The Grind Mastermind Episode 2: Ebook funnels, sponsorships, giveaways and acquisition

Josh and Chris go live every 2nd week to discuss their businesses, recent progress, struggles and focus for the next few weeks.

We discuss:

  • ebook funnels and landing pages
  • email sponsorships (Swapstack)
  • giveaways (Kingsumo)
  • b2b SaaS clients and acquisition
  • website design
  • The Everything Store and Grinding It Out

Make sure to like/subscribe on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform for new episodes!

Find Josh at https://solopreneurgrind.com/
Find Chris at https://conversionalchemy.net/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh: All right, man. How’s it going? Pretty well. The Grind Mastermind. Episode two, February the third. 2023.
[00:00:10] Chris: Yeah, man, it’s going super fast. It’s crazy.
[00:00:14] Josh: It actually is crazy. It’s a, we’re already over a month into the year.
It’s kind of nuts. But
[00:00:20] Chris: yeah, I don’t know why maybe I packed too much into my yearly review. I’ve been doing so much stuff that like, truly, like a week goes by , like in a day. It’s crazy. Yeah. But all good, all good stuff that’s that I need to do for the year, so. . That’s good. Yeah. A lot of prep. A lot of prep work for me, but, and some hustle.
Good hustle. What about you?
[00:00:46] Josh: Pretty good. Yeah. It’s, I don’t know, it’s moving quick. We’ll, we’ll get into it more in the, in the updates, I guess, but things are moving. Yeah. They, they feel like they’re going fast. Also here in like, I’m in Canada, right? It’s freezing as hell this week. So it’s like, there’s nothing else to do, right?
Like, you’re not going to play outside. So hanging in, getting work done, is it snowing? It, it’s not snowing today. It ha it’s snowed a little bit like end of January, but then, It’s just been freezing like the last couple days. It’s supposed to go to like negative 30, I think, either today or tomorrow. So it’ll be an indoor type weekend, you know?
Yeah. But that’s okay. . All right. You wanna jump in with your
[00:01:26] Chris: yeah, let’s start. Start with my, what were my to-dos? Let’s see. From
[00:01:32] Josh: last week we had launch ebook and new funnel. This is for Chris. Streamline social media posting and pick at least one newsletter sponsorship to. So how’d
[00:01:43] Chris: that go? That went pretty well.
So I launched the new funnel and the ebook. I can actually share my screen so I can show the beeps on YouTube.
[00:01:54] Josh: Oh, it, it’s not gonna pick up. No, I don’t think so. Anyway. Yeah I mean, you can, you can try if you want.
[00:02:02] Chris: It’s, it’s video on Zoom. Oh,
[00:02:04] Josh: okay. Everything. Yeah, they can see it. They can’t see your whole screen.
It kind of like messed up the whole O B s, but that’s okay. I don’t know if they’re gonna be able to see the whole, like all the details, but they can kind of see. Anyways, let’s just try it and we’ll check the recording after on YouTube and we’ll see.
[00:02:23] Chris: Okay, cool. , when. Yeah, so this is my new landing page that I created.
I basically added some copy, I added some social proof because the old one kind of sucked and kind of walking people through the main offering, which I, I didn’t focus the entire offer on the landing page. On the ebook itself, I still wanted to center the value around the daily email, especially because it’s a daily email.
So that’s, it’s pretty important that people understand. . Mm-hmm. . I don’t want to have like a tunnel of unsubscribes, so it’s better to keep it clean. But I still added some context around the e-book as like an extra value for them to sign up. And this is basically the main section of the e-book where it basically go over the, the chapters.
and some proof again. But yeah, pretty simple, pretty straightforward. People sign up, enter the name, email, and they get on the list, and then I send them the link to download the ebook in a, in email. So Cool. That’s live and has been doing pretty well. I actually have. A follow up automatic email going out one week, I think five working days after people sign up.
So I still have to probably send a lot of those since I ran the sponsorship, which I’m gonna talk about in a bit. So I’m pretty curious to see the kind of feedback that I get from those emails. It basically the automatic email that goes out. It’s an email where I ask people some feedback on the ebook and I link to like a super quick survey.
that I created. So I have that email in place plus another one, which is just feedback on the daily email itself. So do two automatic follow up emails for feedback. And I didn’t want to make it the sequence to fancy right now first because they’re already getting, so I don’t want to overwhelm. But also because I need to collect feedback.
At this point, I don’t have ton of subscribers and I’m still growing the list. So I want to narrow down my focus, understand what people value, what they, what they like, what they don’t like, and so on. So this is the pretty streamlined funnel that I have right now. Cool. As far as sponsorships, yeah, I tried I’m pretty.
with this platform that I highly recommend. It’s called Swaps Stack. Swaps Stack. So it’s basically, it’s basically kind of like a portal or look it up platform where you basically subscribe and they put you in touch directly with news Matters who are running sponsorships. So you can either browse their catalog, which is the new.
Gallery and find whatever you like, favorite them, or you actually get applications from newsletters. Hmm. And there are some that are quite big as well. Or you can reach out as I mentioned. So I reached out to a couple that I was interested in. Some replied, some didn’t. Some were qualified, some weren’t.
And I applied to three, so, so, I finalized two, so for like around $500. I finalized these two and I rent the first one. So, which is pretty cool because with the first one I got around 60, 70 subscribers. Oh wow. And I keep, and I keep on getting a few, like every day or two they kind of trickle in.
But, and, and this is, and this is a daily email, so they basically like with one only email, I got these subscribers.
[00:06:12] Josh: And, and so how does it work? You find other newsletters and then what, do they give you a quote or is there like a set price? Yeah. Yeah. Where you like negotiate the price?
[00:06:23] Chris: Each newsletter has different kind of tiers, right?
So they might have fixed price, right? They, they might have like a cost per click or cost per advertising. So, and, and yeah, so each one has, is, has their own kind of offering. The one that I did was a cost per click. So they they ran. based on the number of clicks, they, they had a minimum number of clicks that it, that it needed to reach.
Mm-hmm. . And once it reached that number clicks, the, the promotion stopped. Damn. So with, with the budget that I said, they had a minimum budget of $500, so that, that was the minimum that I could spend. Mm-hmm. . But yeah, it’s pretty good. There are some that charge you 150 to 150, so it’s not super expensive.
Obviously the bigger. Are more around like a ballpark of 2,500, 3000. Some you, you can also do like bulk sponsorships, so multiple newsletter sent out, and those are around 6,000, 8,000. So those are outside of my budget right now, but I’m pretty happy with the. that I’ve gotten.
[00:07:30] Josh: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a great way to test the landing page too, right?
Like pretty
[00:07:33] Chris: quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like calculating more or less, I still have to look deeper into the analytics to see the, the sources, but seems like my landing page is converting around 30%, which is pretty good. Yeah.
[00:07:48] Josh: And yeah, that’s very good. No for,
[00:07:51] Chris: yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think. Yeah, I, and I think the, yeah, the new format sure, really helps, helps because when I, what did I run before?
Oh yeah, I ran a sponsorship that was 152 months ago and I got probably only 10, 20 subscribers. So, I think this is much better now. Nice. So this is for the, for the sponsorships. I’m basically waiting, the second one that I already submitted is going out the 8th of February. So in a couple of days. And the other one we are still booking it.
I think it’s mid-February. So yeah, both are going out, so we’ll see what we get. This one also, it’s gonna be interesting because one, the, the, these two are probably more oriented towards the kind of. B2C in the sense of like freelancer audience. Mm-hmm. . And this one, the microphone is rather b2b, so mostly SaaS founders.
So it’s gonna be interesting to see the difference in response from the two ads. And, and obviously I had to tailor the ads for both.
[00:08:59] Josh: Right. That’s cool. I, I think I’ll, I think I’ll check that swap stack out at some point, maybe in a couple weeks for me. But yeah, let us, that was pretty handy. Let us know how.
How it goes. What about, what about the social media stuff?
[00:09:12] Chris: So I automated the kind of social media posting. First thing that I did was kind of create this content calendar. So I have, let’s look at next week for example. So every day I basically write my daily email and I turn it into a Twitter and LinkedIn post.
And I. Basically, this is kind of the timeline that I use with the va. We basically came up with steps and automations in click up. This is the platform that I use to manage my project. So, for example, in the VA space here I have this recurring tasks. Basically in the morning I write the, the email. I just need to move the task in the to do.
it gets automatically assigned to the va. And basically she takes care of everything else during the day. And once she’s completed this, she basically mass marks as complete and the whole site risk starts all over again. Hmm. So this for, for the daily, for the weekly. I also, on Thursdays, I also. Post a YouTube video and it works kind of the same way, except it’s just one day and the sequence is a bit different because it’s the YouTube video, so we need to use to do some editing before posting, but more or less it’s kind of the same flow, so, Pretty happy.
I’m also still kind of unsure of these blocks around midday where I basically post some videos reels on TikTok and Instagram. These are pretty random so far, but as long as I at least keep this main structure in place, I’m, I’m good. Great for
[00:10:57] Josh: now, what, what do you mean by random?
[00:11:01] Chris: Because these, I set them for Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
I realize that I only post them whenever I have ideas. , I, I’m not sticking exactly to the schedule.
[00:11:12] Josh: One. One thing that’s worked for me in that regard is if I have an idea and it’s not time to post, then I add it to the event, right? So like for me, I typically sit down at the end of the day, like 5:00 PM I have in my calendar to write my email and or LinkedIn.
So if it’s like, you know, 10:00 AM and I get an idea for an email or a LinkedIn post, I just go into the calendar event and I write down that idea or topic. Mm-hmm. . So then when the event comes, I just open it. I don’t even have to think of the idea. Or the other thing you could do is like keep a, keep another document just with a big point form list of ideas.
[00:11:52] Chris: Yeah. That works well too. I have the, I have the idea repository that I use for my daily email, basically here, and this is all ideas that I. .
[00:12:01] Josh: So you can use that for TikTok too, right?
[00:12:04] Chris: Yeah. The, the stuff of adding it to the exact event, it’s probably even better for these specific, especially because not all of these ideas are good for a TikTok video, right?
So whenever I have something that feels good, may, maybe adding them to, to the event makes more sense. Or
[00:12:22] Josh: you could split that one document into two columns, and one is for videos, one is for email. Some I’m sure can be for both. Mm-hmm. . I mean, the other thing you can do, man, is like, if you write the email in the morning and you have the TikTok video slot in around lunch or afternoon, just record the video and, and have it inspired by the email.
Right? Yeah. Like you just wrote an email about something. Right. Just pull some, even like pull a one sentence from the email and expand on that. Yeah. or cuz like your emails include a quote, could talk about the quote Anyways, just, just a thought. Yeah,
[00:13:03] Chris: sometimes I, I try to make it more complex than these probably.
So that’s, that’s probably my issue with these videos. But yeah, you’re right. I’m, I, I should probably keep it simpler.
[00:13:15] Josh: Keep it simple, stupid, right? That’s what they say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So for the next two weeks, what’s what are your goals for the next two weeks? Looks like you knocked off all three, so that’s pretty good.
You have two or three for the next
[00:13:29] Chris: two weeks. Yeah. I’ve also. Yeah, was done. All of other stuff, which is good. Feels good. Getting a lot of ideas right now, but for next week next two weeks. Next two weeks. So I want to explore newsletter giveaways, explore. So I, I basically watch this webinar about newsletter growth and I got a couple of ideas and giveaways are, are one of those that I want to.
Mm-hmm. . So basically a giveaway. It’s whenever I partner up with some other platform who’s got a newsletter, an email list, and basically I offer my services maybe at a discount or I offer, I offer special offers, right? So it can even be a, like one of my products or some consulting that I offer, and they promote my services to their own list.
And they benefit because they get. Discount for their audience. And I benefit because they basically promote my name to their audience and I can do the same with them, right? So if I ask them, I don’t know, a usability testing platform, I ask them for a discount that I can use to promote to my list, then I’m gonna promote them in my list.
And the other cool thing that they recommend is once you cobble together a lot of these. kind of coupons, let’s call them. You can put them all in an, in an e-book, for example, and then use that e-book with all the coupons, all the discounts, all the special offers, and use it as a maybe an optin or, or a free offer, free something that you give
[00:15:03] Josh: out.
But, but are, are your newsletter giveaways? What’s the goal? Is it to get more service clients or is it to grow your email?
[00:15:13] Chris: At, at first, or both? It’s probably gonna be, it’s probably gonna be more about brand awareness. So just getting my name out right, and if I, and if I make some extra cash with services that don’t take much of my time, like audits, I, I mean, I, I have my audit on my website right?
For 2 99. If I set it at 190, for example, I’m still not losing money. , right? It doesn’t
[00:15:40] Josh: take me much. I, I think you should. Still good? I think so a couple things come to mind when we talk about giveaways. So, number one, like if you ask Ben Settle, he’ll say the goal should be to get more subscribers, right?
Mm-hmm. . So like, one, there’s a couple ways you can do it. One way could be you’re doing a giveaway and it’s for your subscribers and or other subscri. So it’s like for one week I’m doing a give. And I’m gonna pick one or three random winners, and the winners are gonna get X. Right? And it could be a free website tear down.
Or another good idea of, of an example I read about once was you, the giveaway is like some, some. info product that’s like UX or copy related, right? Mm-hmm. . So maybe it’s, maybe there’s like, maybe you have a course or maybe there’s a really good short kind of cheapish course or ebook on copying UX that you really love, right?
And it could be like, Hey, if you join my list, or if you share this with a friend who joins my list I’m gonna do a draw on three people. I’m gonna give a free copy. This, I remember the story I read, I, I forget where I read it, where a guy was trying to appeal to web developers. Mm-hmm. . And so he did a giveaway and the prize was the pro version of what’s, what’s that program where you write code in sublime text or some, something like, No idea.
Anyways, there’s like a really popular coding, you know, tool. I’m not a coder, right? So I don’t know what it’s, I’m gonna butcher it. But anyways, really, really popular. And so he gave away like three licenses to the pro version or whatever. . And so he promoted it to his email list and on Twitter and whatever.
And anytime you invited a friend who joined, you got a credit and it went kind of like viral. Cause all these devs wanted this, you know, free pre premium plan. And he got like 10,000, I don’t know, he got like a crazy amount of subs. So I would, I would number one zero in on what is the actual goal of this giveaway, and then that will kind of guide the rest.
Right? But I think your goal should be to grow your email. Right. Like, you’re gonna spend all this time and money to get one new client. Okay. Like, I guess it’s worth it. Yeah, totally. But if you can add hundreds of subs and now you’re emailing them every day, growing that rep reputation and building the relationship, that’d be, that’d be my main goal.
So, so what
[00:18:08] Chris: would you recommend doing? I would
[00:18:10] Josh: pick, I would pick one. I would pick a, a, a re, like a really, really valuable resource to the people that you want, the types of people that you want on your. , right? So you want people that wanna learn about copy and ux, right? So I would, if I were you, I would pick like your favorite tool or ebook or course on that topic and say, Hey, I’m running a giveaway and there’s good software you can use for this too.
And you promote it to your list, but then you also promote it on. and the, the, the software is key because you can get giveaway software. I, I, I used one years ago. I, I feel like it was a Noah Kagan product. It was called like Sumo King or something. Yeah, yeah. App Sumo has like a giveaway tool, but the the, they’re basically
[00:19:02] Chris: saying, getting a coupon that I can give someone in exchange of.
[00:19:07] Josh: I’m saying just give it, give them something for free. I don’t care how you figure it out, right? You might have to pay for it with your own credit card and then give, give them a sign in or whatever, but don’t worry about that in the copy, right? The copy is, Hey, so let’s say your favorite copy ux book is whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Copy. Hey, I’m running a giveaway. I’m gonna give, if you sign up, I’m gonna give away three copies of blah, blah, blah. Copy to three people to get extra entries. Send your custom link to all your friends and they can sign up too to have a chance. Ah, yeah. Yeah. And you get more entries. That’s how you get the virality, right?
Otherwise, if one person joins, it’s just one person. Right? But you want to get the shares and the extra entries and all that stuff. And there’s software now that you can use for free or cheap. I think it was called King Sum. . I’ll look it up. King’s. I used it years
[00:19:58] Chris: ago. There, there’s one that I was interested in.
It’s called Spark Loop, but that’s paid and it’s quite expensive, so I’m not ready for that.
[00:20:05] Josh: Look up King Sum, like k i n g sumo.com. I just, I just saw it here. Yeah. And yeah, anyways, that’s the key to a good giveaway, right? You, you want the viral. in it if you really want the chance to get big, big.
[00:20:19] Chris: Yeah.
I’ve also heard someone, there’s this guy Robert Allen, a copywriter who basically has got a whole sequence with different steps kind of gamified, but I didn’t want to make it too complex to start, so I’ll
[00:20:34] Josh: probably just keep a second. Yeah. People just want free shit. Right? People like free shit if it’s, if it’s valuable to them and what they want to do, but also people just love free, right?
So, yeah. Yeah. But don’t waste something like that if you don’t have like a clear goal and outcome. And I think the best value is to grow the email list, right? Hmm. Because. . Now you have potentially dozens or hundreds or thousands of new subs for life. Right? Or as long as they stay subscribed. So anyways, yeah.
Yeah. All right. Anything else for the next two weeks before we we move on?
[00:21:07] Chris: Yeah. I’m finalizing my lead management process with the va so you can set, that’s basically, basically integrating her more in the whole process from when I get a, either a referral or someone gets in touch on my. I’m delegating as much as possible of it, so just need to finalize a couple steps.
Cool. We can talk about that. Okay, so I also have another quite big project, but I’m not jumping into it this time because we don’t have time. Just remind me and you can maybe add a note. Discuss about the automatic client’s funnel
because I’m gonna brainstorm for the past, for the next two
[00:21:50] Josh: weeks. All right. So explore newsletter giveaways. I’ll put in brackets set clear goal slash strategy slash prize. Finalize lead management process with VA. Note to discuss automatic client’s. . Yep. Cool. All right. I’m gonna go quick because we’re we’re chugging along here pretty fast, although I guess well, yeah, I, I’d like to try to keep two around extra time if you, I can do an extra, like five, 10 minutes.
Okay. So on my end, . It’s been a good two weeks. First goal for me from two weeks ago was to finish the beta and launch. We did that, so with, with Vista. Nice. My immigration tech company. We’re live on production and we have our first users signed up, starting to use the app, which is great. We’re doing like a free trial for the fir their first client.
So we, we, we’ve automated the study permit, so for international students that want to come to Canada or for immigration lawyers and consultants that help international students, you know, prep their documents and apply to come to Canada. So basically that’s saying we have a B2B and a B2C side to it. So we’re focusing a little bit more on B2B to start just cuz the value of those clients is much higher.
So we have. , probably a half dozen, maybe even more signed up already, which is a great start. Now we just need to get them using it more and liking it and getting feedback and making sure everything’s going well. So that was really good, really exciting, starting to add in some new features as well. So that’s been really good.
So on that side, I’d like to add, so for the next two weeks, I’d like to add 10 new B2B clients. We also just secured a big partnership today, which I’m really excited about. So with one more potentially next week.
[00:23:42] Chris: So what’s your, what’s your process in high level to get clients?
[00:23:47] Josh: Well, right now we’re, we’re targeting mostly immigration lawyers and consultants and agents.
So I just, is it outreach? Yeah. Or a lot of outreach. Yeah. Because the good thing is like, they’re pretty easy to target, right? If you go on like LinkedIn and type in immigration lawyer Canada, They pop up. Right.
[00:24:06] Chris: So did you try, did you try using the LinkedIn filters in search?
[00:24:10] Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it.
Yeah. So that’s kind of like the really nice thing when you have such a defined audience, it like makes it really easy to, we haven’t run ads yet because it’s just so easy to just search and maybe eventually we will, but the first thing I’ve been, I’ve been doing is hitting. my personal connections. So this is why like every time we launch something new, I get reminded why it’s so valuable to build a personal brand because.
It doesn’t matter if you need anything right now, today. Right. But if you spend the next year building your brand, it could be anywhere, right? LinkedIn, ig. Yeah. Email list, all of the above. And then you launch something I, I
[00:24:53] Chris: give you one. I’ll give you another one. Podcast. Yeah. I was interviewed on a podcast six months ago.
Yesterday I got a lead who just listened to that episode? .
[00:25:03] Josh: Oh wow. That’s awesome. Yeah. I mean, podcast is phenomenal. but just building your brand because you never know if and when you launch something new, start something new. And then even just going through my connection. So now I’m up to like 11,000 followers on LinkedIn.
So I just go to first connections and type in immigration lawyer, immigra, immigration consultant, and I have like dozens and dozens and dozens of them already. So the first thing I’ve been doing is hitting up people who I’m already connected with, right. , basically, if you look at it as like circles, start with the inner circle and then slowly move out.
Yeah. So it’s been really good. I’m excited. The product’s, I’m biased, but the product’s phenomenal. I think early feedback is really good, so I’m really excited. Just want to keep adding on more B2B clients. I’ll set a target of 10 for the next two weeks. That’s my goal. Yeah.
[00:25:57] Chris: Is there a competition in your space?
[00:26:00] Josh: Very little there. There’s very few other people that have automated this. So that’s the other, that’s a good thing and a bad thing, right? What I’m learning in tech is like, it’s great cuz you’re not really fighting with other companies that are offering the same thing, but you tend to have to do a little bit more education.
Right? Because people are like, what the hell is this? We’ve never seen it before. Right? Yeah.
[00:26:20] Chris: And, and also, and also on the other hand, Is this really something that people would pay for, considering there are not many other people selling it? Because typically you get an idea and a hundred thousand people already have the same idea, right?
Mm-hmm. . So it can be a hit, hit or miss. But if
[00:26:36] Josh: you’re, I’ll tell you, I’ll let you know in a few weeks because, because we’re so, so early indications are good. We’re getting people interested, like there’s a pretty clear value. Which is, in our case, saving them a lot of time because immigration work is very time consuming and most of it’s just like boring administrative work, right?
You’re filling out forms, you’re gathering PDFs, whatever, whatever, and we can clearly show with our app, That we’re cutting that time, like in half, maybe even more. So people are getting it, people are wanting to try it. So now we’ll see how many, you know, convert and, and how much revenue we start to pull in, hopefully on the quicker side.
So I’ll have more updates around that in the next two weeks, but, Pretty excited so far. So we just gotta keep pushing and we’ll see how that goes. Update website. So I, I didn’t update the website myself cuz I decided after speaking to you over email, decided to just pull the trigger on a Hiring a developer to update the Solar Printer grind website cuz number one, I just don’t have the time.
Like I’m just so focused on Vista. I, I don’t have the time to do much.
[00:27:45] Chris: That’s why I delegate to.
[00:27:48] Josh: And secondly, like, it’s, it’s something that I’m really not that great and I don’t love doing. If I liked design and whatever, sure. But focused on other stuff, I’d rather focus on Vista and just creating content and like continuing to build in public like this.
And she seems pretty reasonable. I’m talking to her this afternoon actually. So if that goes well, then hopefully we’ll pull the trigger. So hopefully finish new website design. And then the other thing I want to do is really I think what I need to do is like, refocus a lot of the messaging. I need a new, my landing page sucks, is what I’m trying to say.
The join page I think is kind of vague. I don’t really think I’ve like defined. Who I’m targeting, what I’m doing,
[00:28:29] Chris: there’s no, there’s no like one single value proposition or like your position is not super clear,
[00:28:36] Josh: I think. Yeah. So I’m gonna say like redefine vision, vision slash value prop slash ideal.
I’ll call it a customer, but it’s not really a customer for SG landing page.
[00:28:53] Chris: Yeah. And also I will probably give the, the developer some leeway for improving the design because if like, or very cheap, she can just come up with with some, with a better branding at least. So maybe restructure some other pages.
I think it’s one. Yeah,
[00:29:12] Josh: me too. I wanna keep it very. Similar to yours, right? Like a lot of white, very clean. So it won’t be a, it won’t be a huge revamp, but, but the join page needs a lot of work. My email landing page needs a lot of work. And that’s, and that’s partly just on the copy side. And then a little bit on the design, but I’m not too worried about that.
That’s an easy fix, right? Like with a
[00:29:35] Chris: good dev. Yeah. It doesn’t, one, one thing that I learned about design is that it doesn’t need, necessarily need to be fancy, but when some thought is put into it, into it from someone who can design, even if it’s simple, it looks legit and it looks professional.
[00:29:51] Josh: Oh yeah.
Like even, yeah. Even a small but simple. Redesign can make it look. Mm-hmm. a thousand times better. Cool. So that’s it from my end. So I’ll, let’s quickly summarize. So for Chris, explore newsletter giveaways, finalize lead management process with the va. And then next time we’ll discuss your automatic client funnel.
On my end, I want to get 10 new B2B clients signed up on our platform. Finish the new website, design for Solar Printer Grind, or have it designed by some by somebody else. And and do some thinking around the, the messaging for the landing
[00:30:26] Chris: page. Yeah, I have a correction for your task around getting 10 clients signed up because it’s not, it might not be under your control, right?
So what if instead you set a goal like an action goal, something that you need to do, at least to try and get those 10 clients. It could be. ,
[00:30:47] Josh: like X amount of demos or reach
[00:30:51] Chris: out sales calls, I dunno, 50 people a day or whatever you need to do. I would probably phrase it in that, in those terms, because it’s probably gonna be hard to say like
[00:31:00] Josh: Right, what about, what about Schedule X amount of demos?
Or is that still too far out of re like out of control?
[00:31:06] Chris: It’s have to convince people, right? So something that’s in your control that you can do every.
[00:31:12] Josh: Okay, so let’s do reach out to like,
[00:31:17] Chris: what, what would you normally do to achieve that goal? Set some parameters around that. Mm-hmm. some constraints, some,
[00:31:27] Josh: some number.
So maybe let, I, I have to think about the number. Let me just put 50 in for now. Like reach out to 50 leads per. . Mm-hmm. , because that’s a good idea. And
[00:31:40] Chris: yeah. And you can have a, a new list every
[00:31:42] Josh: day, or I’ll put average 50 leads per day on average. Cuz some days, especially days where I have a lot of demos booked, I just have less time to do outreach.
Yeah. Or some days, like for example, . Different leads might take different amount of time. Like cuz we’re going for some big partnerships too. So some are just like small, you know, law firm, whatever. Pretty straightforward, cut and paste, whatever. We’re also going for some big partnerships right now. And so though, you know, take a little bit longer, customize the message a little bit more, blah, blah, blah.
So I’ll put average or,
[00:32:17] Chris: or even better, just at a minimum.
[00:32:20] Josh: That’s a good idea. Reach out to. . Yeah. A minimum of
[00:32:25] Chris: five or 10. And then it’s, if, if a day you reach out to 15 and
[00:32:28] Josh: better, let’s do 20. Because 20 I can do reach out to a minimum of 20 leads per day. Yeah, I like that.
[00:32:38] Chris: And every day you, you will have to do item saying, did I reach out to 20 people, yes or no?
We’ll, measurable,
[00:32:44] Josh: yeah. I gotta put it on my to-do. 20 person outreach. Cool, man. Anything else? I wanted to do a quick book segment, like two minutes. Like, Hey, what are you reading? What am I reading? What are we, what do we like about it? And then I, I gotta run in a few minutes, but what are you reading right now?
[00:33:02] Chris: Sure. So I actually just finished the everything store, which is basically Oh, nice biography. Did you read it? The, yeah, it’s right. It’s right. Business biography.
[00:33:12] Josh: Yeah. Have you read? And then you should also read Amazon Un Unbound is like the follow up. I
[00:33:17] Chris: think I have it in my audiobook list. This is the one with the black cover.
[00:33:26] Josh: Yeah. So they’re both written by Brad Stone, who I really like the everything store, which is what for those watching on YouTube is right there. And then Amazon Unbound is the follow up.
[00:33:39] Chris: Yeah. Okay. In fact, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I recommend them both. That’s next. But right now I’m actually listening rather than reading.
I, I also listen to the Everything Store because I have basically two hours every day at the gym, and that’s how I go through them. So I’m listening right now to Brian Kran Stone’s biography, which is super interesting, really, really cool life story about he’s the actor. Yeah.
[00:34:06] Josh: Yeah. Bad actor. We just started watching it actually.
I never watched it.
[00:34:10] Chris: Oh, nice. I’m on season two. I’m on, I’m on the last season for the second time right now. Mm-hmm. with, with my cousin. We never watched it, but it’s awesome. . Yeah. I’ve heard, yeah, the, the biography is really cool. I’m going through that. I’m also going through the biography. Rockefeller.
It’s called Titan, but that’s like 30 hours, so I’m around 10 hours, so I’m kind of like switching in between that. And discipline is Destiny by Ryan Ryan Holiday, which I’m almost done with, which
[00:34:41] Josh: is, dude, how many books do you read at the same time? That’s
crazy.
[00:34:45] Chris: And I switch between between environments.
I also switch between podcasts, so I probably, probably listen to like three hours of content every. Holy shit. Mostly at the gym. Plus I read maybe, I don’t know, 30 minutes a day. Other damn stuff. Damn. Yeah. I, I’m around four books in a month, see? In 2023
[00:35:06] Josh: now. That’s crazy. I, I, I can only read one book at a time.
I’m like a one book Andy, or, I don’t know. I, I, I don’t, well, I don’t. I don’t listen to audio books and I don’t listen to as much content during the day, but I read at night before bed, so I just sit down, pick up my one book. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I read it. But listen, everyone has their own shick, right?
[00:35:27] Chris: The trick is waking up at five and getting more time.
[00:35:30] Josh: right? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Which, which one, which is the one that you’d recommend out of all those, which is,
[00:35:37] Chris: Probably I really liked the everything store. Mm-hmm. , but lots of lessons. That, and also the I found a lot of commonalities with Phil Knight’s book, the Show Dog as well. Mm-hmm. . So those are two very, very, very powerful entrepreneurial biographies.
And you, one thing that stands out in both is the amount of shit that these people had to go through to build their business. And, and then you realize why they were able to build these massive, massive corporations, right? Because they basically embraced the, the suck and the pain throughout the journey.
And that’s something that I think a lot of people don’t think about. They think, oh yeah, these guys are huge, huge, like rich. , but they don’t think about like all the struggles on the, all the
[00:36:28] Josh: failures. Yeah. I, I recently reread the Alibaba book on Jack Man It’ss the same thing. I think what you realize after you read a few of those is like, there’s no wonder that most of these CEO billionaires are like half crazy, right?
Because to go through what they went through to, to build what they built is, it’s, it’s nuts, right? Like you have to be a little bit. to get through all that stuff. But anyways, very cool. Yeah. I’m rereading Ray Croc’s book on building McDonald’s. I forget what it, it’s called grinding it Out. I think.
Which is an awesome name if you like, if you like my brand, . But same thing, man. He’s nuts. Like he’s just an absolute animal hard worker. The, the cool thing is, and I’m not done, so I’ll talk more about it in two weeks when I finish, I’m probably about 60% of the way done. But he started McDonald’s or he, he bought his way in, right?
Like it was started by the McDonald’s brothers at like 50. You know, so like, oh, wow. I think another thing people don’t realize, like what you were just talking about is like, you don’t have to be 25, 30 to start a business, right. Or to build a super big business. The guy spent like 30 years as a salesman and then got into McDonald’s when he was like 52, 53, and built it into, you know, the biggest fast food chain in the world.
So, you know, even if you’re in your thirties, forties, fifties even, and Gary V says this all the time, right? It’s like, , there’s still so much opportunity. There’s still so much room ahead if you wanna go after it, so, yeah, exactly. But
[00:38:02] Chris: yeah, it’s a great read that, that must be interesting, especially considering that a lot of what McDonald’s did was basically investing in real estate, kind of like like, you know, the the chain and all the branches,
[00:38:13] Josh: right?
Yeah. Like you, you go into it thinking, oh, he’s just gonna open some hamburger joints and it. You know, expands way out from there. Right. And the way, the way they, it just made me want
[00:38:27] Chris: to, it just made me want to watch the movie. Did you see it?
[00:38:30] Josh: I saw the movie, but you should read the book, man. The book’s always better, right?
And goes into more detail. Yeah, it just added it to my
[00:38:35] Chris: list. Yeah. Just
[00:38:37] Josh: added . It’s a good book. And it’s not super long. And it came out in like, he wrote the book in like 75 or something, like 1980. Like so it’s, it’s actually quite old. Yeah. And. it, it’s not even as big as it is now, right? I mean, I don’t even know if he’s alive anymore, but I forget, but I don’t think not.
But yeah, it’s crazy. It’s a great read. All those reads are such good reads for entrepreneurs. Shoe dog, grinding it out, the un, Amazon Unbound, all that or everything, store this,
[00:39:06] Chris: this, this. There’s this other one, which is about the founder of Netflix. . Okay. I haven’t read that. So that, that will never work.
Which is on my list. ,
[00:39:17] Josh: that’s a great name on my list. That’s such a good name. Yeah.
[00:39:21] Chris: And it, and it’s interesting, if you read the, the Amazons one they talk about Netflix a bit. They make comparisons, so, yeah. Mm-hmm. ,
[00:39:32] Josh: they’re all, if you’re trying to build a business or you are building a. I think the most valuable books are the biographies or autobiographies from these CEOs.
[00:39:42] Chris: Yeah, because the non-fiction books, they can give you some like practical action steps, tactics, but in the end, what works is the fundamentals that you glean from studying other people and
[00:39:54] Josh: other, yeah. Well, and you also realize that these. didn’t know half those fundamentals anyways. Right. Like . Yeah. So it it, they’re not specialist.
It’s almost comforting. Yeah. Cuz you’re like, oh wow, they did all these, all so many things wrong, but they just kept working hard and learning from them and adjusting. They didn’t like learn every, you know, read a book, learn everything, wait and then do it all perfectly. Right. It’s the total opposite. So anyways.
Yeah. Cool. So, awesome man. That’s it for me. Anything else? We’re over, we’re over 40 minutes. 30, 40 minutes I think is fine. Yeah. Hope everybody enjoyed. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll keep going live every two weeks, so if you, if you’re listening or watching on YouTube after the fact every second Friday, 9:00 AM Eastern time, we go live and do this on video or if you’re watching or listening after the fact, obviously, you know, we put it out as a podcast and the video, we’ll start sharing some snippets as well.
That’s on my to-do list for my va basical. Take snippets of these episodes and we’ll post them on shorts and TikTok and all that stuff. So that’s it. Thanks for tuning in, Chris. Have a good two weeks. Well, we’ll be in touch I’m sure before then, but have a good two weeks. Yeah, you too, everybody. If you have any feedback, thoughts, please let us know.
Check out chris@christophersilsylvere.com and I’m at solopreneur grind.com. We’ll have links to those in the description. Make sure to like sub subscribe, follow all those cool actions. Chris, have a great weekend
[00:41:21] Chris: notification, bell . Yeah. Whatever
[00:41:24] Josh: that like they do, whatever the heck. You’re listening or watching this on if you, if you like it and want to tune in next time.
Yeah.
[00:41:30] Chris: Yeah. Have a
[00:41:31] Josh: great weekend, man. All right. Same to you. Take care everybody. Cheers. Bye-bye.

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