How to Get More Leads in Your Business with Ray Higdon

Online MLM leader and homebased business entrepreneur – Ray Higdon

Ray is a top network marketer, and helps others recruit and gain leads in whatever MLM company they are in. I ask him why network marketing? Why not just start your own thing?

He has great answers, and also has some amazing advice on how to get more leads in whatever business you are in.

Plus learn how his girlfriend at the time went from zero to $10k a month! And his story from being broke to successful. It’s mostly mindset! And Ray gives some great ACTIONABLE advice for improving it.

Check out RayHigdon.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today we have Ray Higdon on the show. I was introduced to Ray by a really good friend of mine and he said Ray is amazing and I should really have him on the show. He has a website called RayHigdon.com and he helps network marketers get more reps and find more leads. This is something that I don't chat about a lot on Eventual Millionaire so I wanted to bring him on because he teaches thousands of people so maybe you can get something out of this too. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Ray.

Ray: Thanks for having me.

Jaime: I really appreciate it because it's 7am where you are and your wife is sleeping in the hotel room and you have a full day of coaching and you're here with us. I really, really appreciate that.  You have an amazing backstory of being completely broke - I love showing the before and after so let's chat about how you were before and what's changed.

Ray: Years ago I would read stories about people being down and out and they would discover the industry and I'd think "Is that real?" I first got into network marketing back in 2006 - at the time I was doing very well in real estate down in Florida. Things were going well; I didn't really treat it the way that it should be treated, I didn't learn what I should have learned, so I didn't have success. I vowed off of network marketing a couple of years later and then, in 2009, I was at a point where I'd lost it all through real estate and for about a year I was in a financial mental coma where I just hoped things would get better and they just didn't. A buddy invited me to a home party and I saw this and I said "You know what' I don't know what else I'm going to do," and I just ran with it. I was just dead broke, in personal foreclosure, bill collectors calling me every single hour, and now we've earned over $1 million in commissions in network marketing and coaching and products and have been able to travel the world. Our life has completely changed so I'm testament to two things - number one, it works if you actually apply the principles and learn how to do things properly, and number two, that anyone can get to anywhere from wherever they are. I was in a place where I really questioned my self-worth, I really didn't have purpose, it was a dark place and there's a lot of people in that place and I'm just grateful for this profession.

Jaime: What made you decide to go into network marketing the first time, when you already had a successful business?

Ray: A buddy. One of my real estate partners was in a company and he said "You've got to do this, you'd be great at this," and he kept coming at me until I said "Alright, I'll buy the stuff, but I'm never, never doing it as a business." I attended a couple of meetings and thought "What the hell, I'll do a little bit," and I took it seriously for about 60 days - that's longer than most people, I think. So it was a buddy. Even though I do a lot of online marketing and teach a lot of online marketing, if I look at some of my very best success stories, including myself, it was warm market that got me into the industry.

Jaime: So many of my friends were like "Jaime, you should totally do this," and I was like "I'm not going to do that. I might buy the stuff, that might be a cool thing, but I'm not going to do this," and they kept bugging me " and not in a good way. You probably did it much better, because it worked for you, but for me it was "every time I see him, that's all he ever talks about," and that's really hard to get over. So what do you have to say about that" I'm sure you get that all the time.

Ray: What I teach my team and people in the industry generally is that you don't want to be addicted to the outcome and you want to be inviting, not presenting. If you're investing more than three or four minutes with someone who has yet to see a presentation or attend a meeting or something like that, you're saying too much. I teach that you invite somebody, you're not addicted to the outcome - if they say yes, great; if they say no, great, and you just move forward. If you follow those principles you'll never burn out your warm market and the way that you recruit most of your warm market is to create success because then they'll come to you and say "You're still in that thing, huh? It's working, huh?" My wife's family were like "You've got a college degree and what are you doing?" but when she had her first $10,000 both her brothers signed up and her mother signed up. So you want to sign up your family and create some money and create some success.

Jaime: That's one of the reasons I had you on the show - there's a really good friend of mine, her name's Kate Northrop, she's coming out with a great book called Money: A Love Story. She was in network marketing and I had no idea, for a very long time, what she did at all she never tried to pitch to me, and now of course I'm a client of hers. It's funny that I never had any idea and what she ended up doing for me was restoring my faith without even trying to pitch to me - I went to her and asked her to tell me about it. So thank you, Kate, because she started to restore the way I feel. I think that you guys provide some amazing training, amazing stories and sales. Nine times out of ten most people that are starting a new business are bad at sales and, like you said, network marketing is really good at teaching you to not be addicted to the outcome and not push to that. So can you give us your top two sales techniques that anyone starting, whether it be in network marketing or sales, can really use to start in business today?

Ray: You mean things to say or principles?

Jaime: You tell me. Which one do you think would be better?

Ray: I would say the principles. Your management of time will dictate the velocity of your success. Most people go in one of two directions - heavy learner mode, watching webinars, attending conference calls and events, 50 hours a week, but never actually talk to anyone and wonder "Why isn't it working?" It's because they're not talking to anyone. A daily routine is so, so key. When I first got serious about network marketing in 2009, I read a book called Go for No by Waltz and my goal was to get 20 "no's a day. I did that for six months and my seventh month was a $40,000 month and that was from foreclosure and being dead broke. So, number one, my principle would be a daily routine. It's so key - the number of viables you get on a presentation dictates your income and if you're not making money you need to look at how many people you invited, how many people you actually got to watch something, whether it's a conference call, webinar, event, whatever. Number two, I would say as far as how you're presenting yourself, people need to know that you're all in. I think too often network marketers come in seeking acceptance and approval. If you're thinking "Did I make a decision?" you didn't, if that's the way you're approaching people. You need to be "I'm going to run with this thing, I'm going to rock this, I'm going to make this thing happen." One line that I always use is "I'm going to do it with or without you - I'd love to do it with you," and if they like it, great; if not, no big deal. One person's acceptance or approval is not going to dictate my income or my family, so I'm going to give them the opportunity, but keep in mind their decision is not going to phase me in any way, shape or form.

Jaime: I love this. I hated sales in the beginning - when I was younger I was in Kirby vacuum cleaner sales. I was 17 years old, it was bad. I thought sales was unethical so what you're saying, and what rocked my world and changed my life, is that I care about getting "no's," because it's the more people I talk to that matters, not how many people say "Yes," because then I'm hanging onto "Please say yes, please say yes, then I can be happy," and that's not the case at all. So tell me about how and why you ended up going for 20 "no's" rather than trying to get 10 new people to sign up.

Ray: I owe it to the book, Go for No, it's great, a fantastic book, a very short read and it just makes sense. In 2009 I was dating my now-wife and she was finishing her college degree, she had a good paying job, she's gorgeous, she's amazing, and here I am, a dude at home, not making money, wallowing in despair, broke, in foreclosure, and so when I saw this in 2009 I told her 'Listen, the next couple of years are going to be hell, I'm going to lock myself in my office, I'm going to pound that phone until there are no batteries left and we're going to make this thing happen. I just wanted to give you this heads up because if there's resistance, if there's going to be problems with me working my ass off, then we need to address it now." Basically I was giving her a way out, saying it was so important to my self-worth that I dig myself out of this hole, and that's just really what drove me, and I created a psychological trigger in that every time I thought about how bad life was I had to pick up the phone. So that's the principles of the book and knowing that it's just a sheer numbers game, that's what drove me to take that kind of action.

Jaime: A lot of people don't realize how much action it really takes to get to where they want to go - they hope they can hang up a sign and people will come. It's getting slightly better, people are starting to understand a little bit, but they don't realize how hard it is. So what gave you that commitment? Because you said you wanted to have that confidence when you're going in to sell - "You can take it or leave it, this is amazing, but that's fine either way." What gave you that confidence, especially at the beginning, to go "I'm in this 110%. I have to tell my girlfriend I'm in this 110%." What gave you that commitment?

Ray: That's two different questions, confidence and commitment. Michael Beckwith says "Pain pushes you until vision pulls you," and the pain in my life had been my circumstances; the "Wow is me, I lost everything, I used to be somebody and now I'm nobody? had been kicking me around for about a year. What pulled me, and I think here is where I differ from some of the trainers out there, was "Why is not enough." I've talked to people who have had the same "why" for the last 10 companies, the last 20 years, and for me it was "who", who I wanted to become. If you focus on who you want to become you're going to identify the principles that you want to be defined and described as and I wanted to be someone who's going to make an impact and inspire people, someone who, at the end of the day, when my head hits the pillow, I'm proud of my day and the impact that I've made. So for me it was who I wanted to become that pulled me to do these actions. I don't like them - I didn't like calling people, it sucked, all of that sucks and anyone who tells you differently is just crazy, but you do it because you have some kind of vision pulling you. Some people are able to use external visions - for me it had to be internal, who I wanted to become, and that's what pulled me. So every day it wasn't "Oh, I've got to do this," it was "I'm doing this. Period." Even when I needed money badly I didn't beg, bug, chase, plead - I was postured, I used speed and worked my butt off.

Jaime: I love that you said it sucked. Nobody says that it sucks - it does suck, it's not like you like doing all that stuff all the time. There's stuff that sucks and it is what it is. I love that. One of the things that i get a lot, like just yesterday I got an e-mail from someone that said "I get it. I need to find new people and new leads," and you're the leads guy - if you go to your website there's like 29 ways to find more leads and that's one of the things that a lot of people want to know. So give me some of the top tips for finding leads.

Ray: I think a lot of people have a very narrow definition of leads. They think it's a sheet of paper with names on it or only people that reach out to them to make contact. That's not the case. My wife built a $10,000 a month income from prospecting people she didn't know on Facebook, without using advertising. So there's a billion leads. Obviously there are techniques and tactics with that, but people have to stop looking at leads in such a narrow manner. For example, we were at breakfast yesterday, at a real nice place around the corner, and my wife had tiramisu pancakes and the lady that served us is from France and we were talking, my wife speaks a little French, and she likes to travel and bada-bing - we got her information, we're going to follow up today. That's a lead. How many other network marketers are sitting in different restaurants every single day of their life thinking "Man, I wish I had leads." You've got to talk to people. The biggest thing, the thing that I think keeps people from doing it, is that they think they have to close them on the spot or something. We never do that. I've interviewed quite a few top earners and most of them don't actually pitch on the initial contact of a cold market - they'll get their information and follow up with them because that's more natural. It's not natural to meet somebody and tell them about your comp plan - it's weird. I think if people, wherever they are, just do that initial network meeting in a restaurant or wherever, the initial interest opener, and get that information, then follow up and do the invite, versus "Let me pitch you on why my company is awesome." That's a pretty simple way in the cold market. I'll go to network meetings and most people are there to pitch their business - that's not networkmarketing, that's all meetings. You go to a network meeting, they've got their business card in hand and they'll never follow up with you if you hand them your business card so I always go with empty pockets, grab everyone else's business cards, follow up with them the next day and say "Sorry we didn't get chance to talk, I see that you're an attorney," or whatever, and then I follow up and talk about my business. I don't do it at the meeting. If people say "If only I had more leads," they're really not trying hard enough and they're confusing the definition of a lead - there's people all around us right now.

Jaime: My mentor always said that to me too - he said you need to have a prospecting antenna. You need to be constantly paying attention to that sort of thing, especially when you're chatting with a  waitress or something. If you don't pay attention to that you're never going to get that. It's interesting that you're telling me what he told me, especially for offline tactics, because there's only so many things you can do. Does that add up, though? Because people go to network meetings and meet a couple of people at a time - is that really going to give me what I want,especially if I'm not good at converting them into sales? But you got 20 "no's" a day, which is a lot.

Ray: It's a couple of things - number one, that doesn't necessarily mean 20 unique "no's" a day. What I've noticed is that offline there's about a 14 day window and online there's a 30 day window. If you start prospecting consistently every single day you will, just from my observation, start to get the most results in about 30 days. But most people do three days and think "This isn't working," and on day four they're back to wishing they had leads. You need to do it consistently. I've called up people and said "I'm doing this thing, let me give you some information," and they say "If you're doing it, I'm in," so somepeople make decisions like that. Other people do all the research in the world and they'll join six months later. But they'll never join if they see that you're not focused, if they see that you've strayed your path while they were doing their research. So it's about consistency, it's about being all in. I've had people tell me "Ray, I've watched you for six months, you're consistent, I've done my research - I'm in." I didn't know they were doing research, so it is about consistency; it's about fillingup the pipeline. Keep in mind that when you invite someone to watch a video, even if you follow up with them and they don't call you back, which sometimes happens, you don't know - something could have happened in their life but they've watched the video and they're going to get back to you. I have the perfect example that just happened last night - we have a suite here in the hotel and we had a party last night. We invited people and we hadpeople drive six hours from Vegas to hang out. We had a packed room, we were doing some training, having some fun, and a guy walks in that I haven't seen in a year and a half. He's a 25 year veteran of the business, he's made millions and millions of dollars and I just thought he was checked out. He wasn't - he's being paying attention and now he's ready to run. So you don't know who is watching you, you don't know when someone's going to pop or get excited, so you have to be consistent. There were days where my 20 "no'"s came from Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter - I've recruited from every one of those platforms and there were days where they came from networking meetings, going there, grabbing business cards. There were days where I would go to the car wash and they have a bulletin board of business cards - I'd grab them all and call them up, saying "I don't know where I got your business card but I see that you're a, whatever, would you be interested in this project?" So it's just a numbers game with a non-addiction to the outcome. I could wear a heart monitor and if someone said "no" it would not change. That's the difference from going "Why are you saying no? Is it me?"

Jaime: "Your "no" says something about my self-worth!"

Ray: Exactly. I just don't associate that, so it's cool. I like what you saidabout the prospecting antenna. I think the biggest misconception is that people think you have to be annoying or something. You just have to be a human being and you can say "Maybe it's not a fit for you." You don't have to close every person because no one does.

Jaime: Way back when I used to be a local business coach, I used to do a lot of outbound marketing. Now I'm lucky enough to have a lot of inbound marketing so people are presold before I talk to them. But in the industry you're in, you're doing a lot of outbound marketing. In general, people want that inbound marketing because outbound can be a lot more difficult, especially if your first intro is "Hey, nice to meet you," then immediately "I have this thing?" People come to me and say "I want to start a blog to make money," and blogs don't make money, blogs are marketing tactics, so unless you have tons of traffic and have lots of advertising - they just don't want to do the ask. So give us some tips to get people past the ask - especially quickly, for when you meet someone. Because we want people to love us before we come in, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but give me your thoughts on that.

Ray: I define it as active prospecting or passive marketing. Passive marketing would be the inbound - you're doing something you hope an individual will respond to. That's what everybody wants, just get a bunch of leads and they all want to work with you. That's great - the only problem is it takes a while, it's not fast. The good news is you can manage your time and do that. I do a blog almost every single day and that takes half an hour of my day - the rest of my day can be spent however I want it. If you create content every day for 12 months you will get leads, even if they're bad. People will find you. But that's not enough - you've got to go out there and do some actual prospecting. When you don'thave an addiction to the outcome and you're not trying to close you just look for people that are open. Firstly, when you send out that kind of energy it's not that painful a conversation. Secondly, in most cases, I'll usually associate something that they need or want with the reason for taking a look at my deal. People say that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink - well you can if you salt their food. I met a guy at an Orlando event and we were just chatting, he was telling me about his four teenage daughters, and my immediate thought was what needs and desires could he have, and that was weddings. It's traditional that the bride's side pay for weddings so I said "That must be intense, thinking about weddings," and he was like "I know, right," so immediately I knew that was a need. So I said "I don't know what you do, income wise, but there's something that I do, I'm all in, I take it seriously, I have no idea if it's a fit for you, but it may help you set aside some extra money for those weddings," and he said "Yeah, absolutely." So I'm solving a problem, I'm not pitching "Here's my deal." Most people think that they'll hear something like 20 "no's" and they'll lose the human element and they'll think that just means pitching their business to 20 people. What's crazy is that that will actually work, it's a sheer numbers game, but let's actually be problem solvers instead of pitch people, because people aren't turned off by network marketing, they're turned off by network marketers because they're just like "Hey, you want to join my business?" So if you can associate a goal or pain, a problem, with your solution. My buddy Troy says "Results aren't typical but at least they're possible," so you've got to think that way. Whether you're having success or not, just because you haven't bought that huge yacht yet, it's possible? It's not possible in corporate America but it is possible to create freedom in this profession and if you know that it's possible you should be willing to at least give someone a shot.

Jaime: One of the things that I want to add is that it's a dance. Each person is different and you're really good at that, and that comes with practice. People don't know what they're supposed to be asking or doing, but in general no one does. I was really bad - my mentor printed out a script for me in greyscale so the people couldn't see it because I was so bad. Now it's not so bad at all, it's old hat, but it doesn't get that way without doing it a lot and, like you said, finding out if people are open. So give me more information on finding out if people are open. I know, myself, if a friend comes up and starts telling me about network marketing I just shut off, and you probably see that all the time. Do you continue if they do that? Because that doesn't mean that I'm closed completely but that's an automatic reaction, so how do you know if someone is actually open?

Ray: Here's how most network marketing communication goes - "Hey, are you open to my business?" and then they run away. "But you'd be rich! We have a Beemer club!" and they just run away. So I manage the energy and I tell people to be okay managing the energy. We do it in other areas of our lives, why not this? If I said "Would you be open to a side project that doesn't interfere with what we're doing?" and they say "Oh, is it one of those things?" I say "Well maybe it's not a fit for you," and then they go "Well what is it?" The other day I was helping one of my leaders recruit someone and the guy was like "I've done these things before and I've just never had success," he's going on and on and it's something that, if you're in network marketing, you've heard that speech hundreds of times. The average network marketer is going to say "Oh, this is different!" I say "Let me ask you this - why is this any different?" So I'm projecting into them, into their internal, saying "Why would this be any different? We invest a lot of time training you, so why is this going to bedifferent?" So, in an instant, he's going from "Convince me to join" to "Here's why you should accept me." It's just the management of energy, so you look for that. Does that mean I close every person? Of course not, it's ridiculous to even think that. The best people in the world close 30%. That's the best. Your average network marketer closes around 5-10%. You've just got to manage that energy. I don't care how many connections someone has if they're not open, I'm not going to invest a lot of time talking to them. I'm not going to use strong-arm tactics or hard closing or hypnosis, I'm just going to see if they're open. If they're open, we continue the conversation, if not, that's cool, we'll watch a ball game together, it's not a big deal.

Jaime: I wish I could get a lot more tips from you but we have to run really soon. What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Ray: I would say commit. My favorite definition of commitment is by George Zalucki - he says commitment is doing the thing you'd said you'd do long after the mood to do it has passed. The power of that statement is the recognition that the mood will pass, you will say "I'm going to be the top guy," but that mood will pass. I remember when my wide was making calls and  she disappeared for a little nit and I looked around for her and i found her in the bathroom and she's balling her eyes out, "I can't do this, I hate it, I'm going back to a job," and I'm gave her some tough love. Whatever I said inspired her and the next 90 days was when she really started turning it around and doing six figures. So you've got to commit. This is not a 12 hour, 12 day business - you've got to commit to being here and doing the same routine 12 months from now, come hell or high water, with the understanding that there's going to be family emergencies, there's going to be health issues, there's going to be kid issues, there's going to be job issues. Someone you know is going to get a job lay off or whatever. There are going to be unexpected costs - those things are going to happen. If they don't happen, that's weird. People that are successful focus on their goals; people that are unsuccessful focus on their circumstances and it'sthose circumstances that should have them activate but they're exactly the excuses they use not to. So my biggest thing is commit - commit to having that daily routine, to being here 12 months from now, to doing the things that you feel right now you shouldbe doing, but continue to do them and building that vision.

Jaime: Thank you for saying that, I think that's a huge thing. The business owners that I talk to, even those that have been in business for 20 years, have days where they're like "I don't want to do this anymore!" That's normal. It's pushing through that and not quitting - it's crazy to quit when you're only a month into it. The people that know better, who are 20 years into something they've built, it's a little harder for them to quit. It gets easier as you get better as a business owner but I'm sure you still have days now where you think "This is crazy," but that's normal and okay, so thank you so much for saying that, I really appreciate that. So where can we find out more about you? BecauseI know you have loads of cool stuff online.

Ray: RayHigdon.com - I put blogging up there for the profession, for any company. I have people from all over the world. We get a lot of traffic over there. I upload new videos almost every single day and people find them helpful.

Jaime: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Ray, I really appreciate it.
 
Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire Builders. I'm really excited to have Ray Higdon back on the show. He was just telling me, after the first interview we did, that his blog gets an amazing amount of traffic and makes amazing amount of money and I thought that you would want to hear some of his special tactics and tips on how he does that. So thanks so much for coming back on, Ray.

Ray: Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Jaime: Tell me a little bit about how you started the blog, where it was at the beginning and where it is now.

Ray: I started, probably like most blogs, in that I was just talking about my company because I didn't really understand it. I thought that the best thing for me to do would be to blog about my company keywords and if someone was searching for my company then I'd get them! What I realized is that if I just focus on value and on giving people, specifically network marketers, what they want, which is training and help, then I could build a large list and make a bigger impact on the profession as a whole. So I switched from just talking about the company to focusing on what network marketers need help with, so now we teach network marketers how to get more leads, recruit more reps, become top earners in the company, by teaching marketing prospecting, recruiting, closing, those mindsets, those kind of topics. So from pretty meager beginnings we now have, last month, I think 4.5 million page views, 45,000 unique visitors, we ranked in the top 30,000 in the world on Alexa, for traffic, and we consistently, for the last 3-4 months now, we've been selling between 8-10,000 per week in product sales, and that's not affiliate products, that's my own products. Products is something that everyone wants but you have to understand - huge overhead and it took quite a while to get there, to actually sell our first product, so it's definitely not a fast thing, but it's been awesome and I love blogging, for sure.

Jaime: Awesome. I love how you say it's a long term thing. A lot of people don't commit and they expect to see something amazing in six months. How long have you been doing it?

Ray: I created my first product in early to mid-2010. I was totally excited to get the first $1000! I've always kept my eye on the prize, though, and that's residual income. I didn't want to be the launch dude or the product guy, where twice a year I have to create a new product just to eat, so I always kept my focus on residual income but I have supplemented it here and there with rolling out different products. That's been good to me, but I still want everyone to understand that residual is where it's at. I'm still very, very focused on my network marketing team.

Jaime: I love this. We didn't really chat about this sort of stuff at the beginning but this is a big piece and I get questions about this all the time - people create a product, they'll send it to their list, they'll launch it and make a little bit of money and think "Great!" I don't even have a product page on my website, that's so bad of me - I have products but I don't have them on my website. So tell me what you do to get that $8-10,000 a week. How does that happen? If you don't mind telling us. What is the process you go through?

Ray: There are a couple of things there. One is it's building a following, building a list. The people that see my trainings or have met me at events, they like, believe in and trust me. That's the deal. So a lot of the time people will come and say "I want to sell $8-10,000 a week," but what you should focus on is "I want to build a following and put enough value into the marketplace that the marketplace will reward me with $8-10,000 a week," and that's avery different question than "What are the tactics you use to shove product down everyone's throat?" It just happens. I see a lot of times when I'm on a coaching call or something and I recognize that there's an area of training that hasn't been taught sufficiently, so we'll go out there and create training around it. Lately I've kind of stayed away from technical stuff - we've done a couple of blogging products and we've done very well with them, but I'm so concerned with confusing people, especially my team, that I've been shying away from that. We are doing a YouTube one pretty shortly, just a small product, but I always get concerned because I see so many people go down the rabbit hole of technology and never resurface.

Jaime: I guess that's one of the other questions that I have - and this is probably for people who have been blogging for a while, not for people who are just starting a blog. If you're just starting a blog you need to put in your time, a year or something, but if somebody's a little bit past that a lot of time people will go "I'm going to create this product and this random other product over here," where nothing goes together, it's just random pieces, because they do a survey, ask their audience what they want, and they want all these different things. Do you have a complete overview or are you all over the place too? Do you organize it so that it's what they need when or is it all over the place?

Ray: Surveys are definitely a good idea. I didn't use them for years, I just knew my audience. I respond to every e-mail, I talk to leads, I do three way calls, coaching calls, so I'm immersed in my profession, immersed in my target market, I know them very well. I know what they want, so I always like to do a profitable test, which is not a test for profitability, it's a test that will generate a profit and then I see if I like it. In June we did a big event and rolled out mastermind coaching and sold some pretty large coaching packages - that was aprofitable test. The same principle applies to products. I push for testimonials once we've sold a product to see how they are responding to them. One thing that I've done which has worked really well is I like to sell stuff before it's created and so I'll say "Hey, I'm about to create this product - you can get live access to it for a discounted price by participating with me." So doing those live webinars, recording them, then doing Q&A sessions so you can see where to tweak it for future modules has really helped because I take the feedback that I get and really mold the other modules around it, so I know that if someone has an issueother people are going to have the same kind of issue. The biggest thing is continuing to build that following. I see a lot of people who are great bloggersbut they're making a lot of mistakes in that their giveaway sucks or they're not making the right calls to action and things like that. Keep in mind that if you have a following people want to buy from you - they're saying "Pretty please, let me buy from you,let me put money into your wallet," and by not havingproducts you're taking that away from them. People may love you, but they'll never appreciate your free training the way they will your paid training. That's just true. I've seen it a million times - when they pull out their wallet they respect it at a different level and they will always reference that product purchase. "Hey, Ray, when I bought your product, it really changed my life," we get those all the time. You've just got to know that this is not about pushing product, just like blogging isn't about pushing content, it's about providing value, and if you're providing value you should be compensated.

Jaime: So it's about filling that need that already exists and you're just the one that can ethically give them that instead of them finding it somewhere else, where it probably exists but they're rather buy it from you. I love that, especially as I had someone yesterdaysaying "Jaime, when are you selling something? I have my credit card out," and I realized I need to do this better! That's why I'm asking you these questions, because I can use it too, so I really appreciate that.

Ray: I struggled with that in the beginning. What I've done is if I want to do something I haven't done, I hire someone who's done it. So I hired a coach who's just a guru of intellectual property and he helped me. When we started selling masterminds I hired a guru of selling masterminds and learned from him and we've done well with that. In the beginning I was using Paypal and delivering videos on a not-great platform but, like Brendon Burchard says, version 1.0 is infinitely better than 0.0. So my first products werenot put togetherperfectly by any stretch of the imagination - now we've got InfusionSoft with customer hub, logins, passwords, etc. We definitely didn't have that at first and that was a big mistake. Keep your costs low for as long as you possibly can, create that profit then invest some of that profit is a big, big suggestion.

Jaime: It's a process - you didn't start out with InfusionSoft and all of that crazy stuff. First you figured out how to do blogging, then gained a following, then got somewhere good and improved on that, but just took it one step at a time. I know people who just want to do it all at once. My mentor told me to do the same thing - create a live product and be able to talk to people and all that stuff. Then do you create a second product that's sort of 2.0 that you sell or do you end up selling live webinars?

Ray: Usually I'll take the live webinars,repackage them, take that content and resell it. I haven't yet gone the route of doing a 2.0 kind of thing. I don't know if it's because I didn't want to nullify the first product. We did Pro Blog Academy and that was a $850,000 launch - even though it's blogging which you would think "Okay, that was a year ago, there's no way that's still valid," but I try to keep it so that they're concepts, rather than telling people which buttons to push, so the concepts will stay. Unless people stop using WordPress or something. I try to create trainings that are timeless and mindset recruiting, prospecting, not much different. My wife is going to do a Facebook product and that will have to be updated, so there are certain things that have to be updated. One mistake that people make is not diving deep into a topic - I have six recruiting products and some are majorly different, some are similar, but a lot of my listeners bought all of them, they just love that topic. So if your following loves a certain topic, they willprobably buy more from you. Obviously keep it fresh, keep it different - I'm not saying do the same thing, but understand that category can usually be expanded upon. You can even niche it out - in recruiting, there's no reason you can't have "How to recruit financial planners," "How to recruit CPAs," "How to recruit realtors," you could create a whole lineup of that.

Jaime: This is great. I have a thousand other questions but we have to run so I can't ask them. But thank you for all the information - not only is it going to be helpful for the people listening but it'sgoing to be helpful for me! So I really appreciate you coming on today, Ray. Where can we find out more about you' People should check out your product page, just to see how it's laid out, because it's really interesting. So where can we go to find out that information'

Ray: RayHigdon.com - I have a free giveaway there and there's a product page there. Check it out - I very specifically speak to network marketers, so that's what we do.

Jaime: Awesome. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I hope you have an amazing day of coaching some amazing people. Have a great day.

Ray: My pleasure, thanks so much.

Tags: actionable advice, lead generation, millionaire interview, Mindset, network, network marketing, Ray Higdon

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

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