Episode 028 - Getting High Paying Clients with Johnson Emmanuel

Are you finding it challenging when you're caught up in all the minutia of marketing, those vanity metrics out there, the likes, the followers, the fans, and you just feel that it's not moving the needle for your business? On today's episode, we're going to address that issue and we're going to be going all the way to Africa. Johnson Emmanuel is our guest today. He's known as the Marketing Magician, and that's right, we're going to be talking about how to get top paying clients in today's episode. Let's get started. Welcome to this episode. I am so excited to be joined with Johnson Emmanuel, who is the founder of one of the fastest growing digital marketing agencies, Havanser. I had to spell it out in my head and pronounce it that way, Havanser. With clients all around the world. The company he took from a one-man squad to a 50-person company. And this part here, I absolutely love. Africa.com refers to him as the number one marketing magician, but his clients and industry leaders also refer to him as a marketing genius. And that's why I'm excited to have him on the show. Johnson, thank you very much for joining me today.

I am so fired up to be on the show.

Let's go, let's go. Let's do this. So you, I asked you before we started recording if you're in Africa. You're in Africa right now while we're recording, but you also reside in the US, right?

Correct. I'm in Africa right now. I'm in a place called Lagos. Lagos is the biggest city in Africa, like the biggest commercial city in Africa right now. So that's what it is, like what you call the New York of Africa.

Oh, wow. Excellent. What's the weather like there? I'm assuming it's nice and warm.

Yeah, it's hot. I think it's about 28, 29 degrees Celsius thereabouts. That's what it is today.

Excellent! Excellent! So, we're going to be talking about marketing today. We want to give our audience some great valuable tips on how to grow their business, how to get those high-profile clients. But before we want to do that, I want to talk about how you took this from a one-man squad. Tell us your journey of how you started to where you are today with a 50-person company.

Shaun, that's a fantastic question. Thanks for asking. So, First, I'm an African child. Now, you know, as an African child, if, uh, you're faced with more challenges than anybody else in the world. So if a Canadian child, um, needs whatever you— a Canadian child needs to do, you need to do at least 3x of that to be successful. Like, we don't want to talk about the politics and the policies and everything. So I was born into a family, amazing people. And I chose from when I was a little guy that I was going to be good, I was going to be useful to the family, you know. Came into a very humble family, like I said, and I saw when I was 8, I saw a man assault my father, you know. My father had this bicycle he was using, so I saw a man who was pretty rich— not so rich, but, you know, it's just rich enough for, you know, to be okay. So I saw him assault my dad in my presence. I was only 8 years old. So I said, look, I was I'm going to revenge for my dad. So that was my driving force, what, as, as, um, an 8-year-old child. So I was moving, I was growing, and then from each stage to the next stage of my life, I was struggling. Eventually, um, I decided, um, you know, I got into— then I, I mean, I was in primary school, I got into high school, and of course got to university where I was making lots of— I was making some good money as a student, you know. Eventually I left school, things were not so good for me, but I was just struggling, you know, to, to make ends meet. Then the online boom came into Africa, and then, uh, from then around— that was around 2000 thereabout. So then 2004, I got into online marketing, and then 2008, I decided that it was time for me to begin to, you know, not spread my tentacles to get clients from around the world. So I made my switch. Instead of working with clients in Africa, I started working with clients outside of Africa in 2008. So I took a one-man agency. I just started, you know, as a one-man guy. Then Avanza wasn't born. What was born then was what I call Kore Fusion. That was the agency I was using then. So, uh, then from there, Avanza came, you know, from one-man team in 2008. I took the company, we grew in 2016. We experienced, um, you know, an unprecedented growth in the company. Like, unprecedented. Like, it was really unprecedented. So I felt it was time to switch the company from Korefusion to Avanza. Avanza means growth. It's a Hebrew word for growth. So we changed that to growth, and then eventually I took the company, we moved, we started adding more people, and then here we are. Yes, where we are today. We're good there now.

That's a great story. And you know, being in the marketing space myself, you tend to see that there's a lot of people out there that are doing marketing. Tell me a bit about what you bring to your clients that really has helped you become an industry leader and that marketing genius and really sought after as a company to help people grow their business and grow their brands. What are those key elements?

What we do is this. We do everything differently. People say I'm very controversial, right? And that's true, but my controversies help my clients get results. Isn't that what matters? I mean, I, I come, I look at what people are doing. For instance, um, I'll give you a typical example. 2013, 2012, 2013, a lot of people, every— all over the space on internet marketing, what was told was that, look, if you needed to make money online They would— somebody would tell you you need to be blogging 5 times in a week. Now, while you are at that, while you are trying to blog 5 times in a week, somebody else comes, say, no, you need to start YouTube video. While you are at that, somebody said, no, that's not what to do. What you need to do, you need to start podcasting. While you are at that, somebody said, no, stop that, do live event, right? So there were too many noise in that place, too many noise. That led up to 2015. So what, what we do with our marketing agency We focus on client results. When I say results, I don't mean vanity metrics like likes, social engagement, and all those bullshit people do it about. I don't know if I'm allowed to use that kind of— those things are nonsense. Because here's the thing, you're not going to use those things to get money from the bank. You're not going to bank social media likes and all those kind of things. We focus on the thing that help our client become bigger. What do I mean? A client comes to us, they are not making sales. They say, come to us, say, Johnson, how can you guys help us make more sales? That's what they need, that's what they care about, right? They want to have more money in the bank. They don't care about all these other things, social media likes and all those things. They don't care about it. But the industry leaders want you to believe, because they run programs, they have programs that, you know, the way they get their program is maybe they have social media program. So They believe if you have more followers, you have more money, and that's not true. I mean, we've built massive agency. I don't have huge social media following. I don't have it, and I don't regret it. Why? Because few weeks ago, um, Donald Trump was kicked out of Twitter. He was kicked out few weeks ago. Now imagine you, you're building a magnificent property or a rented apartment. No, I'm not saying social media is not important. Social media stuff are not important. No, they are. Come on, it's very important to be on social media. I love it. I spend lots of my time on Twitter. What I'm saying is we focus on the things that drive really magnificent results for our clients, and that is revenue. We often say to our clients, judge us by how much we make you. That's what we care about. That's what we do. And as a result of that, we also— we now develop some proprietary systems which we use in-house for our client and for ourselves. And these are systems we develop. You cannot find them anywhere else in the world because we developed them, you know. So this is the system we execute for our client's business. We execute them into our client business and our client get the kind of crazy result they get.

That's great. So really the lesson just in what you said there, that a business should be looking at what really matters to them. What are they really ultimately needing to get? Right, is more clients.

I mean, that's, that's the most important thing. You, you, if you run the business, what do you want? What do you want? You want sales. Like, that's what you care about. So not some fancy thing that makes you feel good, what I call egometrics marketing, you know, something like it's all about your ego, like your ego just like it. Like, look, I feel good because I have 20,000 Twitter followers. I feel good about it. Like, am I excited because I have it? But what about when we look at your bank statement? What is it saying? What's your bank statement saying? That's all I care about. That's all I care about. Tell me what your bank statement is saying. If it says your 20,000 Twitter followers, it's good, boom, that's okay, that's fine. But if it says— if it says the opposite, it means you need to change it. That's all I care about. I care about my client making more sales, making more money. I care about my client becoming the king of their jungle. I care about them having more sales. That's all I care about. And that's all I want them to judge me for.

So how do we do this? How do we, how do we help clients become that king of the jungle? Let's get some, you know, let's take this marketing to the street. And let's, let's give some education here on what businesses should think about.

For me, basically, I tell businesses, the first thing you need to know, the model, you need to choose the right business model. Like, if you pick the wrong business model, you're gonna suck in business. That's true. So I want you to pick the right business model. What do I mean by the right business model? Every business has got a model. Domino's has a model. Amazon has a model. Tesla has a model. So what's, what's your model? Now, your model defines your success. Your model defines how much you will make. If you pick the wrong model, you're not going to make money. You're going to be broke. Whether I like it or not, that's true. So I want you to pick the right model. First, ask yourself, what do I want to achieve with this business? That's the first question you need to ask yourself. What do I want to achieve with this business? What's my goal in the next 5 years, in the next 10 years, in the next 15 years, next 20 years? What is my goal? What do I aim to achieve with this business? And that is a question that only you can answer. I can't answer that for you because I don't know you, I don't know what you want or something. But let's assume that you want to have a life of maybe, um, I don't know, maybe in a year you want to have like $500,000 in your bank account or something. Good. If that's what you want to have, that's fine. So you need to— the next thing is you want to determine how do you want to get this money, because you need this money to pay bills, you need money to do all stuff, all manner of stuff you want to do. So you need to tell— you need to determine how do you want to get this money. There are several ways you can get this money. You can decide to sell stuff for $1,000, and then at the end of the day, you need 500 clients or 5,000 clients or thereabouts to buy from you. Or you can just decide to sell stuff for $50,000 and get just a few clients who will work with you during the year. But my approach is this: I often tell businesses that, look, you need to work with what I call cheap pocket clients. That's what I think you should— you need to work with clients who can afford what you are offering. You need to work with clients who can pay you well because they give you less trouble, they give you less stress, and they appreciate what you do more. So you need to work with those kind of clients. I don't care what is it you are selling. I don't care what your competitor— you know, your competitor's price— because that's going to be the next thing you're going to say. You're going to say, but my competitor, the market— there's a market price. There's nothing like market price. There's nothing like market price. There's only your price. Your price. Your own price. What is your price? I don't care what the market is saying. I don't care what they're talking about. I care about what your price is. So you need to determine that by yourself. And for me, I believe strongly it should fall in line with what you want to achieve. Overall with your business. So, go for those kinds of clients. Those are the kinds of clients that will help you hit your goal quickly.

That's great advice. That's great lessons there. Now, a lot of businesses I know when they're thinking about marketing their business and they think of digital marketing, they're thinking of that vanity stuff. They're thinking of the Facebook pages, the YouTube accounts and all that. How do you really reach those clients that are paying your price and not focus on those vanity metrics? How do you use those tools in your opinion to find those people?

Basically, there are two different things. Using Twitter or Facebook page for your personal stuff is different from using it to grow your business. Like, so you can post, do a few posts on Facebook and all those kinds of things. You can do them, that's fine. But if you want to take it to grow a business, you need to bring that your, your card and slot it into Facebook. Tell them, Facebook, go get me people who will pay me. You need to pay for advertisement. You need to do that. That's what you need to do. You need to spend money to get money. That's what you should do. And marketing, like I always say, is not an expense. Marketing is an investment if you know how to— if you know what you're doing, if you know what metrics to judge, if you know what metrics to measure. If you know what to do, marketing is an investment, a huge investment, a huge investment. But you know, most people are very skeptical when it comes to, you know, doing Facebook or spending money on ads or stuff like that, because the general perception is that, um, you know, what do you call it now, marketing doesn't work for me, Facebook is not working for me, and all those kind of things. Those are the things people spend their time on. They talk more about those things instead of actually looking for solution to the problem that they seek to solve. So Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all those things, they can help you grow your business in a way that you can never imagine if you know what you're doing.

Absolutely. Now, do you have a story of a client, obviously without telling us who they are, unless you can, but a story of a client you work with where you were able to really take your approach and turn them to a very profitable path to success?

Well, well, truth is, I, I have lots of clients I'm going to talk about. Like, if we could talk about clients— like, I've been in this game for 17+ years now. We'll be running Facebook ad for more than 10 years. So I've been in this game for a long time. So I could talk about client results from different things, like from different perspective. So, um, I, I ran an ad for myself. We're hosting an event in Africa I ran an ad. It was a test ad. I did that. That was way back 2017. So for the test ad we wanted to do, so I wanted to find out if, um, radio and Facebook, which of them was more profitable. So we ran an ad on both platforms. We spent the same money, the same budget on this platform. Guess what happened? We had way more people coming from Facebook than it came from radio. How do I know? We had dedicated lines and we had ways to know which one was coming from where. Not just that, the people who came for the event will also notice that the most people who came from Facebook also bought— more of them bought our stuff at the event than the guys who came from radio. So radio ad, do I— am I saying it doesn't work? No, I'm not saying so. I'm just telling you my result. So you can judge for yourself. Now, recently I worked for a client. We, we had one of our clients who was in the software industry. What we did for them, we gave them sign-up. Total budget they spent, you know, was— they're based in the UK— so the budget they spent in their ad was about £34,000. So we ended up giving them, within a space of 3 months, we ended up giving them £177,000 back. Now you gave me £34,000, I'm giving you back £177,000. That's a lot, that's a lot of this thing. So there's lots of results. If I have a crazy result of a client who gave us about $200,000, uh, in ad spend, which they spend— now when I say give, it's not like they literally gave us the money, we managed the account for them. So not like they just took the money and gave to us, no, we managed the account for them, run the campaign, did everything for them. So at the end of the day, Facebook told us this is worth what we spent, and we saw it because that account was debited. And then at the end of the day, after 200— about 200-something plus thousand dollars— so we ended up giving them— now this was within a space of 14 days— we ended up giving them £1 million— $1 million— back. So they got way over, over £1 million, and they are in the education space. As well. So there are lots of results like that. But I'm not here to talk about my results and stuff we do for clients. I'm here to tell you that, listen, if you know, if you focus on this stuff I'm going to tell you today and the stuff I've told you, you're gonna, you're gonna blow up your business in a way you least expect. Like, there's huge opportunity right now in the world that a lot of businesses are not thinking. I hear people talking about, you know, making loads of all manner of excuses. What are those kind of excuses they're making? Some of them say, look, the economy is down, coronavirus is here. But here's the thing, people are still making loads of money. You know, if you're, if you're on, if you are not running ads in 2020, this is the time to run ads. This is time to do stuff. I'm not saying you should come to us, you don't have to come to us, but I'm saying you should do it for the good of your business and for your own good. Get, go after clients who have money, clients what I call deep pocket clients. Go after this kind of client. And then run campaign that will help you, you know, get this client and get them on a consistent, predictable basis.

Absolutely. Now I have to ask you this because I ask everybody this question: what do you love most about the work that you're doing?

Ah, nothing excites me like helping a client get results. Nothing makes me happy like that. So because every day I meet entrepreneurs and businesses who are struggling they come to us either as a consulting client or coaching client or as an agency client, right? Because we do either agency, whatever, we do those three. So when they come to me and then they're like, look, I have— in fact, one time in Africa, a lady flew all the way to come meet me and she told me that there's a problem. I said, what's the problem? She said, our neighbor who incidentally is a competitor, was using something like black magic on her. So what happened is that that neighbor or that competitor was getting all the business, but she wasn't getting all the business. So like, wait a minute, what does that mean? She said yes. Now I wanted to laugh, but I just couldn't laugh. I had to hold myself because I didn't want to embarrass her. I don't want to make her feel bad. But when we sat down that day, We did some strategy together. When we were done, she started getting sales. So it had nothing to do with the black magic, magical power or something, or some kind of juju or whatever, but it's about having stuff. So when I, when I'm able to change stories like that, when I hear those good things, when I hear that people are winning, it makes me happy. That's the other thing. Like when I hear that somebody is almost dying, not literally, that the business is almost dying, and I'm able to go there like one kind of Superman with a magical power. I just go save the person's life and the person's business. That makes me happy. That's what I live for, actually.

I love it. I love the story. Now, you have a book, Deep Pocket Clients.

Yes, I have a book called Deep Pocket Clients. So Deep Pocket Clients is an amazing book I wrote, and I'm not saying this because I'm the author of the book. Based on the reviews Like, I am humbled. I'm really humbled by the reviews from, like, everybody talking about the book. Like, like, this is just crazy. This is crazy. And I appreciate everybody, but I think it's an amazing book, and people from around the world would get the book. Um, like, people should get it. If I encourage everyone who needs it to get the book, it's going to help. It's basically about how you can get clients who have money, like deep pocket client. Basically, you can get those clients who have money, you know, and we ship the book anywhere, anywhere around the world. We're shipping out anywhere around the world. So I'm gonna get one.

I'm looking on the website right now.

Okay, that's good. So I, I think, I think because I— all my stuff, my strategy of getting Because basically we work with big— with clients who sell expensive stuff, luxury items, e-commerce stuff, real estate, consulting, service providing, whatever kind of thing. Like, you want clients who will pay you good for your service. That's what the book is all about. And the, the strategies there are very controversial, but they are extremely effective. I mean, at least based on the result people are getting. People are talking like it's just something every business owner needs to have by their side. And not because, again, not because I'm the author, but because I know it's a book that the market needed. That's why I brought it out to the market.

For sure. I'm looking forward to reading it. Now, just before we wrap up the show here, is there anything that's emerging in the marketing world that businesses need to pay attention to this year coming into, you know, maybe into 2021 that you're seeing that's like, this is what you should be focusing on now to prepare yourself for future success?

Now, the truth of the matter is I always tell people, stop the shiny object syndrome. That's what I say every time. Stop the shiny object syndrome. Like, I don't know why people always do that. Like, new thing come, they're chasing new stuff. Like, like, seriously, that's what people do. Now, the madness right now, it's Clubhouse. Everyone is chasing Clubhouse, right? I'm not— I don't have anything against it. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not even saying it's good either. But I'm saying that's the new madness. Now beyond Clubhouse, there are lots of crazy stuff. TikTok is there. People like— listen, what will you— what you need to focus on in your business is whatever will help you make more sales and more revenue. That's all you should focus on. Everything else is a distraction. That's right, everything else is a distraction. So focus on the stuff that will help you make more sales, close more clients. That's all you should focus on. And you want to do that in a nice way. You don't want to be so aggressive because if you're aggressive— if you're— if, if a salesman becomes aggressive, it means the marketing— the salesman has a bad marketing. Because the sales— marketing is supposed to make sales very easy. So if your marketing is pressurized, manipulative, or you cajole people to buy your stuff, it means your sales— your marketing has a lot of problems. So you need to fix your marketing so you will not be shutting up people. Let people sell themselves to you. You. And in deep pocket client, I talk more about how you can close client and both of you are happy. The client is happy, you're also happy. In our company, you would not believe this, we do not pressurize people. In fact, we have a waitlist of clients, 6 months, who are on the waitlist to work with us in our agency. But for our cosmetic client, we also have lots of clients who also want to work with them because they know can help them, they know we're not going to be manipulated, they know we care about them genuinely. And that's what like I say you need to genuinely care about your customer. Genuinely, not this kind of fake thing because you need the money. No, but when you care about them, they in turn will give you the money you seek. That's what I believe, and that's what works for us and for our clients as well.

Well, Johnson, you've given us a lot of great information, a lot to focus on. I, I want to thank you so much for, for joining me today. And what we'll do is when we publish the episode We'll put a link to your agency, a link to where people can get the book Deep Pocket Clients, and if they want to reach out to you, they can. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Boom.

Thank you, guys.