The Business Generals Podcast | Helping You Maximize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams - Every Single Week

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089 – A masterclass in creating a multiple 7 figure information product business with a high conversion rate (w/ Alex Charfen) Sep 12, 2018

Show notes

Alex Charfen is as seasoned as they come, a diverse experience going all the way back to being trained in his fathers business at as a pre-teen, his challenges with standard education and overcoming that through his extensive reading about what it took to be successful in business and to eventually creating an international consulting brand that would peak at $250m in revenue. Alex had a false start at retirement after exiting his consulting business, he re-invested all his gains into real estate quickly which quickly grew into a $40m portfolio, but hurricane weather and the global financial crisis wiped out their portfolio and took him and his family into bankruptcy.

In this show Alex takes the time to walk us through three main phases of two plus decades of his entrepreneurial journey, drawing out some key distinctions that any aspiring or seasoned entrepreneur can use to kick start a multiple seven figure business.

With literally all odds against them, Alex shares how him and his wife, a real estate professional, designed a course for real estate agents and the financial services companies whose clients were facing foreclosures at the height of the GFC.

Armed with real life experience after being served multiple property foreclosure notices, Alex looked for a way to bring all affected parties to a common negotiating table that would help more families keep their home, and help more lenders preserve their investments.

This training course was developed while Alex was bankrupt and it was launched with zero money down, yet made a profit on day one and would sell over 48,000 courses averaging $500 per course, multiple millions of dollars from a standing start.

Alex breaks down a simple methodology of how anyone can create a valuable information product that has high conversion and a high completion rate.

Identify your target audience or gap in the market
Research through direct surveys and find out what their pains are. Alex interviewed over 100 real estate brokers and agents, they shared their pain points and frustrations when it came to foreclosures
Develop a product that will answer the needs of your audience. No need for perfection here just let the creative juices flow, if using a computer slows your creative process then write it on paper, draw up all your illustrations or image guides and create the blueprint
Beta testing – Alex called his target audience and walked them through the course details. With their feedback and additional input he further refined the course and got their committee to to buy once it launched
Launch, don’t over complicate or wait too long, get it launched with a few people, see the response and then move on there.
Alex went on to be recognised as a key contributor to turning around the home foreclosure industry through the course.

If you have any expertise or thought leadership, this methodology above that Alex uses is your guide to creating that service offering your clients want and desire so much they are willing to buy without you “over selling” it to them.

We covered other ground during the podcast including:

How you can transition from a corporate consulting role into your own business; and
A case study of how Alex is helping entrepreneurs grow from $1m to $20m plus in annual revenues: Alex breaks down some of the key strategies that are helping put multiple seven figures in top line revenue for his clients today that you can leverage today

Legacy

Alex passionately shares about what he would like to leave as a legacy when all is said is done – this was a powerful moment during the show – – – make sure you check it out!

Entrepreneurial books Alex recommends for any entrepreneur – –

Connect with Alex

Get in touch with Alex at Momentum Podcast on iTunes or his home page at charfen.com

088 – Pipe Drive: Started with a simple idea with zero customers – now over 60,000 customers, $30m invested and 300 employees (w Timo Rein) Aug 18, 2018

Show notes

Timo Rein is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pipe Drive which is a simplified sales management tool that is helping over 60,000 sales teams around the world to get more organised, more focused and helping them sell more. You have probably already heard about Pipe Drive because they have done an amazing job marketing their service, this is a great episode with Timo, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know we will receive great feedback on this one!

Timo is based in Estonia with his wife and kids, born in the Soviet Union, studied psychology in university, he lived in the US for four years and is now back home living and running his business from north eastern Europe in the wonderful Estonia.

He co-founded Pipe Drive 7 years ago with 4 other founders, prior to that was a partner is a sales training business for 10 years, so Timo is a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years in the game of running his own business.

Show notes and links at: https://www.businessgenerals.co/timor

Revenue streams

Pipe Drive is a SaaS (software as a service) business, that generates a monthly and annual subscription from customers who are from all corners of the world. They have doubles their revenue each year for the last 5-6 years, so Timo describes as a high growth yet high investment SaaS business. They have invested about $30m into the business which includes successful strong capital raisings.

Dilution of your ownership v Investors

In Timo’s mind their business is run by a team of professionals right across their leadership and executive level, including the investors who he feels are well invested to give the founders every necessary introduction and connection in the market place as well challenge the leadership and ask more of them so as to get the best that the company can deliver.

The big idea and the story of how pipe drive started

The big idea with Timo’s first co-founder, who also had a sales background like Timo
Coming up with the specification document of the product
Looking for developers who would build the code
Meeting up with 3 other start up founders who had coding back ground

The tipping point for Timo

He was running his sales business and going well
An old friend quizzed Timo about his consultancy role at the time and in Timo’s mind this made his wake up to his dream of being a doer, a builder and this sent him back to his drawing board so he went back to looking at building a business.

Building Pipe Drive

With the new 3 co-founders the idea was ready to be dusted off and given another chance.

Timo and his first co-founder described the whole software idea again to the new team.
A brand new specification document was created and it was much better than their original spec, as it was much more visual with screen shots and clear work flows.
The original founders had the idea, they knew how to market and scale a business while the 3 new founders brought in the engineering experience and proven experience in coding a product that can be scaled, so together they created a strong foundation on which to build the business from.
For a period of 3 months the team would get together on weekend retreats at a local farm house, from Friday nights and code through out the weekend and would only head back to their homes on Sundays. Three of the co-founders had day jobs during the week so this project was only worked on during the weekends at this time. The other two founders plus one other engineer (who would later become a founding employee) worked full time on the project during this 3 month period.
Although away from family, this helped the team focus well on the project and also helped them build a strong team dynamic and start to understand each other better.
After a few months a beta version was finalised and ready for prime time, Timo was not fully comfortable with doing a beta (test) launch as the product was not fully ready, but his co-founders were quite bullish about wanting to start getting customer feedback so he went along.
In hindsight Timo says if they hadn’t done their beta launch when they did it would have been a mistake.

The beta launch

They targeted about 500 previous contacts that they had worked with previously in sales and sales management.
The goal was to get the tool into the hands of these teams, have them test it, break it and give feed back so that the team could fix it and iron out all the bugs – this beta testing took about half a year before the team the first market version was ready to launch

Market launch and getting the first few customers

It was launched with a 30 day trial followed by a paid plan.
Out of the 500 beta users, about 30 had good use of the product during the beta trial stage enough to have 10 of these immediately convert to paid customers when the market version launched.
For Timo, he had a back of the napkin calculation that said if they can scale up to 500 customers who had a monthly recurring subscription then the business would be real and sustainable in his own estimations
For about 4-5 months from launch the business grew at about 10-15 new customers each month, but it was quite linear and the growth target of 500 customers seemed very far away.
Before running out of steam, patience and funding due to the shear pace or lack thereof – the founders started asking how they could accelerate their growth and how they could fund their business better.

Enter…incubators

The idea of joining an incubator program became their next logical step on their journey to growth, the US model was most appealing as it had both good programs to help grow the founders, get the start up off the ground as well as strong investor networks and opportunities.
They spent 5-6 months applying to different incubator programs in the US while documenting their successes and failures on their company blog which also helped in traffic and conversions.
After 6 months an incubator in San Francisco (Angel Pad) accepted them Pipe Drive team into its program.
This program brough some initial funding for the business and at this point Timo and his fellow founders were hopeful that this would be a real turning point for the business

What can we change this week to help our potential customers find us better?

Website optimisation
Content creation
Considering crazy ideas like doing collaborations with other companies. So they did a deal with App Sumo and heavily discounted their subscription in order to make some noise in the market through App Sumo. This added 220 new customers in bulk, and this was a good jump for the business.
With consistent weekly effort, the team finally got to their goal of 500 subscribers which was a great milestone.

Pipe Drive’s reach after 7 years in business

They serve small businesses with teams of 4-5.
Customer reach is over 60,000.
With the lowest monthly subscription at $15/month, the maths adds up to over $10 million in annual revenue, a great achievement for an idea that started so simply with limited time and resources.

Other topics we discussed during the podcast

Inspirational books as an entrepreneur:
Common Denominator of Success – Albert Gray
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink
Crucial Conversations – Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson
Team at pipe drive has over 300 team members which is a great team
Best way to connect with Timo – get onto Pipe Drive and use the messenger option and also on LinkedIn
Pipe Drive pricing – check out pipedrive.com

Legacy

“To give people confidence that there is a way to get to great results which are almost guaranteed” – Timo

087 – Becoming an Inc Magazine Top 100 speaker – employee to business owner (w/ Bobby Umar) Aug 04, 2018

Show notes

Bobby Umar has been named by Inc Magazine as a top 100 leadership speaker alongside people like John Maxwell and Richard Branson, he has taken to the famous and prestigious Tedx stage four times and has over half a million followers on social media. Bobby is also an international author and a Huffington post contributor. A father of two and loves improv comedy.

Bobby started his business full time in January 2017, he rolled out of his corporate role and went straight into launching his business. His number one revenue stream today is professional speaking – inspirational motivational speaker, travelling mostly around Canada and from time to time internationally. Bobby speaks on leadership as a general theme with specialised expertise in three key areas:

Networking – leadership building and connection
Personal branding
Social media and digital marketing

Bobby other revenue streams are coaching (executive coaching, career coaching and business coaching) and events.

Why and how speaking

During his corporate days Bobby conducted workshops and training and received very strong positive feedback about his speaking and motivational skills. By the time Bobby was ready to leave corporate he leaned on this feedback and took all the positives and embarked on building out his personal brand. After a deep dive into his personal values, traits, personality assessments and some soul searching – Bobby says he found out that his brand was all about connection, people, persuasion, influence, performing, presenting and diversity, speaking seemed like a logical thing to do.

First customer

Bobby kept track of all his connections throughout his career even before the advent of LinkedIn, he maintained an excel spreadsheet with 3,000 contacts, so the first thing he did was to send out 500 brochures to people on this list and then also sent an email to all 3,000 contacts sharing that he had launched a business, his services and clearly specifying the opportunities he was looking for. After sending that out a few people wrote back to Bobby (not as many as initially hoped for but it was a start…), some called and with a bit of follow up Bobby landed his first gig.

Business growth after the first few paying customers

Bobby made it a priority to do an amazing job so that it was easy to get referrals from each engagement
He leveraged his network some more, set up calls and met up with his contacts – he estimates having met over 1,000 people for catch up chats, coffees and meals in his first 3-5 years of launching his business. He let them know what he was up to and this fueled more engagements and referral opportunities.
Maintained a strong social media presence through Facebook and LinkedIn
Saying yes to most gigs that were offered to him, a lot of which Bobby says he wouldn’t do today

Paid v Free events

Starting out, Bobby was doing a lot of events for free as he built out his brand but was always looking for paid opportunities.
His paid opportunities were attracting a $500 fee, and after a while this changed to $1,000 with a lower end engagement being $500, and then $2,500 an engagement and continued to grow that way.
Bobby shares how you have to know when to say NO to certain opportunities if they are not within your core niche as saying NO indirectly helps you say YES to what you are really called to do.

Tedx Talk & Social Media

While previously unaware of what it was, on 5 October 2011, Bobby did the first of his four Tedx talks and decided to launch his social media strategy as it clear in his mind that social media was here to stay.
On this day Bobby launched his social media arsenal on all channels – Twitter, Facebook business page, newsletter and announced his Tedx talk – making sure all his content was all synchronised within the brand he was creating.
Within 6 months Bobby landed his first speaking gig directly from Twitter, and that was the start of good innings from social media.

Break through moments

Bobby says his first break though moment was his first Tedx talk which he simultaneously cross leveraged into his social media strategy launch. He had been in business for 4 years at the time, both these events gave Bobby lots of credibility and visibility as well as a strong edge over many other professional speakers who had not yet embraced social media in the same way.
The second moment came in 2015, Bobby had strong recognition as a social media thought leader by this time and this was then named by Inc Magazine as a top 100 leadership speaker (without even pitching for it!) and secondly he scored a speaker agent which meant less prospecting, less logistical admin work and more time to focus on delivery.

Other topics we discussed on the podcast

Corporate skills that prepared Bobby well for his entrepreneurial journey today
Networking, relationship building and connecting with people
How to use the different social media platforms to generate leads and connect with prospects and how to incorporate email and phone connection to close out your deals
Transitioning social media followers to your in house email list using content
Sales funnel tactics for coaching, speaker training and marketing networking courses

Best way to connect with Bobby

Legacy

“My number 1 legacy is going to be my children, being a dad and raising my kids to be nurtured, happy, fulfilled and global productive citizens is going to be the greatest story and legacy of my life. Secondly, I have always been about connection – I am always there for people, I will support people and I will always help them fly.” Bobby Umar

086 – Leveraging a PhD in Psychology into a lucrative speaking career and helping people create wealth through behavioural finance (w/ Dr Daniel Crosby) Jul 25, 2018

Show notes

Dr Daniel Crosby is a Psychologist, he has a PhD in psychology and behavioural finance specialising in helping people and organisations understand the cross over between the mind and the financial markets. He is a co-author of a New York Times best seller “Personal Benchmark” and also authored the “Laws of Wealth“. Daniel is the founder and CEO of Nocturne Capital – an investment management firm whose approach is rooted in the science of behavioral finance.

Daniel has a growing family, based in Atlanta Georgia from where he runs his business which he has been running full time for the last 10 years.

Check out the full show with detailed show notes and episode links: businessgenerals.com/danielc

Lets talk core revenue streams
Daniel shares how he started off doing speaking engagement to market his other services in his company but it has since taken off and become a major part of his revenue stream. An early take away from Daniel is not to underestimate the power of speaking as an extra revenue stream in your business!

Daniel also manages money on behalf of clients, teaches online courses in behavioural finance and provides consulting services and content development.

While speaking is Daniel’s number one income stream it’s not completely scalable due to the time commitment and extensive travel requirements so Daniel has a focus to grow the other income streams. Daniel has been on the speaking circuit for the last 10 years, and cautions that it is taxing for someone with a young family.

Childhood inspiration

Growing up Daniel was inspired by his dad who is an investment manager, after getting into college Daniel loved the study of psychology, helping and teaching people – but part way through his PhD he felt emotionally burned out as a clinical psychologist. A conversation with his dad about his next options turned him down the road of understanding the intersection between psychology and stock market investing.

Why a PhD and not just a Degree

Daniel says in his experience a psychology degree in the US, does not get you very far in your career as a psychologist. The PhD paid off for Daniel as clients more readily hired his consulting services as a PhD graduate even though he was only 28. While the PhD opened doors for Daniel he says he doesn’t actually use it in its direct form because he is trained to conduct therapy sessions as a clinical psychologist but he now picks stocks for a living.

The skills learned however, of being non defensive, hard work, accepting feedback, critiquing and taking action – are life skills he has taken from his PhD that have helped him in his business.

First paying client and a speaking career

Daniel managed to secure his first client before he resigned from his job, he recommends that you find a way to get at least one good client account before stepping out on your own.

He quickly moved into the world of speaking and in the beginning all his presentations were at no charge, he would look for places to speak at in his city as a way of marketing his consultancy services.

After quiet a number of free events Daniel recalls an attendee asking if they could book him for a paid speaking engagement and he began a new journey where he would eventually be charging between $1,000 and $2,000 to speak. A mistake he shares is saying yes to all speaking requests and having to create a special bespoke keynote each time he got an invitation, this would wear Daniel out and he looked for a different solution.

Major turning points in speaking and some key lessons

After a season of providing bespoke keynotes, Daniel put together half a dozen key notes that covered a few generic topics related to his core message of behavioural finance. This helped his clients focus in on which key note they felt was best for them and this worked well for Daniel as he wasn’t building a new presentation but rather using material that had received positive feedback from previous events and that people benefit the most from.
Daniel decided to start saying No to speaking opportunities that were outside of his core focus of behavioural finance and investment management. This was a difficult decision but it paid dividends as he became more specialized and the market rewarded his expertise with increased demand and increased bookings.
Another key thing Daniel changed was his pricing. An event attendee really loved Daniel’s keynote but privately told Daniel that his company would love to hire Daniel more but probably won’t because they didn’t think he was any good based how low his prices were! Daniel decided to triple his prices. This created a renewed demand for his speaking services and created great growth in the business.
A final piece to Daniel’s successful multiple six figure speaking business came through a bold moment were he decided to jump on a plane to go and have lunch with a prospective client who had been not so responsive to Daniel’s emails. With no guarantee of winning any new business it would have been a costly lunch for Daniel’s growing business, but the move paid off, the prospect became a client and opened the doors to many more such clients who were in the financial management space that Daniel had keenly niched into.

Key lessons in these turning points that I take away are:

Don’t be afraid to create systems that allow you to scale and replicate your effort
Say no to requests that take you away from your core strength and niche
Keep an eye on your pricing model and optimize it – cheap is not always attractive
Take some risks with your target prospects and do something your competition will not do

Other great topics you will not want to miss as you listen to the show:

Why you cannot create wealth from savings alone and why you need to invest
The hedonic treadmill principle and how Daniel believes you can turn this negative human bias to your financial advantage
Financial accountability, mentorship and why people who use a financial adviser double their retirement wealth over a typical working career
How to build towards a million dollar speaking business

Recommended entrepreneurial reading

Reach out and contact Daniel

Nocturne Capital
Twitter
Daniel’s TedTalk

Make sure you grab a copy of Daniel’s Bestselling Book

Laws of Wealth – Daniel Crosby

Legacy:
Daniel shares what he feels he would love to leave as a legacy, check it out on the podcast.

Quote of the show!
“I want to leave my kids enough money so that they feel they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.” Warren Buffet

Look forward to serving you again on our next show. Till then keep your hopes up and remember that you are good enough to chase to dreams!

You are a TRUE Business General.

Cheers
Davis

085 – The innovative treadmill desk: Getting your innovation from idea stage into a profitable business and scaling up (w/ Rob Jacobs) Jul 18, 2018

Show notes

Rob Jacobs is the guy who gets people up-and-out of their chairs and moving again! A personal fitness expert and the co-founder of UnSit, an innovative company working to get people UP out of their chairs and moving again with the world’s first Treadmill Desk optimized for use in an office environment. His background is firmly in the fitness industry having been in treadmill retail and commercial equipment including a repairs and servicing business model. Being a fitness enthusiast sitting at a chair all day made Rob research into how to help people with desk jobs get fitter by moving more.

First business startup – the walking centre.
This was a fitness centre targeted at middle aged stay at home mums who would go into the store, rent a movie, and walk on a treadmill while watching their movie! This proved to be a great model for Rob. The results were very good and people started buying these high ticket treadmills in the Beverly Hills area, and opened more stores which also included the sale of commercial fitness equipment. Rob eventually sold out of the retail model after a number of years as the market changed with increased competition and margin pressure.

Before selling out of retail Rob had developed a service model that repaired and serviced fitness equipment for health clubs and fitness centres, so with a new business partner Rob developed and grew this business to include retailing of spare parts. Rob has maintained and continued to grow this business over the last 25 years plus and it still continues to be his core revenue generator.

The business model is ecommerce based enhanced with telephone technology support, targeted at out of warranty fitness equipment servicing clients in different countries.

The problem that turned into a new business idea
Rob found himself constantly sitting at a desk, servicing clients and growing his spare parts business, and found himself having less and less exercise, feeling lethargic, lower back problems all from sitting behind a desk far too long.

A book by Dr. James Levine, who is credited as the popular inspiration for the treadmill desk, inspired Rob to work on solving his problem. Book reference: Get up – why your chair is killing you, Dr James Levine

Rob had seen the idea before but he discredited it on the basis that he didn’t think a treadmill desk provided real exercise or real practicality in an office setting. [During this interview Rob was walking along at 1 mile per hour on his treadmill desk and by about 15 minutes into the interview he had clocked over 2,000 steps! Pretty impressive].

Dissecting the research and looking at the market opportunity

Obesity is one third of US population, and this same third is also at the pre-diabetic stage estimated to require medicated treatment in a few years time
Sitting disease is a term used in the book by Dr Levine which includes diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses which can be prevented or recovered from through exercise
Mental creativity is a softer science but this is the marketing point Rob has picked, exercise leads to a more productive and creative workforce and this can be achieved through the treadmill desk technology

Designing the product

After reading Dr James Levine’s book Rob decided to work on designing a product that was fit for purpose
Most designs at this time simply took a tread mill and stuck it under a desk, but Rob figured there was better way
Rob shares that while his academic qualifications are minimal and his learning quite empirical and self taught, this did not disadvantage his entrepreneurial journey
Rob took out an old treadmill, a piece of plywood and created a frame around the treadmill, tweaked it and after a couple of months came up with half decent treadmill desk
Then after using it a for a little while Rob identified further key refinements like making the desk wider and longer, then also found a way to re-engineer the motor of the product that wasn’t noisy and could power the machine at slow speeds
Rob connected with Paul his business partner and they together partnered up with a manufacturer who was given equity in Unsit as a way for all partners to have ‘skin in the game’
The manufacturer with their experience and expertise developed the first 12 beta units which were in line with the initial mock up prototype.

Beta testing of the product

Found 12 beta locations and got feedback from users of the treadmill desks over a 6 – 12 month period
Through networking Rob managed to sell all of these units out to business owners, office managers, professional service firms and other locations
They got the model pretty close in the beta round and didn’t need to change it too much
This led to the first production unit point with about $100,000 invested into the project at this point which included the prototype, the initial marketing, website and initial beta run

First Shipment

104 per container, so they got 2 containers loads in quick succession as the first production batch
This was shipped over to some of the dealers the Rob is connected to
Rob rented out some space at a We-Work shared office location which has generated sales, doing lunch and learns in different office environments with in person demos and online marketing approaches which are still being built up

Small group selling and marketing

Due to high ticket item of $2,500 a unit, it only takes a few units sold to make good revenue
Anyone who had high value units can follow this model of show casing products to a small targeted group of prospects, Rob shares how each lunch and learn is an opportunity to get content for social media sharing of images from the event, he records the talks and demos and re-purposes them online and on social media
To get real scalability Rob is focused on building the online channel

Growth and marketing

Rob discusses how their current product is more of an executive high end line so working on a lower cost option is a natural evolution in order to access growth
Based on research, Rob discovered there are over 1 million stand up desks that have been sold, and so the next pivot was to sell the treadmill separate from the desk, and about 50% of sales is attributed to people who have already acquired a stand up desk and just after a treadmill
Having the product in the field, showrooms has generated revenue opportunities
Online marketing is also a key driver to growth on unsit.com website
People have resonated to the message that they can do more than one thing at once, i.e. work and exercise and the same time
Testimonials also play a key role in validating the brand online and there is a dedicated customer testimonial page on the unsit.com. website

Coaching tips from Rob

Be willing to change when you go into business
Get focused on the end goal, if your site is there to sell, then make sure this is the focus
Your original vision may not be how the market sees it, your original design may not be the hot you expect, “be willing to change and let go”

Revenue since launch

Took about 12 months before they started gaining traction
A market emanated after they started selling and found out lawyers are their key customers and buying 50% of their units
So they have recrafted their message to target lawyers and this has been successful
The product is still in early adopter phase, even though there are other similar products the market uptake is still in its early phase
Being cash positive is a critical part of the Unsit business, while this means no debt and no outside capital, scaling is slower and revenue growth not as aggresive

Developing the Unsit brand

Before building the first batch of products the founders focused on getting the branding building blocks all sorted out
Had a branding workshop, using professional consultants, spent 10 weeks working on this
The logo, colour scheme, the voice of the company in marketing messages – all contained in the brand style guide
This sets apart Unsit from its competitors, as the brand ID guides the business along in a strong identifiable way

Other topics we discussed with Rob

Biggest breakthrough moment – Rob shares a personal story about the California earthquake, his Tony Robbins event and the value of having a group of loyal customers
Legacy and what Rob would love to remembered by when all is said and done
Best two books on Robs entrepreneurial journey
- Awaken the giant within – Tony Robins
- Get Up – Dr James Levine
Best way to connect with Rob
- Company website: unsit.com
- LinkedIn: Rob Jacobs

Look forward to serving you again here on the blog and over on our podcast!

#3 Miles of walking while Rob was on the interview with me, 5,000 steps – well done Rob!!

Cheers,
Davis

084: Camplify – the Airbnb of Caravan Hire and the RV Share Economy (w/ Justin Hales) Jul 07, 2018

Show notes

Justin Hales is the CEO and Founder of Camplify, the Airbnb of caravan hire & RV sharing community. Camplify is Australia’s largest caravan hire and RV peer-to-peer sharing community, connecting owners with holidaymakers across the country sharing all types of caravans, campervans, motorhomes and camper trailers to enjoy a getaway in. Camplify gives RV owners the opportunity to earn extra income – anywhere between $280 and $2100 per week – while they aren’t using it themselves. As for their hiring members, they get to experience the joy of camping without having to purchase their own RV.

During the interview, Justin shared how in 2 years the Camplify platform has grown from just a small fleet of rentals to over 2,500 placing the company at the top of the fleet market in its niche of renting out caravans and RVs, an amazing effort in such a short space of time.

The genesis of the idea

Sounds a bit cliche but it all started with a seemingly small conversation with Justin and his wife talking about how cool it would be to go on a caravan holiday. Their conversation was triggered while the couple was walking their dog over and noticed a parked caravan in their neighborhood. Having spent his childhood in caravans this was an exciting prospect and so Justin looked for a place where they could hire a caravan for a holiday but found it quite difficult to find a single provider that he could go to and hire from. As a result Justin found a gap in the market and created a space that was like an Airbnb that got all the hundreds of caravans that sit around in people’s driveways doing nothing most of the year and create a sharing economy market place for owners and holidaymakers to share.

Working on the idea

Justin found a startup incubator program that was looking for innovators and applied to be considered for the program, which included some basic idea testing, putting up a ‘crudely built’ website and a power-point deck.
After a stringent review of 500 applicants, Justin progressed into the final 40 that made it to the “Pitch Day”.
Following a successful outing at Pitch Day Justin was offered a spot in the 12 week startup accelerator program.
This was an intensive accelerator program on how to set up and scale a startup which became the backbone of launching the Camplify business following that 12 weeks

Justin’s key take ways from the 12 Weeks accelerator program

Understood the customer more
Tested more variables
Learned about different marketing strategies
Learned how to build good products that had a great market fit, using lean methodology
Started building a brand and acquiring customers
Leaned on the network in the program to raise capital for Camplify which was well received and helped fund the initial Camplify launch

Customer targeting

The initial market most people would lean towards in the caravan and RV space was the grey nomad market (grey nomad (plural grey nomads) (Australia) A retired person who travels independently and for an extended period within their own country, particularly in a caravan or motor home – wiktionary
But through testing Justin found that while the grey nomads was not going to be their target market to consume their services, they were going to their target partners as RV owners sharing their RVs on the Camplify marketplace
From detailed testing and building customer personas, the ideal customer that emerged was families who were not prepared to outlay $60,000 for an RV but still wanted to holiday in one from time to time, and this was found to a buoyant and growing market

The No Money Survey – Just Sweets (…Lollies/Candy)

2nd week in the accelerator program Justin and team stood outside a Camping and RV show with no money for a booth and basically offered attendees a lolly pop in exchange for them answering a few survey questions
Questions included age, RV ownership, type of RV they own, last question was would you ever hire it out to someone else if you own one
Including testing the price point at which they got interested in hiring out their RV
Funnily enough Justin shares that they eventually got kicked off the premises as they didn’t have the money to pay and set up a formal booth or table inside the event!
Then they looked collating and segmenting the data to identify who the customer is, how do you locate them, how do you market to them as cheaply as possible and convert them into a customer

The Most Challenging Aspect of the Launch

Building the platform was difficult, took longer than expected and cost more but it wasn’t the biggest challenge
Biggest challenge was getting access to those customers and have them trust Camplify as the people that will be able to deliver that long awaited solution for this space and part of it was making sure they had the right team in place. Two team members dropped off and one remained and they built the team from there

Getting Over the Customer Access Hurdle

First thing was to find an amazing digital marketer who is now their Chief Marketing Officer, who helped Camplify find how to get to their ideal customer
Facebook was the best route to their ideal customer, so they invested heavily in Facebook marketing which led to the initial ground swell in lead acquisition and onto the Camplify platform for nurturing and engagement
They targeted both suppliers of RVs and holidaymakers, but that hardest of the two markets was getting the RV owners on board and alleviating their concerns that their RVs would be looked after and not trashed
Similar issues Airbnb home owners had to grapple with at the begining

Finding that First Customer

A lot of Facebook marketing and content marketing
Justin then exhibited at a Caravan and RV Expo where they met a lot of people who recognised the brand from the Camplify Facebook campaigns
They would get a lead and stay in contact with them individually and nurture the lead, assuring them of a perfect customer who would hire their RV, and when this person was found Camplify would get in touch with the owner and help them gain confidence in the brand through a personal relationship
Majority of the Facebook work was focused on content marketing around the topics people were searching for on RV hiring and sharing – they looked on old school forums and Facebook groups where people in their niche had questions and discussions that they could target solutions for, which led to building over 2,500 custom audiences on Facebook
The Camplify team then created high quality articles and videos around the questions being asked on topics of interest for their business, thereafter monitored the forums and directed people to the Camplify site to consume this content in answer to their related questions
Once on the website Camplify would capture their email address through an optin or Facebook pixel them and re-target more marketing to them
This led to the first 20 RVs on book and that led to the first few sales which Justin monitored for feedback closely

>> Tip: This strategy still works today as long as you provide quality content that is answering people’s questions and not just click baiting them so that you capture their details <<

Building Case Studies

After the first couple of customers, Camplify really focused on building a solid feedback loop both from owners and consumers, to understand the experience and improve the service on both ends of their market place
Next step was to build out case studies showcasing owners who had hired out their RVs, detailing their experience and the financial upside of being a partner on the platform
These case studies were used to market the business further

Capital Investment & Growth

Initial investment was $30,000 which helped get the platform started
A capital raising of $650,000 soon followed which sustained the next 18 months of the business
Justin went full time in the business in 2015
Over $300,000 paid out in Sept’17 in commissions to RV owner partners on the Camplify platform with 20% growth month on month
Launched into the UK market in 2017 with only 2 resources required for that initial market entry

Other things discussed on the podcast

You don’t have to be the only one in your market place or niche in order to succeed and why this is a good thing
Dealing with customer insecurity and providing insurance for their RV
Story of an initially skeptical owner, who started with 1 RV and now has a full fleet of 14 RVs that he hires out full time, doing $80,000 a month in income during a peak month
Financial benefit comparison on investing in an RV to share out on Camplify Vs Uber as an owner
The inner workings of the Camplify platform to find and hire out an RV
Investing in mentors and finding people who will also invest money into your business as well as working with a peer group
Exit options and strategies

Best two books

The Lean Startup – How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses is a book by Eric Ries describing his proposed lean startup strategy for startup companies
Running Lean – Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works, book by Ash Maurya

Legacy

To be remembered for being able to influence other people to find a way to do this kind of thing for themselves, run their own business that helps others and makes a difference in their lives and that of others.

Connect with Justin

Justin Hales on LinkedIn
Camplify.com.au

Thanks for listening!
We would love to hear from you in the comments section below, and always looking for your support by leaving us a review on iTunes

Look forward to serving you again in the next episode.
Cheers,
Davis

083: How they Raised $19.9M as a Tech Startup – All the Inside Hacks with Rubicon MD Co-Founders Gil Ado and Carlos Reines Jun 30, 2018

Show notes

Gil Ado and Carlos Reines are the co-founders of Rubicon MD, an innovative medical eConsult service that connects primary care doctors to same-day insights from top medical specialists. Their mission is to provide better health care through their online platform that enables primary care doctors to easily and quickly access medical specialists and have online consultations (eConsults) and ultimately provide better direct care to patients. With a fragmented US healthcare system, Gil and Carlos identified a need in the market for access to specialist medical care that didnt require patients to physically be in the same room with their specialist doctor. After a lot of networking and hustle, Rubicon MD was officially birthed in 2013.

>> Show notes Link: https://www.businessgenerals.com/gilandcarlos >>

Today Rubicon is a strong, growing Venture backed Healthcare startup, which has successfully raised over $19M in funding since 2014. The company is scaling at pace throughout the US now with over 5,000 primary care providers using the platform.

The two Harvard Business School graduate co-founders partnered up to launch Rubicon on a mission to facilitate the provision of a higher level of care to patients who may not have access to specialist care due to them not having private healthcare or geographical limitations. The platform allows general practitioner doctors to have direct access to expert specialist help on a case by case basis through e-consult process.

Doctor to doctor interaction via the e-consult platform is one of their biggest wins – patients that would have previously been referred to the emergency department for specialist consultation now receive access through the eConsult process through their primary doctors, and as Gil says this is real tangible benefit that clinicians and patients are excited about.

The business launch and the first paying customer

In 2013 the business was launched with the first key goal being to prove that there was value in the platform and that patients would be able to access greater healthcare through the platform
They put a basic minimum viable product from a technology platform standpoint, they found a doctor who was willing to trial the platform and it run for a few months with a few hundred eConsults and the feedback was very positive
The founders joined an accelerator program focusing on how to build a business around the idea and how to find the people who could potentially buy into your idea
Talked and networked to as many people in the healthcare eco system – learning, doing the research and also selling the idea at the same time
Discovered that groups that are at risk, ie taking care of primary health care patients will be most interested in this
Pivoted on the fact that there was limited supporting data for the idea so focused on finding the companies that were ready to take some risk in this space as well
Their first paying customer contract was from Boston, Gil and Carlos share with excitement how this client has grown and stayed with Rubicon MD for over 4 years, a testament in their minds to the value RubiconMD brings to the clinician.

Cash flow during the start up phase

Carlos was still completing his Harvard MBA at the beginning but working full time in the business, Gil was also full time in the business but they were scraping by and keeping everything very lean financially
It was a difficult beginning for the business, so they had to run their operations in a very lean way but they were determined to see the vision come to life
The duo managed to live through the first startup phase through their savings, family support and just sheer tenacity to make it through the early days

Access to funding

2013 accessed their first seed money from an angel investor, this was enough to run their pilot
After this started accessing funding at this point after they had proved that there was buyer for the product, that patients will be getting real benefit and then ready to access seed money
[UPDATE: Following our interview with Carlos and Gil, we have learned that the duo have gone onto raise an additional $13.8M in a highly successful Series B round]

Working with mentors

Finding someone who helps mentor them through the different phases of the business
Someone who understands the space you are playing in
He also put in his money as the first seed money
This process helped Gil and Carlos stay grounded and stay focused

Temptation to give up or quit?

Once they saw the impact on primary care doctors and the results patients were getting, they knew they just had to find a way to get the business out there because they had established that the need was there and that their solution was of great value
The challenge was how to build a business around having a life, and not having a whole lot of personal wealth to fall back on, and the financial risks that arise can be very challenging
Gil’s wife had the stable income so this helped balanced the personal finances for them

Sharing Roles in the business as Co-Founders

Carlos oversees the operational side of the business, the product, data management, sales, fund raising, delivery of the products implementation for the larger accounts but more focused on the delivery
Gil is focused on the growth side, business development and relationship management

Business Reach

35 states with USA
5,000 primary care providers on the platform – an excited market and growth

Best way to connect with Gil and Carlos

To learn more about Carlos and Gil, visit RubiconMD
LinkedIn:
- Gil Ado
- Carlos Reines

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams!

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

082: Why the traditional profit formula is dead: unless you put your profit first — you risk going broke (w/ Mike Michalowicz) Jun 23, 2018

Show notes

Mike Michalowicz is an American author, entrepreneur, and lecturer. He is a business author including the popular Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. He is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the “Business Rescue” segment host for MSNBC’s Your Business. He also hosted the reality television program called Bailout! Mike has founded and sold multi-million dollar businesses and today shares over 25 years of business experience through his books and on stage in front of global audiences .

During this episode we discuss some amazing business concepts with Mike including the following:

How to Differentiate yourself in Business

Mike has an accounting service business called Profit First. While this is an old established service industry, Mike has found a way to differentiate his business. Mike’s team go out to their over 250 clients as Profit Advisor with a special expertise and focus on not just being compliant with taxes and regulatory obligations but making sure the business is profitable and optimised.
They focus is pivoted towards interpreting the business numbers and helping business find sustainable profitability
This is all part of the Profit First philosophy which is detailed in Mike’s popular book Profit First – A Simple System to Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

Profit First System

It flips the profit formula used in traditional accounting
Commonly referred to as the bottom line, the standard profit formula is “Sales minus Expenses = Profit”. But this creates a mindset problem where a business owner does not focus on profit but leaves it at the last thing, a by product of everything else and invariably what gets put on the back burner can get forgotten and not prioritised.
Profit First in Mike’s world has this formula: “Sales minus Profit = Expenses”. So every time you make a sale you allocate a predetermined percentage that you have calculated as your optimal operating profit level, and take the rest as the amount available for all your expenses (not the other way round).

Acquiring the First Customer in Profit First Professionals

The model is based on finding the right accounting professionals who get trained and accredited under the Profit First Methodology and then operate as advisors under the Profit First banner with a profit share arrangement
Mike didn’t go out with a know it all attitude but went out to the potential Profit First Professional with the mission first, “we can eradicate entrepreneurial poverty together”
They understood that this was something new and it needed to grow so whoever joined would join as the first customers, and it would not be easy but that they will be great upside in the future
They also openly reduced the standard membership fee for the founding members and would bring in the first group of founding members onto the advisory board of the business to help provide real time feedback to help build the business

Marketing Strategy

Mike went to his existing list of customers and followers who were aware of his brand and his message, and publicly announced that he was looking for bookkeepers and accountants who were interested in partnering on this new project, shared the vision and then established a small community that was focused on this new project.
Without a personal community, Mike advises that founders should go and look for the community that the target audience is already established (what conferences do they attend, what podcasts are they listening to or what blogs do they follow) and find a way to start contributing and speaking to them there.

The One Problem Every Struggling Business had when Mike was on TV

Every business that struggled mainly was because they had a spending problem, as revenue went up their expenses went up
The overarching solution Mike found was for them to anchor in on the profit first concept, find the profit mark they wanted to work with and allocate that as profit and then fit all the expenses into the remaining available funds

Mike biggest lesson now

The more I am physically in my business, the more I hurt my business!
Reason being, when the business owner is away, the employees have to figure out how do things on their own
Sometimes the only way to get out of the weeds is to get out of the weeds!

Mentorship

Mike is involved in a peer to peer group each month
Mike believes in mentors, and his biggest investment in that is time, not just money – and it’s not just mentorship in business but also in life in general

Books and how to get the best out of books

You have to understand your problem and then work out which book or resource is best for you
Organic marketing, recruitment, scaling – find out what you need and then find the resource

Great books recommended by Mike

Best way to connect with Sean

To learn more about Mike and get access to a treasure trove of entrepreneurial tips, visit www.MikeMichalowicz.com.
Books: Grab a copy of Mike’s amazing books
Podcast: The Profit First Podcast

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams!

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

Link: Mike’s Wikipedia Bio:

081: From living in his mother’s house to paying off a $450k home in 3 years (w/ Sean Cooper) Jun 16, 2018

Show notes

Sean Cooper made news headlines across global news channels when he paid off his mortgage in a record 3 years at the tender age of 30! Sean did all of this while working a normal job in financial services in Canada and freelancing as a personal finance coach and writing as a personal finance blogger. Sean is the author of his very well acclaimed book Burn Your Mortgage.

Sean’s story was very polarizing when it came out on Canadian news outlets and actually got him a lot of hate mail and articles online and offline because of how quickly he paid off his mortgage which goes against standard accepted beliefs around home ownership and the 30 year loan repayment time frame that most banks give home owners. The negative feedback centered around Sean being portrayed as a privileged child with wealthy parents or as Sean living in this basement without a life outside of work and stashing away every cent he earns.

Born and raised in Toronto Ontario, Canada Sean grew up in a middle class family with parents who instilled in him the importance of home ownership so from age 10 Sean had the vision of owning his own home. He started working various jobs at a young age and started saving for his down payment even before he graduated university. Sean bought his first home when he was 27 and he paid off by age 30, a remarkable achievement – all on his own savings and his own aggressive focus on beating the mortgage debt!

Lifestyle choices – no car!

Sean made the decision of not owning a car during his period of paying off the mortgage as it amounts to the second largest payment in most people’s budgets and he found a practical way to make sure he lived near public transport and lived a car free life.

This was a very bold and mature decision for Sean to make a young age, when I was 20 all I was thinking of was owning my first car, and the first loan I ever took out was to buy my first car, a white Toyota Mark II. It requires discipline and laser focus to follow through with a car free lifestyle. Admittedly it may not be entirely possible for everyone due to your professional work, if you are a trades person you may work from different sites each week and need a personal car, so you may need a find a way to get a reliable cost effective car that doesn’t cost you too much to buy or maintain. There may also be opportunities for you to car pool or ride share with colleagues from work where you reduce your car running expenses with the goal of saving up for your first home.

Saving strategy at a young age

Sean found a way to work through his university days which paid off tuition and helped him graduate debt free. He also started saving for his down payment during his college days and after graduating continued on this path and saved 80% of his income after graduating which helped in save up a handsome down payment of $170,000 by age 27.

Advice for saving up for your down payment

Firstly work out whether they want to own a home in the first place.
Work out how much you need to save in order to fund your down payment or home loan deposit.
Calculate how many years you would like to give yourself before having a fully funded down payment and this will determine how much you need to save each month.
Open a stand alone savings account and ‘pay yourself first’ before you do anything else with your salary put aside your nominated savings amount.
Automate your savings process so that it automatically comes out of your salary account into the savings account, and make sure you have very limited access to your savings account so that you can ‘save and forget’ without the temptation to spend it other ’emergencies’.

Resisting the temptation to spend

Sean kept his goal in mind, work hard for next few years, keep saving up and not defer the savings plan. He buckled down and focused on his goal and now he is debt free and able to travel the world and have the lifestyle choices he forego while saving up and paying off his home.

Sean’s timeline of building up his savings and paying off his mortgage

3 years in university while working student jobs at the campus and part time work at the supermarkets on weekends, also did freelance writing on personal finance blogs and also worked full time during the summer.
3 years while working full time (and doing freelance writing work), lived at home where he paid $600 in rent and saved up the rest of his salary to fund the balance of his $170k down payment.
3 years to pay off a $280k mortgage and owned the home debt free at age 30.
Sean continues work full time in the pension industry and works on freelance writing and speaking after hours and on weekends.

Freelance writing career making $30,000 per year

Started volunteering as a financial journalist back in 2011 with a small online publication, and built up a strong reputation that led to larger writing opportunities for other industry publications including rate supermarket, income tax software blogs – his record month was $12,000 from freelance writing but that was a lot of hours of work which Sean has toned down.

Sean currently generates $30,000 in per year as a part time freelance writer.

Advice from Sean on how you can become a successful freelance writer in your area of expertise

You need to build a library of articles and blog posts in order to create a strong ‘by-line’, basically you must build a reputation that will act as your reference when you go out to pitch your work. You can do this through having your own blog and post your articles on there, and secondly you can offer to volunteer as a writer for smaller publications online blogs or offline publications – start with smaller ones (check out any available local ones in your city) and then build from there to more lucrative jobs.

You can paid from $50 and article to $500 an article once your name is out there and you have a strong brand. To generate a $2,000 month one can expect to write 10 articles based on Sean’s experience in the personal finance writing space.

Other areas that we discuss with Sean on the podcast

Dealing with negative hate mail and public backlash when his story hit the main news outlets across Canada, Australia, Europe and the US
Becoming an author – the process involved for Sean to publish his first book ‘Burn Your Mortgage‘ and how that has helped him further his speaking , writing and money coaching career
Mentorship
Goal setting and mindset
Lifestyle

Recommended books by Sean

The wealthy barber returns”
Be the better broker
Oh lala guide to rocking your rsps

Best way to connect with Sean

Grab a copy of Sean’s amazing book ‘Burn Your Mortgage
Blogsite seancooperwriter.com – Personal Finance and Mortgages, visit Sean here and sign up to his newsletter
Twitter @SeanCooperWrite
LinkedIn Sean Richard Cooper

Personal Legacy in Sean’s words

“Finance is very personal to me, money was one of the main reasons my parents divorced and it tore the family apart so I don’t want to see that happening to other families. I have been championing the cause of financial literacy because I see it as being very important for families that is why I speak about it and help promote it. Secondly when you read newspapers and watch the news you find that a lot of millennials feel like the home ownership dream is out of reach and not affordable, so I want to show them through my story that it’s still an option and that home ownership is a good long term investment even for millenials, I don’t want to see a generation that gives up on that dream of owning a house, I want to show people that its still possible.”

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams!

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

080: Generating High Quality Business Prospects from LinkedIn (w/ Sarah Santacroce) Oct 02, 2017

Show notes

Sarah Santacroce is an independent LinkedIn Specialist, Online Presence Mentor and founder of Simplicity Small Biz. She helps people convert their presence online into paying customers. She is the creative brain behind the LinkedIn Challenge, an event that has helped 1700+ people so far to improve their knowledge about using LinkedIn for business. She has helped hundreds of clients from all over the world breathe life into their LinkedIn profiles, put together a strategy for their online presence or generated leads for them by using LinkedIn and social selling strategies.

She also coaches fellow introverted business owners on how to run an online business, and is the founder of the Introvert Business Podcast.

Period in full time business and core revenue streams

She has been in full time business for more than 7 years. In her LinkedIn business, she works with corporations where she does trainings for HR departments, sales departments, and the people in marketing. She also works with entrepreneurs through one-on-one coaching and teaches people in transition how to get recruited on LinkedIn. She has a series of products like video trainings that generate revenue for her without having to trade her one-on-one time.

She also does affiliate marketing and is planning to host her first retreat for introverted online entrepreneurs. The retreat will be an offline event where they will get together and talk about their businesses, and come up with strategies on how to take it to the next level.

The retreat

She says it will be a quiet, reflective, and respectful retreat with lots of fun. The link for the event is www.sarahsantacroce.com/retreat/

Starting out in business

When she moved to California with her husband and their new second-born, she could consequently not go back to her previous job, and decided to take some time off to spend with her kids. After about a year, she decided to come up with her own business plan and choose to focus on helping business owners with their administrative needs, which was what she was good at. That eventually changed, because with the social media boom at that time, she realised how she was able to use social media to create buzz for her own business.

She therefore choose to move away from administrative/virtual assistant work to teaching entrepreneurs/small business owners how to market their businesses through social media. When she moved back to Switzerland with her family in 2010, she decided to start offering the social media training/marketing services.

Focusing on LinkedIn

She decided to specialise on LinkedIn much later after she discovered that things in Switzerland were very traditional and slow. Most people didn’t use social media for business. The one platform that the Switzerland B2B industry was interested in most, that she was well-versed in, was LinkedIn. After a year of offering her general social media services, she decided to zero-in on LinkedIn.

Corporate career Vs. Business

Sarah says she would never go back to formal employment. She calls herself unemployable because she creates success on her own terms now. She defines how success should be in her life, which she could not do in a corporate environment.

Tip 1: I don’t think business is for everybody. I don’t think everybody should leave their corporate job and become an entrepreneur. Getting side hustles is however a great option for anyone in a corporate job

Tip 2: I don’t advice you to just leave your job and focus on your business idea

Replacing full time job income in a business

Tip 1: If you have a business model that can guarantee to replace your full time income then obviously, go for it!

Tip 2: Full time business is not for everybody because some people need the structure of a corporate job and they may need a team. As an entrepreneur, you are making up your own structure and it can sometimes be very lonely as an entrepreneur, so if you are a huge people person then it will take time to meet other entrepreneurs, and share with them while building a strong network

Getting the first customer

She had just moved back to Switzerland and hadn’t even set things up when she got an email from a potential client asking for a meeting. The client ended up being her first client. That lead and many more came from Sarah’s blogging and her presence on LinkedIn and Facebook. The first client found her through a blog post she had written about the great importance of social media.

LinkedIn as a platform

Her main revenue source in as far as her LinkedIn training is concerned, is the corporate trainings but her best work is always with entrepreneurs because she is an entrepreneur, and understands what their needs are. She teaches entrepreneurs the social selling process where they actually don’t sell but serve. That’s the work that Sarah enjoys the most.

When training a new client, she always starts with their LinkedIn profiles by helping them make them into actual sales tools. The second step is always to help them grow their network in order to increase their reach and get their inbound marketing going.

The third step involves helping them start to offer value by sharing content while the fourth step is helping them with their lead generation targeted at their specific audience.

Setting up a LinkedIn profile to be more of a Sales Tool

Tip 1: The first thing is your headline. Here, you should write more about what it is you do, who you help and how you help them.

Tip 2: In the summary, you should talk more about the services you offer, how you help your clients and what kind of results you provide. This should be written more like an About Us page on a website.

Tip 3: Add visuals into your LinkedIn profile and make it into a portfolio that looks like a mini-website

Sharing and Serving

Tip 1: You have to have a decent size network already before you start sharing because otherwise you will be talking to yourself. Increasing your network comes first.

Tip 2: When you have a network that you think is relevant, you can start sharing, commenting and publishing content that adds value to your network

Lead Generation

Tip: This is where you use LinkedIn as a database for your target contacts. The first step is to identify those contacts, find them, reach out to them, connect with them and then engage them through a series of messages where the main focus is to help, serve and provide value. That way, you can slowly move them a step closer towards hiring you for whatever work that you do.

Case study

Sarah is working with a team that is working on a crowdfunding website. She took them through the 4 steps of the social selling process and right now they are working on their LinkedIn profiles. She is also guiding them in their content development by helping them create an editorial calendar through which they will decide what kind of content they will publish themselves, and what of kind of content they will get from other people to share. She is generally helping them come up with a strategy on how to they are going to be more visible.

They tell Sarah that they are already getting a good response from potential investors, which is what they are looking for at this point.

Most effective content on LinkedIn

She says professional content works really well on LinkedIn. She says LinkedIn is service-related, compared to Facebook which is more product related. Therefore, what works well on Facebook is more visual content while on LinkedIn what works well is sharing content that has to do with services, learning, and career development.

Getting LinkedIn connections

Tip: The best way to get connections to come onto your business database is through content like sharing blog posts so that when they click over to your website, the website will be optimized for conversions. That’s how you get them to sign up to your newsletter

Biggest breakthrough moment

“When I made that decision to focus only on LinkedIn. It was one of the toughest decisions I ever made because I had to start saying no to other work related to other social media platforms. It was the best decision ever because am now known specifically for LinkedIn.”

Size and reach of business

She says that she is internationally-recognized thanks to the LinkedIn Challenge, something she started in 2013 and does with other LinkedIn experts worldwide. In November 2016, she was running the 11th Edition of the LinkedIn Challenge. It has enabled her to grow her business globally and also made her a recognized player in the LinkedIn Specialist/Trainer space.

LinkedIn Challenge

This is training for people who want to learn how to use LinkedIn to get clients. Sarah brings on a team of other LinkedIn experts and together they share one LinkedIn tip daily with the participants of the challenge. Every day, the participants get strategy via email, and they also get to attend two live-training calls where they can ask questions.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs: