How to Make your Marketing Appeal to the Masses with Derek Halpern

Founder of Social Triggers – Derek Halpern

Derek Halpern is the Founder of Social Triggers, which reaches more than 400,000 entrepreneurs each month.

After building several successful websites in various niches (entertainment, fashion, etc.), he refocused on what he loves most:

Building and Marketing Businesses.

He uses the perfect blend of data-driven marketing (conversion rates, academic research, and personal case studies) and content marketing to get traffic, attract customers, and sell products online.

A few things you’ll learn from Derek:

• Fundamental principles that move the needle
• What makes people tick, excited and deflated
• Why the ideal customer avatar that has been shoved down our throats for years is basically a myth
• How to make your marketing appeal to the masses

Derek’s Website:

SocialTriggers.com

Derek’s YouTube Channel:

YouTube.com/socialtriggers

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters, and I'm so excited to finally have my good friend, Derek Halpern, on the show from socialtriggers.com. I've been begging you I think for years, Derek, to come on the show. You have finally graced us with your presence. Thanks so much for coming on today.

Derek:	I wouldn't say you were begging. I think we have a different definition of what that means. But yes. I'm really happy to be here, and I'm excited to have a conversation with you today. I've known you forever and I'm just excited to see where this goes.

Jaime:	So, I feel like asking once and then being like ah, he said no, counts as begging, right?

Derek:	Yeah. You know what? Let's retell the story. You were begging for years, every week, every day, because I'm that amazing of a guest.

Jaime:	See.

Derek:	Let's tell everyone that story.

Jaime:	I was that's where I was going.

Derek:	We'd like to rewind and just do that?

Jaime:	Oh. The ego. I love it so much. Why don't you tell people what Social Triggers is. Not the - I mean everybody should know who you are, because you're so amazing, and if they don't, the small people in the world that aren't paying attention to you, please explain what the heck you actually do.

Derek:	I help people start and grow businesses. And one of the things that we're really good at is that, while most people tend to focus on specific mediums or channels like email marketing, Facebook, Facebook messenger, we take a much more holistic approach to business. And we try to focus on real fundamental principles that move the needle. We try to get people to focus on understanding their product market fit to make sure you're offering the right thing to the right people. Then we show you that when it's not a fit, how do you make it a fit? Then when you know it's a fit, how do you get those people. 

And it's not about the channel, it's about just understanding good business principles and understanding what makes people tick, what makes people excited, what makes people deflated. And knowing how to all of that in your marketing, your sales funnels, in your email marketing if you want to go through email, in your blog, your content, whatever. That's how we do it.

Jaime:	Marketing and sales in general, I mean, you're talking about growing, but most people say with avatars you should pick one small niche and go after it, but it seems like yours is really gosh-darn broad. 

So, isn't it harder to actually grow what you're doing that way?

Derek:	I always tell people there's no such thing as an ideal customer. This ideal customer avatar that has been shoved down our throats for years is basically a myth. You instead have ideal customers. There's no one individual person who's the perfect fit for what you do. There are many individual people who could be a perfect fit for what you do, and that's where your marketing and sales comes into play.

	Because your market and message change based on who you're talking to. Now, when you're just getting started, it's difficult to target five different people in five different walks of life. So, it's smart to focus on just one of them. But you should know that there are other opportunities that lay before you.

	So, I give this example. I used to think yoga people were weird. Every time I saw them they were so happy, they were always stretching in weird places like they're ordering a coffee and they had their leg up on the counter, and I'm like what you doing? This is a coffee shop. But this is what they do. So, I just think they're real weird.

	If someone came up to me and said hey Derek, want to try yoga? I'd probably laugh at them and maybe yell at them unintelligibly. Maybe I'd even bark at them just to scare them away. Now, if I stumble on a sales page that said here's how to do yoga and I saw that headline, I would have zero interest in that sales pitch, because I don't care about yoga.

	Now, a friend of mine, she invited me, she heard that I had some stretching issues. Like I have back pain from sitting in the computer chair hunching over all the time, you know how we computer people are, and she's like hey [inaudible] [00:04:10], I've got some cool stretching routines that will help this. Do you want to do one day? I was like alright. Yeah. That sounds good. I don't want back pain anymore. Let's stretch it out. I go to meet her and she rolls out a yoga mat. And I'm like wait a second. You tricked me. This is yoga. We did it. I found out I actually quite love yoga and I actually hired a private yoga teacher and I did yoga three times a week for like three months.

	But it's funny, because had you come to me and said how to do yoga, I'd probably laugh at you. You tricked me with back pain, now I'm interested. Yoga is for people who want to do yoga, but the point is whatever it is that you sell, whatever product you offer it could appeal to one person who's an ideal customer. But it also appeals to many different ideal customers, and you should know about all of them.

Jaime:	So, wouldn't it be easier to do the low-hanging fruit to people that already know they like yoga so that way they can go after it?

Derek:	No. Because if they already know they like yoga, they probably already have a yoga place that they go to. So, now you're not in the business of convincing people to pay you for yoga, you're in the business of convincing them to switch to you. 

Where they're gonna look at your price, they're gonna look at your better, they're gonna look at your credentials, they're gonna look at all these other things that you might not be able to furnish, that's why it's always good to know about a couple of them, because some of these people will be easier to sell than some of these other people. We actually have a name for it. Should I tell that name?

Jaime:	No. You shouldn't.

Derek:	Alright.

Jaime:	Go ahead.

Derek:	[Inaudible] [00:05:46] Next question. Alright. There are three types of people. The informed customer, the oblivious customer, and the afflicted customer. The informed customers are the people who already know, like, trustee, and want what you got. That's the person who already wants to do yoga. 

The oblivious customers are people who don't even know yoga exists. They don't even know yoga, what kind of stuff is that. Is that food? You know, they don't even know.

	The afflicted people are people who are like me in the yoga situation. I had a back pain problem and yoga was a cure.

	So, the informed know, the oblivious know nothing, afflicted have a problem and they needed solved. So, as an example, if you're trying to sell yoga to uninformed customer, you might write something like why I switched from vinyasa yoga to forrest yoga. This is going to appeal to someone who does vinyasa yoga or any other type of yoga about why they would switch.

To someone like me, eh. For afflicted customer, you might say something like the best way to get rid of backache. Because now you're talking to a problem and you're gonna explain to them how whatever it is you're gonna offer will get rid of the problem. So, you might say something like how our morning stretch routine a lemonade back pain for good. Right? That's an example of appealing to a problem when afflicted.

An oblivious customer is someone who wakes up every day with back pain and doesn't even realize that it's something that could be cured. Meaning they just like oh my back hurts. It's just the way it is. At which point, you might want to write something like, you know, for 27 years I woke up and my back had this much pain. Then I discovered if I did this five-minute thing before I went into the shower, I had no more pain for good.

Now, we're talking to someone who doesn't even know about stretching, yoga, nothing. We're just talking to the problem and showing a potential solution. Does that make sense?

Jaime:			It totally does. Is any of them easier or is it just different subsets?

Derek:	The afflicted customer is probably the easiest customer to sell, because they got a problem and you got a solution.

Jaime:	And they know that.

Derek:	The informed customer is easy to sell, because they already want what you got, but you gotta really prove to them why you're better. The oblivious customer is the hardest person to sell, but if you can get into the habit of converting oblivious people into buyers, that's where all the money is.

Jaime:	That's killer. Okay. So, what if they already have an ideal customer that they're selling right now, they're already making six figures, and then they're like Derek told me to get more than one ideal customer and then they want to go do that to start testing, but the wide road is a little so open that it's hard to go after one of the other.

	What would be the method that they could pick one to test?

Derek:	Bright Spots. Bright Spots is a Chip and Dan Heath, they wrote a book called Switch. This book's gotta be like ten years old now. But they wrote a book called Switch, and they told a story about someone who's trying to solve a hunger problem in this city that had hunger problems. I don't remember the name of the city. I'm getting old. So, I don't remember everything.

	But they try to solve this hunger problem in the city. And they discovered that you couldn't just bring food in and give them food, because that wasn't gonna solve the problem. It was a band-aid. But they discovered that there were some families that were raising their kid and they were not malnourished like the other kids.

	This was a bright spot as they called it. What was happening there that wasn't happening elsewhere? And when they wrote about the story, the research, they went in and they observed this family and they discovered that the family was very active in feeding the child. Meaning when there was food available, the mom would make sure that the kid ate enough. It's the first thing.

	The second thing they noticed that they were feeding the kid this root that was growing freely nearby that most other people weren't using. So, you look for this bright spot you're like oh my god, that's a solution. So, they start educating people about this and it was eventually the solution.

	The same is true in your business. When you want to branch out into new customers, you want to look for the bright spots in your customer base. Look for the weird customers you have that purchased that are different from everybody else. And focus on them. Get them on the phone. Hey, thank you so much for buying this. I hope you really loved it. But can ask you a question? What made you get here? Why are you here? And they'll tell you the story. And you're like oh shit. I gotta get more of those people.

	That's how you do it. We did this a lot. So, I found I had some hairstylists on my list, so I did a video about how to price more money for your haircuts. Went viral in the hairstyles community. I found out I had some massage therapists on my list. I did an article about massage therapy. I got more massage therapists into my line. All by focusing on these bright spots.

	A lot of people will look at 100 customers and say I've got 95 business owners. Obviously, my customer base is business owners. Or maybe you've already got all the business owners that are willing to pay you and look at those five other people and see if there's 95 of those people out there that will pay you too. That's how you find the new customer. You look for the bright spots in your company.

Jaime:	I love that. So, you align the marketing that you're kind of already doing and just sort of switch over. So, you do a lot of content working. You have a blog. We'll talk about that later. But you take that and scoot it over, right, to a different thing, so that way you're not going hey I'll do marketing tactics, so that seems kind of crazy too.

Derek:	Yes.

Jaime:	Okay.

Derek:	It's always about being aware of who you're serving and then trying to serve more of those people.

Jaime:	Totally. What's interesting though is like especially because I come from the old-school way, so sometimes it's like oh, this subset found you randomly and they actually look at newspapers because they don't like computers because they're so old or whatever it is.

	And so, I want to make caveats, because if people are like oh, that random dude. Yay. Oh, he actually found me as a fluke instead of leveling that piece up. Did you notice there's nuances?

Derek:	No such thing as a fluke.

Jaime:	Ooh. Okay.

Derek:	If they found if he's an older person that found you through a newspaper, maybe you should think about by newspaper ads. That's how you [inaudible crosstalk] [00:12:15] new markets.

Jaime:	Yeah. I agree.

Derek:	Most people just use the same, oh, they want to get new customers, oh well you know I hear Facebook's big, I'm gonna go do Facebook now. And it's like wait a second. Slow down. That's not the customer base is not only on Facebook.

Jaime:	Totally.

Derek:	We do direct mail.

Jaime:	Do you?

Derek:	We [inaudible] people.

Jaime:	Okay. Tell me more about this. Because I do a lot of direct mail with my clients, and most people are like Facebook advertising. And I'm like dude this is not the only thing that you guys can do online. Just so you know.

Derek:	There's so many ways the goal of marketing and advertising is to get people's attention and channel it onto your product. You could do it through email, you could do it through Facebook advertising, you could do it through phone calls, you could do it through Instant Messenger, you could do it through push notifications, you could do it through mail, you could do it through any format or medium that you believe they will have attention on.

	It doesn't matter how you get the attention. The key part of marketing and sales, get attention, sell them stuff. Get attention does not mean buy Facebook ads. You know? If you could sit on a corner scream with a sign buy my stuff, if that works, do more of that.

Jaime:	I love your enthusiasm over all this stuff. Okay. So, on the direct marketing side then too, a lot of people are like oh it's too expensive, it's old-school, blah blah blah.

	What sort of tips do you have for somebody testing some of that stuff? Because it's a whole new channel that can have its nuances also.

Derek:	What you mean so expensive?

Jaime:	That's what people say. They're like oh stamps. I have to pay for stamps. I know. 

Derek:	I gotta be honest with you. This is going to be a side topic, but there's been this influx of people starting and creating businesses who think it's free because they believe the ads that they're reading. Okay. 

	Business isn't free. Alright? There's no such thing as free marketing. Either pay with your time or you pay with your money so, the question isn't like there's no free. And yes. You can do a mail test for five grand. Oh my god, $5000. It's like alright well, you gonna spend $5000 on advertising. Just try that. You know what I mean It's like people are just so willing to complain about costs and it's just like especially if you want online business, you don't even have an office. You have no costs. Use that cost. Spend some of that money. 

Like I get people hit me up and oh, and this  I'll never forget this conversation. There's this guy who makes a lot of money. Millions of dollars a year. And he's complaining about a $99 software service. I'm like dude don't you have bigger problems than to monitor your $99 software. I've been paying for this one software for $300 a month for like five years. I didn't even remember I was paying for it. 

Because when you're making money you're not sitting there nitpicking. I'm not saying you blow money on nothing, but the point is is like you're focusing on the wrong things. And then direct mail, if it works it works. You don't know if it works until you try it. And if you tried it and it doesn't work, you either did it wrong or it doesn't work. And you're never going to know the answer to that unless you try it.

Jaime:	Yes. I agree. Though, a lot of people when they test stuff they don't actually measure things, and then they go I don't think anything worked. Yay. Right? And that makes it difficult also.

Derek:	Crazy. 

Jaime:	Yes. I know. Or a business that's going through lower sales or whatever well actually cut their marketing budget or their sales team. And you're like that doesn't make any logical sense. Anyway.

Derek:	None.

Jaime:	We get on tangents. Okay. So, let's talk about your content marketing, your blog, all that fun stuff. Because we're talking about it a little bit, and I just saw you sort of did an influx of new videos and you're like nah, we're not totally doing it that way anymore. 

So tell me because at the beginning, years and years ago when you now that you're old, you know, you were early Internet stage when videos were not nearly as cool as YouTube is now right? And you were the guy that was really going all in on a lot of video stuff, where a lot of people were. Then you stopped. Then you came back. So tell me. 

Derek:	It all comes down to great, great question. I'm a firm believer and this is not something I suggest people replicate, if I'm being honest.

Jaime:	Appreciate that. Yay, Derek got something wrong. Sorry. I don't mean to revel.

Derek:	It's not that I got it wrong, it's that I'm a firm believer that when I don't like doing something one percent, I won't do it anymore. 

Jaime:	Mm.

Derek:	So, when I was doing the videos originally they were doing great. We're getting lots of views on them; people loved them, that's how I built my brand. People like my personality, I kinda came out of my shell, it's like oh shit. This guy's kinda loud, he's maybe  he's kinda funny, he's kind of a dick, but, you know, he's smart. I'll listen to him. This is like what happened. 

But eventually I got unhappy. I didn't want to do it anymore. So, I stopped doing it. It's that easy. I was done with that part. The other part was that I knew that I had to create something different. We wanted to focus on more course development, more software development, more product development. I was trying to focus on the things that I believed were going to move the needle better. 

And if I don't like doing something and I don't think it's actually moving the needle, so you stop doing it. That all said, I think the market has changed. I think video is a big way to connect with people, and I think that if you're not doing video your stupid. And the thing about video that's interesting is, we wanted to do a daily blog this year And the daily blog was a test. We wanted to keep it up and we lasted about 60 days doing one video per day, was it 60 days? It might've been a little bit more than that. I don't know. Whatever. We lasted 60 days doing a video every day, we made more videos in two months then we made in like two years.

Jaime:	Wow. 

Derek:	And - 

Jaime:	On something you didn't even like. Interesting. Okay.

Derek:	But wait. I wanted to like it again. So, I started to do it. It was fun at first, it got more fun, then it started to taper off, and the content was getting a little weak. And the reason why the content was getting weak is because it's hard to create content like that every single day. 

And that all said, I have another company that we launched, it's a health product line, that was ramping up, and there was a lot of time there, so we put it on hiatus for a little bit. The reason why I put it on hiatus, one, we weren't delivering the content that we wanted. It wasn't good enough. Two, this content wasn't linked to a business model of any kind. It was just done because I wanted to - I have a big mouth. Look at me guys. That's what I want. 

So, I was doing it for me. We had business opportunities come up that we had to focus on, and three, back to the content. Right? It wasn't good enough. So, one of the things that we were gonna do is we stopped doing it, we went into the other stuff, we solved all these other issues that we had, and now we're thinking about coming back to it, and we wanted to take what we learned in that 60 days of doing it daily and kind of boil it down to the key points. 

Like what do we really want from this? And we're actually in the process of figuring that out. We're trying to figure out how that works, how it's going to work. I know that I don't want to do content every day. I know that I don't want to teach everything every day. I want it to be more of an entertaining experience for people that also has some knowledge bombs of course, but how many times are you gonna look at me on video in front of this fake plant? It gets boring. 

Now, luckily I have personality, I can talk loud, I can talk low. I can modulate. I can be entertaining. But how many times do you want to look at this plant? Not at all. So, that's why we stopped.

Jaime:	Okay. So then, what did you learn? so, I know you're still figuring out exactly what you learned. Well, what are some pieces that you learned so if somebody wanted? because I want to do more video too. And I've been sort of pushing it away anwralright it's gonna take a lot of work. And I only have so many hours a week. I don't how many hours you work, but video takes up a lot. 

And so, what did you learn, especially on the YouTube side, to really level that piece up in those 60 days?

Derek:	Yeah. First thing, when you're making YouTube videos, your number one audience is an oblivious customer. Every video you do has to appeal to the masses. That niche stuff is good for search-engine rankings, YouTube rankings; not good for viewership. You need to appeal to the masses. That's first one. 

Second, story-based content works better than non-story-based content. Third, don't teach too much stuff. People get overwhelmed. They can't keep up. You're always giving them stuff to do, they're gonna feel like you're always giving them stuff to do. And then they?re gonna stop watching, because they feel overwhelmed and guilty by not doing all the stuff that you told them to do.

Jaime:	Right. Okay. So, how do you stop not teaching all the time? Right? Like the point is to deliver value and give them things that they'll see results from. So, how do you stop teaching too much?

Derek:	Well, I haven't figured that out yet. I'm trying to figure it out right now. If I'd figured it out, I would be on video right now saying just that. 

Jaime:	That's awesome. Okay. Good. You'll have to let us know when you figure that out.

Derek:	Oh. You'll know. Not only will you know, you'll see my face on advertising. You'll see it everywhere. I want to bombard the Internet and maybe I'll send you a piece of mail too.

Jaime:	Good. See. That would be amazing, with your face with that plant. Here it is again. 

Derek:	The plant is back.

Jaime:	So, what so? and I know there's been an evolution of you in videos, because I remember watching your first few videos. Right? And you're an introvert in general. 

Derek:	I am. 

Jaime:	So, tell us how? give us tips 

Derek:	I'm an introvert. 

Jaime:	Yeah. Exactly. Give us tips on how to manage all of that. And actually get good at it.

Derek:	Great question. So, I watched an interview with Chris Rock. Chris Rock was doing an interview and the guy was like Chris Rock, you're nothing like you are on stage. And Chris Rock is like people don't want me on stage. They want three times me. 

And this was a huge insight for me. Massive. And the reason why it was massive is because everyone focuses on being themselves. And when you try to be yourself on camera, what ends up happening is you become stiff. 

I'm like hi. I'm Derek. I'm going to teach you how to do - you know what I mean? They're very stiff. That's boring, especially on video. On video, you need to over exaggerate your actions. You need to make sure people see the movements. Like I'm very I talked with my hands maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker, who knows, but I purposely over exaggerate some movements because a micro-movement is not going to be picked up as well on camera. Right? 

So, at the end of the day, Chris Rock says you can't be yourself. You gotta be three times yourself. So, when you?re trying to be on camera, you know that you're going to have a tendency to be stiff, which means you're gonna be half yourself. So, you overcompensate for it by being three times yourself. If you're loud be louder. You know what I mean? That's kind of the types of things that you want to do. Now ?

Jaime:	It's been impressive by the way.

Derek:	The what?

Jaime:	It's been impressive to see the trajectory that you've gone. You're like this anyway, you know, like in person. You're quite like this anyway. But yes. It's very much bigger. You can tell. 

Derek:	Yes. And that's one of the things its active practice. You're not born with it. If you look at some of my first videos, oh my God. If you go to YouTube.com, Google, or YouTube search, Derek Halpern Affiliate Summit 2011, and you'll see the first ever speaking engagement I ever did, and you are gonna see me white knuckling the podium being quite. And I look at it and I cringe. My neck is getting red I'm so nervous. 

I don't talk like that anymore. And it's because you develop a character. You wanna on that character. It's not that you don't want to be yourself, you always should be yourself, but just know who you are and dial it up. So for me, I'm a loud New Yorker that's part of my brand, it's who I am. I dial it up when I'm on film, when I'm in person, everything. 

If you're a quiet reserved, nerd book reader, and I say nerd in the best sense of the word, because most people also know that I probably read more books than anyone you know. Think about the person who reads books more than me, I probably more than them. Like you know what I mean? I read more than them. And so, if you're that person, you're quiet, you're reserved, dial that up. 

When you're doing a video, have a big stack of books there. Say hey look, I read 47 books in the last three days, because that's me. So, you dial up the parts of your personality that are what I would call are weird or quirky or interesting, and dial down the parts of your personality that aren't. 

Jaime:	I love this. Alright. So, what about the talking head videos though? Because what we said before is you're doing all the movements which is great, but nowadays there's lots of different ways to do stuff. 

You've been watching Pat Flynn's videos. He's like doing a lot more cuts, he's got the whole crew, they're following him around, right? Do you think that that's the trajectory of where things are going, or can we just be big enough personalities that we can sit in front of a camera and that's going to be enough?

Derek:	Look. You can make things complicated, have a big crew, at the end of the day, it's the person in front of the camera that's gonna get the audience. Right? And that all works for Pat because Pat's got his unique personality.

Jaime:	Yes. Very much so. 

Derek:	You have to own it. And part of it might be you getting on your camera, sitting in front of this stupid plant wall, and talking, and practicing, and learning, and then you develop what you want to do with time. 

My friend, Marie Forleo, has a great quote. She says clarity comes from action not from thought. And this quote is something I quoted on several occasions, and I've quoted it on several occasions because it's an amazing quote. 

So many people get caught inside their head trying to figure out the best way to do something and then they never do anything when all they need to do is just say screw it, do it for a little bit kinda like I do with my blog, and see what happens. Then if things are going crazy, you cancel it. Wait a second, I did that. You revisit it, you figure out how to change it, and then you do it again. Simple. 

Jaime:	See. Okay. Simple, not easy. Because a lot of people are like oh no, people are going to think I fricked it up. Right? I was gonna swear, but we'll have to beep me if we do right? 

So, it's really awesome to be able to see you, someone that's high level, do something and be like that kinda sucked, I have to redo it and think about it again. So, A, thank you but B, what do you all those people that have too much crap going on in their head and therefore won't actually take action?

Derek:	Know what the best part about launching something and having it bomb is? Usually it bombs because you didn't get any viewers or traffic, which means no one's gonna know you failed. You're basically going to fail in silence. That's usually how most failure is. You're gonna do something, you're gonna get it out there, eight people will see it, you're gonna think it's not working, and guess what, only eight people saw you fail. 

So, everything you're worried about seeing people think you're failing and stuff. Nobody gonna see it.

Jaime:	Well, first when we got on the line, I was like oh how's the blog? And he's like we're not really doing that anymore. I was like I didn't even notice. Sorry. Like when it's there, I notice. When it's not there, you're not like oh where did he go? Right? It's past. 

Derek:	And that's how you know that it wasn't good enough. Because you knew I was doing it, but you didn't know I stopped, which means I was right. The content was not as good as it needed to be, because people weren't missing it. 

Now a lot of people emailed me thought I'd died, because I turned off all social media. I've been doing a [inaudible] [00:27:50] a test, no email, no social media, no text messages, my phone ringer's off. I don't talk to anybody. It's great.

Jaime:	Okay. Tell me more. Why? I mean I get it, but why?

Derek:	You know I'm introverted. And sometimes I just don't want to talk to anyone. So, I basically cut off all communication for little bit just to see what would happen. And you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing. I?m like I might throw my phone right in the garbage. 

Jaime:	I dare you to. Triple dog dare you. 

Derek:	Don't tempt me.

Jaime:	I know I know. Right? Well, so, okay, so, how did that affect you? How did you actually? do you feel better getting rid of all that stuff so people aren't pinging you all the time?

Derek:	Yes. I like - I live in my - I have a company obviously. I'm not just some loud dude wearing a hat, yelling on camera. I communicate through my company through Skype and Google Chat and Slack and stuff like that. So, we're still very much in touch in getting everything done. 

But I started to focus on the things that matter most for what we're working on. And I try to cut out the unnecessary things. And sometimes we all get caught up in reading everyone?s latest Facebook update or logging into Facebook reading the feed and getting mad about like four different political events or something. 

Like oh he did this oh she did this. It's like every day you're like why am I on this roller coaster? Oh. It's because I opened my Facebook feed and Facebook is only showing me content that they know I want to engage with and I only engage with things that make me mad and I'm really mad right now rarh, rarh, rarh, rarh. Two hours go by and you're done.

Jaime:	So predictable and yet we still habitually do it every day. 

So, what roles are you actually doing in the business? Like you're the guy doing all the social and that stuff or are you just doing videos, like what's your actual role?

Derek:	Yeah. So, right now my role has always been relatively the same. Business the role. How do we get more people to the site, how do we get more of those people to buy more things. So, all that time is spent doing that. Message development, marketing campaigns, email campaigns, and things along those lines. How do we get more people interested? How do we do it? Roll out a campaign, get it going, see what happens. 

Jaime:	How big's your team then? Because it's not just you going into all the programs and writing everything and stuff like that?

Derek:	No. No. Not anymore. That was a much simpler time with much higher profit margins.

Jaime:	I bet. Seriously.

Derek:	Now, we have a team. It's hard to really know like how many employees I have, because I don't sit here and count them all the time and you kind of laugh at me. You don't have an org chart that shows everything? It's like no I don't have an org chart. That's how I think. 

We've got between freelancers and full-time employees I think it's like 15 people or so. And that will be scaling up as we continue to grow over the next few years and kind of where we put our focus at and whatnot. And it's interesting this focus like, you know, dealing with the team is always a big enough communication task that you can't really risk wasting your time on things like Facebook. 

Jaime:	Yep. Recalibrate every time. You're like darn it. Every time. Back to center. Focus matters. But of course  

Derek:	And they piss me off. Every time I log on I was getting mad, about everything. I didn't even realize I could be mad about something that happened in Australia. But apparently I can be. 

Jaime:	You have to actually look at Facebook right before your video, so you can get all jazzed up for when you go after it. I'm sure you're a lot more chill in general, especially without Facebook. My goodness.

Derek:	Wait a second. We hung out a few times. I'm pretty much the same person.

Jaime:	You totally are. But, pissed off Derek is very different, pissed off and animated Derek is very different than regular just assholish Derek.

Jaime:	Wait. What did you call me?

Derek:	Yeah. You know I love you.

Jaime:	Somebody called my father also, so I can't really say anything. It's a term of endearment. Okay?

Derek:	Of course. Of course. Well, one of the things is just knowing and being three times yourself. Like back to the whole point. You want to be yourself. And if you look at some of the evolution of my stuff, you'll see my earlier videos, I got stupid hair, I'm wearing a T-shirt, and I look like crap. 

Then I started to get different. I got tuxedos, I got watches, I got suits, and I started to be more professional, and now I'm back to T-shirts. And let me tell you, going that whole suit route was fun, but man every time I put on a tie I felt like someone was trying to choke me out. And it's just not for me. It?s not for me.

Jaime:	So, it's a great test though. What made you just give that piece up? Was it working better? Or are you like it's not even working better. It doesn't matter?

Derek:	Maybe it does. Like, I roll around in a hat now. I sometimes wear a blazer with sweatpants. I do whatever I want. And what's really interesting about that is that it's not always, I'm not saying to go walk around and make a scene, but it's about what makes you feel the most comfortable. Right? 

And people think they're going to get judged for how they look or how they act and sometimes that's true. You know, there are mean people in the world. But other times you have to just be confident in who you are and sometimes that confidence comes from just being who you are as opposed to trying to be something you're not. Because if you can do that on camera, in content, on video, on audio, in the content you're creating, in your business, in a sales call, it's something that will always be appreciated. 

I had friends, I was doing a sales call and they were listening to it and they were like I noticed that you're very aggressive and combative on sales calls. So, I'm like I wouldn't say I'm combative, I'm just very authoritative around the topic. And he's like well, most people would say that that would be a mistake. Why are you like that? 

I was like oh easy. I like to just be who I am on a sales call as opposed to like most people when they go on a first date, they try to put their best foot forward, let me dress the way I usually don't dress, let me shave even though I don't usually shave, let me do this, this, this and they basically create this persona of who they believe the best version of themselves are and it's not who they are. They go on the date, they woo them and the second someone sees you for your real you, you're not that person. 

Now, they're surprised. You lied to them. Of course they're surprised. So when I'm on a sales call, I'm myself. If I want to look at a problem this way and I think you're doing something stupid, I'm gonna tell you. You're doing something stupid. And if that's can offend you, I like to just throw that out there in the first ten minutes that way you know what to expect for the rest of our engagement. 

Jaime:	I don't want your money, because later I might have to refund it because you hate me. Awesome. [Inaudible] [00:34:37] Get it out.

Derek:	That's what I'm saying.

Jaime:	That's killer. I think people need to do that way more. I think it comes with time though too. I remember my mentor made me wear suits and red lipstick, and I was like huhuh I hated it. And I'm so grateful now that I can have purple hair and it doesn't really like none of this actually matters when you actually know your confidence behind what you're saying and what you're actually selling. You can actually be yourself a lot better. But I wish I embraced that a lot more earlier and I couldn't or didn't, I should say.

Derek:	Yes. Hundred percent. You gotta be yourself, but you don't want to be too much of yourself. Because there's some people that are a little too much of themselves and alienates customers for no reason. 

Derek:	Wait. Not you? No? What? 

Jaime:	No. I never alienate so, when I make so, people asked me one day you know, Derek, I noticed that when someone sends you feedback, and by feedback they mean when someone sends you a stupid email, you make fun of them on Facebook. You know, that's kind of giving them power and makes you look weak, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. 

And I'm like just like well, why don't you think to yourself why I do it? Do you think I'm doing it for self-cathartic reasons like I need to just release this into the world? I need to just be mad about this? You think that's why I do this? Well, yeah. Why else would you do it? 

Maybe I do it to scare off people who would be doing the same thing to me because I don't want to deal with it anymore. And they're like ah that doesn't make sense. I was like sure it does. If you want to keep the deer out of your backyard you spray coyote urine around the backyard to keep the deer way. Those Facebook posts are my coyote urine. 

Jaime:	Can we use that as a quote for like this interview? Those Facebook posts are my coyote urine.

Derek:	It makes sense. Right?

Jaime:	Yes. It definitely makes sense. But that's alienating the people that you don't want to be your customers, and you don't think it alienates in any way other people that could be your customer?

Derek:	It could. It could alienate some of those people, but the bottom line is that if you're gonna be offended by something like this, you're not gonna like me. So, let's just cut it out right now, let's put it on the table, you should go over there.

Jaime:	Kick them off the island early. Alright. Then we don't have to worry about stealing their food later. Alright.  I love this. 

Okay. So, anyway we have to start wrapping up really soon, but I actually want to ask you, because when you go to socialtriggers.com, you kinda see what you sell, but you kinda don't. So, which is cool and especially for info marketers and thought leaders quote unquote, I love your moving around in the chair. For the people that aren't watching video, you should, because Derek is very funny when you watch him on video. 

But when you look at what you actually sell, do you have funnels and everything behind the scenes so you don't put it out there like crazy? What are the things that you actually sell and how do you sell them typically?

Derek:	We sell primarily through email. You opt into something and then we spam you. No. That's not what happens. You opt into something; we make offers based on your behavior. So, if you opt in for a blog-related blog-growth product, you're gonna get an offer for a blog-growth product eventually. And those are all automated sales funnels that we deal with. And that's the primary driver of how we generate sales right now.

Jaime:	Do you have your funnels like separate based on the lead magnets so it's blog - your blog info product has a lead magnet [inaudible] [00:37:58]? 

Derek:	Yeah. There could be multiple different lead magnets that send it to the same funnel. It just depends on what it is.

Jaime:	What's your email software now?

Derek:	Eh. New topic. 

Jaime:	I didn't know you could do that on my show. Good to know. Awesome. Thanks Derek.

Derek:	I hate all email software companies. I don't even want to say who I use because I hate them. I hate every single email software company that targets the marketing space, and I don't even feel comfortable mentioning their name on a camera. That's why I'm  not trying to be eh, new topic to be an ass, I just don't like that person, and I don't want to give them any publicity.

Jaime:	Well, the reason why ask is because? 

Derek:	[Inaudible] [00:38:39]. We can talk about this all day. This is one of my favorite things to drink during the day. It's got no calories, it's got lime flavor, and you know what, I should be their spokesperson because it gives me my energy to perform.

Jaime:	Good segue. That was perfect. Nice. I'm totally ADD and on a different topic now. Good job. 

Okay. The reason I was asking though too is because I don't even care about the software like you said, it's not necessarily the tactic strategy, it's a holistic approach, the problem is that things get really complicated when you have multiple funnels and you have tons of lead magnets, when you tag stuff, it's starts to get super nitty-gritty especially six and seven figures, and that's what I was looking for. Sort of how you manage all that.

Derek:	If you make less than $1 million a year, you only need one funnel. Don't make the only thing person making things complicated is you. 

Jaime:	Thank you. Everyone's like I need seven lead magnets.

Derek:	No.

Jaime:	I'm like you're not making any money. Let's focus on the product please.

Derek:	I wanna get rid of all my lead magnets and focus on one of them, because I'm stressed out. That's why the email is so annoying to me. Because I want to move this stuff over and like moving over a million different things I told my team recently to axe it. Axe it all. We're going to one. 

So, people tend to over complicate things. You'll have people who have never done a webinar before think about running a webinar, running an email campaign to people who didn't register, running an email campaign to people who did register, running an email campaign to people who stayed halfway, running an email campaign to people who didn't see the first email. 

It's like whoa slow down. You have 200 people on your email list. Your writing email campaigns for three people right now. Stop it. You know what I mean?

Jaime:	Oh. Believe me I do.

Derek:	So that's why when it comes to this, don't over complicate things. You have good product, make a good funnel, that's the way you get people to buy stuff. Done. 

Jaime:	Now, do you?

Derek:	Now, get more people into the funnel.

Jaime:	Do you think they should be paying 'your' you do a lot of the copy on your own. Do you think people if they're not necessarily good at copy should they hire somebody? Because sometimes that's hit or miss too. 

Derek:	You know, I think copy is one of those things that every business owner should be accustomed to learning how to do. And I think it's because it's one of the best highest leverage activities that you can do. Get good at it, you can literally drive your business. 

Now, I don't think you do it forever. I have some copywriters that I work with that work with me and they became really good copywriters. And it's something that you can start doing. But I think in the beginning, the act of learning how to write great copy makes you better understand your market. Because great copy isn't written. It's assembled. You basically take the feelings of other people and you assemble it into the proper order to make people connect. 

Now I didn't even make the quote up. I'm stealing that quote. I think I'm stealing that quote from Eugene Schwartz. The whole great copy isn't written it's assembled. And that's the key. Because when I'm writing a great piece of copy, the reason why it works is because people read it and they think to themselves that's me. 

And the reason why they think that is because it was them. You know what I mean? 

Jaime:			Definitely.

Derek:	So, great copy connects because it comes from the real feelings of people; of your customer. A lot of us like to think like oh man my customer really wants this and it's like you think your customer wants to wake up every day and do that? What world do you live on?

Jaime:	I love that.

Derek:	Right?

Jaime:	Yeah. Well, I - I'm - I've always said I'm not great at writing, and so what I have to do is just ask people things, so I will talk to customers. That's what we're doing right now. I'm like can I hop on the phone with you and just ask you a bunch of questions about pain or sell people on the phone and record it and just take what they say. Because I'm not. I can't do that. I can't go, if I were them, how would I feel? If I'm not.

Derek:	Yes. So, if you can't do that, you just take their words right out of their mouth and you use those words. Easy. 

Jaime:	Easy.

Derek:	Everyone can call their customer on the phone. Nobody does it.

Jaime:	I know.

Derek:	So stupid.

Jaime:	I know. I have big issues with that too. 

Derek:	Is that too combative?

Jaime:	Yes. Throw your phone away right now, Derek. I dare you. 

Alright. So, we have to start wrapping up. So, I'm going to ask the last question. It's, what's one action out of all of the stuff that we talked about, one action listeners can do this week to help move them forward towards their goal of 1 million?

Derek:	Easy. The number one thing you should do this week is get five of your existing customers on the phone and have a conversation with them. On that conversation, you want to ask them questions about their experience with you, you want to ask them questions about the problems that they still have, the problems that they don't have anymore, how they solved them; better understand your customer. 

If you can, record it, get it transcribed, create a sheet. So, now you know what they're thinking, and now you have all the copy you'll ever need. And if you do that in the next seven days, I promise you one thing, that you will be able to talk to your customer better. You'll know how to appeal to them. You'll know what to say, how to say it just by looking at these things. 

Now, the three questions I would make sure you ask them. Question number one, you want to ask them about where they're at and how they're feeling about it? Feeling is the most important thing to get from them. 

Second, you want to ask them what their problems are and what they're struggling with like where- what's keeping them awake at night? 

Question number three. What have they solved recently and how did they solve it? Now that?s an interesting question because it helps you see the types of things they actually put their time into but it also helps you see the types of problems that your customers are already solving that other people might want to solve too. 

Three questions. Do those three questions, put it in a conversation, record it, transcribe it, you'll be good to go.

Jaime:	I love it. I haven't heard that last one. So, that's super cool, especially because you can line up products with matching type products of your same exact avatar or many ideal customers. 

Derek:	Don't make them sales calls.	

Jaime: 	Yeah. Right.

Derek:	[Inaudible] [00:44:38] down on these calls. These are research calls. If they're begging to buy something, let them buy something. But that's not the point. The point is to get information. I still do these calls today. If I'm doing a company, if we're launching a new product, I'll get on the phone with 15 people and I'll ask them 1 million questions. Because I need to understand who I'm talking to, what I'm dealing with. I don't want to fly blind. You know?

Jaime:	It costs money to fly blind. It costs a lot of money to fly blind.

Derek:	Exactly it.

Jaime:	Awesome. I love, thank you so much that you actually showed up and gave amazing value and moved your hands a lot. 

Where can we find your site, what you sell, all that, get on your email list so you can yell at us if we get mad at you, all that stuff.

Derek:	Socialtriggers.com is probably the best way, YouTube.com/socialtriggers for some of my other crazy videos, and that's pretty much it. 

Jaime:	But he won't respond to any social media right now just so everybody knows.

Derek:	You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, I hate all those things.

Jaime:	Good. Perfect. Now on that note, thank you so much for coming on the show today Derek. I really, really appreciate it.

Derek:	Thank you for having me.

Tags: Business Owner, content marketing, data driven marketing, Derek Halpern, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, jaime masters, millionaire entrepreneurs, podcast, sell products online, social triggers, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, top entrepreneurs

Categories: All, Analytics, Content Marketing, Featured Millionaire Interview, Innovative Marketing, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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