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E198: How To Go From Ordinary To Extraordinary With Erik Seversen

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Erik Seversen is a writer, speaker, adventurer, entrepreneur, and educator. His new book Ordinary To Extraordinary highlights the story of an average man’s adventurous search for meaning.

Quotes To Remember:

“I believe it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”

“Taking care of the self first is a better way to be a better entrepreneur.”

“Breaking that barrier of ‘How much do I really know?’ is really key.”

“When you are relaxed, you are able to do more.”

“Knowing is not enough, we must do. Willing is not enough, we must apply.”

“The bigger we dream, the bigger we’re gonna reach.”

“Anybody who is breaking through success or wants to breakthrough success needs mentors.”

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • Being an Adventurous Entrepreneur
  • Learning a New Language
  • Transitioning from Being Ordinary to Extraordinary

 

Key Links From The Show:

Erik’s Site

 

Recommended Books:

Content Marketing Secrets by Marc Guberti

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahani Smith

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

How To Accomplish Your 2020 Goals

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The New Year brings new hopes and dreams. The outlook always looks better in January with the past in the rear view. For too many people, this optimism towards their goals fades at around March.

Then 2021 becomes the year it’s all supposed to happen.

This isn’t meant to be negative. It’s the scenario most people go through. If you don’t want to be in the same scenario most people find themselves in, you have to think and act differently from most people.

No one gets goals just by declaring them. The people who do achieve their goals put in so much behind-the-scenes work.

It is good to challenge yourself each year and set bigger goals. But how do we end up accomplishing these goals?

The key to accomplishing your goals is to break them down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily actions. The more you break down the goal, the more check points you have leading up to your goal.

One of my goals is to qualify for the Boston Marathon so I can run it in 2021. I have to break 3 hours just to submit an application. Running a 2:55:00 or better is almost a guarantee so I’m going for a sub 2:50 marathon.

I run my first marathon towards the end of March. I have three months to build up my body to be fit enough to run a sub 2:50 marathon. I run another marathon in August which would be my last chance to qualify for the 2021 Boston Marathon, so I want to get it done in March so I can check it off.

I know what types of workouts I want to run leading up to the marathon. Each week, I build up so I can run the types of workouts that I want to run.

From a self-publishing standpoint, I set a goal to publish a new book every two weeks. That means writing at least 1,000 words per day and turning most of those days into 2,000 and 3,000 word days.

It’s one thing to say I want to make X amount of dollars or hit Y time for my race. It’s another thing to figure out what actions you have to take each day to make those goals happen.

One of the reasons people don’t accomplish their New Year’s resolutions is because they search for the instant gratification.

If you want to double your revenue next year, understand that on January 1st and perhaps for most of January, you still have 2019’s business model in place.

It’s only after you take the right actions each day where you have the 2020 business model in place that will actually double your revenue. It’s only through the action taking where you get to see what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and what you need to modify.

On January 1st, don’t expect the drastic changes to already take place. If you averaged $20/day from your side hustle, you were still averaging $20/day when the clock hit midnight and 2020 entered into our lives.

If you stick with your 2020 Goals, you won’t see the big changes in January. It’s going to be around the end of the first quarter where you start to see you are moving in the right direction. It’s going to be the second quarter where momentum starts picking up and the results are a lot more obvious. It’s going to be the third and fourth quarters where you’ve achieved your biggest 2020 goals.

You can accomplish some of your 2020 goals sooner. While qualifying in the Boston Marathon is a 2020 goal of mine, I can accomplish it in March. With that said, I’m in my 8th year of running so it’s not like I’m going from never running a mile in my life to wanting to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

Patience is vital. Trust yourself past January even if the results aren’t easy to see or if things have barely changed.

The way YouTubers make it on YouTube is how you accomplish your New Year’s resolutions. The way most YouTubers makes it is by creating a ton of content without people noticing them. They then learn how to optimize their videos for watch time and clickthrough rate which helps a little bit, but for the most part, some people still don’t notice them.

Even then, these YouTubers continue to refine their content and start to build a small audience. Then, one video takes off and the rest is history. One YouTuber I follow made nothing from his channel in Q1 2019 and very little in Q2 2019 only to have multiple 5-figure months to close out Q4 2019.

That’s what happens when you stick it out and not get discouraged by initial results. The 2020 goals you set require you to get better than you already are. I’m not getting in the Boston Marathon with my 2019 marathon times. I’m going to get into that marathon with my 2020 marathon times. To hit the 2020 marathon times, I have to approach running and my workout routine differently from how I approached it in 2019.

You are still 2019 you right now. You have to become the type of person who can accomplish the big goals you set for yourself.

I’d love to hear what your 2020 goals. You can also join us in the Breakthrough Success Facebook Group where we all keep each other accountable to our goals.

3 Strategies To Grow Your Facebook Group

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Imagine growing a Facebook Group and having thousands of active members. Many of these members are on your email list and some of them have already bought your products.

This is what can happen if you commit to growing a Facebook Group.

It’s a very helpful asset to get more traffic from your social media marketing efforts.

My Facebook Group is approaching 1,000 members, but just because of a change I recently implemented, that group has allowed me to add 100s of people to my email list.

For every new 1,000 members added to the group, I can expect to get an extra 700-800 subscribers to my email list.

How is this possible? I’ll explain shortly, but first I’m going to share some strategies you can use to grow your Facebook Group.

 

Strategy #1: Provide Exclusive Interviews

Bringing guests into the Facebook Group and interviewing them is a great value add for existing members.

However, these interviews can also get more people in the group.

One strategy I utilize is asking each guest to promote the upcoming interview to their audiences. That way, not only do I promote the interview to my audience, but someone else is promoting the interview as well.

You have two options for growing your Facebook Group and email list.

The first option is to lead people to a landing page where they subscribe to get notified about the interview.

In the welcome email, you proceed to tell them to join your Facebook Group because that’s where the interview will be.

The benefit with this strategy is that you can have better email copy with those new subscribers through your autoresponder. You can adapt your email copy based on who the speaker is and what subject material will be covered.

In other words, it’s more than just a generic autoresponder sequence.

The second option is to lead people to your Facebook Group. This will grow your Facebook Group more than the previous method because some people who join your email list will forget to join your Facebook Group.

The boost in new members and engagement will also help you rank better in Facebook’s algorithm which will help you attract new members.

So there are benefits to each.

But how do we get new members to join our email list? The answer is by asking new members a few questions.

If you ask too many questions, pending members won’t bother to fill them out.

That’s why I only ask three questions. You can ask more questions later on by following-up with new members (Facebook doesn’t let you automate this part).

These are the three questions you should ask:

  1. Why do you want to join [your group]?
  2. What is your email address?
  3. Are you interested in receiving a free income spreadsheet you can use to track your income and expenses?

You could also finish question #3 with “If so, please enter your email address below,” and change or remove Question 2, but this method works for me right now.

I may A/B Split Test it to see if changing Question 3 gets different results.

In any event, asking these types of questions will allow you to grow your email list. All you then do is copy and paste the individual emails into ConvertKit or your equivalent.

Most of the people who join the group are also interested in the Free Income Spreadsheet. As a result, they join my email list.

This is the secret to getting new members to join your email list. You can post something in the group asking current members if they are interested in the resource, but it works better once you have the questions set up for each person who wants to join your group.

 

Strategy #2: Optimize Your Group For The Facebook Algorithm

How many people are really searching “Breakthrough Success” in Facebook’s algorithm. If they are, it’s likely people who already know, like, and trust me.

For a long time, my group was just named Breakthrough Success. I recently changed the name to hit on a few keywords people would actually type into Facebook’s search engine.

The new name of the group is Breakthrough Success – Entrepreneurship I Digital Marketing I Grow Your Biz. Those are some of the keywords people type into Facebook to find different groups to join.

People who search “Breakthrough Success” likely know who I am. People who search “Entrepreneurship” may come across my brand for the first time.

You can also work more keywords into your description to get that extra SEO juice.

It’s important to note that Facebook only lets you change your group’s name once every 28 days. Do your research to make sure you’re picking the right keywords to rank for in your title because you’re stuck with them for almost a month.

 

Strategy #3: Boost Group Engagement

Facebook wants to promote groups that will keep people on their site longer. If you get good engagement in your group, Facebook interprets that as a positive sign and pushes out your group to more people.

You can start the process by posting into your group at least 3 times per week. I aim for daily posts to get in front of more of my members more often.

When I increased my frequency to daily posts, I got more likes and comments for my posts. Open ended questions such as “What’s one goal you want to achieve in 2020?” tend to get the most comments.

When someone comments on one of your posts, put that person on a list of people to continue reaching out to. Some people will leave a comment on one of your Facebook Group posts and then never leave a comment again.

This happens because people forget about you or spend the rest of the time in your group lurking and seeing what others are posting.

To avoid this, get into more individual conversations with people who have commented on past posts. Reach out to them using Facebook Messenger and continue the dialogue. If they have a birthday, wish them a Happy Birthday. Like their posts and leave a comment.

This is especially important to do in the early stages of the group when it is growing and gaining momentum.

To boost engagement even more, I use the cover photo for my Facebook Group to encourage people to click the notifications button.

People who click on notifications will get notified each time something new gets posted in the group.

This increases the likelihood these people continue to participate in the Breakthrough Success Group and leave comments on future posts.

 

In Conclusion

If you want to use Facebook to grow your business, you need to start your own Facebook Group. Facebook Pages get more pay-to-play as the years roll by and a personal account is great for business relationships.

However, a group helps you build relationships while growing your email list and revenue.

Facebook Groups continue to be an under utilized opportunity with everyone rushing to Facebook Ads and thinking that’s the only way to make money on Facebook.

What are your thoughts on Facebook Groups? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

11 Ways To Use ThriveCart To Get More Sales From Your Website

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Getting sales is the key to sustaining and scaling your business. Money pays the bills, and you can use it to run ads to reach even more people.

I’ve used a variety of softwares in the past to help me achieve this singular objective. Some were better than others. However, for most of the top end options, the monthly payments didn’t make sense.

Then I came across ThriveCart. Unlike most software, ThriveCart is a one-time purchase for lifetime access. Most other comparable softwares charge at least $97/mo. You stop paying…you lose your stuff. ThriveCart is not like that.

I decided to give ThriveCart a try a while back and haven’t turned back since. I’ve used it for my virtual summits, product launches, and everything in between.

Since I started using ThriveCart, I’ve optimized the process of using this software to boost sales across my website. Here are the 11 ways you can start using ThriveCart to get more sales from your website.

 

#1: Set Up An Order Form

The first thing you’ll want to do on ThriveCart is create an order form. This is the actual page where people will buy your product. Here is a simple ThriveCart order form I used for my dividend investing spreadsheet.

ThriveCart gives you a variety of capabilities to enhance your order page to maximize conversions. This is just the starting point for making money with ThriveCart. You can connect with Stripe and PayPal so your customers have those payment options.

That can be done in the settings tab under the payment gateways area.

To create your order form, all you have to do is go into the “Products” tab and click on “Create Product.”

ThriveCart will then take you through the rest of the process.

Some of the previous softwares made this part of the process very tedious. Creating products, adding integrations, and making it look nice were very difficult.

On ThriveCart, it is much quicker and easier to create these types of pages. Their dashboard is easier to navigate than the other options I have tried.

 

#2: Include An Order Bump

The easiest way to use ThriveCart to get more sales is to tap into existing customers. Customers who commit to buying something with you are likely to buy more from you in the future. However, you can “speed up” the future by adding an order bump on your order page.

An order bump is an extra offer at a lower price point than the initial offer. It’s the equivalent of an optional add-on that will increase your average revenue per customer. I always add an order bump to my virtual summits and can attribute them to a 20% increase in summit revenue.

The best part about these order bumps is they’re not hard to make at all. When you go into ThriveCart’s process of creating the order form, one of their options is the order bump. This is where you can customize the appearance, name your offer, and set a price.

 

#3: Redirect Customers To An Upsell

It is imperative to note that when someone buys something from you, they are more likely to buy more things from you. This is a key fact for using ThriveCart to get more sales for your website.

One of your options in ThriveCart is to decide where people will go after they complete the purchase. ThriveCart refers to this as the success page. You can either create your own or use ThriveCart’s built-in success page builder.

You can customize this success page to include a video, text, and other elements.

So far I’ve created my own success pages using OptimizePress to sell my next level offer.

Anytime someone buys an All-Access Pass from me, they get sent to a page like this…

Upon scrolling down, the customer sees that I’m offering something new. In this case, I’m offering the Virtual Summit Blueprint (VSB) since this customer just purchased the All-Access Pass for one of my summits.

Several people who bought the All-Access Pass have taken me up on the Virtual Summit Blueprint offer.

The idea is to have another offer on the other side. If you sell something or $47, have an offer for $97 or $197 on the other side. The focus of the success page is to thank the person for buying your product. However, you can mention another product at the same time.

Part of using ThriveCart to get more sales from your website is to get multiple sales from the same customers.

 

#4: Include Benefits And Testimonials On The Order Page 

Benefits and testimonials are two of the best things to add to an order page to boost sales. Benefits give your potential customers an idea of what they’ll get. Testimonials reinforce social proof.

Earlier on, I shared my dividend spreadsheet order form. On that order form, I include the benefits right below the picture of the product.

I’ve put the picture down here to save you from scrolling back up…

The benefits appear under the What you get part and have green checkmarks next to each of them. Sometimes the benefits will be enough to turn a visitor into a customer.

However, you will boost your conversion rates with testimonials because of the social proof they’ll generate.

I recently bought ConvertBox which is a great software for boosting opt-in rates. Sure enough, they used ThriveCart for their order form and had some testimonials at the bottom…

You do not need too many testimonials for a ThriveCart order form to have the desired effect. ConvertBox only has these two testimonials on their order form at the time of writing.

 

#5: Include A Multi-Pay Option

ThriveCart gives you the ability to add multiple payment options for the same product. Depending n how your product is priced, not everyone can make the one-time payment.

However, some of these same people can buy your product under a payment plan. In most payment plan set-ups, you’ll get paid less in the beginning but end up with more money at the end of the plan.

One payment plan I recently incorporated for my summits was two payments of $25 instead of paying the $47 upfront. People have taken me up on the payment plan already, and instead of making $47 right away, I make $50 in two months.

Not only is that a 6.38% increase in revenue from doing virtually nothing extra, but I’m also getting customers who weren’t able to take me up on the one-time $47 payment.

For higher priced offers like training courses, you can get a higher ROI with the payment plan while getting more customers.

Some of the people coming out with $1,997 training courses will also have a 3 month payment plan of $797/mo. At the end of those 3 months, the total comes to $2391 instead of $1,997 which is a 19.73% revenue increase at the end of those 3 months.

 

#6: Receive Recurring Payments From Your Customers

The only problem with chasing sales is that you have to continue hitting a certain number of sales each month to continue making a certain amount of revenue each month.

Recurring payments solve this problem.

You get the customer once and the customer continues to pay you monthly. This type of payment model is commonly seen in coaching, services, softwares, and membership sites.

Having this type of model on your side will allow you to earn more with ThriveCart. In the pricing options, ThriveCart allows you to set payments to recur monthly.

This is how it looks on my end for the Advanced Influencer Mastermind which happens to be $47/mo.

This works great for automating the monthly payments of coaching, services, or any of the other types of recurring revenue offers.

 

#7: Add A Countdown Timer To Your Order Page 

One of the strongest human drivers is urgency. If you give people a short amount of time to make a decision, they will make a decision sooner.

ThriveCart allows you to add a countdown timer to your order page. When the timer hits zero, you can choose where to redirect the visitor if they have not completed their purchase.

You can create a countdown timer in the customization tab of your order form.

One important feature of the countdown timer is that you can set the countdown to a certain date or base it on a period of time after the first visit.

If you want to set a deadline such as the end of the year for a special promotion, you can create that countdown timer.

For my virtual summits, I set a 15 minute time limit for new visitors to buy the All-Access Pass at $47 instead of the usual $97. This countdown works very well for generating sales and can be a great asset for you as well.

 

#8: Add Buyers And Cart Abandoners Into Email Sequences

Earlier we talked about including an upsell so your customers buy more from you. Not all of your customers will take action and buy the upsell…in that moment. With the right nurturing, some people who passed up the upsell may convert a few days or weeks later.

Nurturing the relationship requires knowing in your system where that customer is along the journey. A while back, I created a Free + Shipping Page for my book Content Marketing Secrets.

I ultimately stopped promoting this because I was doing all of the work (filling in addresses, sending them out, etc.). The only way to delegate was by giving someone my Amazon password which is something I’m never doing

In any event, the order form looked like this…

Cool stuff, right? There was just one problem.

Some people who would opt-in and get to this point would abandon the cart and not pay for the shipping and handling.

Every person who opted in was added to a list of people who did not buy the book yet. They would receive an email about two days later urging them to get their copy of Content Marketing Secrets.

People who bought the book through this form were moved from the “did not buy” list to the buy list. This is something you can do with a combination of ThriveCart and ConvertKit (most emailing services work in this scenario).

On ThriveCart, you can select which list someone gets added to when they complete an order. On ConvertKit, you can set an automation so they when people get added to the buy list, they automatically get removed from the “did not buy” list.

That way, people who bought the book aren’t then getting urged two days later to buy the same book they already bought.

 

#9: Split Test Your Carts

One cool feature ThriveCart lets you utilize is A/B Split Testing. You can make a slight tweak to an order form and compare the two versions to each other. A single added benefit or slightly different copy can go a long way in boosting sales.

You can even test order bumps to see which order bump converts at a higher rate.

While I personally have not done A/B Split Tests yet, you can start your own in the ThriveCart dashboard.

You should wait for your A/B Split Test to get at least 100 visitors before making any final conclusions about which one is the better performer.

Once you find a winner, conduct a different split test to see if you can increase the conversion rate even more.

 

#10: Recruit Affiliates To Promote Your Products

This is my favorite part about ThriveCart. No matter how big your audience is, you are limited in how much exposure you can get on your own.

The best way to maximize your exposure and sales is to recruit an affiliate army to promote your products.

ThriveCart gives you the ability to add affiliates to your products and provide them with their affiliate links.

Recruiting an affiliate army goes beyond the scope of this blog post, but I do have something special. Each person who buys ThriveCart through my link will receive free access to my Advanced Affiliate Marketing Summit training. In this training, myself and over 20 other leading affiliate marketing experts share how you can boost your commissions, grow your audience, and recruit an army of affiliates for your products.

The Advanced Affiliate Marketing Summit training is one of the bonuses. I’ll talk about the others at the very end.

 

#11: Lead People From Your Website To Your ThriveCart Order Page

All that is left is leading your people to your ThriveCart Order Pages. If you want to sell straight from your website, include a link on your website that leads to the corresponding ThriveCart Order Page.

A more popular model is using your website to grow your email list. You then use an email sequence to build a relationship with new subscribers and eventually promote the appropriate ThriveCart Order Page based on what sequence the new subscriber is in.

Both of these approaches work. It’s your decision on how you apply them and which one you focus on.

 

ThriveCart has been one of the most critical softwares for my business. Without it, my summits and product launches wouldn’t make money.

…and since I am an affiliate, I decided to sweeten the pot and add these bonuses:

Bonus #1: Advanced Affiliate Marketing Summit Training

Discover how you can recruit an affiliate army for all of the products you put on ThriveCart. Over 20 top affiliate marketing summits and I will be joining forces to share how you can boost your sales, get more traffic, and recruit your very own affiliate army.

Bonus 2: Blog Traffic Domination Training 

A big part of making ThriveCart work for you is attracting traffic. An affiliate army will help you, but there are ways to bring your own traffic. The Blog Traffic Domination training will show you exactly how you can start driving a ton of people to your blog. These strategies also work if you are a podcaster or YouTuber.

Bonus #3: The Ultimate Profitable Content Repurposing Strategy

Repurposing content is one of the easiest ways to tap into multiple platforms and grow your audience. In this training, you will learn how to profitably repurpose your existing content so you can direct more people to your ThriveCart order pages.

I’ve been using ThriveCart for a few years now and love their software. To this day, I continue finding new ways to use this tool. If you encounter any new ways to use ThriveCart that I didn’t mention, let me know in the comments. I’ll give you full credit and mention you in the post.

I grateful for you being a part of the journey.

Click here to learn more about ThriveCart

E314: Making The Shift You Need To Make To Live A Remarkable Life With John Hinkle

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John Hinkle is an author, speaker, and personal growth coach who’s empowering men and women to navigate those changes and find their “second-half purpose.” His experience working with Fortune 500 companies has equipped him with unique tools to help others reach their own personal and business success goals. He’s here today to share 5 practical and transformational principles from his book, Shift: Moving from Where You Are to the Life You Want, to empower you to move from your current unfulfilled status to a future of success and purpose.

 

Quotes To Remember:

“There are little nuggets of success within every failure.”
“There can’t be success unless there’s failure.”
“Is your dream big enough? Does it scare you?”
“You have control over how you respond.”
“Life is about change.”
“Surround yourself with people who will make you greater.”
 
 

What You’ll Learn:

  • Navigating shifts in our lives
  • Crushing transitions
  • Shifting mentality to success
  • The SHIFT acronym
  • How to level yourself up

 

Key Links From The Episode:

Seth Godin: Episode 16 and Episode 292

John’s Special Gift For Breakthrough Success Listeners

John Hinkle: Facebook, LinkedIn

Content Marketing Plaza


Recommended Books:

Content Marketing Secrets by Marc Guberti

Podcast Domination by Marc Guberti

Shift by John Hinkle

The ONE Thing by Gary Keller 

This Is Marketing by Seth Godin 

The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran