when I have new offers to make When I can ascend people through my ascension model. This is literally the difference between businesses that flourished during the COVID pandemic and Instagram influencers who severely struggled because they didn't have the tech set up the way that I've talked about. A lot of you watching this episode or listening to this episode are affiliate marketers and you're no exception to this. It's one of the worst things ever. When you spend all of your time and energy building up, say, a Facebook following. And because you don't have your tech home base set up the way that I've described, when something like Covid happens, everybody flees and scatters all over the digital world and, and you don't have your own contacts collected, you don't have your email list. During COVID we had record breaking sales months, month after month because we had this set up. And so while so many businesses were freaking out, stores were closing down. They didn't have systematic control of traffic, they had a hard time producing consistent revenue. And the companies that I set up, we had again, record breaking sales months. We leveraged our technology foundation and it really kept us grounded and really gave us the ability to stand strong in those trying times. Sounds interesting, right? And I want this for you too. So where do you start with all of this? There are basically two ways to do technology. One way is the hodgepodge, piece it all together way not wrong, but not the most efficient way of going about it. What most people do is they get a WordPress or a Wix account for their website, or they hire a web developer to custom code something for them in exchange for lots of money. And then they get ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp or Constant Contacts, their email provider and their CRM. I've even seen some new businesses get something robust like infusionsoft, which is way over the top for most businesses. And then they go and get a click Funnel subscription or LeadPages or Groove Pages or something like that. Something that allows them to build out their series of landing pages, their sales funnels. And then they need digital content hosting. So they get Amazon web Services to host their digital downloads, or like Vimeo or Wistia to host their videos. And after several of these services, they're spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars, like I mean, upwards of five to eight or $900 a month with all of these platforms. And it gets expensive. Plus it's tricky because you have to make them all talk to each other. So that's the one way to do it. But my Favorite way to do it is an all in one platform. And I'm going to give you my recommendations for my favorite all in one platforms. The advantage of an all in one platform is you have one subscription to handle and all of those four components operate on one platform. So you don't have to get them to all talk together. They're built with each other. So your buttons, your forms, your contact capture forms on your website, those are all immediately connected to your CRM and your automated emails and your email blast, the broadcast that you do manually, they all work seamlessly together. Your sales funnels are all and the cart checkout, the payment capture, it's all built into the same platform so you don't have to have samcart or extra payment processing things to be able to process your transactions and take payment. It's all built into the all in one platform. And then same thing with your digital content. You don't need extra video hosting or extra digital download hosting because again, it's all built into the platform. Now, there are lots of services that claim to be all in one platforms, and I'm gonna talk about one first that I recommend you do not start with. Okay. However, this is one that is very popular and it's one that I use in two businesses that I own. And so you might be wondering, well, why would he recommend I don't start with it? I'll explain. ClickFunnels advertises to be an all in one platform. It's actually not. It has the ability to send emails and it can be your CRM, but the CRM is one of the clunkiest ones that I've ever experienced. And you have to have a third party SMTP provider. If you don't know what that is, then you definitely should not be going this route. Okay, so ClickFunnels manages sales funnels incredibly well. It is the most powerful sales engine I've experienced, which is why we use it in multiple businesses that I own. But we don't start there. And the reason why is because you have to get all these other subscriptions to make ClickFunnels work perfectly. Okay, so once you've got the tech platform set up, then I think it could be cool, depending on you and how much you want to learn. Clickfunnels. It's very powerful to add clickfunnels on for extra sales, but I would never recommend a business start there without having their base, their technology base already set up the way that we've described it. Clickfunnels is a powerful sales engine. But it is not intuitive. It's one of the least intuitive programs I've ever used. They say you can set up a funnel in 10 minutes or less and then you watch the demo videos, but they leave out all of the prep work that can take days or weeks to be able to create a sales funnel in 10 minutes or less. Okay, so. And it's just not very user friendly. Takes a quite, quite a bit of time to learn how to use clickfunnels very efficiently. @ this point I've got people on my staff and I myself have learned clickfunnels really well. But it took quite a while and we are a very tech forward company. So if you're not tech savvy, I would definitely not recommend you start with clickfunnels. Where I would recommend that you start are one of two options. The first option is called Groove Funnels. This is a newer service and it's a service that lets you not only start for free, but their base membership is free for life. And you can go to donovanrising.com groovefunnels and you can get set up with a free account that's again, it's donavanrising.com groovefunnels and groovefunnels has all the things that we've talked about plus even more built into their free membership. When your business starts growing and you need to add on extra sales funnels, there's a limited number of sales funnels you can build a limited number of digital things you can host on their site for free, but you can do it all for free. And you can literally start generating money for your business before you ever upgrade to their paid subscription. So if you want a free version to start with for all this tech setup, GrooveFunnels is really cool. And I recommend that if budget is one of your primary concerns, one of your primary focuses. Now, the disadvantage with GrooveFunnels is it's one of the newer players in the market space space. So they're developing a lot of things. They have a lot of money being put into their company by investors right now, which is good for you as the consumer. But it also means that you get to be a little patient because they're developing certain areas of their platform still. The second area that I highly recommend is Kajabi, and you've probably heard me talk about this before. We use Kajabi for two businesses that I own as our tech home base. Actually three now, three businesses that I own. And I love Kajabi. It is not the cheapest option on the market. But it is way cheaper than hodgepodging and piecemealing everything together. I believe the base subscription as of the recording of this episode is somewhere around $149 a month. But that is significantly less money than you'd spend if you had a paid subscription for all those tech services individually. Kajabi gives you everything in one place. And the reason why I love it the most is it is the most intuitive, user friendly experience I've ever seen when it comes to creating offers that you can sell, building out digital courses, building a gorgeous website, capturing leads, delivering your digital freebies in an automated fashion, when it comes to processing orders, when it comes to your CRM and organizing contacts and creating email lists and tagging people and creating automated email sequences and sending out email broadcasts whenever you want, launching products, offers, all of that happens on Kajabi. And it is so smooth, it is so seamless. I love Kajabi and I know that sometimes when people are starting off and they're newer entrepreneurs, they say, oh, that's a lot of money. It really isn't. Because if you don't do an all in one platform again, to have a complete technological foundation set up the way that we've talked about, you'll have to spend more money than Kajabi costs to piecemeal it all together. And then you have all the headache of trying to make it all work together and something always breaks, something always forgets to talk to something else if you piecemeal it. So my recommendation is this, if you are a confident entrepreneur, you know that you've got stuff you can sell right now, you can quickly start generating money. Start with Kajabi. You can go to donovanrising.com kajabi and you can even get started with a free trial under me that will let you experience everything on Kajabi. You can build out a gorgeous website, you can build everything that I've talked about and just give it a test drive. And I highly recommend you start that. If you're willing to take a follow a little bit of instruction from me, I will send you some freebies. I'll tell you how you can get started building everything out on Kajabi and then quickly start selling your stuff, your products or services so that you make money. When I started with Kajabi, my goal was to not have any out of pocket expenses. And if you've heard my story before, I set up my Kajabi really quickly. By the way, I did the whole thing in just over a week, just about a weekend. So I built out this great marketing machine, launched my first digital product which was hosted on Kajabi and I never had any money out of pocket because every month I was profitable, I was making more money than I was spending on my technology. Which means that I was accomplishing all the things that my technology is supposed to do for me, right? So if you are willing to follow instructions, I will give them to you. Kajabi has amazing resources. I recommend you start there. If you're here to just make it happen, if you're here to get selling, get moving your value, get generating revenue for your business, Kajabi is my favorite place. If the cost is really a driving factor for you, Groove Funnels could be a really great option for you. Now I believe that this process should be quick and easy and you've got the free option, you've got groovefunnels, okay? And then you've got the paid option which is Kajabi, which might be a smoother experience if you're willing to spend the money on that. Okay? Now how can you get set up with these four crucial components in your all in one platform and not get stuck spending months and months and months setting this up? The easiest way is to get my digital quickie, my techie quickstart guide and I'm gonna send that to you for free. You go to donovanrising.comtech T E C H and if you go to donovanrising.com tech I will send you my techie Quick Start guide. It's a little ebook that I've created for you that will show you how to set everything up and I believe you can do this in a weekend. So when people tell me that they're spending months getting their tech set up, it just makes me want to pull my hair out because it's just them delaying generating profit and having a business that's viable. So I think that you can get these basic things set up quickly, easily and I'll show you exactly how to do it with my techie Quick Start guide. Alright? I'll send that to you for free and just follow the instructions. You don't need everything to be perfect. I'm going to show you how to get the basics established and then you'll grow them and elaborate on them and smooth them out and refine them as you grow your business. But you want to get the basics set up and then get making money with your business. Alright? So my friend, I hope this has been beneficial for you. Technology is one of the places where people get the most stuck when it comes to online business or even physical business with some online components. So if you have colleagues or friends that also need help with their tech or will you please send this, hit that share button, send them a DM or a text with a link to this episode. And as always, if you learn something valuable from this, then go down to Apple Podcasts and just give us a quick rating and review and share what you learned. That means a whole bunch to me and to my team that helps produce this show. So I hope that you have a smooth saving experience with your technology. By the way, if you already have a website set up or an email set up, yes, you can easily move them all over to GrooveFunnels or or Kajabi. And I recommend that you do have everything in an all in one platform. It will just make your life so much easier, save you so much time and then you can spend that time doing things that are actual revenue generating activities, things that really light you up, more areas where you really want to show up in your business, not just the technology. All right, so best of luck to you and I will see you on the next episode.