Wicked Smart Marketing and Systems on Beginner Budgets with Jason Swenk

I’m your bridge and coach for your digital agency from sales, marketing, & operations – Jason Swenk

Audiences, email lists, and budgets don’t have to be massive to bring in serious revenue. Listen in as digital marketing whiz Jason Swenk teaches listeners surprisingly simple ways to execute (and earn) on shoestring budgets.

Jaime’s Interview on Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast

Check out JasonSwenk.com for more info!

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Transcript: Download

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast ? with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you ? the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I?m Jaime Tardy and today on the show we have Jason Swenk. Jason actually interviewed me for his podcast - it's called 'The Smart Agency Masterclass'. We chatted after and he was like 'Actually, I can probably come on your show,' which never happens - usually, when I get interviewed, I can't actually have the person on my show. I'm so excited. He runs JasonSwenk.com, he's had some incredible success with running an agency, selling it for millions and then starting his own digital company and already doing over $1 million in a year so I?m super excited to have him on the show today. Thanks so much for coming on, Jason.

Jason: Well thanks, Jaime. It was so much fun having you on the podcast. We had a good time.

Jaime: We did, it was really awesome. So this time I get to ask you a thousand questions because I think I wanted to ask you a bunch of questions on your podcast and you're not really allowed to do that when you're being interviewed. Now you can't ask me any questions and I can ask you so it will be perfect. So you did 12 years building an agency so tell me how that worked, because there are tons of listeners right now that have agencies.

Jason: I kind of fell into it backwards - I worked for Arthur Anderson, the paper shredding company, before they went out of business and I hated it. I worked for them for six months and one of my best friends looked like Justin Timberlake from N'Sync and so I designed a website called N'Shit. It was really popular in the '90s and people started asking me to design websites for them and I was like 'Wow, I can be the man, I can pick myself and I can do what I want,' and so I started an agency. I struggled for four years - I mean when I started I didn't even know what an invoice was. I remember my first client asking me to send them an invoice and I was like 'What is it?' and there was no Google so I couldn't Google it and I had to figure it out. When I started putting systems in place that's when we really started to hit scale and really get profitable.

Jaime: That's amazing. So four years, though, of not really knowing what you're doing and moving forward - what's that like? I tell the amazing successes at the beginning of the show and everyone's like 'Oh, he's amazing. Oh, wait, four years of crap.' So tell me about that, because that's a long time.

Jason: Oh yeah, I was right out of school so I was used to living on ramen noodles and I didn't have to do too much. I just didn't have the right systems in place. I'm a true believer of having the right systems; systems outperform talent all day long, and before I got really serious about who I was targeting, where I wanted to go, who I wanted to go after and attack and who I wanted to track, I was kind of just aimless. When I say I was struggling, I think for the first four years we were probably under $400,000 in revenue, and then when we really started getting focused and having a specialization and really understanding our clients, we quickly grew over the $1 million mark and we quickly grew over that as well.

Jaime: Nice, so you think system outperforms talent - I love that, tell me about some of the systems that you actually enacted, because I'm sure it's one of those things where everybody hears about systems and they either don't actually do them or they don't do them right.

Jason: Yeah, if you don't have the right systems in place you're just being reactive. Some of the systems, especially in the foundation systems, is knowing where you're going and having that clarity. So many of us fall into the business, kind of like when I designed that website I fell into the business. I didn't know where I wanted to take it, I didn't know that I wanted to sell it one day, I didn't know who my audience was, so you have to get that clarity of where you're going. It's just like Google Maps - it's great software but if you don't put in an address it's useless. That's kind of how business owners are, they're just being reactive and they're taking on the clients that are just coming to them, the ones that they actually want, and then the other systems were around how you deliver the work and be successful. So many people win the business but then they didn't charge the right price so they don't have the right system in order to be profitable or manage it and then their employees are unhappy, how do you manage your employees and make sure that they're inspired, not motivated - I learned that the hard way. If I have to motivate someone, they're the wrong person, so I only worry about demotivating them. There are so many other systems. I always looked at business as kind of 12 systems, from what you need to charge, how do you partner with other people, technology that you use - that's what I'm really harping on right now, the technology, because it allows me to work less than 100 hours a month, which is amazing. When I was at my agency, sure, we were worth well over $1 million but I was a prisoner - I didn't have that freedom that I do now. I mean I can go to the race track whenever I want, I can go play tennis, I can crash my RC planes into my neighbors houses or whatever I want to do.

Jaime: This never happened, right?

Jason: It happened this weekend!

Jaime: Smart man, we'll talk about that later. The funny thing I think is that is all foundational stuff and unfortunately that's kind of unsexy to people. They want Facebook ads and webinars because that's going to make them so much money really, really fast, but you had to learn all of this foundational stuff, which is why you're so successful in this next business that you did so fast, because you learned that foundational stuff. Why do you think entrepreneurs push away this foundational stuff and just go after the sexy marketing tactics that are the next big thing?

Jason: They start modelling themselves on people who are where they want to go but they don't see all the work that led up to it. So they see you doing Facebook ads and doing webinars and being hugely successful and they're like 'Well, I need to do that,' but you understand your audience, you understand what you want to do, you understand where you want to take it, you understand what to charge and the mindset and all of that and that's hard to see in the very beginning. They look at Facebook now and if you look at Facebook when it first started, it started out at Harvard, an Ivy League school, and then universities and high schools and then us old people, right? You've just got to start somewhere and build something small and see if people want it and then you can do the sexy stuff - but you have to build the foundation.

Jaime: That's so funny - I run a group where we do beta courses and I did this for my exact program and we're spending a ton on Facebook ads right now so everyone's seeing my face all over the place and they're like 'I want to do that. Why can't I just do that right now?' and I'm like 'You know, it took me six months to a year before I had every piece put in place before I did this?' Nobody notices that - and you did your agency for 12 years, that's a long time. What were some of the pivotal moments that really made a huge difference for you?

Jason: We only have 30 or 40 minutes and there was a lot but I remember one time where we had a staff at the time of probably 30-40 and we were coming up to payroll and we were literally about two weeks away from just closing up shop and I remember my wife going 'You're so depressed, why do you keep doing this?' and I was like 'I don't know,' and she said 'Why don't you apply for the CMO of Nascar? You love racing, you race all the time, you know that world and you love marketing,' and I said 'You know, maybe I should.' So I started to apply, I started typing everything out, and they asked us questions like 'What do you want to do with your role? What don't you like to do?' and as I was doing this I had more control in my own company that I could do it and I knew that I had to get laser focused so that was a real pivotal time, where I could say 'I don't have to take on the clients and have the clients dictate what I had to do, I can dictate the clients that I want and write down that perfect criteria.' Then I basically mapped out exactly how I wanted the agency, who I wanted where in the agency and where we wanted to go, and when we did that we quickly started just skyrocketing, I mean doubling over the years, and quickly grew it to an eight figure agency. So that was a very pivotal point and I remember there were huge amounts of pain - I was literally two seconds from just hitting cement. I'm a big racing fan so I would have gotten the job, I know it, and then I would have probably been miserable because I was working for the man.

Jaime: Yeah, you would have been stuck and not done what you actually wanted to do, even though it seems like a quick, painless way to get out, it's definitely not. It's insane, though, that focus is the thing. I just did a webinar and talked all about focus - it's actually one of the words that comes up more often than any other word in these interviews and it sounds so cliche, it's like 'Laser focus!' Yeah, that's great, everyone hears thousands of things about laser focus. How did you actually implement that, though? How did you actually get laser focused?

Jason: I weighed the sheer pain of closing shop and going to work for someone and seeing 30 or 40 families that it would affect and I said 'Look, I just don't want to go through that,' and I started looking at where I wanted to go and I said 'I'm not going to move on until I've finished one commitment at a time,' so finish one commitment until success and I think that's what your prodigy John Lee says.

Jaime: I wonder where he got it from? No, I'm kidding.

Jason: That's right.

Jaime: I think that's the funny thing in general - focus is huge. What I want to do is fast forward a little bit, past how much you sold your business for, I know it was for a lot. Then you have nothing - don't get me wrong, you have money and you have family.

Jason: I had nothing, yeah! I knew nothing.

Jaime: You have all of this experience but you have no business. How did you figure out what you were going to do next and how did you grow it so quickly?

Jason: Well I sold the agency four years ago and it took me three years to figure out what I needed to do.

Jaime: Thank you.

Jason: I started looking at it and I was like 'Crap, I've done this for 12 years, I've never really worked for anybody,' and I struggled. I had a non-compete so I couldn't create another agency. [Interview cuts out for a bit here] but I didn't have passion to implement the stuff and I didn't really know the health industry too well - I mean I could go running, I could bike, but I wasn't this health nut like the P90X people. At the time I had friends reach out to me so I actually took a job working for someone else, as a chief innovation officer, and I was like 'Okay, I'll try it out, because I'm sitting at home doing nothing and all my friends are doing stuff.' So I worked for them and as I was doing that I had agency owners reaching out to me, saying 'Well now that you're not my competition, tell us the secrets of how you beat us and how you built it and how you sold it,' and out of sheer laziness I created the JasonSwenk.com website, putting up the common questions, and then I quickly saw people from all over the world reaching out to me, wanting help, and I enjoyed it so much I said 'Well, I'm working for someone, I have this huge responsibility for this $30 million company that we're running and I need to automate it and I need to create these systems where it runs without me,' and so I started doing that but then I started having a lot more fun doing that and when I started having fun I was like 'Sayonara,' or however you say that in Japanese or Chinese, to the company I was working with and I just jumped into this full force.

Jaime: So you already knew there was a market out there, asking you questions over and over and over again and you were like 'Well, I could probably do something with this.' So what was the first thing you did?

Jason: I started out helping - that's the key. I didn't start out selling or thinking 'What could I sell?' Out of sheer laziness I was answering people's questions and I created blogs and I created stupid little videos with cats. My cat won't make an appearance - I know we were joking in the pre-show - he's probably sleeping now. I created these crazy videos that people liked and they enjoyed and that they got value from and it built credibility with them and then, when I created a program, at the time I only had 500 or 1,000 people on my e-mail list but I knew creating an e-mail list was important and when I launched my program a couple of people bought it and then I just tried to figure it out. I treated people like the traditional funnel - that doesn't work anymore - and then I had to figure out other things that maybe we'll talk about later.

Jaime: Okay, so I have a lot of questions to do with this. Number one, you sold to a couple of people - I've seen this before where people are like 'That didn't work!' and throw it all away and start something new. So tell me about what your attitude was, selling a couple of people, and then going from there, because especially from having such huge success beforehand, a couple of people sounds like a drop in a bucket but tell me your thoughts.

Jason: The cool thing was when I sold the couple of people I was on my mountain bike and I thought that was the coolest thing - I was like 'Dude, I'm making money! I'm a sponsored mountain bike rider!' and I didn't have to deliver anything and that was cool. I know a lot of people like Jeff Walker and Frank Kern and all those guys are like 'When I realized that, everything took off,' and it was the same story with me - I was like 'That's cool,' but what I did was, when someone bought something, they immediately got a survey, like literally as the thank you page, rather than an upsell, because I wanted to learn more about them. I said 'Why did you invest and what are you most excited to learn?' and from this I was able to really start changing what I was marketing and take the few people to a bunch of people and then I would create systems in the backend - I use InfusionSoft or you can use HubSpot or whichever - but I started developing things around net promoter score.

Jaime: Tell people what that is, because some people don't know.

Jason: I ask them one question saying 'One a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how would you rate the agency playbook that you just bought?' and I would ask them three times based on the different phases that they would go through and so if they were an 8 through a 10 they are a promoter - they're going to actively tell people about it and tell people about your program and that's where you want to kick up a sequence and say 'Hey, do you know any other cool people like you that may like this program?' and you can ask for a recommendation and a reference. Then, if they're in the middle, like 7 through about 4-5, you've got to be like 'Dude, why do you think it's just good? How can I make this thing awesome?' because they're not going to tell people bad things but they're not going to tell people good things. Thank God I have - knock on wood, I'm knocking on my head if you don't see the video - but if they are below that it immediately creates a task for me, so I can call them up and be like 'Dude, where did we drop off? Where did we miss out?' and so by doing all of this I was quickly able to fine tune the marketing and make sure that I was able to answer people's objections because our job is just to make someone make a decision, yes or no. We're not for everybody - there's a lot of people I turn down and a lot of people I try to get off the list because they are not the right people. I just want to understand that and market to the right people. I think you've interviewed Seth Godin, which I love, but I remember he was telling a story where he was talking about Zig Ziglar before he died and he was like 'Zig, what do you do when you're talking to an audience and someone in the front row is sleeping?' He's like 'It's not for them. You talk to the person that's really attentive, that's up in their seat,' and when I heard that I quickly knew that I'm not for everyone and I'm only going to help out the people that I'm right for. That may be five people, it may be a thousand, it may be a million, whatever it is, I don't care about that number but I'm going to obsess over providing them value.

Jaime: I love that. Tell me more about the net promoter score - this is a question for me - and how you actually get that in InfusionSoft. Because I use InfusionSoft and a lot of millionaires that come on the show talk about net promoter and that sounds awesome. Is that a plugin? How do you actually implement it?

Jason: Dude, it's easy. If you go in the marketplace in InfusionSoft you can just download it, then it's a net promoter score.

Jaime: That's what I thought, sweet!

Jason: Yeah, so you could do that but all it's doing is it's using ten radio buttons and it's putting a tag on each of them, so if it's a 10, 9 or 8 it tags them as a promoter.

Jaime: So easy.

Jason: Yeah, and then it just has a conditional sequence that kicks off after that.

Jaime: I love that. I'm making a note for Kendra to go and do that. It's huge because you need to know that stuff a lot of times if you don't ask, nobody's going to tell you. We ask for testimonials for sure anyway but the people who do really, really well will always give you testimonials. we check in with other people but sometimes they get back to you, sometimes they don't, but a quick little thing, where they don't actually have to tell you to your face what something is, is really, really important.

Jason: Oh yeah.

Jaime: Okay, I love that. Okay, so once you sold a couple, you were like 'Okay, I sold a couple. Now I want to do millions.' You said the funnel is dead so what was that process of trying to figure out how that could work?

Jason: I was funneling everybody down to the same end result and I was treating everybody the same way and I wasn't having contingencies or having campaigns behave dynamically so what I started doing is I started creating little milestones, or mini yeses. So let's say if I saw you at the club, we're in the club, and I went up to you and I pitched marriage you'd probably say 'No, that's a big commitment and I don't know you.'

Jaime: Creepy, no.

Jason: But if I came up to you and said 'Hey, can I buy you a drink?' and got a mini yes and then kind of proceeded maybe we could have been married, right? I love my wife very much, but you go for mini yeses. So what I started doing was thinking about what mini yeses and milestones can I do? A lot of people launch a program with three videos, kind of like the Jeff Walker launch, right? So how I do it is I'm sending them video number one, a couple of days later video number two, video number three. I will send them three e-mails to get them engaged to watch video number one. If they don't watch video number one I won't send them video number two or video three because they weren't engaged, maybe they don't like watching videos. Then what I'll do is I'll build a contingency in there - maybe they would rather read. Maybe they're not like me and they like reading and they'll read a white paper or a long PDF and get them engaged - or bolt on another pain, that's the secret, is bolting these campaigns together based on what they're interacting with, or maybe you invite them to a webinar. So let's say they watched video one, so now they get video two and video three. The next milestone in there would be to maybe jump on an early bird list, especially if you have an auto launch and you're building up for launch. So now you want people to raise their hands and see who wants something right now and let's give them something cool - let's say it's for a free consultation, make them watch a video to go through the criteria of what you're looking for and then make them fill out an application - that's the next milestone - and after that pick a time to chat with you, then show up, then upsell - so you can kind of see you can take this really complex set of campaigns - I'll use the old word, funnel, one more time and then I'll call it the F-word - so you have all of these complicated campaigns together but if you start breaking it up into little mini yesses or little mini milestones it makes it so much easier. Let's say somebody got caught, they never watched video number one, you could do a remarketing campaign on Facebook to get them engaged and watch video number one to get vide number two and vide three.

Jaime: I love that. Okay.

Jason: So it's just getting mini yeses.

Jaime: So you're not letting anybody drop out of the funnel. You're looking at each person that's coming in and figuring out what they want. Do you know Ryan Levesque and Survey Funnel? I said the F-word, sorry! His is all about asking questions too, so it sounds like what you're saying is 'Okay, I only want to give you what you want. You don't have any time anymore to just be thrown stuff at your face all the time.' That's what's ridiculous about the internet nowadays - we have so much content it's utterly insane. Half the time you opt in to something you don't look at anything that's sent to you ever because we're inundated with everything.

Jason: Yeah, it's crazy. 50% of people who opt in to something that they raised their hand for don't want it, so most people just send them one e-mail. Why? Send them a couple of e-mails. They're not paying attention to e-mails anyway so send them a couple and have more of a chance to convert them. One of the best performing e-mails that you can send out is not where you have someone sending a link. I'll say 'Would you like me to do something really cool for you so you don't have to do something that sucks? Just reply to this e-mail.' I did that as a test the other week - sent it out to 3,000 people, 500 people responded.

Jaime: Did they all say yes? What did they say? Like 'Sure!'

Jason: They said 'Yes, send me the details,' and then I'll send them the details and then I'll tell them why I'm doing it, I'll tell them there is a catch - I can only work with this kind of criteria - so the technology kind of weeds people out, but then I had 100 applications, I was like 'Holy cow!' and then I had to go through all those 100 applicants.

Jaime: From a 3,000 person list. Okay, so tell me how you did that, tech-wise. Because the thing is that if somebody replies to that many e-mails if they don't have InfusionSoft or something like that, tell me how you do it.

Jason: I can only tell you how I did it because I used InfusionSoft and then I used a cool technology called Parsey - or parsley, it's a vegetable software I call it - it's a horrible name, terrible brand, but amazing technology. It basically does the API for you, so if someone replies to that e-mail it literally puts them in the next milestone.

Jaime: Are you an InfusionSoft guru or something like that? Who's your InfusionSoft guy? How did you find someone who's amazing and does all of this? I have gone through a lot of InfusionSoft people to try to find good ones.

Jason: I was doing a little work with Frank Kern so he put me on to the thing for Parsey and another cool technology that we use is Plus This. That works really well with InfusionSoft.

Jaime: What's Plus This? What does that do?

Jason: That will enable you to do humanized dates. So one of the things in order to get people to watch the video is I'll basically say 'You have to watch this video by May 28th,' and whenever they opt in it's all in auto launch so whenever you opt in it projects out four days. So if today is May 27th it's going to say June 1st - you have to watch this video by June 1st or it's coming down, so it adds that scarcity or that urgency in there, and you do that throughout every milestone - you have to add that urgency or scarcity in there and you can create all of these auto launches, it's really pretty cool, and then you can take away stuff and you're really taking away stuff, versus a lot of people say 'Hey, we're going to raise the price,' and they never do. The system automatically does it for you.

Jaime: You're like 'Don't be a liar! Actually do it.'

Jason: Yeah.

Jaime: So tell me how you can keep track of all of this, because this is kind of ridiculous. How do you map this thing out? I have huge white boards and when we were going over funnels - maybe I shouldn't say that again - marketing milestones, when we were going over some of those sort of things, it is a crazy web of so much it's ridiculous. So how do you do it? Is there an online tool you use? How do you keep track in your head?

Jason: I don't know, I just do it. I mean literally I'll go for a run or a bike ride in the morning and I literally just have time to focus and kind of figure it out and then I just go do it. I don't have any white boards anywhere, I just literally go 'This is what I want it to do,' and kind of map it out in InfusionSoft, or ConfusionSoft, and figure it out.

Jaime: So I'm a visual learner - you must not be visual.

Jason: I learn from doing mistakes but I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I look at making a mistake as a paid learning lesson, it's kind of in the very beginning. There are so many people that don't take action because they're like 'Well, what if I fail?' Well what if you don't do anything? Nothing's going to happen. Just send the e-mail out to your whole list - if you have 10,000 people or 3,000 or 1,000 or whatever it is, just send it out and just do it. I'm kind of stealing the motto from Nike.

Jaime: Just do it! Dan Martell added the F-word - JFDI, Just F-ing Do It. That?s what's on his license plate.

Jason: That's fantastic.

Jaime: I've interviewed him, you would love him too, by the way. So let me ask you this - for the people who are just beginning or maybe just starting with InfusionSoft, all of this stuff can get a little crazy - the experienced people, they love this, they're like 'Tell me about more tools and things that I can work on,' but for the people who are a little overwhelmed. I had two clients sign up for InfusionSoft this week and we're going over the beginning but you have to really cut it down because there's only so much you can do so what do you suggest people do to start?

Jason: Just create a regular auto responder. Literally just create one campaign and then, as that goes through, think about what are the next logical steps of the mini yeses that you need to create and just build one at a time.

[Connection lost/end of file]

Jaime: That was weird.

Jason: Yeah, sorry about that. I don't know, I've turned everything off on my computer.

Jaime: Yeah, everything's good on my time too. I pay for super, stupid fast internet speed so good times!

Jason: Where did I lose you?

Jaime: You said 'I have eight campaigns' and then I heard nothing. So if you could start on 'I have eight campaigns,' that would be great.

Jason: Okay, so I have eight campaigns - even though we just lost internet connection and we're coming back but you didn't see that because of the magic of editing - but you can't start with thinking about eight campaigns because you're going to be very overwhelmed. You just have to start with one, and I mean literally just start with one e-mail and think about the next e-mail and how you can help and how you can build value to the people that you want to serve and what are their struggles? Just start with one, that's it.

Jaime: That makes it so much easier because eight campaigns makes people want to go hide under a bed and one e-mail makes it sound so much easier and you can build it out as you go and I think that's the thing that's really important that you've said over and over - once you learn who you're working with and what they actually need and you give them that, it's amazing how well that works, but you have to talk to them and you have to work with them. So how did you start learning more about your avatar in general? I know you had people reaching out to you, which is always helpful, but tell me more about how you really found out? Because, again, that's the squishy staff where people are like 'Learn about your avatar!' right? Okay, how will I know when I've learned enough?

Jason: Well I was the avatar so I knew the challenges that they were having. I thought about 'What do I know better than most?' and it was running an agency and so I was like 'Well, let me help them out,' and learning about your avatar - ask them questions. So many people focus on telling them about themselves but the power of a question is it focuses on the real rock star, which is the clients, the people that you're helping, so if you went on my website, most of the places on the website you'll see questions because I want them to focus on themselves. If you went to my About page, you don't see anything about me until the very bottom - I'm asking them questions in order to focus on them so by asking questions I can understand their challenges and the model that I have is I have information products, I have mastermind groups, I have one-on-one coaching and I do all of those and the reason I keep the coaching is I like helping a select few but it gives me a really good snapshot of the current market and the problems so I can say 'How can we make these programs even better?' and then just focus on making things better and upgrading, versus just building it once and going 'Hmm, it's done.' You just can't do that.

Jaime: Well the market changes too, right? 'Facebook ads worked really well last time on these three things and now these next three aren't. Huh,' and that's what my whole program talks about. 'Well that's too bad. Here, let's sell it anyway.' That's not good either - you really have to stay up to date on the pulse. The quick question that I have on the questions, though, is it's one thing to ask somebody, like when you do a sales call with somebody you probably ask them a ton of questions if they're a good fit for one-on-one but for online it's harder to ask questions because you don't get the response. How do you implement asking questions? Do you think they think about it in their head? Tell me what your thought process is on that.

Jason: I'll create landing pages like 'Would you like to convert 80% of your marketing proposals with clients like LegalZoom and Hitachi?' and then it's an opt in so now they're indicating interest and I send them a video, or 'Are you struggling with trying to scale your business?' or 'Are you struggling with just being reactive? If so, you're in the right place,' and then I tell them in my About page, if I can remember it, it's like 'You can read 1,000 books, you can read 1,000 blogs, you can listen to 1,000 podcasts but this is totally dedicated to the agency owner that is struggling and trying to get to the next level.' I just do that to direct attention to them.

Jaime: What do you think about niching? I know you said when you niched in your agency it made a huge difference. People go back and forth on key differentiator and niching and all of that fun stuff so tell me how you figured that out in your industry because it can be tough. I don't niche very much and everybody is like 'I niche,' and I tell other people to niche because it's way harder to not, I agree and I should do it, it's just there are so many people that we have that we love helping, we haven't broken the courses down to separate niches yet because it takes a lot of time.

Jason: When I used to race cars I would rather race against three people because it's easier to beat three people than a thousand, it's just the sheer number. The more you niche down and the more you go further down the less competition and the more authority and the more you can relate. I had a client who I was working with a couple of months ago and we found a great niche for them and I said 'Great, go and change your website.' 'Oh, I can't do that,' and I said 'Why not?', 'Well, we're not going to get any leads,' and I said 'Well how many leads are you getting now?', 'Zero.' It's not about having everybody listen to you, it's about who wants to listen to you and how do you find them and then listening to them and what they want and that's the key and only then can you branch out. So at my agency we picked a particular technology and so we became the best in the world at the technology and then we went on to be one of the best partners for Microsoft so we used it as kind of a side base or horizontal niche versus a vertical niche. Did I say that backwards? I'm dyslexic so whichever, you guys can figure it out. But we were willing to be the best at that and put all our cards in there and if it was the wrong pick, no problem, we can change and pick something different.

Jaime: How do you get that pick? You work with agencies, right, so social media managers, we have business coaches, all of this stuff is so crazy general it's nuts, then you have people on the other hand who are a Facebook ads person or this and that and there are quite a few of those too. How do you figure out what the best niche is for you and the people that actually want to listen to you?

Jason: You've got to do what you love. I don't feel like I'm working ever, it's the coolest job in the world. I get to talk strategy all day long and hear about huge successes people are having and do goofy videos and be with my cat - I'm a weird cat dude.

Jaime: That's your niche; that's how you did it.

Jason: That's my niche. If you're a dog person, don't go to my site.

Jaime: I'm a dog person, I don't know what to tell you.

Jason: I love dogs. I just don't like snakes, I'm scared to death of snakes.

Jaime: Alright, let's not talk about snakes.

Jason: If you have an existing client base it's so hard to be like 'Well I'm just narrowing it down to this niche.' I can't do that. You're only marketing to those people and you can always change your marketing. I take on people who work for logistics companies and work with big brands still but if you go to my site it says 'Digital agency owners.' So it's not saying that you can't take on those people, it's just saying what you market to.

Jaime: That's a huge distinction that I don't think people recognize very much. Normally what I have people do is look at their current client base and see if there's a certain one that keeps popping up for them. Like it was authors for one of my clients and I was like 'Well, look, you already have a whole bunch of authors,' and they were like 'Well I don't want to switch to just authors.' We could just create a lead peg, like one separate website that's just for authors. You know what I mean? It's not that difficult and it's perfect languaging because otherwise, when you're too general, nobody will say yes to you, so that's huge. I've had so many people come back and go 'I don't know, I don't want to.' How do you combat that? Because you're like 'This works, please listen to me!'

Jason: It's all about why we make decisions. So we make decisions to avoid pain or to gain pleasure - it's kind of like why we eat a cookie, we get instant pleasure versus later pain - so I start asking them questions in order to figure out 'If you keep going down the road you're going now how is it working for you and how is it going to affect your business if things don't change and you're not getting leads? How can you market to everyone? What's everyone's challenge? You're going to spend a lot of money, you're going to have to do a lot of different things,' but most of the time I try to weed those people out before they even get to me so those are just not the right clients. You just have to be willing to take a shot at it and risk failure. I mean you guys are entrepreneurs so nothing's certain. Are we losing each other on the video?

Jaime: I gotcha, or maybe we're slow. I have a bunch of questions about your lead generation - so what, right now, is working? Because I know you've got the amazing milestone marketing, which is great. What's the best way right now that you are getting people into that?

Jason: A couple of things. Obviously the podcast is always a really good source but then the other two ones that are really good are Twitter ads and Facebook, using the power editor.

Jaime: Twitter ads? I have not heard about Twitter ads lately. I hear about Facebook ads all the time, but Twitter ads, tell me more about that?

Jason: I don't use the Twitter card. I tried it out when they first came out and it worked really well and then Twitter called me and they were like 'What are you doing?' But I think they?ve readjusted so I?ve started running those again. I think I was paying close to $10 a lead on Facebook and I?m paying close to $2.50 on Twitter.

Jaime: Wow, that's really interesting.

Jason: Am I losing you?

Jaime: I lost a little. I know, good old internet. Okay, so that's really interesting, I?m going to have to look into that. Is there a program that you use or did you hire someone who could do the Twitter stuff for you?

[Connection lost/end of file]

Jaime: That is crazy.

Jason: I'm so sorry. I actually think it's my internet.

Jaime: Okay. I'm like 'I'm pretty sure...'

Jason: Yeah, when I saw it being fuzzy I was trying to switch the internet and turn the wireless off and back on so hopefully it will clear up for us.

Jaime: It looks much better now, so good. So my question that I had for you was how did you figure out Twitter? So did you actually use a course or did you hire someone? How did that go?

Jason: No, I just used the same kind of methodology I used with Facebook and I just figured out, alright, who's the audience I'm going after? Who are they following on Twitter? And then just put out the same kind of tactics of using a lead magnet or landing page with the titles like 'How to do something really cool without doing something that sucks.' That's how I phrase all of my titles and it works - the landing pages people go on, they're converting at over 30%.

Jaime: Nice. Okay, so you just know marketing pretty well, so going from ad platform to ad platform hasn't really been that big of a deal.

Jason: I don't know everything about Twitter. I love testing stuff and I'll just go do it. I have a big advantage because I ran a digital agency for so long so it's a little easier for me to adapt to it. The only things I really outsource are my show notes and I have one of my employees do that.

Jaime: Really? You do most of the marketing on your own? That's awesome, and the fact that you're getting Twitter ads that much cheaper is really interesting to me and probably a lot of people that are listening. At least from when I'm talking to a whole bunch of my friends they're saying Facebook - of course everyone is doing that - and everyone's hot on YouTube ads coming up now. Have you heard anything about YouTube ads?

Jason: I've started diving into that. What I've been doing with my podcast is I'll basically turn it into a podcast for iTunes, a video for Facebook and a video for YouTube, so I take that one piece of content and use it in all places. It's all about focus - sure, I could spend a ton of time and try to figure out YouTube, but if most people are going to go to YouTube, perfect, go to YouTube - I'm going to stick on Twitter. I want to do something where people aren't. Yes, I'm on Facebook and everybody's on Facebook and all us marketers are going to screw it up pretty soon so it's all going to be gone, so I'm trying to figure out what's next.

Jaime: I love that, though, and I love that you told us what you think is next because some marketers keep it close. I tell them about YouTube ads but none of my friends are talking about it, they're like 'We're testing them right now but we're not telling people about it now,' because it's cheap so far and people don't want to talk about it. The fact that you're like 'Yeah, Twitter ads are real cheaper,' it's like 'Shoot, man, I'm going to go do that.' I have a lot of fans on Twitter, I don't even know how that works. I'll have to hire someone - I don't know how to do Twitter ads. This is awesome, though, and I really appreciate you coming in and telling us tools and tactics and techniques that are working really, really well for you. I apologize to everyone for all of the internet connections because Jason has been killer and awesome. We'll have to have you back on the show and give us more tactics and tips for sure, but the same last question as always - what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Jason: Write that first e-mail. Actually, don't write the first e-mail - think of the biggest impact item that you can have, like what's the biggest long term item? So many of us just do the little stuff first because it's easier, like writing the e-mail, but think about what's one thing that, if you get it, it could be huge and catapult you and just focus on doing that. So if it's writing a book to get on more stages, write the book; if it's developing a course so you can make money while you go mountain bike riding, develop the first module of the course. Just do it. My motto is action leads to transaction and if you don't take action you're not going to get the transaction, right?

Jaime: That is a great freaking quote, I love that! That's awesome. that's the thing that I think is important too - people, like you said, they'll start at the beginning of the funnel that doesn't make money for a really, really long time and not get to the end that will actually make money, so action and transaction, I love that.

Jason: It's kind of like your story - I mean how long did you commit to putting out content? And then you almost gave up, if I remember right. You were like 'Ah, this is not going to work,' and then something kicked in and something picked up. People don't see all of the hard work that goes into it. Seth Godin took 20 years to get to where he's at, to be an overnight success.

Jaime: And we look at him and go 'But he's amazing!' and he told some of his story on the podcast that I had of him - he was walking by the windows and window shopping and couldn't pay for anything. It's just amazing to hear that your idols did the exact same thing.

Jason: If you were just an instant success right away then what's the fun in that?

Jaime: Exactly!

Jason: You've got to think back of all the lumps and all the hits that you took.

Jaime: I talk about, in my book, God mode in video games - as soon as you have all of the money in the world and all the stuff you're like 'I can't play this game anymore, there's nothing left to do.'

Jason: We all have challenges - every level you get at, you have challenges and you worry about stuff, so don't think, when you make $1 million, your problems are solved - you've just got a million more problems.

Jaime: Yay! Let's leave it on that high note! No, I'm kidding, they're all good problems, just wonderful challenges. So tell us where we can find more about you, where we can listen to your podcast, all of that fun stuff.

Jason: If you go to JasonSwenk.com - and Swenk is spelled S-W-E-N-K, not with an A, I'm not related to Hilary, even though there is a town named after me called Swenksville, which is pretty good. You can go to JasonSwenk.com, link to my podcast, all there. I give away about 85% of my knowledge free and I just charge for the really, really good stuff.

Jaime: Check that out and definitely check out his podcast because if you like this you'll definitely like it. Thanks? so much for coming on the show today, Jason, I appreciate it.

Jason: Thanks, Jaime.

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Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews, Sales

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