294: Grant Baldwin On How To Scale A Niche Business By 3X

Steve: You’re listening to the my wife quit her job podcast. The place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today, I have my buddy Grant Baldwin on the show. Now, Grant is someone who took a very specific Niche and turn it into a seven-figure business. Not only that but he was partially responsible for increasing my top-line by millions of dollars over the years.

But before I begin I want to give a quick shout-out Privy who’s a sponsor of the show. Privy is a tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store and right now I’m using Privy Display a cool Wheel of Fortune pop-up basically user gives your email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store and customers love the gamification aspect of this and when implemented this form email signups increased by a hundred thirty one percent. Now, you can also use Privy to reduce cart abandoned with cart saver pop-ups and abandoned cart email sequences as well one super low price that is much cheaper than using a full-blown email marketing solution. So bottom line Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers and recover lost sales so head on over to privy.com/steve and try it for free if you decide you need to the more advanced features use coupon code MWQHJ for fifteen percent off once again that’s privy.com/steve.

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Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so can spend more time with your family focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to my wife quit her job podcast. Today, I’m happy to have my buddy Grant Baldwin back on the show. Now, Grant is someone who I’ve known for a long time now and he was partially responsible for introducing me to webinars, which is a strategy that I’ve used over the years to make millions of dollars. But if you ask Grant, he’ll take full credit for everything that I’ve ever done successfully. Anyway, Grant runs speaker lab, which is a business that teaches others how to get paid in book to speak and he also has a brand new book coming out soon called the successful speaker. And over the past few years. He’s tripled his business using a combination of automated webinars Facebook ads and email marketing. And today we are going to dissect how he’s grown has business so quickly and with that welcome show Grant. How you doing today, man?

Grant: I’m doing awesome. It’s always good to hang out with you my friend. Yeah and partially responsible. I don’t know man. Like I’m just kidding. I showed you the path you executed very well and the all the results are yours.

Steve: all that stuff. It’s evolved over the years. So I’m really curious to see you know, what changes you’ve made but for then it’s been three years since you’ve been on this show. And first question for you is, do you do any work? Because when I follow you on Instagram, it seems like you are perpetually on vacation my friend.

Grant: We like to travel we, I’d say this I’ll give you the joking answer and the serious answer. The joking answer is we do like to travel and we learn a lot on Facebook ads which leads to a lot of chase points which leads to a lot of free travel. So that has been very nice. The serious answer would also be like we have been very I say we meaning my Wife and I and our family have been very intentional to make sure that the business supports our life and not the other way around and so I think that I think you’re probably very similar in that. We enjoy work. I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I enjoy what it is that we do. Enjoy our team enjoy the students that we work with and the people that we get to help but like make no mistake like this is I still want to have a lot of freedom and flexibility and autonomy.

And so I tell our team all the time like I want to keep growing and building and doing what we’re doing as long as we get to still play by these rules. And once we can no longer play by those rules, like it’s no longer interesting to me. So for example, I live outside Nashville and Dave Ramsey just built a huge new headquarters here that was open up recently. And so it’s for five minutes away from it and passed by it regularly. And is this huge huge multi multi multi million dollar complex and neighbor of mine is a VP over there and give me a tour of the place. It’s a cool place, but I’m looking at it going like I don’t want that like I want to work from home and I like having again the freedom and flexibility to spend a lot of With the family and spend a lot of time traveling. And you know making memories and doing that sort of thing.

Versus like a traditional nine-to-five work from an office just because that’s what you know, a lot of people do so, it’s part of the fun part of the joy of Entrepreneurship is like you get to define the rules you get to the side like what makes sense for you. And so what works for someone else may not work for you. And so you just have to decide what what is it you’re trying to do what you’re trying to accomplish.

Steve: Absolutely my friend. We definitely do have the same philosophies. Give the audience a quick recap and remind them what you do and how you make money.

Grant: Yes. So for several years, I was a full-time speaker travel the country primarily the US speaking at a lot of, on education space a lot of with colleges a lot of high school stuff and then a lot with entrepreneurs and business owners, corporations, associations. And then sort of having a lot of people ask me like, hey, I want to be a speaker. How do you do that? And so then a few years ago, we started doing more teaching and training along those lines of teaching people the ins and outs of the speaking world. And how do you find a book gigs. And so that’s the core of what we do today. We have basically two Variations of a summer program where we’re teaching kind of some systems and structures of how to find a book gigs and the speaking industry whether you want to take a couple times a year or you want to speak, you know, full time.

We walk through how to do that. So one is more of a kind of a self-study program that we offer via automated and live webinars. And then the other is a kind of a group and one-on-one coaching program with myself and other coaches and that’s sold over the phone. So we have a team of enrollment advisors and they do calls on a daily basis and invite people to join that program. So so both programs ultimately teach a lot of the same material and content but once more of a kind of a DIY and ones were kind of on a in the trenches with you and also do several of the pieces for you some done for you stuff.

Steve: I’m always amazed at your success because I remember when I first met you I didn’t think that your Niche was that large actually to be quite frank, but you’ve turned this thing into a seven-figure business and I’m continually amazed.

Grant: Yeah. I mean, I’ve, I would say this, like there’s no shortage of people who are interested in speaking like speaking is one of those aspirational things that has been around for a long time it will be around for a long time. So that’s one of things. I think there’s a lot of longevity and stability and what it is that we do. So if we were teaching, you know Pinterest marketing there’s nothing wrong with Pinterest marketing, but I don’t know it’s interesting to be around in ten years is Pinterest marketing still going to be a viable strategy in 10 years. So, you know, who knows but speaking public speaking professional speaking is one of the things that has been around and we’ll be around and it’s kind of like equate it to like the number of people who want to write a book like it’s just a high amount of people that want to write a book and there’s a lot People who are interested in speaking. And speaking can also be very I don’t think device of is the right word but polarizing I guess where some people like, I love to be a speaker.

I love to sing on stage like that. Give me the mic that sounds amazing and other people like I know my wife, for example, she’s like just horrified at the idea of having to stand up in front of a group of people and it’s not that you know one’s better or worse than the other it’s just again if there’s a lot of people who are interested in speaking but just don’t know what to do. So I know for myself earlier, when I first got started a line that we use a lot is I felt like I had the potential but I needed the plan I had the potential but I need the plan. I like speaking. I knew I was an okay speaker. I want to do more speaking. No clue what to do from there. How do you find gigs? How much do you charge? who hires speakers? Like, how does this mysterious black box work? And so we found that there’s a lot of people who are in the same spot who is where I was where they have the potential passion about speaking. They love speaking they want to share their message, but just I don’t understand. How do I find gigs?

You know, there’s a lot of people who teach and speak about more of the art and craft side of speaking and we do cover some of that about how do Create deliver great talk and how do you stand on stage and deliver and how do you deal with nerves and all that stuff. And we do cover some of that stuff. But like if you’re a phenomenal speaker and like nobody knows you exist like you’re at a business and this is you know, not exclusive to just speaking with anything. I you can have an amazing product but there’s also the side of the business where you have to let people know what it is that you do. And so that’s that’s the core of what we try to teach.

Steve: so it’s been three years since you came on and you mentioned earlier that you tripled your business. Where did all that growth come from?

Grant: Yeah. So a big thing I would say would be doing the the high-ticket group coaching program that definitely move the needle for us because we had a lot of people who are asking like we had the the self study program which is $1,000 course that we’ve sold through again automated and live webinars. That’s always done fairly well for us. Facebook ads still work well for leading to that or email this is a good-sized now over a hundred thousand people and so the combination of those things has worked well provide a kind of a good base, but then doing the high ticket program definitely move the needle because we A lot of people who are saying Grant I want to do, you know group coaching or one-on-one coaching. I personally don’t want to do any one-on-one coaching. And so we are trying to think through what that model looks like. I also have been very intentional about not wanting to build a business based on me.

I tell our team all the time like this is not the grant show. I know that like, I recognize like on the face, my name is on the cover of the book. I do the podcast I do the webinars that sort of thing, but I don’t want people signing up for our programs thinking like they’re gonna get a ton of access to Me because that’s just this typically not the case. Like I’m sure they work with students and help students. But this is not like a one on one program with Grant and so a huge huge win for us as when people join our programs and they say, oh I worked with Eric. I worked with Rick or I work with, you know fill in the blank and like I had a great experience with them was like good because they, you know, we worked with them. We’ve coached them. We’ve trained them they’ve seen results and so them being able to help other speakers is incredibly rewarding that doesn’t just depend on me like this is not about me. This is not Grant show.

So that’s been very helpful of trying to build the group coaching thing. That doesn’t depend on me. Now that the group coaching thing has worked well, but the sales mechanism for of doing phone calls has been it’s been a new challenge which has been fun because when you know you last time I was on we talk to Tom about webinars and you and I geek out on webinars and the reality is is like if you have whether we have 10 people or a hundred people or a thousand people on a webinar, it really doesn’t dramatically affect our workload or how the webinars going to go. Like there’s there’s there’s hypothetically an unlimited number of seats of whoever wants to attend the webinar versus with calls. What you’re trying to do is they all they do inbound calls. And so we are regularly inviting our list or through Facebook ads for people to book calls.

And so it’s this delicate balance of supply and demand that we don’t want people to book calls, you know days or weeks out. We want them to ideally be able to book a call in the next day or two while they’re still interested and excited about it. But obviously, these are all one-on-one calls with our Team, we can’t send so many calls their that the soon as they can book is a week out but we can’t send to’ So if you where, you know, an enrollment visor has 12 open spots tomorrow and only two bookings like we don’t want to do that. We want to fill their calendars as best as possible. But again, it’s this kind of like delicate ebb and flow balance of you know, what levers to turn or pull and what knobs to turn and to make sure that everyone’s schedules are full but not too full where pushes things too far out.

Steve: So you’re running Facebook ads to human calls.

Grant: Yes. Yep human calls. Yeah, and it’s difficult and different in some ways and and better in other ways because you know when someone’s on an automated or a live webinar, you know, they’re just looking at a screen even though you may be calling them out. Hey, I see it. You know we got Steve here from the Bay Area. What’s up Steve? And you know, you can you can do that kind of touch but there’s something totally different with like one human talking to another human.

Steve: Yeah

Grant: about their business and what they are looking for and where their challenges are and how this program can help that specific thing. So, Certainly something that’s helpful about that. But there’s just there’s yeah, there’s a lot of

Steve: so if you look at your overall funnel, would you say that you grab people in? You have a free series. I remember. and then you’ve got your webinar. And then from those people are you doing the group coaching or is it completely independent?

Grant: Yeah. So basically I like we have a variety of different lead magnet. So you mentioned that you know, we’ve got some PDFs or we’ve got a the speaker fee calculator that’s done well for us people can find over at myspeakerfee.com, myspeakerfee.com. So when people ask us, Hey, how much should I charge as a speaker? We send them there. It’s a type form. They answer like seven or eight questions and it tells them what they should be charging as a speaker. So we use that quite a bit. So we have a variety of different like lead magnets like those that work but everything we do all the lead magnets even this new book everything points to one or two places. We either point to the automated webinar or a point to book a call all the calls to action on the website. If they point to like any content the podcast or any of these lead magnets, ultimately it’s going to end at either the book a call. Or attend the webinar. So those are the two calls to action for everything.

Steve: How many people do you have answering phone calls?

Grant: So they’re not even answering called there is like it’s not like a hey just call this one 800-number whenever and you know, we got someone standing by so someone would book a call in a sense of like, you know Thursday at 2 p.m. Central Time, you know, we have an available slot. So some of the book that and they’d be having that one-on-one call then. So at the moment we’ve got we have three enrollment advisors.

Steve: Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So let’s let’s start with webinars since it’s kind of what we talked about last time how is webinars evolved for you? And specifically I noticed like on your front page. I think when you click on the button, it goes straight to an automated webinar, right? So first off so which software are you using and what is this webinar flow look like what is conversion rate and are you running ads to this automated webinar?

Grant: Yeah. We still run ads to that. One of the things that we do is all of our ads for our webinars go to the automated webinar. We actually don’t do any ads for the live webinar. This is partly for a tracking thing. We made changes to some point. But basically what we do is we do our automated webinar on a daily basis ads go to that. And then once a month give or take, we do a live webinar to the list. That’s largely the same the same webinar the same content, but we find that you know, if we have and I’d have to pull up the stats here. But if we have let’s say, you know for the automated webinar let’s say, we have a 50% show up right that means the other half the other 50% didn’t show up they registered they were in Interested in speaking, but they didn’t they didn’t attend for whatever reason and we get it like that’s part of it life happens.

So we do this once a month webinar live webinar as kind of a catch-all of hey, you didn’t you didn’t attend a webinar recently or at some point and so we’ll have people who will attend that who register for the automated webinar like weeks or months or years ago. We can also see, you know, just looking at tracking that we have had people who’ve attended, you know, two three or four live webinars before they ultimately decided to buy

Steve: Yup, same with me.

Grant: and so yes, I’m like who knows what’s happening on the other end of you know people who are like there’s probably all of us we have like different things that are kind of like Loosely interested in but then whatever reason like the timing is right and we pull the trigger on on buying something whether it’s a product or a book or course or whatever it may be because like, okay now the timing is right for me to want to jump into this. So so doing that combination of the automated and the live webinars has been has been really valuable because I live webinar is basically again kind of a, since we don’t do any ads that we know. That it’s an exclusively from those sales or from our list but there’s always again there’s always people in the list that are interested in speaking but just haven’t bought something for whatever reason and we’re able to kind of recoup some of that ad spend that we had before.

Steve: So how much are you paying for automated webinar lead?

Grant: so it is varied. Let’s see. I know you like stats and not vague answers only pulled up. I can give you some actual stuff here. One of things I’ve noticed is that we have an outside agency who runs all of our ads they do a great job. We’ve been working with them for about Year and a half we worked with a couple different agencies over the years. And so one thing that we’ve noticed is that we have started paying a lot more per lead. But our conversion rate is significantly higher.

Steve: Okay.

Grant: So for example, let me look up a couple of weeks here

Steve: And when you’re talking about conversion rate are you just talking about from the automated or you talk about collectively even including the live one scoop it up at the end?

Grant: just the automated.

Steve: Just the automated, okay.

Grant: Yep. So for example. Okay. Let’s see here. I got a couple of weeks worth of data. So we did have some weeks where we had low like five, six, seven dollar leads registrants, but our conversion rate on those was around 1%.

Steve: Okay.

Grant: And now if we go to some other weeks here, we were paying around fifteen, sixteen, Seventeen dollars a lead. So, you know 2 or 3 times that but we had conversion rates anywhere from three to five percent.

Steve: interesting.

Grant: So the idea being that the hypothetically we’re just getting higher Quality leads that are converting so we’re not getting as many leads. But our dollars are going to better leads that are converting better. So that’s one of the things that we’ve seen lately as just a kind of an observation.

Steve: So why an automated webinar as opposed to kind of like a drip sequence?

Grant: honestly, we’ve just never even tried the drip sequence. I know like if I remember correctly, that’s what you did before you did the webinar.

Steve: I’m experimenting with something new and we can talk about that a little bit. I’m just kind of curious what your input is, but go on.

Grant: Yeah, I was gonna say like, I don’t know there’s no necessarily like a Rhyme or Reason. Webinars have always worked well for us, so I think it’s easy for us to kind of fall into the Trap of okay, It’s it’s working. So let’s just keep doing that and maybe dabble with something here or there but for the most part like now this is working. Like let’s just keep doing that instead of trying to Tinker too much or, you know be distracted by other, you know, shiny objects that could work that could be incredibly effective an example too though is we had just recently hired a new director of marketing and he has a ton of experience with this and really will bring a lot more bandwidth to the table. Like that’s the other Challenges just limitation is kind of picking and choosing. Okay, if you’re if you’re a one-man band if you have a small team like you just got to decide.

What’s the best bang for the buck what makes the most sense for you to work on knowing that there are plenty of other ways that you may be leaving money on the table are the things that you could be doing. But here’s what I’ve got the mental capacity to focus on especially the going back to what we talked about earlier. I want to I want to do this and still be able to have a lot of freedom and flexibility and autonomy and life. So you got to be, you know, a little bit selective there. so so I wouldn’t say there’s any like strategic reason of why we’ve done, you know, we haven’t done more email marketing or emailed like drip sequence has other than like webinars of works. We just keep doing that.

Steve: That makes sense. If it’s working then don’t change it.

Grant: Right

Steve: so you’re not actually actively running the ads right? Yourself?

Grant: No. No, so this is actually the new director of marketing. He will in the near future be taking over. He has a ton of ad experience so he will be taking over that so I know enough to like just be able to have a conversation on it, but I’m not in the weeds on a day-to-day basis of you know ad copy or creative or targeting or placement or that sort of thing.

Steve: Do you know how much you’re spending like on a daily basis on Ads though?

Grant: so I can tell you like big picture, we’re spending. Well tell you what, let me pull that let’s pull up a different spreadsheet. I want to things that you know is I like a lot of spreadsheets we track all these. This one thing. I remember what we talked about last time and I tell people all the time that if you’re going to run ads like it cannot be just like ran ads and like I think it’s working but I’m not sure. Like I said, we religiously track all of this stuff. So we slowed it down over the holidays, but we’ve picked it back up. So we’re spending anywhere from like 25 to 30, 35000 a month on ads so, a thousand a day give or take.

Steve: okay cool cool. And what tools are you using for your auto webinars? Just curious?

Grant: Yeah. Currently. I think we’re using easy webinar and we still use webinar Jam for our live webinars. We have been having some issues with ever webinar, which is webinar jam’s automated tool. We had been having a couple issues there. So we did a lot of split testing between easy and ever and there’s some things that one could do that the other couldn’t do it and vice versa and the split test was Almost like identical and so we’re just like we’ve been using easy for a little while ever for a little while. So let’s try easy. And so that’s what we’ve been using for the past. I don’t know. A year or two. what do you use?

Steve: I don’t do auto webinars. That’s why I’m asking all these questions. I’ve been using this sequence. So what I’m doing now actually is I found that a lot of people when I was putting out, I did a kind of pseudo Auto webinar for a little bit and I notice that people weren’t watching the whole thing. So what I did is I decided to break it apart into three pieces, and now I have it hooked up in messenger at hasn’t launched yet, but I haven’t broken up. In a three pieces and if they don’t watch One Piece, they get a reminder in Messenger to go watch it. And the idea is to kind of push them down the line and leave a cliffhanger at the end of each one.

Grant: can’t speak to the actual text out of how this actually works. But I do know we use messenger and SMS reminders a lot for the automated and for the live webinar. So when someone registers for the automated webinar, they’re getting email reminders, but they also are getting texts and Facebook Messenger through many chat reminders as well. I think we send out some type of like PDF leading up to the webinar and we send that out the many chat because like the many chat, are just a Facebook Messenger open rates are just ridiculously high engagement levels. So we have it’s not that the primary thing but we do use that.

Steve: Yeah, I’m blasting everyone on all channels including push notifications to I mean, whatever it takes to get them to show up.

Grant: Yeah

Steve: Just kind of curious. What are your show rates these days because I know might have gone down over the years.

Grant: On automated or live?

Steve: Live.

Grant: Okay, let’s pull up the spreadsheet

Steve: by the way. I’m still using It’s Gran’t spreadsheet, I think you gave it to me a while back

Grant: so good. You looks like anywhere from 25 to 40 percent.

Steve: Okay.

Grant: Yeah, so it’s not it’s I would agree. It’s definitely down. Like if I were to go back much further here, let me open that up

Steve: In the old days. I used to get like 35-ish and now it’s around twenty five-ish.

Grant: Yeah. So the last one we did we did one a couple weeks ago is 24, 32, 29, 26, 34, 29, 25 25, 41. So I mean it varies but kind of in that range. But yeah, I think that I mean the reality is I think two things. One is that you know webinars, you know, I don’t know maybe five years ago were much more of a latest and greatest and new shiny thing that people are used to, are people weren’t used to. And now maybe the second thing would be that people are more used to it. So the other thing I try to think through is like a lot of people are busy and one of things I’m kind of interested in in this is an idea just on the dock. I’ve heard a few people talk about is doing the like a micro or mini webinar. So like I know our automated webinar is about an hour and then we get into some Q&A so it ends up being like an hour fifteen which you know as a this day and age like that’s a good spot.

Steve: That’s a good time, yeah.

Grant: So it’s a lot to ask someone I try to make sure that we get to the pitch to the offer and there’s a link to buy before the one hour mark on the automated but I’m intrigued by the concept of doing like, okay, let’s imagine that you had to do a webinar in 15 minutes. Like what would you do and so really trying to condense something down because most people are busy they have a lot going on and so again to sit through it’s gonna be a big ass, but if you say hey, we have a 15 or 10 minute Webinar where we’re going to go we’re going to cut out as a whole the fat possible and get right to it and then make an offer at the end. How would that convert? How would that affect show up rates? so that may be something we try at some point. I don’t I’ll have any personal data to give you on that but just something on the radar.

Steve: Yeah. Are you guys doing any different over the years on webinars? Just before we move on?

Grant: not dramatically, I would say like the the webinar that we have done in the past like we maybe make little tweaks the offer here and there but not not dramatically for the most part like we may be updating testimonials or case studies or examples but the content has largely been the same because the continents are the program is largely the same like it’s updated but like The Core Concepts aren’t dramatically changing, you know year to year. So there may be a few little pieces that we you know, we update or change but not not not a ton.

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I’m kind of intrigued by running ads to calls, to live calls because I know that if I ever get on the phone with a prospective buyer, that’s like the closure rate Is like 90%

Grant: Yep.

Steve: So I imagine if you could scale that like you could increase your conversion rate dramatically, like if you called like the people who clicked on the sales page of your live webinar, but didn’t buy. You called all those people. I’m sure you would close like a good percentage of them

Grant: Yeah, 100% totally you wouldn’t come close hundred percent 100% agree with your idea. But the other thing that we have done in kind of a similar vein to that is maybe a year ago, maybe six months ago. We added live chat just to the checkout page so we didn’t add it across the Across the whole side or anything, but just to the checkout page and so when people would hit that and they’re going hey my cards not working or hey, I had a quick question. Can I do this and get this bonus or hey, I just wanted to confirm whatever, you know, they’re there. They’re on the checkout page. They have the card in hand. They’re ready to make a decision and I got a quick question. So we have found like having that has helped us because we don’t get it. We don’t get a ton of chat like a lot of people who hit the checkout page don’t have questions.

But the people that do that are right there ready to make a buying decision if we can help just clarify one little thing for hem and that pushes them over the edge like and the it causes them to make a decision. Like that’s been a big big win. That’s really really simple for us to execute on.

Steve: What Are you using?

Grant: we use there’s several different tools. We use one called crisp currently. I think it’s crisp.

Steve: Interesting, I never heard of that before.

Grant: It’s Crisp.chat I hadn’t heard of it either. There’s a few different ones. There’s pros and cons to it to any of them. But one was it was it was relatively inexpensive to some of the others like some of the others have like all kinds of bells and whistles and we’re like we just want this 1 chat on one page and so it does like a it integrates well with slack I’m sure they all do but so we get a slack notification and myself or one of the other team members can just hop in their can the whole conversation can happen in slack. You can also see like we have a couple different versions of our checkout pages. So with a crisp has a good app and so you can get a notification there that you can you know have the chat conversation via your phone and see exactly which page that they’re on so you make sure that you’re answering them correctly. So like we like we may be getting Couple of chats. I don’t know handful a month or you know one to a week. So it’s not like a crazy amount. But again, if you have let’s say, you know, ten of those conversations a month and it causes, you know, two, three, or five of them to buy that may have walked away frustrated otherwise like that

Steve Oh it pays for itself for sure. how much you charging for the group coaching?

Grant: group coaching is currently a, at the time of this recording. It’s 4,000. I’m actually in a couple days. We’re raising it to 5,000.

Steve: So what are your ads look like for that for the live calls and what your conversion rate like once you get someone on the phone?

Grant: Yeah, so so there’s some people who like we’re trying to Target more and more like warm audiences for that. So sometimes it is like straight to book a call and that can be kind of hit and miss the other side of it is we may send someone to like a lead magnet. And as soon as they download the lead Magnet or they do this calculator or something. We’re sending them to some piece of content and then once they engage with the content, then we invite them to book the call. So hopefully they’re you know, it’s semi warmed up but also like just re targeting people who listen to our podcast regularly or come to the site regularly, so I would have to dig in a little bit more than off top of my head like how cold converts historically I’m guessing it’s not going to convert super great and that I’m scrolling through Facebook.

I just came across an ad. I booked a call and you know, I’m offered a I’m interested in speaking. But like I just found out about you guys type of thing. So there’s a side of the other side of is like, you know similar challenges with the webinars is similar challenges with the calls and that we have a lot of no-shows people who booked a call and who are excited and interested at one point and the call happens tomorrow or in two days and they flake out. or like I just kind of want to see what it’s about and not really take it seriously or they’re just kicking tires. So that’s part of it too. Like we we hear a lot of stories from unique people from our enrollment advisors are on the front lines who are like, man, I just had a really weird call with this person you get you know, you get some of those like looky-loos and and tire kickers and that’s you know, it’s also just kind of part of it.

Steve: So are the people making the cause of they compensated on a commission basis?

Grant: Yes. And so I’ve we’ve heard a different people do it different ways. Our people are Straight commission and so on one hand, you’re like well, if you know if they’re not selling then we don’t have any out-of-pocket costs but still since a lot of those leads may come from ads. We still have that hard costs on the ads. The nice thing is when you’re you know, when you have more of a high ticket type of program, then you have potentially more margin with ads. so you can afford to spend more on, you know, getting a booking or getting an are getting an application or getting a lead even. But ultimately like the the sales rep or the enrollment advisor like they’d still got to do a great job close them. or ultimately so going to be costing you more money.

Steve: These enrollment advisors are not the actual people teaching the class though, right?

Grant: Correct. Yep. They’re just purely Frontline enrollment advisors, sales team and then we have different coaches that work with them.

Steve: Wow. So, how big is your team now?

Grant: I think We’ve got 13, 14 people.

Steve: Wow. Okay

Grant: Yeah, give or something like that.

Steve: because the last time I talked to you, I think it was like less than a third of that you had like 3 people maybe

Grant: yeah, I was so the majority of the team is Contractors majority of them are part-time to varying degrees to some would be, you know, 10 hours a week and some are 30, 35 hours a week and probably should be employees and so and everything in between. So I would say cumulatively we’ve got I would guess maybe eight full-time people if you kind of add it all together.

Steve: amazing, amazing. Yeah. So for me personally, I have no desire to have that many people.

Grant: Well, I would say this, okay because I had the exact same thought and again, I think you and I I are very similar and that we don’t have like these we don’t have like these massive aspirations to be like an Elon Musk like seems like a nice guy, cool stuff he’s doing we get to be the beneficiaries of it. But I have zero aspirations to do something like that. Right? No knock on anyone who does that’s that’s great. We need we need to people like that. They come up with cool stuff that Steve and I can use but that I know that that’s not me. That’s not how I’m wired. And so I’ve always kind of felt similar of like you can’t have a low-stress business and you can’t have a lot of freedom and flexibility and autonomy. If you have people the more people you have the more Headaches you have. and sure like there are days where you just like man, it was simpler when it was just kind of a one-man thing.

I have found in my experience so far, that getting the right people on Place doing the right things. It’s actually created more freedom and more autonomy and more flexibility for me. There are some days where it’s busy and there’s a lot going on and I was a lot that I got to do but there’s other days you’re just like I know there’s a lot happening but there’s not a lot for me personally that I’m owning and I’m responsible for that I need to do and I like I think it speaks to this like One thing I know you have talked a little bit about was I took a sabbatical a couple months ago. I took a complete month off from the business and the business is great and part of it was kind of a stress test on the business to say. Okay, we talked with the team about this for months leading up to it. So it wasn’t like hey guys, I’m gonna be out next month. Peace out. Good luck.

It was like we prep for this we let we prepared for this and basically I took a complete month off was not on slack was not on email didn’t attend a single meeting had no communication with the team. I think they texted me once three days in Hey, we can’t find the login for the certain tool and that was it. So it’s a completely hundred percent off line and the business that great like that four-week period was one of the best stretches we had of the year and whenever I got back like we did kind of a debrief and and just kind of a re-evaluating like okay, how did it go? What worked what didn’t work and they’re all like it was kind of business as usual like things went well and so for me it was I don’t want to build another job for myself. I wanted to create something that didn’t depend on me having to show up constantly and be the dancing the dancing monkey.

So that was a very good validation. That one were moving that direction where we’re building something that doesn’t depend on me that the business can function without me and I would not have been able to step away for that long or for the business to do that well. if we didn’t have those right people in place because sure you can have you know, you have you know, your 10 hour a week VA is international and like no knock against that but at some point like you have to have like some solid people and and that also requires some investment but I know like that investment has also reached like significant ROI on that that has impacted the bottom line and thus also impacted me personally financially.

Steve: sure sure. I mean your revenues have gone 3x but your costs have gone up also, but at the expense of your freedom and everything also, its improved your lifestyle.

Grant: yeah, a hundred percent, Yes. So I would definitely agree like we have more people we have more overhead we’d spend more but we also are generating more and I would say that even though the business is bigger than whenever we talked A few years ago, I would say I’m potentially doing less and making more and also know like the you know, the business is just having a bigger impact. So so I’ve always felt the same way that you know, you kind of describe like you can’t have people without headaches and sure there are like there are certainly days like that are some of it is like people they’re just being goobers and you know, we’ve had that hires before but you also like like part of it part of my job is to get the right people on the bus and they’re certainly going to be like things that happen that are outside of your control.

So for example, a key guy this was two or three months ago, a key guy on our team a couple days before Thanksgiving his 16 year old son tragically passed away and so he was out for a month and a half or so understandably. So but so so having to suddenly deal with that and help him kind of deal and cope with that and also balancing like okay, but we’re you know, we are still running a business, but I also want to be extremely sensitive and generous with him. So that’s part of it. But I also know like he also provides a lot of freedom and autonomy for me. Because he of the things that he takes off my plate, you know, so there’s certainly a trade-off.

Steve: Yeah. Absolutely. Hey Grant, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about speaking also for selfish reasons. So I’ve been speaking for many years now. I always speak mostly for free just to hang out the events and I’m very, you know choosy about what I go to if I were to transition to taking a couple of paid speaking roles here and there where would you go if you were me?

Grant: Yeah, so I would start with the book a successful speaker five step is an amazing platform.

Steve: Haha Amazing!

Grant: you definitely want to do that. So basically inside the book we walk through a five step process that makes the acronym speak. And so the first I’d really just I’d walk where it to that ladder. So the first step of it is that the yes select a problem to solve and this is the part that most speakers have the most difficult time with and this is not exclusive to just speakers. But any type of entrepreneur is we think that like, you know, how do I how do I speak to the most people possible? How do I affect the biggest broadest audience possible? So like if if you if we translate this to your world like the e-commerce space, you know, I don’t want to create a widget that’s for a small select group where I’m a big fish in a small pond. I want to create what something for a where I’m a big fish in a huge Pond and I want to reach as many people as possible. But the reality is is like by focusing on this very Niche thing like handkerchiefs. You can do really really really well versus like trying to create something for the masses.

And so the same thing is true with speakers is don’t try to speak on to you know, for speakers who say like, well I speak to humans I speak to people. My message is for everybody was like well then it’s really for nobody or the speaker who’d say well what I speak about what do you want me to speak about I can speak about anything I can speak about, you know, physical products are can speak about leadership or sales or marketing or marriage or parenting it’s like but you can’t. even if you know something about all those things if you try to be an expert on all those things like you just come across as foolish. So one of the things we talk about in the book is that you want to position yourself as the steak house and not the buffet, the steakhouse not the buffet meaning, Steve if you and I were going to go grab a good steak. Like we have a choice we could go to a buffet where steak is one of a hundred things that they offer and they’re all mediocre. We can go to a steakhouse where they do one thing but they do that one thing incredibly incredibly well.

And so that’s what you want to be positioned as a speaker is I do this for this specific audience and this is how I help them versus I try to help as many people as possible through as many ways as possible. And again, it’s counterintuitive because we think the more people I speak to the more things I can talk about the more opportunities I have. But the opposite is the case like the more narrow the more clear the more Niche the more focused I am. the easier it is actually find gigs and find clients. So that’s the hardest part for speakers. If you get that part right then the rest of it becomes actually a lot. Or is just because you feel like but I don’t want to limit myself, but I could do all these other things like yeah sure like if we went to a steakhouse I bet whoever the chef is that they could cook a really good bowl of pasta. I bet they could make really good tacos and I bet they could do really good job with making whatever other things but they say, nope. I could do those things, but we do steak and that’s it.

The same things true like I can speak to in our business for the speaker lab. I know that those who are interested in speaking are also interested in writing a book or publishing or doing a course or doing A coaching or consulting or any number of other things and so we could do all those other things but I know that the more things we try to do the more water down we’d become and so we just say no. No, we do this for this we serve speakers we help them understand how to find a book gigs. And that’s it. Like a couple days ago had a guy message and with some questions about writing and Publishing and that’s and books and he said, oh you have the speaker lab, you should do the author lab and part of me is like, oh that’s kind of cool and part of me is like, nope. Like we’re not going to do all things for all people. We’re going to serve one specific audience with one specific way and By doing so it actually makes it easier to find the right kind of people.

Steve: I just want to let you know that tickets for the 2020 Seller Summit are on sale over at sellersummit.com. Now what is seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that is specifically targeting e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online and unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS. Mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the Seller Summit will be small and intimate every year we cut off ticket sales at just a couple hundred people. So tickets will sell out fast, and in fact, we sell out every single year many months in advance now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250K or 1 million dollars per year, we are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now, the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From May 6 to May 8. And right now, we are almost sold out of Mastermind tickets already and I will be raising the ticket price regularly starting the day after Cyber Monday for more information, go to sellerssummit.com. Once again, that’s SELLERSUMMIT.COM or just Google it. Now back to the show.

Yeah, absolutely specialized. I mean when I think of you I think of you as the Speaker Guy

Grant: exactly.

Steve: right.

Grant: Yeah, and that’s a good like litmus test. So anyone listening like ask your if you have a business ask your you know, your friends family colleagues. What a I am the blank person on the blank guy the blank gal like what what are you? so some people would be like I think of you as you know, you do a lot with e-commerce and you do a lot with physical products and helping people start that that business versus people who are like, let’s see, what do they do? Like, I think they do Physical Products but they may also do some speaking stuff. I think they do something on course and they like they do all everything and nothing and I don’t know what they do and it feels like this kind of flavor of the month kind of bounced around. I think I think a reason that you and I have had some level of success is because we’ve focused not only that we focus on one thing but we focus on one thing for a long period of time like we’ve both been doing pretty much the same thing for years now.

Steve: Yeah, it’s been like a decade now.

Grant: Yeah, it feels like you know, like okay versus like I do this for a little bit and then oh, here’s an opportunity so do that for Six months and I’m like Just Bounce Around versus am like, Man, All I do is this and I’m going to be here for a minute. So if you’re looking for help, here’s the go to because like you said other people like friends colleagues other people in the space start to recognize like yeah Grant’s a go-to guy for speaking versus like I think he does speaking but I think he does a dozen other things and I’m not really sure like, I just don’t want to be lumped into that category.

Steve: So that’s step one is to specialize what’s step 2?

Grant: So the the P is to prepare your talk to prepare you’re talking to me. That like not all talks are created equal and so once you’re clear on on this is who you want to speak to. This is what you want to speak about. How do you put together talk? How you deliver talk even again, if you’re someone who you know, maybe you don’t want to you don’t want to speak a ton. You want to give a few talks here and there but you’re staring at a blank screen going. I know what I speak about and I know what I’ve been hired to speak about but I’ve no idea. How do you put together a good talk how you deliver it? And so that section is all about is talking through how do you how do you create and deliver a great talk.

Steve: What about actually getting the gig?

Grant: mmm, we’ll get there. We’ll get there.

Steve: I want to jump to that now, Grant

Grant: haha I’ll give you the I’ll give you the next one.

Steve: Haha Okay.

Grant: So the E is establish yourself as the expert.

Steve: Okay

Grant: and this is where you have to have two marketing assets. You have to have a website and you have to have a demo video. Okay, if you have to have these things especially if you want to get paid because people need to see some of that type of proof and get a sense of what you speak about before they’re willing to hire you, now

Steve: Make sense.

Grant: it leads us to the a the acquire paid speaking gigs. Now again, like you said, this is the part that people want to skip to but if you bypass all the other steps than you’ve defeated the purpose and you’re going to be backed to square one. So people say like yeah, but I just want to book gigs because like okay, but first you got to get clear on who you speak to what you speak about now as this I’ll speak about whatever I just want to speak. Okay. So what we got to figure out what the talk is about. Are you doing a keynote or Workshop or seminar or break out a woody? I just want to speak. Okay. What about your website, video? I don’t need those things. I just want to speak. Okay, we have to have these things as foundational pieces before we get to the part on how to actually find a gig.

So a couple thoughts on actually finding gigs. One, is make sure everyone in your sphere of influence knows that your speaker and knows what it is that you speak about all of them your family friends colleagues cousins uncles enemies anybody and everybody. the reason is you may be thinking like but none of those people book speakers, that’s fine. Most of them probably don’t but they may know someone who does and you have to put it on their radar that this is something that you do in the same way that I personally as Grant I want to be on Steve’s radar as someone who helps people with speaking gigs because Steve may not be looking for a speaker, but he may know someone who is looking for a speaker that I could be a good fit for. I need to make sure that Steve knows that this is what I do versus again going back to like well, I don’t really know what Grant does or I’m not really sure how well I didn’t even realize he’s a speaker like no. No, I like I want to make sure that anyone in my Spear of influence knows that this is something that I do and you need to be able to do the same.

The other thing then is that you can see several things you can do to actually go about finding gigs one of the things that work really well that doesn’t cost a lot other than just time is using Google. There are a lot of events that are already looking for speakers. You don’t have to try to commit like you for example you are you still doing your annual Conference?

Steve: Yeah

Grant: and it’s like in the physical product space, right?

Steve: it is. Yes.

Grant: What’s it called? Remind me

Steve: It’s called Sellers Summit

Grant: Sellers Summit, and you’ve done it three years? Four years?

Steve: It’s our fifth year

Grant: Fifth year, my goodness. You’re a legend. Okay, so you have Seller Summit year after year after year. So let’s imagine for example. I am someone who teaches, you know, Facebook advertising for physical people in the physical products business, right? I don’t have to convince you to hire a speaker. You’re already planning on hiring speaker. Probably multiple speakers for seller Summit. I’m showing you why I’m a good fit. So if I’m if the core thing that I I can speak about is running Facebook ads for selling physical for a physical products business. Then I’m probably speaking on something that’s a natural fit for your audience. So again, I’m just showing like why I’m a good fit for your event.

So what I would want to do in that situation then is you can spend a few minutes just kind of browsing on Google and looking for events that you would be a good fit for so, you know physical products businesses or a conferences rather or e-commerce conferences or those type of events that are naturally looking for speakers that you would be a good fit for. and then beginning to reach out and have conversations with them. So that can be very effective connecting and networking with other speakers can be very effective as well. I remember like my first year. My first full-time year is a speaker. I remember looking back and trying to reverse engineer like okay. I got a bunch of bookings. Where do these booking come from? And my biggest source of gigs came from other speakers came from referrals came from Word of Mouth came from hey, I can’t do this gig, but you should talk to Steve. Steve would do a great job for you.

So building relationships with other speakers makes a big difference. So it’s not necessarily like a All right about a website. I got my video. I’m clear on who I speak to. I know what my talks about now just sit back and wait for the phone to ring or the bookings to come in. Like it doesn’t work like that like speaking as a momentum business and you have to do something to kick start that momentum. I would I would guess I’m just kind of speculating here. It’s kind of like if you are launching a new physical product on Amazon like just listening on Amazon does squat for you. Like it’s a very much a momentum thing that you have to do a few things to build the momentum to get some initial reviews to get some initial traction to get the word going and then it starts to like it can take on a life of its own. But you it’s easier to sell product after it’s been out on the market for a year and you’ve got some traction but it still takes a little bit initially to get going and to keep it going in the long run.

Grant: Yeah, it probably involves doing a bunch of free gigs early on too, right? to get your name out there.

Grant: I mean it can like I don’t know that there’s necessarily so when people say like, you know should you do free gigs or free gigs a good thing or a bad thing? I always say like speaking for free is okay as long as you know why you’re doing it. Don’t just do it out of the goodness of your heart just because you like speaking. Like you and I like helping people we like serving people but we’re also running a business. And so you have to recognize that and realize that so realize though that there are a lot of ways that you can receive value Beyond just whether or not you got a check. That’s the most common way is I go speak I click to check end of transaction, but there’s a lot of ways that you can get value for your speaking that don’t involve a check.

So for example you and I have if we’re offering some type of like, you know product or service or coaching or consulting or book or something and we know like okay if I’m gonna go speak for free, but I’m going to generate significant leads for my business or help in other ways. Like I can think for example, you know, I have both we both spoke at fincon several times. Big conference for financial people in the financial space. And the first time that I spoke there I didn’t get paid a dime, you know, you’re headed there on your own dime and so on paper, I’m losing money, but I remember like okay we had several people who joined our courses with several people who join some coaching stuff so I can trace like thousands of dollars in Revenue to that event, even though I didn’t get paid by the event Organizer so recognize it again. There’s a lot of ways that you can generate Revenue that’s beyond just whether or not you got a check at that event.

Steve: Cool. Well said. Tell me about your book. When’s it coming out? What’s it about?

Grant: The book is out February 18th. The book is called the successful speaker five steps for booking gigs getting paid building your platform. And so there’s certainly some people who are listening to say. Hey, I want to be a full-time speaker. I want to do 60 70 gigs a year or more and that’s awesome. That’s great. The book will show you how and other people who’d say again, like yourself, say, I don’t I don’t want to do that much but I wouldn’t mind doing five a gigs a year 10 gigs year, but I’m just having trouble figuring out how to actually find those and again, how do I know what to speak about? How do I know if my topic is something that people actually higher speakers to talk about? How much should I charge? And like just the ins and outs of the speaking World.

In addition to the, you know, the sections on putting together and creating and delivering a great talk and the you know, what you need to think about when you’re preparing a talk when you’re crafting a talk when you’re studying rehearsing and going over your talk, whether you should use slides how you do a technology, how you interact with an audience like all these just nuances to speaking of whether you’re speaking once or a hundred times that you want to do a good job, you want to deliver you want to be professional and that the book will show you exactly how to do that.

Steve: and we talked a lot about webinars and that sort of thing where can people just kind of find a sample of what we were talking about today?

Grant: Yeah, everything that we do is over at thespeakerlab.com. thespeakerlab.com. You can poke around through, if you wanted to book a call if you if you do book a call just like poke around not planning on showing, just cancel it that will help us out.

Steve: Can you ask for a grant or no?

Grant: I am not doing any calls these days.

Steve: ha ha

Grant: and then also there’s going to be some different Opt-ins for the webinar. So people want to kind of poke around that. you hop on our email list probably a few weeks later or fairly soon will invite you to a live webinar. And so you can you can see that. So yeah, that’s that’s not a problem. And again, I would say I would also say to go back and I still regularly Point people to the previous interview. We did a couple years ago on webinars because that’s that’s the most like in-depth nuts and bolts. I’ve talked about our webinars before so definitely go back and listen to that episode as well.

Steve: Cool. Well Grant, I really appreciate your time and thanks for coming on the show.

Grant: Steve, always good to chat with you, my friend.

Steve: Yeah, man. Take care.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. I actually have grants book right in front of me right now. And it is a great read if you have any remote interest in public speaking whatsoever. And in fact, I believe that public speaking is a required skill for all entrepreneurs. For more information about this episode. Go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode294.

And once again I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode, Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo. Once again, That’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo.

I also want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use the term visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture exit intent and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it is so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied your eCommerce store. Now, if you want to give it a try it is free so head on over to privy.com/steve. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve.

Now I talked about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store heading over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com