The Successful Speaker with Grant Baldwin

I’m thrilled to have Grant on the show this week! Grant was a fantastic client back in 2014, when I helped him start his podcast. It’s been amazing to see his massive success over a few short years!

Here’s what he had to say about working with me:

“I worked with Jaime Masters as a coach for several months, and I’ll summarize it like this…it was a game-changer for my business! I looked forward to each call with Jaime because I knew she would push and challenge me.

She helped me launch a podcast that was ranked #1 in Careers in iTunes and got 100k downloads in 2 months! She made introductions to others in the industry and helped validate me in the space. If you’re wondering how to take your business to the next level, your search is over my friend. You need to hire Jaime Masters. BUT….only if you’re serious about getting real results in your business!” – Grant Baldwin

(Btw we’re accepting applications for my next mastermind! Fill out an app here: eventualmillionaire.com/app)

Grant Baldwin is a nationally known speaker, podcaster, and author who has helped thousands of people start and build their own speaking businesses through his Booked and Paid to Speak Training Course. Over the last 13 years, Grant has spoken to over 500,000 people in 47 different states.

Regularly featured in the national media, including Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, and The Huffington Post, his “Reality Check” curriculum is taught in over 400 high schools nationwide. A podcaster since 2014, he has published over 300 podcast episodes that have been downloaded over 1.5 million times.

He loves motivating other leaders and entrepreneurs, but his favorite moments are those spent with his high school sweetheart, Sheila, and their three daughters. They live in Nashville, Tennessee where Grant enjoys bicycling, summer days at the pool, and living life like Chuck Norris.

“By being more narrow, more clear, and more focused, it is simpler to attract the right type of client and to build the business.” – Grant Baldwin

Episode Highlights:

How to keep from getting bored talking about your message
Finding new angles and challenges in your message
Advice to speakers during the COVID-19 pandemic
The upside and downside of a virtual speaking gig
Pivotal moments of Grant’s journey as an online thought leader

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I am Jaime Masters. And today we have my very good friend, Jesse Jameson. You can check him out at JesseJameson.com. He's been in the industry for so long it's been amazing. He's the social media marketing expert of the stars, in my opinion. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Jesse.

Jesse: It's a pleasure to be here.

Jaime: You're like the man behind all the things. And it's kind of interesting when I started chatting with you. I was like, "Oh, you know everybody and have been in the game for such a long period of time." But I had no idea because you fly under the radar and help people behind the scenes. So, was that on purpose or...

Jesse: Well, to some degree. I'm somewhat of an introvert. And so, it wasn't always top of my list to be the center of attention. Even when I started speaking a lot, I'd only have this window of time before I would like, "All right. I've gotta get out of here because it's like energy overload." So, yeah. I didn't feel the need to be attached to a lot of the projects I was working on from a notoriety standpoint. So, just being a part of the projects was cool.

Jaime: All the introverts listening are like, "Yes. Thank goodness. I can actually do and make a lot of money online and not have to be always on." Because I mean not speak and do a bunch of other things, but you've been able to leverage things a lot better. So, how long have you been doing social media? Like before it was a thing.

Jesse: Well, that's a good question. So, digital marketing as a whole I started in 2001. So, July first of 2001 was my personal Independence Day. That was the day that I... my first day without a job in the corporate world. So, I made that transition. And did all different types of ecommerce marketing, lead generation, kinda finding my way around the internet, both in creating my own projects and my own companies and then also consulting, based on all the things I'd learned along the way.

About 2008 is when I really started to say, "Okay. This social media is gonna be a thing." And not only that, but a thing that businesses had yet... they weren't able to figure out how to really apply it and use it. But what really grabbed my attention was just watching what Facebook was doing and their moves. And when they started doing things like creating single sign on where you can utilize their login to access websites, it's like, "Okay. These guys, they have a bigger game plan than just building a social network."

So, about 10 years. And then about eight years ago is when I started teaching what I had learned up to that point. And so, my time was pretty much split between an agency, where I was doing consulting, and then the training courses through my publishing company. So, yeah.

Jaime: Well, I really appreciate that you're boots on the ground. And you've been boots on the ground for a really long period of time also with your clients. Because, no offence, there's a lot of [inaudible] [00:02:47] leaders that are like, "Yay. You do it like this. But I haven't run traffic in I don't know how long."

Jesse: Yeah. That's actually the reason that I've even continued to maintain a boutique agency because I really don't need that aspect of busines anymore. But it's the lab. It's where you're testing all the thoughts and ideas. And something new has been implemented on some social network. Well, how does that play out in different industries? The only way you can really find that out is if you're a part of that.

Jaime: Who knew? Data. Testing. Who knew, right? So, tell me a little more because I feel like there's a big debate on digital marketing versus social media. And a lot of people are like, Social media's just for visibility and engagement, and let's go down this deep rabbit hole.

Jesse: Sure. Yeah. And it's a great question because my attraction to social media is because it is the biggest social experiment in human behavior. And so, I have... so I'm doing a presentation. I show this videoclip of where they put a mirror in the jungle and all the animals come up to it and some of them freak out and they're really angry. And other ones they're just... they're playing with it. So, it's both beautiful and frightening. And so, to me, that is really what the internet is. It's for the first time holding up a mirror to the reflection of collective consciousness around the planet. Social media is the conversation we?re having about what we see.

And so, the transition from just digital marketing ? because kinda what happened is prior to the internet you had some accountability with who you did business with. You were still usually a face associated with your business. There was a street address. There was all those types of things. And so, marketing got a little bit lazy when the internet came around because you could be faceless. You could just do your thing and then we saw refund rates go up and returns and all these things because it became faceless. And so, there was less touch between businesses and the people they served.

Well, social media changed all of that because social media is a conversation about what's happening with your business and your industry. And if a business is not a part of that conversation, they're gonna lose out to their competitors who are.

Jaime: A million times yes. And more accountability, which is great, when you can put a face to it. More connection. More all that stuff. But when is it just vanity metrics? Tell me more.

Jesse: Yeah. Sure. Sure. And a lot of businesses make that mistake. So, they'll go onto a social platform and they will just try and gather anyone and everyone they can, so they have this image of vanity. "Look how cool I am. Look how many followers I have." But the problem with that is that they are shooting themselves in the foot because the way to utilize social media to it's fullest is to only have people that follow you that are raving fans. Because the algorithms that you utilize on the social networks that allow you to find more people, find the people who are gonna buy from you, find the people who are interested in you, you can only leverage those algorithms if you are attracting the right people.

So, if you have a bunch of vanity plays and a bunch of people there that really aren't your fans, the social networks don't know how to help you find more. And it actually looks like your content isn't relevant because you have tons of people who are supposed fans, but they're not actually engaging you. So, it works against you if you go for the vanity play.

Jaime: Yeah. Like, Look at me. I look amazing. Oh, wait. I have zero money in the bank and wasting a ton of time. Go team. Yeah. And I mean a lot of people have gotten into that place and gone, "Oh, wait. That's not right either. Let's regroup and pivot." So, how do you start building that?

To give you an example, one of my clients has a podcast production agency. And so, he's online, but he's doing most of the work behind the scenes. He doesn't have a huge platform. He's really good at what he does. Works with high-level people, but what should he be doing to try to build those actually targeted engaged fans?

Jesse: Yes. So, if you're a business and you're just starting off on social media, the best lowest hanging fruit thing that you can do is to begin by uploading your own lists. Anyone that you already have an established relationship with. Customer list, prospect list. And then inviting those people to be the seed audience for how your tribe on social media starts to grow. Because that's gonna set the tone for the conversation, the culture, and what begins to attract other people to your network.

Jaime: Where do we do that? So, I know you're a Facebook guy too, but when we talk about different platforms and where to actually upload the list and all that fun stuff, go a little bit deeper.

Jesse: Sure. So, of all the major networks you have out there, another challenge that a lot of businesses have is trying to figure out where to begin. Or do I need a presence on all of them? And they all are different. Twitter is like a perishable news source. It's great if you already have a following. It's very precise in the culture if you're gonna try and build one there. Pinterest is very much a visual search engine. So, if you have products and services that lend towards that, that's a great place to be. LinkedIn, very B to B. Instagram and Facebook, again visual, but very much social. Friends and family first kind of thing, but now starting to expand more to represent businesses.

The reason that I like Facebook best and Instagram best for business to dive in is because of the information that those ? that the platform will give back to you based on all of the data that it has. So, that's the best platform to start with, in my opinion, and uploading a list there is actually quite easy. Everyone that has a personal account is able to create a page for their business and also has access to an ad account. Within that ad account there is a place called audiences where you're able to upload a customer list.

Jaime: Yeah. I feel like it's ? people are like, "Oh, there's so much to it." And there is. I mean I've got a lot of clients that are Facebook agencies. And I know how deep you can go in that. But especially for people that are like, "Well, I either have to hire a Facebook ad agency that's gonna cost me a lot of money." And I've known a lot of people that pay for agencies and go, "That wasn't worth it." So, then they sort of pull back.

So, as they're starting to get that piece going, how all-in do we go? Should we learn it first and try and figure out that piece and get pieces of that going ourselves before we try and hire an expert?

Jesse: It used to be such that you could probably dive in yourself. But Facebook especially today is a pay-to-play platform. And so, as a result, you kinda want a Sherpa to kinda help you navigate the waters because there's so many things. Do I create a group? Do I not create a group? Is it just okay to have a page? Do I run ads? Do I need a pixel on my website? So, you've got what ? how do I create audiences? So, do I create offers? Do I leverage Facebook for events?

So, there's so many moving parts that now it does benefit a business to just have a conversation, at the very least, with someone that knows their way around. And they can say, "Hey, for the type of business you have, here's all you really need. You don't need everything, but here's the things that can support your business best."

Jaime: It's the jam experiment. 23 jams and you're like, "And now I'm gonna do nothing and back away slowly." And getting that advice, I think that's the other piece though is who do you actually trust online? Because, no offence, there are ? everyone's a Facebook ad expert now. And you're like, "Okay. Great." And they're all not, just so we're clear. So, how can you actually delineate some of that? Besides going to your website, of course, which we know.

Jesse: Right. That is the thing with whether it's social media, whether it's SEO, it's how do you make sure a person really, truly knows what they're doing? And I guess the best way to do that is say, "Who can I talk to that you've done this for?" So, in other words, I wanna have a conversation with someone who can say, "Yeah. This person knows what they're doing and here's the results that they got me." Otherwise it's a roll of the dice.

And it can be challenging because, as you mentioned, tons of agencies out there that approached it by saying, Well, Facebook's important. We kinda need to add it to our agency, doesn't mean they're experts. It doesn't mean they've taken the time to understand how the platform works, what's in it for the users, what does Facebook want from you? All of those things that play a role in how you're gonna find success on the platform.

Jaime: Well, and those guys are expensive, the guys that actually know what they're doing because they get value for what they're worth. So, yay. So, a lot of them are building courses and stuff like that too, but do you still think it's worth it? Especially for somebody like my client that's going, Okay. I've got a really good chunk. I know what I'm doing in so many ways. I know I wanna leverage it a little more, but do I pay $3,000.00 for this agency to just take it over and cross my fingers because I got a really good referral? Or should I do their course and then learn sort of internally and ask them questions or do a consulting call? There's just too many weeds to go through.

Jesse: Yeah. So, the reason that a lot of businesses don't find success when they go that route is because I think the first thing a business can benefit from is knowing what Facebook needs from you before you even have any success. By just having a presence on Facebook as a business, you have just opened up a new customer support channel, whether you like it or not, because you can't wanna sell products and services, you can't want to engage new prospects, and then not respond to someone that leaves a post on your page or sends you an instant message and says, "Hey, I have this problem."

So, if you're going to go the route of social media, you kind of have to allow for the fact that that is gonna become a new support channel. The other aspect with social media is don't leave it up to an agency or anyone outside of your company's culture to create content. Because if you're just... so many businesses make the mistake of we post just to post because we think we should post. And I'd much rather see you post one great piece of content a week than 20 crappy pieces of content. That doesn't get you any engagement and does nothing for you.

So, yeah. Don't make the mistake of feeling like you have tons of content but make that content quality and make it from someone in your culture that's actually trying to add value to your tribe. And then again, the other one is, yeah, it's gonna have to become a portion of your customer support now once you open up that door.

Jaime: It's a time that we want to invest, but we wanna make sure we're investing it and not just going, Oh, now I just have 12 channels to respond to and not getting any ROI from any of them. So, what exactly is quality though? How do we determine what's quality and not for posting?

Jesse: So, quality is determined by the feedback that you receive from your tribe. And so, a lot of the times what we do in our agency is we begin everything with an audit and a strategic plan.

So many businesses want you to jump right in. And we're like, ?No, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a discovery call. We're going to then go away for about three weeks. We're gonna do what we do to listen to the landscape. We're gonna find out what your competitors are doing. We're gonna find out what your industry is... has learned specifically about how to engage people on Facebook as it relates to what you offer. And then we're gonna come back with a strategic plan that basically says here's the steps for how to do it.

That's a key ingredient is paying attention to what's already happening. So, if you have someone... and let's say, for instance, you might say, "Well, there really is no other business that does exactly what we do." That's fine, but who is serving similar value to your customers and prospects? And how are they doing it? And what is the market responding to?

So, you pay attention to the conversation that's already taking place before you jump in. Otherwise it's like going to a cocktail party, opening the door and go, "Hey, everybody." And you have no idea what's going on, but you're making a lot of noise. And eventually people look at you and then they get back to what they're doing. So, pay attention.

Jaime: That's the epitome of social media.

Jesse: Yeah. It totally is. Come in with a big sign, "Hey, buy my stuff."

Jaime: "Hey, I'm awesome."

[Crosstalk]

Jesse: Like, "What's going on here?"

Jaime: Look at me. So, how do you... so, the question then on that point is when you go and look at someone else's stuff you can check and see if they've got good engagement, but you don't actually know if they're getting any ROI from theirs either. And I think that's what's hard. You're like, "That guy's doing that." And it's like, "But is it actually working for them?"

Jesse: Yeah. Because it's a progression. Because the ROI in social media is different than how direct response marketing has worked in the past. Because in social media you're spending some of your time and energy growing your audience. You're spending a little bit more of that time engaging with that audience. And then because you have developed a relationship that way, now you can invite them to consume other levels of value. Whether that is taking the off-ramp of their news feed on Facebook to visit your website.

So, you are doing it in layers. It's different than just showing up and putting an ad out there and expecting that ad to produce a return on investment. So, with Facebook you can do that through the ad process if you have a compelling offer, but a lot of times it takes warming up that audience by demonstrating value in some other compacity before you say, "Hey, can you buy my stuff?"

Jaime: Well, and it's funny because back in the day you think of marketing and they needed to see you seven times before you'd actually engage anyway. And that's sort of what social's doing on the front end. But it's so intangible it seems like. We've got numbers. It's not like we don't have numbers and engagement and that kinda stuff, but it's like what is really doing it?

So, how long do people... should they be spending on this? Especially at the beginning stages where they don't have a converting funnel on the backend that's like, "We know this works, we're just in growing audience stage." Because it can get very sticky in terms of how much time, and energy, and effort you're trying to give value. And a lot of times it doesn't grow nearly as fast as the entrepreneur wants, because we're an impatient bunch, and then we get deflated.

Jesse: Yeah. So, I mean it jumps into the aspect of business where you kinda have to know your metrics. You have to know what a customer's worth to you in general. And you have to know what it costs to acquire that customer even on other mediums. Because if you have that as a baseline then you've kinda developed what we call that magic slot machine. I put $1.00 in; I get $2.00 out.

And so, social media helps us on that frontend by often lowering the cost to acquire because people buy from people they know, like, and trust. So, if you've spent some time developing rapport by demonstrating value and connecting with them on a social platform, they're more likely to buy from you than cold market would.

So, you're using the medium to introduce your offering to new people, but you're also condensing the timeline often because you don't need that seven. As you were saying before, we all have a condition that you have to have seven touch points before someone's gonna buy from you. It's not really like that anymore. It can be social proof. If you have enough of a tribe on social media and then you do put up an ad and then all your fans are getting in there, liking, commenting, sharing, the person that sees that post for the first time, it may be enough for them because they can see, "Oh, seven of your friends like this company."

And the truth is before social networks it was really Amazon that brought the social component of reviews to purchases. I mean I'm an avid shopper of Amazon and, yes, I pay attention to the reviews of what people say. Because now there's a conversation happening around products and services. So, that's a way that having an established tribe can lend to your credibility and shave down that time to develop rapport with social proof if you've got a tribe on Facebook or some of the other social networks.

Jaime: Yeah. It's mitigating the risk of like, "Are they just gonna take my money and run?" Back in the day, that's what the internet... "Are they gonna take my...?" And that still happens, don't get me wrong. But how important is branding and USP? Because it seems like a catch-22 where they're like, You need to have a perfect brand and a perfect USP that people totally understand in order to put in front of the perfect audience. And then it's like, "But you need an audience first. And then you can clarify your brand." There's a catch-22 there.

Jesse: Yeah. There is. And having your USP defined is obviously important because the easier it is to explain to someone the value that you offer, the less confused they will be, which is what helps people make a buying decision. The moment anyone's confused, they read this long statement and they're really not sure what's going on, they can't make a buying decision because it just trips us up to where we're confused, and it freezes us up. So, yes, even in social media it's important for when a person gets to your social property, they know in a matter of seconds what you're about.

Now, the beautiful thing too about social media is that there really is no such thing as a crowded... overly-crowded market anymore. Because even if you're in something as competitive as real estate or mortgages, your unique style, something about you, is what's going to turn people on, turn people off.

And so, yeah, you're going to chase people away because they don't like something in particular about you. They may like it better about someone else in your industry. But finding your tribe is really what it's about. Your style. The way you share content. Are you someone that does video? Maybe you don't do video. Maybe it's you have a presence about you that is brash. And so, that's abrasive to some people, but other people are like, "Yeah. This person gets right to the point."

So, it allows your personality to be injected into your presence. And that's another thing is that an individual will always do better than a brand because we connect with people. And so, if you're just building a straight-up brand and your profile is a logo, it's a little bit more challenging to build your business. And so, a lot of times it's good to combine the two. Who is the face of the company in addition to what your logo or brand culture is about?

Jaime: So many questions in regard to that. Okay. So, because I have clients that do have multi-million-dollar businesses. They're amazing. They're also the face... thought-leader-ish. So, there's a matchmaking company. I have a Pinterest agency. I've got a bunch of different types. But then the question comes into, "Now my face is plastered everywhere, what if I wanna sell my business?"

Jesse: Yes.

Jaime: How do I unstick that part?

[Crosstalk]

Jesse: Oh, yeah. Know all about that. I've gone through that several times actually. So, for example, with Social Media Pro, it started off with a couple of faces. With Kate Buck primarily. With her being the face of the company. And then from there it kinda transitioned to where I was doing more of that. And then even with the training we're trying to figure out, Okay. Eventually when we position this for sale, how do we transition out of it being a face so that it's easy for another company who acquires to say, "This is a brand we can utilize that's no longer dependent on the individuals?"

So, over time we do more. As the tribe was built, we would get the tribe itself more inspired around the brand so that they became brand advocates. They became brand ambassadors. So, we started doing other things like creating groups that they could kinda feel like they were a part of this community that wasn't dependent on us as an identity. We also started injecting in new speakers and new instructors so that it became less about specific individuals. And that was a transition that didn't happen overnight, but we're basically there now. In fact, very few people associate me at all with the face of my company.

[Crosstalk]

Jaime: How long did that take? Which is why I think that's amazing. I'm like, "Tell me more." Because people get stuck. It's awesome to be able to connect with your fans and your customers and that sorta stuff too, but it's also really interesting to try and see what that transition and potentially rockiness. So, are the instructors W2 employees? Are they just paid? Tell me more about how you actually did that transition and how long it took.

Jesse: Sure. Yeah. I only have independent contractors in my business. I just like the model. It supports an entrepreneurial mindset regardless of what they do in the company. So, yeah. That was a big factor. But with regard to the instructors, what we have done... well, a lot of instructors just wanna contribute their content. And we don't really have to have a relationship. We have a reciprocation where we'll promote them and do things like that. And then we have other instructors where we publish their courses.

So, what we'll do is we'll take a portion of their training content, put that into our large course. So, that was, in essence a free contribution from them to our course that we charge for that we don't have to pay them anything or commission on. And then within our course if people wanna deep dive into Pinterest or Instagram or local marketing, then we can say we have a course that will take you down that path and give you a lot more information. And then in that instance that is where the instructor receives publishing royalties for that content.

Jaime: So, you're like a... I like this. Okay. So, you're like a curator for... is it like a mini course that you have? Is it something that they would normally have a paid product, like $97.00? Or how deep does that taste go on that sort of subsection?

Jesse: Yeah. Most of the courses that they create that we publish are in the neighborhood of about $300.00. But we take a portion of that course and then we put it into our membership training, which we have a certification for for social media.

And so, as they're going through that, when they get to the section on local marketing, they'll be a portion of it that isn't ? because it's so challenging to try and expect everyone to deep dive into every component. Because you can specialize. I focus primarily on Facebook ads. I don't know very much about content posting on Pinterest every day. So, we bring in specialized knowledge from people that do have that expertise. And so, when they do, they haven't shared the basics, which we add to our course, and then the deep dive is the course that they created that we publish.

Jaime: Yeah. We can't know everything. That's the funny thing when I see people create courses, they're like, "I want to create all the things." And No. 1, you can't. But making sure that we can tell people that we know and trust. Because that's the other thing. Going, "Well, if I do wanna go down the Pinterest road there's a million of those thought leaders that I could go down. And those are potentially brand new and not really experts either." So, your ability to curate what's good for somebody else is really valuable regardless of how that's... how much cash is bringing in the door for that. Okay.

Jesse: Yeah.

Jaime: That's all right.

Jesse: A tip for anyone that... of your listeners that are content publishers or they create courses or digital products, anything like that, is I can say that after having done this for a decade now of creating content, because I created courses even before we did social media stuff, is that the model that seems to work and saves so many headaches is to create courses around best practices. And then save the alt trainings for what's working now. That way you're not constantly having to go back in and, "Oh, look. Facebook made this little change and now we have to redo our whole course."

So, that is a lifesaver. Structure your course around best practices and the components and things that really don't change very often. And then you can do one-offs, whether... our happens to be live weekly trainings, but it could be whenever relevant to have one-off trainings that support what's working now. Because that's the stuff that's perishable usually.

Jaime: So smart. I know. Poor people are like, "Oh, my gosh. I have to re-record." Making courses is a lot of work.

Jesse: It is.

Jaime: And updating courses is too. So, I wanna know what your funnel looks like. How much are you giving away for free on the frontend? And I know you have a membership. What does that look like? Do trip wires still work? Tell me more about all your stuff.

Jesse: Sure. And so, it's interesting within our funnel a lot of people that are funnel experts are gonna go, Why don't you have upsells and all these ways you can increase the value? It's just been a part of our model that we just haven't really implemented. Maybe out of not really having immediate necessity. But what our model looks like is we... and we've kinda tried a bunch of different ones over the years, but we've settled on... we charge $49.00 a month for access to our core training or $294.00 a year.

Now, what's interesting is that on Facebook with advertising I found that depending upon how many bidders are on the platform and what other things are going on that change what your conversion costs are, is that it costs me, on average, about $94.00 to acquire a new customer. So, you might think that "Okay. Well, you're upside-down if you're only getting $49.00 a month." But what's interesting is that when we injected that $294.00 a year, we see 40% of the people take the annual. And so, it offsets our upfront marketing costs.

And then we have other costs that are relevant to value. For example, we have a directory. So, our motto for teaching content is, Get educated. Get certified. Get listed. So, we have a directory where people can actually say, Hey, to the world, Here's my certification. And here's what I'm qualified to do now. And that's been built up.

And we do other things to support how we find people. Right now, we're in the middle of a summit. We tested this summit last year. We had 1,400 or so people registered last year. We tested the model. This year we've got just under 19,000 from over 100 countries. And with that model, to offset the marketing, we offer the replays. So, you can watch the summit for free.

Jaime: That still works though. I'm so impressed that that still works. It's been going for so long. Keep going.

Jesse: Yeah. So, the summit itself is free. And here's what's great about that part too is that the summit is just our best of from our weekly trainings for the last year. So, we have no new content to create. Our instructors and the people that contribute it love it. They get their exposure. They show up and answer questions in the comments live while their presentation's going. So, it ends up being a great model. There's no technical hiccups.

And during the summit we have a price where we charge $29.00 if they want access to the replays. And after the summit it goes up to $99.00. So, within day one of the summit starting there's enough people that have prepaid that we offset all of our marketing costs for the summit. We just grew our list by close to 20,000 people. All of which are prequalified to buy our course and our training. So, that's already paid for marketing. Plus, this summit has now become a profit center for us.

So, it's just looking for things that support our core business that we can begin to expand so it helps us bring new people in and extends the lifetime customer value because we have more things to offer them that are relevant.

Jaime: Yeah. I was trying to meet with you last week. Your summit is going on right now as we're recording this also.

Jesse: It is.

Jaime: And I remember being mind-blown that you already all had the content anyway. Because I feel like we don't do enough repurposing content anyway. You're taking your best stuff, putting it out there. Your team's doing everything. We hopped on and you're like, Yeah. So, I'm good. I can totally schedule this call. I'm like, Oh, wow. I'd be freaking out a little during summit craziness, because summits are crazy. There are a lot of technical details.

Jesse: They are.

Jaime: There's a whole bunch of things going on. How did you get your cost down then? So, if you look at... if it's $94.00 for a customer for the main program that you're sort of working with, and $22.00 for this, what are your lead costs for the summit then? Are you looking at different ways of getting the costs down per lead for that?

Jesse: Yeah. Our cost initially when we began... and with Facebook ads, you always have these windows where there's ebb and flow. There's different reasons for advertisers backing off the platform on certain days. And so, you will see some ebb and flow in what your costs are, but our registered costs for the summit was under $1.00 per registrant. And at one point it was down to about $0.77. But I think it averaged $0.94 throughout the entire summit.

And then because we also had the replay there, we were offsetting a bunch of costs for people prepaying for that. And by the time, yeah, Day 1, which was Monday, we had already offset all of our marketing costs for it. And then so now it's all profit going forward.

[Crosstalk]

Jaime: Well, it's a no-brainer. $29.00.

Jesse: Yeah.

Jaime: So, questions. Because as far as price points and stuff like that go, everybody... and I don't like the word trip wire. And if anybody doesn't know what a trip wire is, the point of a trip wire is to have it sort of offset the marketing costs like you were talking about.

Jesse: It's a term Harry Fletcher created.

Jaime: Yes. I know. It depends on who's creating it. Like, "Yes. Let's kill them all." No.

Jesse: Yeah.

Jaime: But it seems like you're using pieces of that model, but not in sort of the way that they're coming up with it. So, how did you come up with $29.00 or $49.00? Because you're on the low end of Facebook marketing teaching.

Jesse: Yeah. So, rather than come from the perspective of how much can we get. So, I always liked the idea of making it an irresistible offer. And then one of the things that also tells me how much value ? I like to overdeliver on value. Our refund rate is ridiculously low across the board. Our refund rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 1.5% where an industry is 10% or higher. So, yeah, we overdeliver. And obviously we're meeting people's expectations because they're not asking for their money back.

So, as long as we can create a profitable business and continue to grow and expand our reach and limit that period of time where a person has to say, Do I really need to have this, we make it easy for them to make that decision. And this is kind of a... I don't know. I guess a subject I'm a little sensitive to is that the internet marketing industry has abused copy in neurolinguistic programming to such a degree that people are spending money on the buying experience and a lot of times they don't even consume the product. It's the emotional experience of the buying process.

And that always makes me feel bad. I want people to consume the content and the quality of the stuff we're creating. So, that's what brings us fulfillment. And my whole team feels that way as well and that's the people we attract. And so, for that reason, we're able to put forth a lot of quality content. We don't have to charge that much for it. We seem to find a right price point for it to make it an irresistible offer. And, yeah, that seems to work pretty well for us. I get other people will try and figure out, Well, let's just change our copy and see if we can up the value... perceived value, therefore we up the price. Yeah. And there's a balance in that for sure.

Jaime: Just the squeezing out of every last little bit from somebody that you know is not gonna use the course just irks the hell out of me also.

Jesse: Yeah.

Jaime: And let's talk about using the course. Because I know for $49.00 or $300.00 for me, I'd buy that for my assistant to be able to go through. And that's valuable if we go through one little tiny chunk. So, the irresistible offer and the no brainer makes perfect sense, but where does that come in with people actually doing it, like you said? Do you know how many people are actually using and consuming your content?

Jesse: We do because we use a learning platform where we can see exactly where people are at, percentages of stuff completed. We actually test and have quizzes along the way. And so, they actually complete that quiz before they go to the next piece of content. And then once they've consumed that then we actually have an exam that they go through for their certification. And then once they're certified, we use a credible, which can link to their LinkedIn and other properties to basically show, "Hey, look. I'm a certified social media manager through Social Media Pro."

So, we actually are able to pay attention to where people are falling off and say, "Let's go in there and figure out what's going on with that portion of the training." Or we get feedback from our community because we have a group for students and faculty as well. And that's another place where we update our content because people will say, "Hey, I didn't understand this," or something like that. So, when people get to a place where they're confused and they're stuck, they're gone. That's usually what happens.

And so, we keep looking for those. We're actively searching for sticking points and removing them. And that seems to be what ? and we've been monitoring our stick rate for how long members last with us. And the more that we do that, the longer we can see that stick rate starting to extend.

Jaime: I love that. Do you think the certification at the end really makes it stickier because of that too? Because there's an actual end point. It's like college. You're like, "I took a bunch of courses, but if I didn't get the degree, what's the whole point of it?"

Jesse: Yeah. And that brings up another question. And my business model a lot of people might say, "Well, if a person can go through? and they technically could. They can complete our entire course in a month. So, they could pay $49.00, they could complete the entire course, they can then pay $79.00 for their certification exam and totally have completed everything for, what is that? $140.00 or something like that. No one ever does. No one is like ? that's not true. We get probably five percent or less that are... 1 out of 20 or something that's really gonna jam through in less than three months.

And so, but why would they wanna stick around? Because our other component ? remember before I said the course content is best practices, but we also include in that monthly membership live weekly trainings. And so, that's a reason we have people that have been with us for seven-eight years now in our community that stick around paying their monthly membership fee because they wanna show up for these live weekly trainings.

[Crosstalk]

Jaime: What? Wow. That's a really inexpensive certification. So, tell me more about the certification process if someone wants to go into that. Because especially when it seems like we're competing quote/unquote against colleges. And it's like, "Where is that line?"

Jesse: Yeah. Super good question because here's the challenge, a college can't really teach social media. They can teach some best practices, but it's a moving target. The content they would be teaching is obsolete by the time that a person learned it and then went out and tried to apply it.

Jaime: I'm just laughing because I have a degree in computers. And do you know what I learned back then? So sad. I'm sorry. Continue.

Jesse: Right? It's so true. So, rather than just teaching stuff in a structured format that might touch on a few things, we teach the actual business of social media management. That's kind of our adopted tagline most recently is that we teach the business.

What does that mean? We don't just teach you how to operate the platforms, we teach you how to set up your business, we teach you how to find clients, all of these things. And then when you've gone through the certification training and you're in our group, we do a thing where we say, "Hey, when you go out and you're talking to someone and they give you a question you don't know the answer to, you say, That's a great question. I'm gonna go back and talk to my team. And we're your team."

And so, people have that comfort and feeling like, "Wow. Okay. I am supported beyond the fact that I just got educated." You're not gonna get that in a college setting. It's just not set up. It's one of the roles that isn't best supported by traditional education. And so, the best way to get that knowledge is to get it from people that are actively in the trenches, as you say, doing the stuff daily, and are there to support you not just through the learning phase, but the implementing phase as well.

And so, because of that, even though a person can get certified, they're gonna stick around for the support and for the community. And so, as a result, yeah, that adds up over time. We have people who have been with us for quite some time. And I go in and I look at customer value for those people, it starts getting up in the $3,000.00-$4,000.00-$5,000.00 range because they bought other courses, they were a still active member, things that we promote and suggest they buy that as well. So, it's the relationship we develop that starts stacking that lifetime value.

Jaime: That makes perfect sense. So, the certification, was it difficult to actually create? It's just a quiz along with what? Yeah. Tell me more.

Jesse: Sure. So, there's 20 modules in our course. And so, as we built it out throughout each of the modules, we have checkpoints where we do quizzes. And so, the certification is really a stacked version of what all the quizzes are. But just so that we really understand that you get our concepts. Because we actually have a structured way that we teach it that's different than we see anyone else teaching it that happens to work for us. From auditing literally hundreds and hundreds of companies and their social media, we've kinda narrowed it down to what we believe works best.

So, we wanna make sure that a person gets that before we sign off on it. So, it's not just like a lot of places like, "Here's your certificate." But if you were to quiz them, they really know nothing about what they're talking about. We don't want that. We don't want our brand on that. We actually want people to understand what they?re doing. So, that was our process for creating the certification. It really wasn't that challenging.

We do have another layer where we will take them on for coaching if they wanna extend that further. So that way they have a certificate, but we also will sign off that, Look. We have spent time with them. And it's someone we would recommend. Because you just could imagine oh, I'll kill that. People approach us all the time, Who can help us with our social media because we our agency's full. So, we recommend our students.

Jaime: That makes perfect sense. And then the ones that you worked on you can be like, I can actually give them the thumbs up because I know that they're really good, instead of just being like, "Yeah. Random people that hopefully are in my membership site and hopefully did it." Yeah. And that's where the directory and stuff comes in then too.

Tell me, especially because were talking about college, the future of social media. What are your predictions? When we start moving forward it's an ever-moving target, but you've been in the game for so long I feel like trends are your backend. You're used to this. So, where do you think we're going with all this?

Jesse: Well, it's gonna get tricky. And we're already in this ? and this is a topic that even supersedes business. It's like, "Well, what does it mean to culture and society as a whole?" Yeah. And what does it mean to privacy? We're seeing all the businesses right now that are stepping back from Facebook. Is that gonna last? I don't know. The challenge is this, "Are these companies that are putting the content out there, are they a publisher or not?" That's the big question. If they're moderating content based on their opinion and their beliefs, then they are a publisher. And if they are a publisher, then now they become liable for content that's posted on there.

So, I personally think that these companies are so large now and they represent so much of our culture that they need to be treated like a utility. That's one way. The other way is ? but that still leaves room for control. The other way is to have some form of Blockchain within the content so that its ledger based. So that when content goes up, content stays there. You don't like it; you don't have to look at it. But it's not going to be edited, modified, it's not gonna be censored. And personally, I prefer that route than the other route. I mean this is kinda going down the path of how deep does this go?

We saw a few years back ago when a very controversial person, Alex Jones, was the first person to really be booted off all the platforms at the same time. So, that was an effort where all the big ones got together and says, "Hey, let's get this guy." Why him? He was an easy target because it's enough people could say, "Well, I can see why he needs to go." But then it becomes a slippery slope because now they've already demonstrated they can remove people and now it's just at will.

And so, we're in tricky times. I don't know that anyone has the right answers. But the beauty of it is that we're in a time where it's so tied to our culture and what's happening that when we do get it right, and I have faith that we will, it's going to become ? it's gonna help us accelerate how we connect with each other.

Jaime: I love your viewpoint. And also, it scares me a little. Because I mean on the point when we start at having things taken away from us, because technically we're on their platform. So, of course they can ? I have so many friends that their ad accounts are gone. And then they have to try and fight and it's hard.

[Crosstalk]

Jesse: Oh, yeah.

Jaime: So, is it worth putting all your eggs in one basket? Especially because we can't sort of be everywhere at all times. And especially if you build up a whole business based on a very specific distribution model, it's really tough.

Jesse: That's true. That's why I would recommend to people that they start looking for other means to diversify where their traffic comes from. We're heavily dependent on Facebook. There's no way around it. I know for a fact that I can't get lower cost traffic anywhere else. And I continue to try and I can get traffic and I can get reasonable cost traffic, but nothing that produces the same profit as a result of the way that I can target people and the way that I can use a Facebook pixel and market based on behavior of people on my website. All these things make it so that a lot of people are landlocked into having to use the platform.

So, the best thing you can do is start looking for ways to diversify. Even if they're not better you still have choices because, as you said, and I had my own ad account shut down twice and then gotten it back. I've had ? a client's ad accounts have been shut down and then get them back. And because there is over 8 million advertisers on the platform, it is usually an algorithm that does it first. And unless you have the ability to get eyes on it, it'll end up being a permanent decision.

And there was a few times where I've been fortunate to be able to have some favors, but that's not available to everyone. And so, it doesn't make it something that's sustainable and you have too much at risk. The average business has too much at risk because you don't ? it doesn't take much to violate the terms and conditions.

Jaime: Okay. [Inaudible] [00:44:37]. Because I just had a client on Amazon have one of her things delisted for a while and that was a huge revenue source. And then we can't get ahold of anybody to do anything. And we have connections. You would think it would be easier for us than anybody else. And so, that risk assessment and trying to mitigate your risk knowing that we have to go all... not all-in but knowing that we have to go in on that is also difficult because we're business owners and we have a million things on our plate.

So, we're like, "I know I need to diversify. So, let's diversify a little." But maybe they're not the best. You know what I mean? You're still getting not really the numbers that you want. How much is enough risk management?

Jesse: Yes. And speaking of which, risk management, I do have an emergency that popped up. Of all times, my top person, my COO, just sent me... that's who's been trying to reach me.

Jaime: Oh, no.

Jesse: And oh, my God. I look. I actually do have an emergency here. So, yes.

Jaime: Well then, I will let you go. Good thing it's almost time. So, I'm gonna ask you the last question if that's cool?

Jesse: Sure.

Jaime: Do you have enough time for that?

Jesse: Yeah.

Jaime: What is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Jesse: So, I would say that action is going to be really making a case study of who in their industry has already made that happen that is the closest possible. Closest in personality. Closest in core values. Closest in the tribe that they serve. And really look to ways that you could be emulating what they're doing better than you are now.

Because that's someone that's been down the path before you. That's someone that has already hit the road bumps and has figured out how to pivot and make adjustments. And so, you wanna leverage their experience and their knowledge that helped them arrive them. So, the fastest path to getting there is to really look at how you can emulate people who have already done it.

Jaime: Instead of looking at them with googly eyes being like, I wish I were you, and being jealous, you can actually take some action around it. So, that's awesome.

Jesse: Yes.

Jaime: Where we can find more about you and your membership and all that?

Jesse: Sure. SocialMediaPro.com is where you can find out about our membership to become a social media manager. We also have a Facebook group. All you have to do is type in search social media managers, and we're the largest, oldest, most active group on Facebook for social media managers. And then me, and my agency, JesseJameson.com.

Jaime: Thank you so much for coming. Good luck with your emergency. And I'm gonna have you back so we can talk more, okay?

Jesse: Yes. Looking forward to it.

Jaime: All right. Love you, Jesse. Thank you.

Jesse: Cheers.

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