Transcript
Steve Gordon: Welcome to The Unstoppable CEO podcast. I’m your host, Gordon. Today we’ve got a fantastic interview. I think if you’re in a position where you’re selling something that is more than a couple of bucks, and you’re selling a high ticket and you need clients, then this particular episode is going to be for you. So get ready to take some notes.
Today I’m talking with Schumacher, and Jon is a revenue growth strategist, a webinar specialist and an online marketing consultant. His clients have earned over $10 million using webinars and online strategies, and he’s the president of Marketing Mastery Media Inc. They’re a digital marketing consultancy that’s focused on helping coaches, consultants and service providers attract and enroll high end clients using automation and organic marketing systems.
This is going to be a fun interview because I think Jon and I have a lot of a similar thinking and it’s going to be a lot of fun to dive in. Jon, here what you’ve got that’s unique in this situation. I think it’s going to be a great interview for everyone. So Jon, welcome to The Unstoppable CEO.
Jon Schumacher:Steve, I am excited. Thank you for having me. Honored and love the work you’re doing for your clients and community too. So hopefully I can add a little bit of sauce to the good stuff you’re already cooking.
Gordon:Oh, I have no doubt about that. I have no doubt about that. So give everybody a little bit of background beyond the bio. How’d you get to this stage of being a webinar and marketing expert?
Schumacher:Yeah, boy, we could talk for a while on this. I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. I don’t have the traditional business background. I was actually a physical therapist. I was a healthcare provider before I got into marketing and all this online stuff. I was one of maybe a handful of physical therapists who started creating content on this newer platform called YouTube. This was about 10, 12 years ago. I started shooting little videos and creating content in my clinic and started selling courses, and eBooks back when that was still a thing on how to fix your back and how to address your shoulder pain and things like that.
So that was my first experience into this digital online world. I actually had one of the first live stream interview shows interviewing healthcare entrepreneurs. This was several years ago back when Google Hangouts and things like that were brand new. So I love marketing and I love this new media stuff. I fell in love with it. After doing it in the health care arena for a while I decided that my true passions were in marketing and because I had learned all these strategies and tactics and built this community, I decided I wanted to help other people share their message and use some of these newer strategies.
So I pivoted from a healthcare focus into more of a marketing focus. I had one of the leading online training programs around how to use live video in Google Hangouts. This was over five years ago, and started selling that program on webinars with JV Partners and did that whole thing for a while. And it sold really well because it was a fresh new item.
I learned all about how to make sales presentations, and work with clients, and all that stuff. Then from there, after doing several webinars, started teaching webinars. So I pivoted into that space, hosted two online summits. We had about 8,000 people attend those and created a program and a course on that, started selling that as a course.
Then these last couple of years, I’ve been less focused on selling information products and more into services and consulting high ticket, big ticket stuff, $10,000, $30,000 type stuff. That’s been my focus the last couple years is really working with experts, and consultants, and people on how to increase revenue in their business. Webinars are certainly my specialty. Like if you put “Schumacher” into Google, you’ll see a bunch of stuff on that, or put “webinar coach” into Google, I think I’m at the top of Google most of the time on a lot of those type of things. But beyond that, I enjoy helping experts, coaches, people like that, build a tribe, build a brand, get in front of their ideal clients. I just love all that stuff.
Dealing With the Unknowns That Come With Reinvention
Gordon: That’s awesome. So it sounds like you’ve had a few different reinventions as you’ve gone through your career. Those aren’t ever easy because when you’re going from one thing that really well, to something new, there’s all of this transition that you go through where you know this first area and you know what you have. And you go into this unknown. When you’re dealing with those sorts of changes, how do you keep going? How do you push through? As you’ve done that, what are the things that you found that really helped you stay persistent through all of that?
Schumacher:Yeah. Well, I think it’s probably cliché to say, and we can dig deeper on specific mindset things if you’d like here in a moment. But for me, it’s just I’m a hugely motivated person to continue to have freedom and independence in my life. I’m a big personal development nut, so I think I’m very internally motivated, and selfishly motivated in lot of ways, to maintain my own freedom and not work a job. That was really my motivation initially was I wanted to leave my practice and things like that.
So having a big why, a big internal motivation, will keep you persistent because you’re going to fail a lot. I always tell a lot of my tribe, “Look, in life, most things don’t work out. Most first dates don’t end in marriage. Most business ideas or products that you launched fail.” In many cases I’ve had more failures than I have successes along my way. More bad ideas than good ideas. But I think all of us get punched in the mouth. All of us get knocked down, but it’s not those that get punched in the mouth. I mean, we’re all going to get that if you’re out there creating art. Or entrepreneurship, or whatever. It’s how fast can you get up off the ground? How fast can you get back on your path?
Well, you may need to quit certain smaller ideas along the journey because they just were bad ideas. You shouldn’t quit your overall dream, and motivation, and vision. Mine has been very internally focused on … Part of it’s ego, part of it’s a personal desire to maintain my own freedom. Part of it is a desire to make an impact while I’m here on this earth.
Gordon:It’s interesting. I think your first person that’s shared that particular take on this that, that it’s how fast you get back up after you’ve gone through something that didn’t work. I hate even to use the word failure because for those of us who are running businesses, most of the time it’s not utter abject failure. I mean, it’s that whatever we were doing just flat didn’t work and that’s okay. What do you now do next?
But I think you’re absolutely right. This idea that the faster you can get back into action, the easier it is to go through all of those challenges.
Schumacher:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think of like Thomas Edison who failed apparently 10,000 times before he got the light bulb. I think you have to have enough internal motivation, because most people will take one or two punches in the face, they roll over and quit. You’re going to take a lot of punches in the arena if you want to be a thought leader, like a lot of your audience I assume. If you’re a coach or consultant and you want to differentiate yourself from the masses of others, you should become a bit of a thought leader, a bit of a content creator in creating programs for your clients.
You’re going to fail sometimes. You’re going to do a webinar. It’s not going to convert. You’re going to do a launch. It’s not going to work as well as you like. I’ve failed “failed” at a lot of things, but you just take it in the chin, you get back up, you dust yourself off. And if your internal motivation is strong enough, you’ll keep going. I could take an infinite number of punches I feel like in my face. I’m sure you feel the same way in a lot of ways. We bled in the streets, so to speak in this world and it just toughens you up. That’s just a requirement if you want to do something special.
Gordon: Yeah. At least once. Well, I want to take a quick break. I want to come back and I want to talk about webinars and dive in to how you’re using them with your clients, where you see them fitting in the overall marketing mix for people. So we’re going to be right back. We’re going to take a short break and we’ll be back with more from Schumacher.
Hey everyone, welcome back. It’s Gordon. And I’m talking with Schumacher, and Jon, where we left off was really getting into the conversation around webinars. I’m curious, how did you gravitate towards helping people with webinars, given your background and courses and other things? What was it about webinars that you thought was just particularly useful for your clients?
Recognizing When It’s Time to Pivot Your Business
Schumacher:Yeah, well part of it was a desire to … Because I had done them myself. I started doing a lot of them. I was getting good enrollment rates and stuff from the webinars. Part of it was a necessary pivot for me going from like Mr. Google Hangout, which is what I was for a period of time. I wrote a book on it, and had a course on it, and all that stuff. I could see the writing on the wall. So part of it was a pivot out of necessity to keep the flow going and selfishly keep my business going. Plus I also saw that people wanted to learn this thing, they wanted to use it more, and they were scared, or nervous, or a lot of people just weren’t doing it well.
So I just saw a bit of an opportunity for myself to do something I had figured out how to do, felt that I knew well, and that I could continue to help other people and continue my own online business, and my independence, and stuff like that. So part of it was just selfish motivation of, “I think this is something that will sell, and I think there’s something people could benefit from.” I didn’t want to just hang my hat on it on a temporary tactic. I wanted to broaden out a little bit.
Gordon:Well, one of the things that I particularly like about webinars is while it’s a new delivery mechanism, the strategy is as old as, as humanity. Anytime you had somebody stand up in front of two other people and try and convince them of anything, you were having a webinar, a presentation, whatever you want to call it. To me, that’s one of the really magical things about webinars as a medium is now you can do that worldwide.
I’ll never forget, I used to, my first business, we’d go around and do the dog and pony show and give seminars, and workshops, and speeches, and all this stuff. We were pretty limited in the number of people that we could impact. It was still better not doing them, but I do a webinar now, and I’m sure you do webinars now, where you have people dialing in from all over the world and it’s astonishing. I think some people maybe take it for granted if you haven’t lived in both of those worlds, but it still blows me away.
Schumacher:Yeah, it’s true. I’m probably one of those people who take it for granted because I wasn’t in marketing as long as you’ve been with those days. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. We can communicate and it’s basically … We can define webinar however you want. It’s basically just a virtual presentation stage that allows you to sell, or teach, there’s a variety of different types of “webinars” that you can use. Some more broad markets, some smaller, more intimate. There’s a lot of ways to use webinars in your marketing or virtual presentations to build rapport and enroll more clients.
The tools will shift and change over time as they have, but I think as you pointed out, the idea of using, audio video to build rapport and make offers will still be around either in the future, even if we’re using holograms or I don’t know what the next best thing is, VR, whatever we’re going to do next. The core strategies behind the human nature of it will, will be evergreen.
Gordon:Yeah, and I think that’s something that makes it so powerful. So I get questions sometimes from some of our subscribers when they ask about webinars, and there are so many webinars out there that are selling an information product, a course, or whatever. Then I think service providers see those, they try and mimic the structure or the tactic that’s used on those. Is there a difference between how you would structure a successful webinar to sell maybe a product that’s got pretty hard offer at the end, and how you would advise one of your clients to structure it if they’re selling a service, does it matter?
Schumacher:It does, yeah. It’s a little different model. So if you’re selling a course for $997 or something … I have a client right now I’m working with on optimizing his funnel. He’s doing about $100,000 a month to X ROAS on his ad spend just selling a $997 course. So we’re talking about other ways to optimize that funnel in this or that. It looks fairly different, I would say, than if you’re just looking to enroll clients, like big ticket clients, where you get them from a webinar to a conversation, and from their potential working relationship. I think … Oh what do they call it? The ladder that I just described, if you’re looking to book a call, I call them book a call funnels or application funnels.
Much more simple, can often be a shorter presentation. In fact, it’s often preferred, because a lot of those folks you’re looking for bigger ticket clients, they’re usually people who have more money than time sometimes. So we don’t want them to sit through a 75 minute webinar structure as much. Versus if you’re selling a course or something like that. There is a different presentation structure in many cases, as well as a different follow up, and delivery method, and things like that, that you would want to use.
I personally, at this point in my career, like the book a call funnels, because I tend to like to work more with less but better people and higher ticket stuff. But there are some people out there still doing the course funnel model and it’s not necessarily … There’s nothing wrong with either of those. It’s just depends on your brand, and philosophy, and those kind of things, but I don’t know how much of a nerd out you want to do on the specifics of those two different types of funnels. But feel free if you have any other questions.
Gordon: Let’s dive in.
Schumacher:I could talk forever on that stuff.
Getting Butts in Seats for Your Webinars
Gordon: Yeah, well I know everybody … The vast majority of the folks listening are going to be wondering, “Well, how can I book more people onto a call? I sell something that’s probably intangible, and I need to get people educated enough so that when they’re talking to me, they’re prepared.” So if you think about creating that sort of process, what are some of the key things that that are important?
Schumacher:Yeah, absolutely. So obviously webinar’s a one to many tool, so you’ll need a list of people. Email still works better than social media. You can use bots or whatever. It depends on how many people want to go with the newer tactics, but you’ll need a way to obviously send people to the webinar to sign up. As far as the strategy, if your goal is to book clients, there’s a few different overall strategies that I think are effective.
One, you could sell the webinar as almost like almost like a trip wire type offering and do what my friend Brad Constanza calls a “compression session,” which is basically like a two hour teaching session where you just educate these people. Then at the end of that, there’s a soft call to action to apply the fee they paid for that webinar to a deeper coaching or consulting program. That can work well.
Another way to do it is just to have smaller, intimate webinars like board room meetings basically with high ticket clients where maybe you send out an email, they respond, say they want the link. You qualify them a little bit with some back and forth conversation via email, and then if they seem qualified, you give them a link, they show up. Maybe you do a little presentation about your offering to 10, 12 people, and four or five of them decide to work with you.
Beyond that, if you want to do a bigger presentation to your list, let’s say you want 100 people on there to look at a presentation and those kind of things. Yeah, I mean you can get a hundred a hundred or so people on there, do some more traditional webinar stuff, kind of like teaching, but teaching away objections and shifting beliefs and all those kinds of things. Then at the end of that, webinar, you can offer a call with them, that kind of thing.
So part of it is being able to get enough people to the webinar, because it is a one to many tool. If you can’t get people there, one to many, you’re stuck, right? It’s not as effective. So having a list of a way to distribute your webinar, and then having an initial strategy of what the “funnel’s” going to look like, then a good incentive to book a call with you. If you want to get into the specifics of how to structure a more traditional application funnel, webinar, we can talk about that, but I don’t know. There’s, there’s some value in what I shared there I think. It’s just a matter of what’s the strategy? I’ve used all of those effectively.
Gordon: Well, what I really took out of those last few comments was that a webinar isn’t one thing. I think most people, when they think of it, they think, “I’m going to try and put 100 or a 1,000 people, whatever, pick a number, on this thing and it’s going to be like I’m in front of a room. And it could be like that. I’m in front of a fairly big room. Right? It could be like that, but what I heard you say is that there are other formats that can also work effectively.
So one of the things that as I listened to you, it sounded to me like you were describing almost like an executive or a CEO round table sort of webinar where you maybe present a little bit, but then there’s a lot of interaction with a small group of people. That could be one way to go. I think there was one other format that you mentioned before that, but really folks, I think that the takeaway here is you can be very creative with it, particularly with some of the technology that’s available today. You can take a lot of the things you might have done offline and now bring them online and still be very, very effective. Is that where you see things heading in the future?
Schumacher:Yeah, I do, and it just depends on your philosophy. If most people are on here are service providers or consultants and people like that, you probably want to work with what, maybe no more than 15 to 30 clients maybe. Depends on how much leverage you want versus the all that kind of stuff. But you don’t need a massive, massive group of people when you have a good offer that’s priced well, that’s strategically available to help you. I’ve been doing more percentage deals and stuff like that, and getting a piece of the lift with my clients.
So you don’t need a gazillion clients, and you don’t have to follow the traditional click funnels webinar thing or whatever. You don’t have to do that stuff. I know a lot of people … I was just meeting with a client before this interview today actually in person out here in Reno, and he’s very adverse a lot of that stuff. I’m like, “Look man, you don’t have to do that. Let’s look at this, look at this strategy.”
So we mapped out a strategies like, “Oh my God, yeah.” I’m like, “It’s simple, but it works. There’s a lot to be said about using these kind of tools just to create little conversations with people. A lot of times, your best buyers don’t want to go through all that crap. They want somebody who’s real on the other end who they can talk to, and they’re willing to pay good money for that. You can use a webinar however you’d like. The traditional thinking is you need to get as many people as you can on there and that’s still works.
It’s just having a good strategy in place, if that makes sense. You don’t have to do that model, and you don’t have to be the cheesy snake oil salesman either. I know a lot of people are allergic to sales, and webinars, and things like that. I’ve shifted a lot. I’ve tried the salesy stuff where I tried different people’s stuff. The more I do this and the more I go along my career, the more of a simpleton I’ve become.
I just want to have good conversations with people who have the ability, that are fairly successful already, who have some assets we can utilize together, and then just build on.
Gordon: Yeah, sometimes I think we make it more complicated than it really is. Getting back to the basics often works. So I know one of the other things you’re working on is working with folks on the enrollment side of things. I’m sure that probably includes webinars to get people to the conversation, but talk a little bit about what you’ve got coming up related to enrollment.
Schumacher: Yeah. So you mean the pilot program I’m going to be putting out?
Gordon: Yeah.
Schumacher:Yeah, so I appreciate that. Thanks for asking. Later this, this fall I’m going to be … Obviously I niche into webinars, and that’s sort of my thing. I don’t think everybody needs to have one right away. I think it can be part of the solution or part of the ways to get in front of people. So I’m piloting a group for experts, consultants, coaches who are making, I’d say high five to mid six figure, who have a bit of a list, a bit of an audience that they feel like they probably could be using better.
My goal will be to help them add $100,000 to their business in under six months. So what we’re going to do to get there is going to be one, to optimize or create a big ticket offer. So it could be a five, 10, 20, $30,000 plus offer. Then help them generate leads for that offer, and ultimately enroll them into the process. I’m a big 80/20 thinker. I call it 95/ 5 thinking.
The Client Acquisition Triangle
And if you want a picture a triangle for client acquisition, and effective client acquisition, at the top of that, at the peak of that triangle would be your offer. Now having a well-structured, well-positioned offer is so important, and people don’t give that enough credit or enough time. Then at the lower left hand part of the triangle is lead generation, which everybody wants more leads, more leads. Then in the bottom right hand corner is enrollment.
So a lot of people can generate leads, but they don’t know how to enroll them, or effectively follow up, and those kinds of things. So I’m teaching all three of those. I’m helping people optimize or craft a high end offer. I’m helping them generate leads, and I look at lead generation as three parts. One is your personal assets, like your email list. Two is partnerships or referrals. Three is using paid traffic when appropriate.
Then finally, once you get those people on a call or in an enrollment conversation with you, how do you go through that process, and how do you follow up to enroll more clients? So that will be the focus. Turning those three screws, I feel, is the 5% that gives you the 95% results, instead of focusing on ultra-ninja flashy tactics. A lot of it is just the fundamentals.
Gordon: Absolutely, and I tell you, one of the things that I think holds so many people back is that they just dabble in all these different sales and marketing strategies and techniques. They never really get good at anything. And I love it that you’re focusing on just a few things that are going to move the needle.
Schumacher:I’m a simple man. Look, I’m a funnel guy. I’ve geeked out on funnels. We could go super, super deep on that stuff. And I do, do that with some of my clients who have funnels. But yeah, it’s a waste of time for a lot of professionals and service providers. They’re just not doing the basics. Like the gentleman I was speaking to today, he’s got all these amazing partnerships.
I’m like, “Well, have you ever done a presentation to their audience?” “Well, no.” “Why not?” He’s got a list of about 6,000 relevant leads. And I’m like, “Well, when’s the last time you made an offer to them to work together?”
“Well, I really have … It’s amazing out there how many experts, they have all this low hanging fruit sitting right in front of their nose. They just don’t know how to use it, or they either mental hang ups, or they just don’t have a simple strategy, or they get caught up in trying to figure out all this minutiae. Those are the people I actually want to work with, as long as they’re coachable.
I don’t necessarily want to just work with the Internet marketer and crowd, or the Facebook newsfeed ad, make $10k in 10 days kind of thing. I want to work with the experts who have assets, but they just need help with marketing and sales. And they’re good people, they care about their clients. And there’s a lot of people out there that are like … There’s this big world outside of the bubble of Facebook chest pumping that is pretty, it’s pretty exciting. So those are actually the people I want to work with more and more, are those folks.
Gordon: It’s funny, the old make $10,000 in 10 days, seems to only work for the person selling to make $10,000 in 10 days system, and the ones who will then copy it, rip it off, and try and sell it themselves. You and I both have friends that sell the LinkedIn marketing. Same thing with them, they’ll say, “Well, you can do this amazing thing on LinkedIn and get clients, and follow my process.” The fundamental disconnect, which it sounds like you’re addressing, is that, in any kind of sales, the two most important decisions are, who are you selling to and what are you offering that they want?
And so many of the marketing tactics just gloss over the importance of that. They might talk about ideal client or something like that, but offer is one that’s really difficult to solve. Most businesses have their offer, and sometimes it is like moving Heaven and earth to get the offer to change. Most of the time, either there, or in their definition of their ideal client, is where the entire problem is. So it sounds like you’re tackling that.
Schumacher:Yeah, that’s the first and most important thing. It’s like the tip of the triangle. Yeah, look, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve had wild ideas that I thought someone wanted that didn’t. I’ve even done that recently. So we all get caught up in our own ideas, but I think you’re right. One is, we’re not really truly clear on what that person wants in the language they use to describe that in the messaging.
I think a lot of people, particularly in high ticket or big ticket sales, they make it too hard for a person who’s not a close person to you, to start a working relationship with you. I know Jay Abraham was big on this. I talked with a number of people as well who are very intelligent, and one of the things I love to geek out on is offer structure, particularly for B2B professionals. Because I think a lot of us, we just make it too hard for people to want to work with us.
These are people that … If it’s somebody you know or it’s like a super fan, you could just say, “Here’s my big thing buy it.” Okay, but most people, like it for me, I get a lot of inbound leads from Google or YouTube. They watched some of my content or they’ve went through my website a bit, maybe read it, watched a few videos or whatever. But they still don’t know me deeply. They still see me, even though they’re interested in what I might have, there’s still a bit of rapport. There’s an uneasiness there of course.
Sitting on the Same Side of the Table as Your Prospect
What I’ve learned, even more recently is, how can I make it easier for people to say, yes? How can I sit on the same side of the table with them instead of being me versus them, kind of jockeying for a sale? How can I sit on the same side of the table? And the key distinction is with the right clients. One of my mentors told me, “Jon, it’s not always what you do, but it’s who you do it with that makes the difference in your business.” I’ve really taken that to heart recently and particularly this past year.
Gordon: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think that may be the perfect point to end this interview on because … Folks, that probably some of the best advice you’ll hear on this podcast. So Jon, before we wrap up, any final thoughts, or can you share maybe where folks can connect with you? What’s the best place for them to find you?
Schumacher:Yeah, final thoughts for me as somebody … Take it from a squirrel brained kid who did all this fancy stuff, and I’ve burned and wasted a ton of time. Focus on what Steve teaches, and smart people like him. Focus on the fundamentals: your offer, your messaging, make it easy for people to say yes to start a relationship, have a strong entry offer. Focus on basic lead generation stuff.
I think the fundamentals are important, and networking I think is even going to be more important in the future. Not that it isn’t, and or it’s always been, but as CPC costs for ads go up, platforms shift and change having good relationships in your business is never going to change. So the fundamentals I think are everything and. So I would just, for everybody listening, focus on that, learn from the smart people like Steve who … By the way, I love your book on referrals and your follow up stuff. You’ve got some really great fundamental stuff there. I love that.
Gordon: Thank you.
Schumacher:Thank you to you for not being a peddler of the flashy tactic, and actually teaching the fundamentals. As far as where they can find more about me. My name is Schumacher. You can just go to Jonschumacher.com, my website. There’s a lot of resources on there. There’s a free guide. If you go to Jonschumacher.com/conversion, you can get on my email list and get a free webinar guide out of that. Yeah, my name is spelled J-O-N. So no H. So J-O-N, and then my last name is Schumacher, S-C-H-U-M-A-C-H-E-R. Almost everybody spells both my first and last name wrong, so hopefully that helps.
Gordon: That’s great. We’ll link all of that up in the show notes and Jon’s got a great video on his homepage that talks about a little more in depth on Webinar structure and his approach. So definitely worth watching that. Jon, thanks for investing some time with me. This has been really a lot of fun and I know we’ve shared some great stuff with everyone listening, so thanks for being here.
Schumacher:Steve, I appreciate you thinking of me and I appreciate you having me on.
Gordon: Absolutely.
