Ep580: Ralph Burns – Create Value First, Then Sell

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And that mission has led me to create to become a better investor community in the community, you get access to our global asset allocation strategies, stock portfolios, and our institutional and grade Investment Research weekly live sessions and the risk reduction lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests go to my worst investment ever.com right now to claim your 50% lifetime discount. Exclusive for podcast listeners, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Ralph burns rounds, are you ready to join the mission?

Ralph Burns 00:59
I am ready to join the mission. Andrew,

Andrew Stotz 01:03
you know, I'm excited to have you on because you've been whispering in my ear for a long time now, and that is through your podcast. So let me introduce you to the audience. Ralph Burns is the founder and CEO of tear 11, a digital marketing agency that utilizes a proprietary system called customer acquisition amplification, to unlock the online potential of purpose driven businesses to help them scale and grow. Rouse 100% virtual agency with people in 30 plus countries and six continents manages a portfolio of social media advertising customer accounts in over 57 industries with an annual spend in excess of $100 million. His podcast, perpetual traffic has been downloaded well over 8 million times and has helped 10s of 1000s of people grow their businesses through online traffic and conversion strategies. Round splits his time between Boston and Cape Cod, Massachusetts with his wife and two college age sons around take a minute and tell us a bit about the value that you bring to this wonderful world.

Ralph Burns 02:22
Yeah, I mean, well, the podcast is you mentioned is certainly an outlet for me to influence people. And as you know, podcasting is a tremendous medium. And I've been really fortunate to be a part of that with digital marketer for going on six years now. So I would say, the industry and the business that I chose a tear 11 was really just a vehicle for growing online businesses. And we just so happened to do it through different ways. And you know, back in 2013, we kind of pivoted to a full service, digital marketing paid traffic agency, we were an SEO agency before that we're, you know, doing affiliate stuff is that we just use the best platforms that we thought were out there for acquiring brand new customers, and then enhancing their long term value, which is why people come to us, it's, it's really easy to go out. If you're running traffic and just retarget the people that already know who you are. It's a whole lot harder. And David Ogilvy who's one of my favorite advertisers of all time, probably the most well known advertiser, he was more of a brand advertiser. And he always said, the hardest advertising is direct response. And I think I'm drawn towards hard things, for whatever reason, I think that's probably led to my thinning hairline, and my heart condition, and all the other sorts of things that go along with it. But I know it's really hard thing. And I knew that if I could do that, if I could acquire customers, for businesses and, and enhance their long term value, I'd always have a job. And so prior to starting tier 11, I was in the corporate world, and I was in sales. And I said to myself coming out of college, and I could sell stuff for anyone, I'll always have a job. I've just translated that over to digital. And that's in essence, what we do. So we use digital marketing, we use advertising, we use something that we call customer acquisition amplification, which is a whole super system of traffic and conversion and messaging, and everything that goes along with it. All that is is a vehicle to help businesses grow. And when we do that, as a team, and as an agency, we feel pretty good about what we're doing because we win, they win. Everyone wins. And especially due to the fact that we really do only work with purpose driven businesses, ones that we really feel passionate about that really do have something that will change the world for the better. We all feel pretty good when we're successful and in growing those businesses through what we do at 1011.

Andrew Stotz 04:57
Well, there's a lot of value and for listeners out there, you know perpetual traffic is one of my top listens on my podcast because it's really what we need is perpetual traffic. And I just was thinking that you know, I have a lot of my listeners are, some of them are financial people like me and you know other people that want to start their own businesses and all that. And I thought maybe we could discuss the way I did my business and you know, some tips and ideas that you have, that could help all of us. And because the way I did my business, first of all, I spent 30 years of my life to voting every moment I could to learning everything I could about finance. It's just such a fascinating topic to me. I've studied all the way up to a PhD, I have a CFA Chartered Financial Analysts, you know, a designation, I was president of the Chartered Financial Analyst in Thailand, I've done everything. And all of my work is all about finance. And so when it came time to create, for instance, one or two or three of my online courses, what I did is I started creating the course. And then later, after I created the course, I realized, oh, wait a minute, I need to get customers. And it's like, I kind of realized I did it all in reverse. And in some cases, I had to completely throw out what I did, in other cases, okay, I happen to be writing it in such a way that it appealed to the market to some extent. But then, as probably a typical guy that knows nothing about marketing, what I did is I went out to my friends and family, and I got immediate success. 27 people signed up for it. And I thought, fantastic. And then I thought, Oh, my God, now I gotta bring a new product to these 27 people to be able to continue my business. And eventually, I woke up and realized, no, no, I need new customers, I need that perpetual traffic. And that's where I just hit a roadblock, I would say, it became a lot harder than what I realized. I've worked on rewriting my copy on my pages. I've worked, tried to do Facebook, I've tried Google, I've tried SEO, I've tried to live, I've tried, and I've never really, you know, been able to get success in it. So that is kind of my story. And maybe I know that it's probably the story of some of the other people listening, maybe you could just give some kind of general advice of the way you look at how to think about this type of stuff.

Ralph Burns 07:21
Yeah, I mean, if you're selling a service online, if you're selling a digital product online, it's hard to sell it to cold to cold traffic, we always talk about like cracking the code on cold traffic, we call it level one traffic, but which basically is the hardest kind because they're really unaware of who you are. They're unaware of maybe even the problem that they have that you solve in some cases. So I mean, just sort of boiling it down to there's really this sort of five, sort of levels of awareness when it comes to marketing online. In essence, and it's, you know, from this book that we'll reference probably later on in the show, but I mean, the point is, is, that's the hardest thing, once you go to your friends and family, and they buy, then what, and you have a proof of concept there, which is good. And that's a good start. The hard part is like now you're trying to sell something, you gotta go out and find new people. So how do you do that? Well, the biggest thing that you can do in the financial space and the digital product space, in the E commerce space, is give them something of value in exchange for their contact information, or maybe even their time. And we refer to that as a transitional lead magnet, or a transitional call to action, or a lead magnet, in essence, so it's not the thing that you really want them to get. But it's something free that they get that you give away, that's very high value, in exchange for their name and email. So, you know, in the financial space, you might give something away on your website. That is, you know, the five biggest mistakes people make in their finances over 50, or whatever it happens to be, you know, like, whatever your market is. So you're calling out problem, you're calling out, you know, potentially a solution, you're calling up your demographic, if that's sort of the demographic that you're going for, you know, five of the best mutual funds that no one knows about, like whatever it is like you can brainstorm this kind of stuff. But ultimately, it may be, you've got a course. And then you pull out a part of that course, that's the best part that you know that your customer your ideal customer has the biggest problem with and that's what you are, in essence online, you're the guide. You're the one who helps the hero, which is the customer ultimately achieve the goal. And typically there's some kind of big problem that's standing in the way of their goal. And if you can help solve that, then you're now the trusted adviser. You're now the guide that can help them get to the promised land. But typically, people don't want to buy from strangers. So you need to give away something of value. And, for example, what you're doing here on this show is valuable, like you give away content here. That's, that's highly valuable, they get to know unlike you, and then ultimately, maybe they go check out your website, maybe they maybe they buy, maybe they don't. But you got to figure that probably 99% of people that go to your website aren't going to buy. So you have to give them something of value. To make that sort of transition from somebody who kind of knows who I am to now we're in a relationship. Now I can put you in an autoresponder, a drip campaign, that'll maybe subtly give them even more information. And then every now and then you throw in an email that says, hey, you know, you need financial advice, maybe you're retiring, or maybe you're rolling over your IRA, you don't know what to do about it, you know, book a call with my team. So that's kind of how you do it. So you do build that relationship, I mean, that the very top of the funnel is really as something like a podcast, and then sort of the next step is that transitional call to action. And then ultimately, the big thing, which is maybe book a call or actually purchase. So

Andrew Stotz 11:09
that's a great flow. I think what you just said was that I proved the proof of concept. And you know, that con concept that you have, you know, testing it out, unfortunately, in that case, Rob, I think I proved proof of friendship. When the 27 people bide, you know, I, I can prove that I have some friggin loyal friends and family. So, but I, I can now, you know, it reminds me of, you know, some I've heard people talk about, you know, give away your best stuff, you know, and all that. But what I'm hearing from you is take something that is very valuable within what you do, and give that knowing that by them seeing the value of what you've delivered in that they want more. And also, I think the other thing I would add, that I've kind of come to realize is that, and it's the same with means that you know, I want that solution. I just don't want to work for it. Or I just don't have time to work for it. And so what I realized now more than ever, is the idea that people need help with implementation. So if you give away a lot of great information, that you think, oh my god, I'm giving away the shop, they're not implementing it. They're still facing the problem. They're still facing the challenge, and that's why one of the courses I have is the valuation masterclass. And I turn one part of that into the valuation masterclass boot camp, and I in fact, I always keep this with me. When times get tough, and the students are lagging, I kick butt and I keep the pressure on them, I drip content to them. And I build a community where they support each other and it's a six week bootcamp process is intense. But what I've seen now is the value if I just have a typical online course and I put it out there and people attend, only about 10% will get to the end and fully completed. But with a bootcamp I've got a 70% completion rate and that is because I realized that it's about helping them make this transformation not just the information and that's one big lesson that I've learned that validates the idea of giving out good quality content knowing that people need more than just that I one last thing that I I would hold on

Ralph Burns 13:54
Yeah, you can still hear me Same thing as before just like you just like that just you disappeared

Andrew Stotz 14:00
okay

Ralph Burns 14:08
let me try. I might be the box that runs this microfleece got an editor that does the editing let me see if I can reconfigure it here. Just give me a second. I think I'm gonna like be the mic just clipping out anything

Andrew Stotz 14:43
testing 123

Ralph Burns 14:46
Hey, go back. Okay. Good. I unplugged and plugged back in the microphone like that's. I have no idea. Anyway, sorry about that. That's

Andrew Stotz 14:59
no problem at all. So we'll just keep going. What I was I can't remember where I was now. But I was saying something very profound, I'm sure. But yes, I think Well, I think that there's one, I guess what I would like to do is just maybe start right now, I'm just going to start again. And I'm going to ask about Facebook specifically. And so let's do that. So let's start again, right now we'll continue where we were, and I'm going to basically ask you, one of the questions that I've had is, does Facebook even work anymore?

Ralph Burns 15:41
Well, it's a lot more challenging than it was two years ago, that's for sure. And it's interesting because there's been a big shakeout in our space. And there's been a lot of agencies that have really sort of dumped it. But it's funny, because we talked to Facebook every two weeks or so, I mean, it's meta now. And they say, there we are one of the only agencies that they have, and the direct response space that's actually growing in our ad spend. So which is an indication that, ever since the iOS 14 changes came, and Facebook, really, they didn't see that one coming, that was a big change. If you've heard about this, basically, all Apple devices now ask you whether or not you want to track and they've done like a really great job of TV ads and everything else with it. But for advertisers, you lose, especially if you're sort of in an upscale market, you lost a lot of visibility into your iOS users, which means you're tracking all of a sudden is a big nightmare. All of a sudden, you've got conversions and opt ins, like we were talking about before leads purchases that are not tracking through the system. So you have to figure out an alternate way of sort of triangulating all your different sources to say, Alright, these are the results that I'm getting. And this is where it's coming from, and from this campaign, and all these other sorts of things. So, for us, it's gotten a lot more challenging. It was no doubt about it. But we actually feel right now that we've come out the other side of that with some really good solutions, it forced us to become better. And out of that 100 million dollars in ad spend, I would say probably 80% of that now is still in Facebook and Instagram might be 75%. I mean, our Google ad spend is growing crazy right now, because that's just a tremendous platform always has been even better now. But yeah, I mean, it's much harder. And if you got listeners out there that have just sort of given up on Facebook, I don't blame you. Because he really do have to stay ahead of the curve. One of the things that we do in this customer acquisition amplification, super system is in essence is all about the front end messaging, and really connecting with your avatar, just like we were talking about a few seconds ago. It's like, what's their biggest problem? How can you hit them right between the eyes with a message that really resonates and they stop the scroll? Like, how can you get their attention, and you really have to do that research, you really have to do that work ahead of time for us takes like two weeks for every new customer. For us to figure out messaging avatar, what we're going to say and those front facing ads so that they stop the scroll. And everybody's thumbing through their lens and look at anybody anywhere on any social platform on their phone. They're just thumbing away, what when they stop, you've actually done your job as an advertiser and a marketer. And it's that that's the most important thing now than it ever has been, which is almost a throwback to the 1950s and the 1960s. Like the old admin, back then, which I'm a huge fan of. So for us, it's been challenging, yes. But it's forced us to step up our game quite a bit and really talk about the problems that the market has for a particular customer. And then positioning the product in such a way so that it's the logical next step, but the solution to that problem, and that's really what we do day in and day out here at your lovin,

Andrew Stotz 19:14
it kind of goes back to what you talked about, originally, which was the idea of, you know, doing hard things. And one of the challenges with what you're facing with the changes in Facebook and sticking with it is that you end up coming out the other end of that before anybody else and you end up with some strength that others may not have because they decided I'm not going to do that hard thing. I'm just going to jump to something else. One of the questions I had was I had a guest on AJ Wilcox, who's expert in LinkedIn ads, and he said something. Yeah, he said something to me that really helped me to kind of put LinkedIn ads into perspective. He said on the podcast, he said something like, you gotta have a high ticket offer. If you're not going if your offers not $5,000 You know, the money you're going to spend on LinkedIn ads is going to be difficult to really profitably, you know, to make a profit out of it, that number may have changed. That may not be the exact number that but it was a big number. So if you're selling a 14 $99, you know, $14.99 cent book, you don't do it through LinkedIn ads. And I just curious, like, has something changed on Facebook? Or what is that threshold? When it comes to Facebook? On average? Obviously, everybody says, Yeah, but I'm gonna make an amazing ad, and it's just gonna go viral. But for the average, what would you say is kind of the right price point?

Ralph Burns 20:36
So it's a great question. And AJ is super smart. When it comes to LinkedIn. I think he's probably my favorite LinkedIn person that's out there. And he's been on the show. But I think he's right. I mean, they get the cost on LinkedIn are astronomically higher than they are on Facebook. And we do a lot of LinkedIn. I mean, we're a high end purchase, you know, we have long term value customers stick around for a long period of time, we devote a lot of energy over there we do. And we do Facebook, we do Google, we do all that sort of stuff. So totally makes sense. When it comes to Facebook, though, like there is a range. I mean, we have, you know, we have customers that our high end, you know, $10,000 courses, $15,000 courses, all the way down to products that are $20. In the E commerce space. So it depends, I hate the answer, it depends. But it's a pretty wide range. If you've got an impulse buy something that all you need to do is just show how cool the thing is. And, you know, you're in the 20 to $50 range, you can sell that on Facebook, but you really need to know your numbers. Yep, that's the key is like, what can you pay to acquire a new customer. And for some people, when this whole thing happened with iOS, the cost just went skyrocketing, and they were not able to, to continue to advertise on Facebook as their primary channel. When I say a 20 to $50 purchase, that's great. But typically, for us, that's a front end purchase, because there isn't back end and to AJs point, there's something on the other side of that, that you need to be able to monetize whether it's some kind of higher ticket offering, or it's, you know, we have customers that all they want to do is just acquire customers and their acquire customers at breakeven, for their first 30 to 60 days, these are bigger companies that you know, have a treasure trove of, of money to be able to spend, but it's sort of depends on the business. But it's a recurring model, once you get one sale, they will customers will be on that thing for anywhere from nine to 15 months. So you need to know your numbers. So lower end, you can do it. But you need to understand really what the economics are, I think the day is of just selling 20 $30 stuff $10 Stuff on Facebook, in the newsfeed are kind of gone. Yeah, you know, if you don't have some kind of sales funnel on the back end.

Andrew Stotz 23:09
So ladies and gentlemen, if you want to learn more about traffic, go to the podcast, perpetual traffic. And if you're in a situation where you're like, No, I need help right now. Just go directly to tier 11. I'll have all the links in the show notes. Well, Ralph, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to and then tell us your story.

Ralph Burns 23:41
Well, this was one of my first businesses. It was a business that I started that eventually got me into what I'm doing right now because I sort of pivoted and most people do pivot their first or second business doesn't usually work out all that well. Although I have met some 20 year old kids sometimes we get like, they just figure it out like that they've got you know, they're in their early 30s. And they've already made like three exits with you know, eight figure businesses, I hate those people. No, I'm just getting good for them. But that's the aberration. I think that's really most people go through some sort of failure. So for me, it was that I worked in the corporate world for you know, 20 years. I'm no spring chicken here. But the point is like, that was a great experience for me. I always wanted to start my own business. So I was in sales and sales management, like I mentioned before. So I said, Well, if my wife gave me the four hour workweek for my ninth wedding anniversary. And it was the probably the best gift she's ever given me. She always gives me books. She reads like 200 books a year. So when she gives me a book, she's vetted it like she knows I'll read it. So I immediately read I think I gave her like an Ethernet cable For an Android, it's like embarrassing. But anyway, I definitely got the better end of that deal. So anyway, so ninth wedding anniversary, I read this thing. I'm working at a big diagnostic company in the medical field. You know, I got the big job, the big, you know, the company, car expense account, all that sort of stuff, all the trappings of success. So I'm, err, quoting success, but I'm miserable. So I read this book, and I realized people are actually making money online. So like this thing called the internet, which is kind of crazy to think about today. It's totally dating myself. But anyway, and this is 14 years ago, so. So I decided I would start a website, that if my employer found out about it, they would be excited because it would be all about the thing that I'm doing every single day. And I loved managing salespeople, I was a regional director for this big company, got a bunch of people I know how to hire, I was continuously the top of the charts for rankings, all in sales and sales management. And so I started a company, and, you know, got my S corp, and did all that, and then launched it, you know, launched my own blog, and it was in the sales management training space. So I, whatever I learned from the four hour workweek, I basically followed it and listen to a bunch of podcasts, built up my big list of, you know, 10,000 subscribers, mostly from India, and parts of the world of Africa and areas that I really shouldn't have been marketing to. But I racked up all kinds of credit card bills, I think it was my largest Bill was about $20,000 on one credit card. So I build up this list. And then I spend another 10 grand on a website and a membership site. So I've got this list, sales management training, I build this whole list, and then I launched my membership, and went through the Jeff Walker Product Launch Formula. 2.0 I think it was and I was really excited. I'm like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna just crush it.

Andrew Stotz 27:13
You've just done everything, right. In that sense, you know, like listening to that. It's like, everything, you know, put up a website put up interesting things build a list. Malo, Jeff Walker launched the membership, you know, like, these are, you know, continue.

Ralph Burns 27:32
So sounds great, right, in theory. So, but yes, I felt like I had done it the right way. And I was a really smart entrepreneur. So I launched this thing, Jeff Walker style, and do the, you know, the sequence and everything leading up to it, the videos, everything else. And finally, I launched the thing, and I have like a three day launch. And first day, zero sales. Second day, zero sales, the third day, to sales. And of launch. The product was $67 a month. And I think they both stayed for one month. It was a guy from Cyprus, like the country, and then a guy from New Jersey. And out of my 10,000 person list, which I had probably spent 20 $30,000 on this whole venture to sales. And I held on to that business for another year, another two, three years just trying to make it work. I started to learn internet marketing and affiliate marketing. All the while, my employer found out about my Moonlighting. And a co worker was actually looking up sales management training and found me in the launch and reported it to my boss's boss. And they came to me and said, Well, you can't be doing this stuff. But we can't tell you not to do it. We can't fire you. But it's highly advised that you stopped doing this moonlighting stuff and your hours, you know, after work and on weekends. Eventually, they did fire me a year later, they figured out some kind of way to get me on this Medicare thing. But anyway, that's a whole other story. But the point was, is even after I launched it, I didn't I didn't actually sell anything more. I sold no more than those 260 $7 memberships that lasted for one month, and I spent $30,000 on it. So the point is, is there's a couple of different things. The first thing that I came away from that is I realized that wasn't sales management training that I loved. It was actually it was the marketing that I loved. Even though I wasn't really good at it, I loved it. And that led me into my next venture which was affiliate marketing, which is basically selling other people's stuff with paid traffic. And that ultimate He led to what I'm doing now. So I look back on it. It was like my worst investment ever. And, but I learned so much from it. And without that, I don't think I'd be here today. And it's you know, I think that's obviously the purpose of this show is like, Hey, you make mistakes do you learn from her? Do you not learn from him? Well, you better damn learn from him because this one was pretty expensive now $30,000 in debt, to me now is not that big of a deal, I suppose. But back then that was all the money in the world

Andrew Stotz 30:34
was oh, putting it down all down on the table? Like

Ralph Burns 30:38
putting it all down? Putting on black 17? Exactly the roulette wheel.

Andrew Stotz 30:42
For the listeners out there. Let's help them understand. Clearly. What lessons did you learn? How would you summarize 123.

Ralph Burns 30:54
The first thing is, to far more research in your market, what I did is I actually mistook interest in a free lead magnet, which just like we talked about, in the early part of the show, I did all that stuff. I miss took that interest as the acquiring actual buyers, these are these are managers, I think, that are just getting free stuff. But in actuality, in the sales management training world, the corporate training world really was what I was going after. Sales Managers and salespeople don't pay for their own training, very few do those freaks like me that actually love management, I'll read all the management books and all the sales books and all that stuff. And that's how I got good at sales and sales management. But most people don't do that. They wait for their company to buy it for them, and then they're forced to do it. And I completely miss took the intent of a lead magnet or some valuable piece of content with that turning into actual buyers, because I didn't realize that the sales management training market was more enterprise than individual. So do your research, is the first lesson. The second lesson is, you know, launch products in a minimally viable way, you know, the Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a great book. And I read this unfortunately, after this debacle. But I really I did pivot the entire business just like he had laid where the term pivot sort of came from. But the point was, is get some sense from the market as to whether or not they can buy, don't go out and build this whole thing. Get a proof of concept first, and sell one thing that takes you maybe a couple of days to create, as opposed to selling this massive content membership site with a webmaster and development person, all this sort of stuff, I built it completely the wrong way. So get your minimally viable product out there. I could have sold like a $47, ebook on sales management, how to motivate your sales reps, right? I could have sold that first. And I and what I should have done is taken all those leads, and then send them to that one sales page for that 140 $7 product. See how many people would buy if nobody bought? I kind of would know, well, maybe this is a bad idea. So I did it completely in reverse. And it's a lesson I've never forgotten. And I still sort of rely on that when we're dealing with customers to this very day. Because we do a lot of offer augmentation, offer analysis sort of after the click after we do the ads, let's look at your offer. You know, how can we make it irresistible and provide a tremendous amount of value. So we do all that. And I think that's the thing that I never did. And it's funny to sort of think back to it. To this day, though, the one reminder that I do have, Andrew, is that credit card that I put the $30,000 on, I put it on an auto debit plan for the last 14 years. And I just finally paid it off, I think last month as a reminder to never do that ever again. So an

Andrew Stotz 34:27
email, put that one up on the wall, you know that credit card, that's the

Ralph Burns 34:31
credit card, and I never have touched it ever since I've never put anything else on it. But it just made the payments every single month religiously just as a reminder. So

Andrew Stotz 34:41
maybe I'll share a few takeaways that I got from it. I mean, the first thing you talked about the lesson is do your research. And it just so happens that that is the number one most common mistake that I've identified by talking to all these people. And I would say in your case I wrote down a word after which is kind of iterate, iterate through some different offers, which brought this, you know, MVP. And you, you said, you read the Lean Startup after it reminded me of a story when I was 17, I was in a lot of trouble and a lot of trouble with addiction and others. So I, I went into rehab, and I got out of rehab, and I went into a 12 step program, and I got a sponsor. And then, well, I ended up using drugs again, very soon after all that happened. And I remember calling him and he said to me, you're supposed to call me before you get high. After. Oh, so luckily, it eventually took and now it's been 40 years in September, next month, it'll be 40 years, and I haven't gotten high. So that's a good, good outcome. But so I was thinking about the MVP, you know, and that what was outlined in lean startup is amazing. The other thing I was thinking about is that, you know, really, you mentioned that ultimately, you found what you love, you know, through this process. So one of the things that I would say is stay with whatever you're doing, you know, keep trying, keep iterating see, you know, test, be more, be more gentle touch, you know, you don't have to go so deep. I mean, I'm an analyst, and I love to go deep and like a lot of us. But you know, keep a more lighter touch is what I was thinking as you were talking about it. And that's really what MVP is about. And that allows you to then quickly pivot, you know, ultimately, what you're trying to do is figure out what people are willing to pay for. And now you also mentioned about that people, and this is this is the I think a critical lesson from this is that you've got to really understand your customer and their wallet, their spending behavior, you may have a product that you think they want, and they may want it, but you may have the wrong alignment. And I'll tell you a story, Ralph. In my own experience, I worked for a big investment bank, and I had been working for investment banks for 20 years. And then I was creating a product through this broker that we worked for, where it was buy these 10 stocks. And I would talk about these 10 stocks, I would modify that portfolio, it was exactly what clients wanted. They wanted good ideas that were actionable. And that the analyst followed up consistently on those stocks, so that they could really build their portfolios. So when the company basically said, well, we don't need this anymore. I thought, Well, I'm gonna go across the street and do the same thing. I talked to my boss, and we went through everything, contractually, no problem, I went across the street, set up my business, I had this amazing product, I had validated it. I knew I had huge feedback. And then I traveled around the world, every city, I went to London, New York, San Francisco, fully booked, talking about the product, they knew it, it was a no brainer. And when I got back to Bangkok, you know what I found out, I sold zero. And what I had missed was at the core function of an investment manager of fund manager is picking stocks. And therefore, I was basically asking him or her to ask their boss to explicitly pay for what was their core function. Whereas they were paying through brokerage fees, that were normal part of business so that it was hidden, that they were paying for investment ideas. And I completely missed that. And it caused me a lot of suffering for about a year until I realized it isn't gonna work. Now, if I was an expert on Chinese politics, they could have convinced their boss to pay for that. Because they didn't have that competency. They needed that competency for their investing. And it just you know, all of your story reminds me of that particular story. Is there anything else that you would add to the breakdown I've just done of some of the things that you've talked about?

Ralph Burns 39:07
Yeah, I mean, I think the MVP idea like testing the market with the paid something paid. I mean, people will, you know, we talked about your business when you had proof of concept, right? Well, that's, that means it has a pulse. You can sell it to your friends and family. But proof of concept from my perspective is cold traffic, people who don't know who you are. It's the hardest thing and get people that don't know who you are to buy your stuff. Or get people into your sales funnel. In this case of sales management mastery, which I believe it's still actually we still pay for the domain. I don't I think it's banned by Google because I did all this blackhat seo and link building and everything I totally destroyed the site. But anyway, the point is, is that even Need to see whether or not they're going to pull out your their wallet for you. And that's the big thing is like, can you bring that traffic in? Yes, traffic's actually easy. The easy part, I mean, perpetual traffic. The reason why we call it perpetual traffic, because everybody wants it. What they actually need is they need a great offer, right? Because all the traffic in the world doesn't matter. If your offer sucks, yep, you have to have something that people will actually buy and will buy and solves a specific problem in the marketplace. I think that that MVP idea, you you, once you go out to people through any paid channel, whether it's Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, you name it, and you get your first sale, now you have some validation, and it's not your mom, or your uncle or your cousin, somebody actually buys your stuff. Now you have a proof of concept. And you learn as much as you possibly can from that. And sometimes that means going into debt sometimes that if you're really driven, you might not make money off it right from the get go. That's okay, because you're learning all the way. And you're listening to the signals that the market is telling you. And you ultimately pivot and turn it into a business. So, and that's, in essence, sort of what we did at 1011. It's like I was doing all this traffic and running advertising for affiliates. And I met this guy in San Francisco, and he said, Hey, you know, my, my friend is launching this website, where he's this nationally known speaker, can you run our paid traffic? And I was like, great. That was my first customer, my first paid traffic customer, and had a lot of SEO customers sort of before that. But the point was, is like that was our proof of concept. And like, wow, I can actually sell this. And then I did it. One customer, one sort of paid traffic customer. And I did really well with it. I'm like, okay, that's proof of concept. Now I can go out and sort of tell people what I learned, and then acquire new customers that ultimately built a business.

Andrew Stotz 42:07
Yeah, I just while you were talking, I wrote down proof of friendship, proof of insect interest, proof of concept. Like, in a sense, you had a proof of interest that you had a lot of people interested in it. But the ultimate proof of concept is when you say, Okay, are you willing to pay, I want one last thing I would share is that, um, we do a lot of different things. And we do a lot of research in my business. And we have portfolios, and we have institutional style research that we create. And what I have been doing is doing that in a lot of different directions. And we've been talking for a while about a membership. And so recently, we launched a membership in basically, we went out, I talked to some friends about it and went through it. So I have proof of friendship. And then what I did is we said, look, we have got to go out with some offer where price is not like the main issue in the beginning, but there must be a price. So we decided to go out just to my friends and family and the people that I know, saying $9 a month for life, never going to increase the founding membership price. But we are going to add value to this over time. And we got 100 people paying that. And now we set a goal of about one and a half months to deliver value, take their feedback, do one on ones with people identify what they want, reshape our offer all of that stuff and then go out at a higher price and then reshape after we bring in those people and go out at a higher price and you know, ultimately trying to get it up. So I would say that, um, in that case, I think I'm learning from all of my and my guests mistakes. So let me ask ya. So let me ask based upon what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Ralph Burns 44:04
I think going to the market with a low price is actually the way that you describe it is actually really smart. Because the hardest thing is getting somebody to pull their credit card out online. I think it's one of the hardest things to do. And if you can actually do that, whether you make money or don't make money, it's almost irrelevant. That point like you said, like that's the third stage. That's proof of concepts, people who don't know who you are buying something, maybe not at a profit, but they're buying it $9 A month, like that's a great price point. Whatever product you want to sell online or you want to make the next logical step make it so easy, a no brainer that they can't possibly say No, I mean, we've sold we've done book funnels for customers, which are basically free plus shipping, like get this book mailed to you and it's $14.95 Since for the shipping, but you get the book for free. In essence, like that's a breakeven because businesses understand are at the back end of that we maybe have a high end coaching, we maybe have a membership site, we maybe have all these other sorts of products. But the point is, is like, at the front end, you're making an irresistible offer. And if you can do it so that what you pay is what you deliver, and value, in essence is 10 times the amount they pay, that becomes a really good offer. So if you're delivering 1000s of dollars in value, price, it is, you know, $97 if it's hundreds of dollars of value, and it didn't really cost you all that much. You know, maybe price it nine bucks, you know, but start low and then increase exactly like you said, you're doing it, it's actually really smart to do it that way. Because you've got, you've got your base of customers that are now hopefully they're loving this thing at a really nice price point that you can go back to them test ideas out survey them. Like now you have a list of buyers. Yeah, that's so valuable. Serve the heck out of them and ask them like give them like an Amazon gift certificate to you know, tell me what your biggest problem is with investing right now like that's do a survey monkey survey to that list like something, find out from them. paying customers will tell you, especially if they think they're getting a deal. And you're in essence, you're playing in that laboratory right now. Yeah, you're not making money yet. But you're on the path to do it. Because you've got buyers, as opposed to just what I did. I had 10s of 1000s of opt ins for people that were never going to buy. I never actually made that one little step. And I actually think if I offered them a $7 product they never would have bought anyway, which would have been the signal that this is a sucky market, like you're barking up the wrong tree. But for you, you've got validation now. And now you can just launch it and get it to the next level.

Andrew Stotz 47:11
Yeah, and we're keeping a list of all the things that they're, you know, asking for there's we, we have a cheat sheet that I use for markets. And the one guy said, Wait a minute, Vietnam is not on here. Oh, shoot, let's get Vietnam on there. But I said, Look, we value companies, what would be a company that you want to see? And they said, Oh, Alibaba and Tencent. Oh, okay, good, then that gets onto the list. And then I'm starting to do one on one. So she I see, unfortunately, Ralph, the problem is, I'm 35 years into my business career, and I'm doing it now. But hey, but you're doing it, you're learning. So let me ask you, what's the resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Ralph Burns 47:53
I would say I mean, I'm going back to sort of the basics, we're starting to do this video series, who are my new marketing manager, it's really it's about the basics of business and how how you're offering your online marketing is all really a fundamental of understanding your numbers and understanding what the purpose of businesses, yes, the purpose of businesses, a lot of things, but at the end of the day, it's like the purpose of your business, the real purpose is to turn a profit. Ultimately, you're not doing this for free, or for maybe you are doing it for fun, if you're independently wealthy. But unless you're venture capital backed, like that's the big thing. So how much can you pay to acquire a customer, you know, talk about like real basic stuff about like, everything that we're sort of talking about here on today's show. And I think one of the best resources that I've found is any book by Donald Miller is tremendous. If you really want to learn I just think he simplifies everything. He's great. He's been on the show. We got to get him back on the show. He's a super cool guy.

Andrew Stotz 48:55
Wouldn't you love to hear his worst investment ever? Oh, my God. Yeah. He's amazing. Yeah, he's story brand is just, I just read it over and over and over again. And just just the one part that you're not the hero. Yes, the customer is the hero. The hero that's your the guide. Yep, exactly. So that's a great resource. Ladies and gentlemen, get any book that Donald Miller has. Story brand is one that I like. He also is got an email that he sends out on a regular basis with good little video clips and that and I would say that we can't go further without saying go to perpetual traffic because and you go through and listen to a lot of the past episodes, there's so much value there. So that would be another resource. Okay, last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Ralph Burns 49:49
By number one goal for the next 12 months for us is I guess business goal and then I've got personal goals but business goal wise is really is. You know, we have taken the last year and a half since the Facebook iOS issue came up and rebuilt our entire team and refocused our energies. And we've got now 70 plus people at tier 11, which is amazing to me. And I think it's like, it's probably like 30 plus countries. Now, I think we just got a guy in Luxembourg last week. But anyway, the point is, is like we've built this team and I, once I was once told by a mentor, you're never gonna have a team all full of a players. You just, it's never gonna happen, you're gonna have A's, B's, and C's, and you kind of get C's, and the whole Jack Welch like vitality curve, and all that sort of stuff, you're never gonna have all the players, I actually feel right now. Like, we've got all A players, all 70 people on our staff are all a players, which has laid the foundation for tremendous growth, like we, you know, we took our hits, like every other Facebook advertiser did, we've diversified, or, you know, all of our product offerings in the last year, any last three years, really, even prior to this change for Facebook. So we were well positioned, but as a result of that it made us stronger, made us smarter, made us more resilient. And it also sort of allowed us to rally around our values and attract the right types of people. So my goal for the next 12 months is to double our sales and double our size with all A players. And my leadership team is really excited about it. And we see a lot of opportunities in the market right now. Because of one of your questions like does Facebook advertising actually work for anyone? Like that's a really common question. And it works if you do it the right way, with the right people, putting in the right effort and the right types of talent. And we really feel like we're positioned for that in the future. I'm pretty excited about that. Because it's been a tough year and a half, two years, but we've learned a lot we've come out the other side even better. So that's what I'm really looking forward to.

Andrew Stotz 52:09
Jeez, I download that lead magnet. Does Facebook even work anymore?

Ralph Burns 52:15
No, it was one of our most popular episodes. And like my email, like broadcast emails, big enough biggest open rates? Is Facebook advertising dead?

Andrew Stotz 52:24
No, well, fantastic. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet joined the become a better investor community, just go to my worst investment ever.com right now to claim your 50% lifetime discount exclusive for podcast listeners. As we conclude, Ralph, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Ralph Burns 52:59
I'm just honored to be on the best titled podcasts on the planet. And to be your guest here today. So I love talking about mistakes and bad stuff that happens because you just learned so much. And it's a total cliche, but you learn way more from your failures than you ever do from your successes. And, you know, at 1011, we say, hey, you know, if seven out of our 10 ads fail, we're in the Hall of Fame. If eight out of 10 fails, and we're probably in like the AAA, you know, we're never gonna get to Cooperstown by any stretch, but like failure is a part of business and as a huge part of advertising. And I just love the fact that you've built an entire podcast and a tribe around that fact, because I'm a big believer in it. So appreciate being on the show today.

Andrew Stotz 53:53
Well, we appreciate having you and that's a wrap. On another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that. Today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.