You need to clean up your rats’ nest

Kit Volcano runs The Little Volcano with his wife, Rosy. They train coaches. Their business has been compared to running a mystery school and a sacred funhouse of mirrors. He's celebrating completing his first talk. He opened for Kyle Seaspin. And he nailed it.

 

04:11 Challenge: We only have one entry-point to working with our business. So it can only grow as big as our challenges can be. So we don't know how to get more people into the events, which is the thing I really love doing. 

05:19 Question: Who comes to your events?

05:24 The people who do the week-long challenge. 

05:32 Question: What is your current funnel? 

05:35 Every single person in the challenge comes from a referral when we teach our coaches how to do enrollment. 

05:53 Rosy: Or it's people who've seen us on stage. 

05:57 Question: Why don't you do paid advertising?

06:00 I paid a guy once, he was totally optimistic at first, then he came back and said we have too much of a culty vibe and it'll never work. No results, then he bailed. 

06:33 Question: Who's ever hired a shitty service provider? Who's still been successful despite hiring a shitty service provider? 

06:40 Brad: You who else is is culty? Every other major successful brand on the planet.

06:59 Suggestion: So that guy's an idiot. Go hire somebody else. 

07:16 Kit: We've been through 3 marketers. There's no trust there anymore. 

07:20 Rosy: We hired someone to fix our website. It was a bust. We hired someone to transform our campaign; he just transferred all of our contacts and then ghosted. 

07:33 Question: Are you getting referrals from trusted second paties?

07:36 Yes. 

07:56 Question: Are you not spending enough for the right people? Let's nail down the problem. You're either not investing enough to get the right people or the leadership or communication is mismatched. 

08:15 It's probably both.

08:28 Suggestion: You've got to be about to suss out someone's value. I've seen talented people way undervalued and terrible people way overvalued. You need to learn how to structure deals so that you won't get hurt if they produce nothing. Walk the deal toward having everybody win. 

10:10 Suggestion: But these relationships take time to build. Give them a month or two to see how they do, then start giving them more. Make sure you're getting what you're paying for. Think of "if this, then that." 

10:35 Suggestion: Be slow to hire and quick to fire. 

10:48 Suggestion: You've also got to be reasonably competent with all of the tools; clickfunnels, Bitly, spreadsheets, etc. I get nervous if I don't understand a process. If there's an emergency, I need to know what to do. 

11:33 Suggestion: Have them make videos of themselves doing what they're doing, so you can learn it, too. And make that contingent upon them getting paid. 

12:15 Suggestion: Being an emotional buyer ends up fucking everybody. 

12:52 Suggestion: Ads are just science; use the scientific method.

13:14 Suggestion: Spend enough money to teach Facebook to send you the leads that you want. This will probably be more than you think you need to spend. They're called conversion events, and you need to send at least 50 in order for Facebook to learn. 

 

14:24 Suggestion: Split-test your pages and copy. The ads, the images, everything. You don't know what will work, so you need a lot of options. You get closer and closer with every iteration. 

15:28 Suggestion: When you're advertising for a location-dependent event, it's the trickiest ad. Try having an opt-in. Try 3-month lead-ups. 

17:19 Suggestion: Is extremely difficult and expensive to get somebody to commit to showing up to a thing in person. It's extremely easy to get somebody's email, by offering them some free virtual value. If you're targeting within 50 miles and getting an email, you know that you can continue to market to them consistently, without having to pay again. You have the ability to get them to come, once you've warmed up to them. You have the ability to retarget them with more ads. Ultimately, you have the ability to build a relationship with them ahead of time. 

18:14 Suggestion: You might need 1,000 opt-ins to fill a 50-person event. 

18:25 Suggestion: With no name recognition, a cold audience just won't commit. But if they're been warmed up for a few months, they're much more likely.

18:38 Question: How many people are you trying to fill?

18:46 I would like to be able to scale these events so that I'm not leading every single one of them - one a month - if we can literally just show up, run the event, go home, I'd love one per month, 50 people. 

19:23 Phase 1: So let's say 75, on the high end. You need at least 1,500 or 2,000 opt-ins to get those butts in the seats, that are in your area. Realistically, you'll need to spend $2.50 to $5.00/ lead to get there. $5.00 X 2,000 = $10,000 in ad costs. But it doesn't stop at the ad. You need to be continually dripping on them, developing a relationship. 

19:55 Phase 2: Try to get some low-ticket offers on the front-end of the funnel. Maybe a $7 upsale, a $37 upsale, a $97 upsale kind of thing, so you can recoup some of your ad costs. That's what we're working on in our business, but it's successful. 

20:13 Suggestion: To create the relationship, they want to know that if they invest their money they're going to get the return. So if they do a small investment and feel successful, you reinforce the relationship and then you give them an opportunity to do a higher level of commitment with you. More transformation. Building them up to that stage is a process. It's a long-term, stepping stone type relationship. You get their information, and then you nurture them. It's a life-long relationship. 

21:02 Question: You only have one entry-point. How can you create 3, 5, 7? Do you have any automated funnels? What else can you do? 

21:22 Kit: Our systems are such rats' nests, they require so much manpower, so we need to clean it all up and streamline.

21:35 Suggestion: Eliminate anything that doesn't serve you. What's left, simplify and streamline. 

21:46 Kit: We do have an automated program, but I question it because I'm afraid it's like every other course on the Internet. 

21:54 Rosy: We never released it. We've only done some beta testing for it. 

22:25 Kit: We have so much that we're doing, that we don't finish things. 

22:30 Brad: It sounds like you guys need to simplify, streamline, and scale. In that order.

22:38 Suggestion: My best hack for multiple entry-points, fast is to come up with an eBook that's the Top 10 Something, then you have ten leadpages and each leadpage is one of those things. Then you can send ads to that one thing, so your Facebook ad is Here's the One Trick to XYZ" it goes to the leadpage, which goes to the eBook. But it's 10X. There's one lead magnet, but ten ways into it.

23:08 Brad: That's interesting. Do you cut the ones that aren't tracking?

23:16 Suggestion: The trick is that they're in the book. 

 

23:24 Brad: Say #2 isn't going anywhere, but #8 is killing it, wouldn't you just double down on #8?

23:26 Yeah. But that's the quickest way to get ten entry points to one thing. Mistakes work best; people like to know what not to do. Or myths. But a top 10 list in an ad can be overwhelming, so just say, "Here's the one thing that's going to help you do XYZ." When they show up it's ten things.

24:15 Suggestion: I just did a bad-ass video with an opt-in at the end.

24:30 Brad: $500 price point, time and money. It's like have this Mastermind, but there's no stairs to the top floor. Unless they're really committed, they're not going to jump.

24:46 Kit: We have people go from $47 to $5,000 with nothing in between. We're doing already. But we could have an automated $500 program.

24:55 Brad: Or you could just have stairs. 

25:06 Question: Have you thought about an automated webinar?

25:08 Kit: I created one with the Facebook guy then he didn't put it out. 

25:14 Question: What  are the top-5 things that you're going to work on for the next week?

25:28 Kit: Rat's nest. Launch the course. 

25:43 Kit: Delegate and SOP for all the stuff we don't want to do. 

26:34 Kit: Scaling consultant, should be #1.

27:24 Rosy: Putting our energy into the next programs. 

27:38 Kit: Getting people into the programs.

 

Three Key Points:

1. Get organized. Think about hiring someone to help you. Make a to-do list.
2. You’ll need to spend money on advertising, probably more than you realize.
3. Outsourcing and delegating is good, but you’ve got to understand all of your systems. Create SOPs.