How Nate Smith Grew His Business 8x In One Year

In this episode, we chat with Nate Smith. Nate is pretty new to the entrepreneur game yet was able to 8x his business in a SINGLE year. We talk about exactly how he did that, what he learned through his experience and so much more!

Resources Mentioned

http://www.8020marketingguy.com/jeremy/

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone, Jeremy Reeves here back with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today I have on the line, Nate no name. I was actually just doing his intro and forgot his last name for a second. So sorry about that Nate.

Nate Smith: Yeah, I think, actually I am going to go with that, it is probably better for SEO.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, right. Nate no name. So his name is Nate Smith and Nate is a former professional musician who decided to get into online business 4 years ago. He launched his first successful product in January of last year, 2015, and since doing that has grown his profits 8 times over the course of basically of last year.

So now since he has got that experience actually doing it for himself, he decided to help other entrepreneurs kind of do the same thing and earn more from their existing audiences typically by improving conversion rates of their funnels, kind of like what I do.

So Nate has worked with authors such as Taylor Pearson, author of The End of Jobs and he also works with a lot of startups.

So we are going to get in to all that, but before we do, Nate you know, welcome to the show and tell everybody a little bit more about yourself and a little bit about your story.

Nate Smith: Yeah, thanks so much for having me and hopefully this would not devolve into me just picking your brain for an hour because I am a little bit star struck at the moment. I am talking to the man. I am talking to the conversion rate guy.

So yeah, my journey is -- as Jeremy said, I was a professional musician and you know, 5 or 6 years ago I decided that I was sick of working a day job and sick of kind of playing in the same stand box as everybody else, like I had an inkling that everyone was competing for pieces of a shrinking pie, but I did not exactly know what to do yet and then through some friends and through a couple of books I read, I learned about entrepreneurship. I learned that this was a thing and I was still kind of skeptical about it, so I had read 4 Hour Work Week and then I was actually at that time considering applying to Stern Business School because I was working a day job at NYU and I am like, you know what, this whole entrepreneur stuff sounds pretty scammy, but let me just try it like an experiment and then even if it goes totally (inaudible 2:31.4) and still right about it as a case study to apply to business school.

And about 2 months in I was like, hang-on a second, this might be a thing and by the end of the first 6 months, I was like, yeah, there is no way I am spending money for business school after this.

But it was still another 3 years before I actually saw like money coming into my bank account in a really validating way like 4 figures just boom overnight in my back account and then you know, finally I could pay off the credit cards and it is maybe the one time in my life when the actual experience has paid off in the way that I have been anticipating for it to pay off, you know how things are, it is like you think, yeah, when I get up to this plateau, that will be amazing in the (inaudible 3:21.8) it was not really all that.

So I wanted other people to feel that way so I have definitely been super bullish on turning around and helping other people get their businesses started, so you know, I am a member of a few networking groups and over the course of 2015, I was growing my business and I was trying all these things with my primary business with my course to like grow my profits.

So I had realized first of all that traffic growth was just going to be a long haul, like it was going to be a slow you know, careful strategy, it was going to be content, it was going to be all these other things, but the thing at my disposal, the thing that I had control over was conversion rate.

So just by like changing an email sequence or writing a better sales page or you know, here is a shocker, asking people why they did not buy things. I could make interventions to my business that would in the course of like 2 weeks, cause like multiplicative effect

So it all kind of came into my head at the beginning of this year when I have been blogging about it and writing about it on the entrepreneur forums and one of my friends who has startup called Bobsled Marketing which helps founders get the products on Amazon and by the way she is booming up now. She is like, she is on track to hit 7 figures this year which is amazing, but she hired me to help her with her funnel, I was like, wow.

So could this be a thing and then you know, 6 to 9 months later and a handful of clients later this is kind of what I do now. This is what I am doubling down on.

So it has been a super quick journey from successful solopreneur to conversion consultant and I tried to be humble and realistic about what I actually really know and that has been a lesson. It is like what can I guarantee that I will be able to do for you and just you know, continuing to learn but also like fine honing that deliverable further consulting clients.

So within the realm of the things that I have direct experience with and you know, can fairly well guarantee that they will get value from.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know, and that is a good plan. I mean always, I always -- in fact, I actually just send out a proposal this morning to a guy, Torquhil if you are listening, Hi, how are you, but you know, it is Torquhil, I have never even asked him how to pronounce it. I am going to have to, but anyway, so I was talking to him, I do not know, last week or the week before about you know, kind of us working together and that kind of thing and I was kind of explaining to him that when I work with people -- that is what I do like I always look for, okay, what can I -- because there is you know, it is marketing, it is not you know, in most cases, you cannot say, okay, I am going to do this and it is 100% absolutely guaranteed going to work you know what I mean.

A lot of times like me and you with paid traffic, a lot of times you think that thing is bad ass, it is going to blow up out of the water and then you launch it and it just does not, you know (inaudible 6:47.1) face.

In most cases, there are parts that work, parts that do not work and overall, it either works or it does not work you know what I mean, and but I was you know, when I am working with clients too is like okay, there is going to be all this stuff and my first kind of thought in my head when I am working with some new is how do I get them. They are going to pay me X amount of dollars, just say, whatever $10 or $5 or $20 or whatever it is you know, just say $10, so alright, they are paying me $10, how do I like get that back to them as soon as humanly possible you know what I mean.

And that is just you know, working with people, I would definitely recommend looking at that way like you just said, like you know, what can you do that is going to get them kind of like a guaranteed result you know what I mean and sometimes you can set up your service where the whole services like that and then other times in our case like a conversion rate optimization, it is you know, not every test wins you know what I mean.

I just had let us see from (inaudible 7:48.6) there are 2 failures in a row and then the third one won you know what I mean, but it is just you know, you have to look at it as more of an overall kind of thing and then if you know, if it does not work, then you do the right thing and you know, and kind of keep going until it does get them the result you know what I mean, but yeah, sometimes it takes some testing you know.

So like with that in mind, with the whole like testing and things do and do not work and it takes a while sometimes and all that, let us go back to your success like when you grew your business you know, you were doing certain things you know in the beginning and you could kind of tell us of what things were not working in the beginning and then you know so when you grew it that much last year, you know, what were some of the things that did and also did not work as you were growing like that.

Nate Smith: Yeah, 100%. So between the unsuccessful products I launched and the first successful one, there were 2 things that work. Number 1 was building a content platform and in this case it was Youtube and for different verticals it is going to be a different thing. I think for a lot of business-related verticals it is still probably blogging, but so I had that kind of cache of trust and then the second thing was simple validation.

So I know there are a lot of people like Ryan Levesque, who just test this down to (inaudible 9:13.3) but you do not necessarily need to be that scientific about it. I really just had a list big enough of people who already trusted me from my content and surveyed them about what it was that they wanted. What needs they have that I was not filling and I got an email that was kind of like the golden nugget which is the thing that I now like, I always hope for with clients because it is sort short cuts the whole process and if you heard it a few times so much the better but it was an email that said, why are you wasting your time trying to build X for us. Why don’t you just sell us why and I was like oh, crap, alright, that is the move.

So then the next thing that I did that now I am just adamant with clients you know, I cannot guarantee results unless we do this was that I sent kind of preliminary sales letter to people like so I imagine the product in its finish state before I build the thing and we are kind of sales page for it via email. There are different words for this I think teaser is another word.

Actually, I am doing this right now with Taylor Pearson but the important part was I named the price point and I said only click this link if you are interested, and so it is not 100% guarantee that people, who click the link will buy. In fact, I think probably something like 35% to 40% of the clickers eventually converted, but it will give you a quick warning if something is not going to sell before you dump a bunch of time into it.

So I launched the product successful in January that was amazing, yeah it converted at about 35% or 40% of the cohort that I launched it to which just boomed me away and then the challenge became how do I make this evergreen and how do I grow it.

So to sort of return to the initial question you asked which was what were the intervention levers that proved most lucrative, that moves the needle amongst all the things I tried that did not succeed.

So the first one believe it or not was the copywriting and the timing of the emails in the launch sequence and the scarcity element. So scarcity obviously means you are not offering your product just permanently available on a sales page. People need to sign up at a certain time in order to participate in the launch and if they missed that opportunity then they have to wait you know, months, weeks, or whatever. People do that in different ways. A lot of people do it through sales, but I would say (inaudible 11:59.6) Jeff Walker and in more modern circles, people like (inaudible 12:05.0) and David Siteman Garland who were like, nope, I do not do sales. I will just control when people can and cannot get into my courses.

So I implemented that and when I finally figured out how to do that in an evergreen way so that everyone as they subscribed through my list had an opportunity to buy based on their behavior you know, based on their engagement levels but somewhere between 2 weeks to a month after they subscribed to my list that move the needle a lot. So that was the big one.

And then after that, I doubled my revenue again by putting a nurture and a re-engagement sequence. So I learned an important lesson about sales cycle and this is something folks like Dean Jackson and Joe Polish talked about all the time which is like, only a small (inaudible 12:54.8) of your people are going to (inaudible 12:56.4) and buy it right off the bat, but that does not mean that they are not eventually can buy.

So I tried to get really scientific about calculating where the sweet spot of the sales cycle was, like when are most people willing to buy and after what point, what is the point of diminishing returns after which. If someone has not bought by now odds are they are never going to buy it. So I am not worried about offending them by hitting them with future sales pitches.

So those two and then I think probably the final one was just sales page copywriting. So believe it or not, like for about 6 months, I just had a totally garbage sales page and you know around July or August of last year I decided -- and yeah this illustrates you know for you and for everybody how green I am still at it but you know, got to be real about it. Yeah, I decided. I need to write a sales page. So I just went to school on it you know, I just studied all of my favorite sales pages from all the lists that I was subscribed to.

People were doing scarcity launches. I made sure that I participated in the launch so that I could screenshot their sales page and study it. I read you know, a few books that friends recommended on it and basically you know, locked myself in my room for an entire week and wrote a sales page and I tested it in optimizely and it was like 2x. So that was the big one. So I think those are kind of the big 3.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got you. Yeah, and a lot of it really does like it is not -- with most of business, it is really not rocket science you know what I mean. It is not like you did some crazy things that nobody has ever heard off and you know I mean it is really just you know, you gave them a really good offer like with scarcity and all that included and you had good copy on the page and did a lot better you know.

It is really not, it is not anything new. It is just you got to -- just do the work you know and get it done you know.

So what was wrong with your -- cell phone is going on, I forgot to turn on silent. Actually it does on silent, and it is still going on.

Nate Smith: Oh please is that an emergency.

Jeremy Reeves: No my phone has been dying on me. I need a new one. I am lazy of buying cell phones.

Nate Smith: (inaudible 15:18.6) they are expensive.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, well, I am too lazy to switch it over you know what I mean which is also another good kind of marketing point. It actually comes back to scarcity you know, that is a lot of times why people respond to scarcity is because it is just, they know they need it. It is like, you know I am going to get it, I am going to get it and then it is on sale or you are getting free bonuses or it is going away or whatever and just that well, you know, you can get it now on its half price or you know, if you do not buy it now, it is not going to be available for 6 months or whatever then it gets people over the hump you know what I mean.

So the phone call actually leads into a good kind of you know message.

Nate Smith: Yeah, 100%. I think the scarcity and the limited opportunities to join combined with a deliverable that is on demand and sort of self-paced like this is one reason why I am so bullish on courses as deliverables right now as alternatives to say SAS or services. I think it is just a super easy way to get your value at there and let people pay for it and then get value from it on demand like Netflix or something. So (inaudible 16:36.9) if someone is on the fence and they were like yeah, you know, I may not need this for another month, but I might not have another opportunity to join for 6 months. I think that is really important element.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So when you were -- when you do all this -- so now you, you know, you revamp your copy. You added scarcity in there, everything you just talked about and then so what did you do for on a traffic side of things because we have been talking about conversions, you know, what were some of the things you did on the traffic side of things to help kind of get that 8x number in there.

Nate Smith: Okay, so yeah, my traffic did double in that year, so that is why you know, from writing ads from my consulting I am careful to say like conversion rate optimization is responsible for 4x of the 8x, but so there are few things that worked. Number 1 was just continuing to make content and being pretty strategic about the content that I made. So it was like once --

Jeremy Reeves: (inaudible 17:38.8) into that more, definitely. That is something that very few people talked about. I did a guest post on it, I do not know may be 2 or 3 months ago for I do not even remember who was it for. I read a lot of articles. But you know, it is something very few people talked about it. It is just everybody is just, oh, I know more traffic, I need more traffic, I need more traffic and I was actually just on podcast and we are talking about the difference between quality of traffic and quantity of traffic you know what I mean.

So yeah, so dig into that more and let us talk about that a little bit.

Nate Smith: Okay, I have a got a lot of thoughts and quality and quantity of traffic. In fact, I just wrote a blog post today and I saw this when I started my own business, but I am also seeing it with clients. So one thing that I discover actually which is sort of helping me get over some of my mindset hurdles as a consultant because you think, oh, this person is a 7 figure company with like 25 employees like what can I tell them, it is like well, that is why they are getting someone from the outside to come in because a lot of these startups will have what I call KPI silos, and actually that is one reason I was super excited to talk to you is because when I have heard you on the podcast, you are really bullish on this kind of holistic approach to the funnels, it is like what is your acquisition cost. What is your lifetime value, I do not want to hear about anything else that is not going toward either of those bottom lines, but what happens is you have people measuring click through rate from an Ad in isolation and then opt in conversion rate from a landing page in isolation.

And you will end up attracting bad traffic and the reason why is, if you are not tying everything back to how profitable somebody is, I actually came up with this idea of like 3 customer avatars right. So it is like I am starting to run paid traffic to my landing pages to get people on my list and to sort of experiment with you know customer avatars and pivots for both my consulting and future products right.

So I am running paid traffic to my list and I am noticing that there are 3 sort of types. So one I like to call Craigand you know apologies for anybody is Craig out there, maybe it is from Craig’s list, sorry Craig, but Craig works at a holistic (inaudible 20:00.7) and his brother works at Microsoft and he is interested in being an entrepreneur, but he is not really an action taker.

So Craig sees my offer on Facebook and it says, my lead magnet which is 3 simple steps that helped me 4x my earnings you know, download the few part, it is like (inaudible 20:23.2) so if I optimize for click throughs I am going to get a bunch of Craigs, but the thing you do not know about Craig is as soon as he is on the landing page, he needs to enter in his email, he is like, ah, I do not know what the privacy and everything and like, how do I know I can trust this guy and am I getting a text and he is off (inaudible 20:41.5).

So you could spend $1000 optimizing for getting Craigs to your page and you would have zero to show for it, but maybe you decide you want to optimize for conversions. That is what all the paid traffic people are like, right. Like just optimize for conversions bro. So it is like, cool. So you are optimizing -- you put a pixel on your thank you page after your opt in.

So now you got Pete and Pete likes to order body building supplements and he is actually had 1 foot in the day job and he has been trying to start a business for like the last 3 years. The problem is Pete does not like to invest in long term solutions. He has got kind of shiny objects in general. So now, Adwords and Facebook and Bing Ads or whatever you are running to your page is selecting for Pete because yeah, Craig will click, but Petes are the people who are converting.

So if you optimize for Pete, sorry, (inaudible 21:38.0), but anyway, if you optimize for Pete you are going to write a very different landing page. You are going to have a landing page with an attractive model. It will say something like 3 report reveals the secrets to 5 million dollar success and Pete is all about that. He is going to opt in all day, but then the problem is you are not going to sell anything to Pete further down the line.

So the point is those are the 2 top stages of the funnel and if you take this kind of traditional segmented stage by stage approach to things you might be ignoring Shiva, who is a partner in a 6 figure startup, who realizes that she is losing 4 to 5 figures a month just because of conversion rate attrition in your funnel and maybe 1 out of every 100 Shivas aren’t put off by the ad or the landing pages and good damn thing because when she finally sees your content and your copy she is great. She loves it, but the problem is you need to spend $1500 to get just 1 sale if you are optimizing for the wrong things.

So why not start from who actually bought your stuff and find more of those people. So you are viewing click through rate as a function of again like how much does it actually cost me to acquire someone who is eventually going to buy, like I do not care about anyone else. If you are doing opt in you know conversion rate through the same filter.

So you start with your funnel conversion rate, right. Like, is a 2% or above great, raise your prices. Is it below 2%, okay, now let us look at your opt in conversion rate, right, like it is a 10% to 15% across your property. Okay, if it is great, then we want to look at your sales conversion rate, but if it is not that you know, we want to do some of the common you know, opt in conversion rate optimizations like optimizing your landing pages to make the offer clear and making the button clear and like putting the -- putting super clear CTAs on your content pages, etc.

Once you have those 2 dialed in, then you can go further inward and say okay, now it is time to look at the copywriting, the persuasion, all of that stuff, but that way, you are not going to end up spending a bunch of time and resources optimizing for people occupying spaces on your mailing list who are not eventually going to buy.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know, it is -- like you were saying before how I look at kind of you know, all the KPIs and the actual matrix and stuff like that of the actual buyers you know, I am working with a company now and we are split testing a couple of different leads for VSL that we are doing and so they came back and they were like, okay, you know, here are some of the results, blah, blah, and I was like, okay, well how are you like just kind of confirm how are you getting these results and they said, oh, we are looking at page views like engagement on the video. I am like, okay, that needs to stop right now.

Let’s go back, we have to do this on the actual sales you know, so now like, they did not really realized that and I should be the one that was setting it up, really, but -- so now, you know, we are going back and we are going to start retesting all those different things based on sales you know because it is kind of like if you look at emails, a really good kind of way to make this applicable is -- look at your email rates and if you know, so for example, I have another client that we just put in a -- which was the first one, it was a prospect campaign.

So prospect campaign, there was not one in place before we put one in for people basically who abandoned shopping cards, it kind of like a 2 step process and people who only went through the first step, we put an end to try to get them to complete second step.

Nate Smith: Oh, I cannot wait to hear this because I am working on the same thing.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, so basically, what we did was we look and we put tracking code in for each of the emails to track the actual results of each individual email, not like the sequence itself, but each individual email and we found that you know emails number 1 and number 5 were converting like bought like head and shoulders above the other ones.

So you know, if you look and you look it at that way, I mean, I do not even know the open and the click through rates because they do not matter that much you know, like how many podcast and things have you talked about it and oh, you know, I got a 40% open rate. I got whatever percent click through rate.

How often do you actually hear people say, well, you know, I am getting X percent of sales from this email you know what I mean. It is like --

Nate Smith: I go this client, he is getting clicks for like a penny a click, it is like, great, but what is his conversion rate (inaudible 26:34.6) zero sales.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So you know, it is just you know, people when you are doing this and like you were talking about before, you have to look at it -- you have to look at each step of the funnel and kind of analyze that is what it is like you know, when I talked about kind of fixing your funnel. That is one of the first things we look at is okay, you know the funnel is doing whatever right now, either it is not converting or it is a breakeven or it is profitable, either way you still want to optimize it, does not really matter.

I mean sometimes if it is converting like horrifically bad, then you just kind of scrap the whole thing and start over, but if it is showing life and you started to optimize it I mean all you really do is look, okay, start at the beginning, click through rate, how is that doing. Does it meet our kind of you know, benchmark our you know, baseline criteria, yes.

Okay, next thing, opt in rate. Okay, next thing, sales page you know, and just look through the whole sequence and if you find the weak point in any of those areas it kind of gives you a hint of where to look you know, it is kind of like you know, a lot of marketers where really jus detectives you know. If you find you know, gun residue or whatever happens when you shoot a gun, you know, if you find that or if you find you know, bullet casing or something, well it tells you, it gives you a place to start to you know, do your detective work you know.

Nate Smith: Right. And as much experiences that you have, you probably start to get kind of a spidey sense about, does this feel right or not.

Jeremy Reeves: Yep, yep. I go a lot off my gut actually, but yeah, and you know, that is you know, one thing that people like it seems like a common them in like what you have done to grow your business so fast. You just look and say, okay, you know, what is happening here, okay, that is doing fine. Let us move to the next thing, okay, well, then you got to your you know, when you are looking at it, you said you got your copy and you said, oh, that is not doing good. So then you -- you know, start it there and you work and tweak that made it better you know.

And now you know, -- actually, it takes me to my next point. What is -- what is your kind of next steps with that business. So you already you know, took it 8 times you know, what is the next step. What is the next on the plate you know, what are you going to start looking at next to grow it even further.

Nate Smith: Yeah, great question.

So that (inaudible 28:54.2) is my primary business and I continue to improve the products I have for sale and I continue to create content and grow the audience, and in Q2, speaking of working with Taylor, he pushed me because we are selling his effectiveness productivity coaching product. So I took the product because I have the copy ready for it. So one of the thing is that you are supposed to chose a single goal for 90 days.

So for Q2, my goal was become a 6 figure consultant. So most of my best efforts, my best brain glucose in terms of growth is gone into helping to serve my clients as well as I can and learning as much as I can from them and also to sort of build a content and authority platform in the conversion rate and funnel vertical, but the great thing is I allowed myself one avenue or one activity with the primary business and that was content and traffic.

So actually by restricting what I can work on that has made me sort of more creative about it. So it is like, alright, I can only do traffic over at the primary business which by the way is the 80/20 Drummer, he was a professional drummer so I monetized my music skill.

So what has worked well in traffic, things like joint ventures on Youtube, right, where someone else has a Youtube channel with some traffic and I feel like they are good fit for my audience, so I invite them on my channel and we will do a collaboration.

And even if they do not reciprocate, which a lot of times, they do, it is still a great way to increase the exposure for both of us because a lot of times they will share the video with their audience.

So yeah, it has been primarily traffic and incremental product improvement over on the 80/20 Drummer side, but I am learning so much from working with consulting clients that it will be fun to try to apply some of these lessons I am learning like for instance, the Ryan Levesque thing, right, like go back and find the people who have not bought anything from you and survey them and find out if there is any you can serve for them so then you will have another product or the Perry Marshall upsale thing.

Like how many people would be willing to pay 4 figures for some sort of in person event is that power curve from 80/20 sales and marketing. So that stuff has been fun to think about.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, nice, nice. I kind of do that too because there is only, and I can relate because one of side businesses actually, I am actually working on it today, because we are doing a big launch next week. So it is one of my you know, usually -- I only work on it either nights or weekends and it is kind of the same thing. It is like, it is not -- it is not making enough that it is like, it does not even compare to what I make with like in a consulting side of things, but it is like I mean, like 100% passive you know what I mean. I spend like half hour a month on it. If I am not doing marketing stuff like (inaudible 32:10.3) I just let it run and it is like half hour a month.

That is kind of how I am like I found and I was just kind of analyzing what I work on with that business versus consulting business and I found that I am a lot more focus and I am even with the consulting like I am very focused. I have weekly like kind of meetings with myself, like I analyzed my habits on a weekly basis and so I am still very focused in what I do in everything, but even with Keno or the side business, I have noticed that like, I mean, when I work on that, I know that I only have like an hour, 1 night, or when the kids are sleeping on Saturday or something like that and it is just like I mean in that hour, I get done so much work, it is insane, you know what I mean.

Nate Smith: That is amazing.

Yeah, it makes me wonder actually if having a entrepreneurial venture that you started on your own is positively correlated with success and sort of velocities to success as a consultant. I wonder because obviously like we both the learned the lessons about business from doing it ourselves, but I have also found that having the cash flow from the original business has allowed me to be long-term outcome dependent, but yeah, short-term outcome dependent with the consulting.

So I am not necessarily nervous on any individual sales call and I am kind of in the psychology of like seeing if something is a good fit rather than hard-selling somebody.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that is a good point you know. It comes back to kind of you know, a foundational marketing principles to think strategic long-term rather than just kind of short-term promotions.

I actually just took a -- one of my clients, she was kind of short-term, just did promotions every couple of months and -- that was one of the things that I focused on with her was, okay, let us get away from that and let us put this into like more of an evergreen thing and she is up to like $1500 a day now from just kind of making that switch from the you know, like just a promotional business to like an actual you know, like long-term kind of focus and having perpetual traffic and sales and all that kind of stuff.

Nate Smith: Yeah, that is awesome.

Can I ask you a quick question. I am sorry.

Jeremy Reeves: Oh yeah, go ahead.

Nate Smith: So, I am curious about something which is earlier in the call, you were talking about how you like to be really outcome focused on behalf of your clients. In terms of -- they hire you for a broad objective to create value in their funnel, and I noticed the same thing especially with a couple of clients lately where it is like, they will hire me to accomplish a goal, right, like improve conversions for this thing, but the particular means that we think are going to be the one to succeed, may not actually be the thing that succeeds.

So just for instance, the cart abandonment email sequence. So I had to look at that and then I am like, you know, these emails are not bad. Let me see the checkout page and I am like, well I cannot even find the shipping form on the checkout page. Let us just put this above the fold.

So my question for you is, what happens for you with clients when -- I guess how do you allow in your arrangements for projects where the scope might quickly change because you need to pivot quickly, because it turns out something different than what you originally anticipated is the best way to accomplish the goal.

I hope that phrase -- is that okay.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a good question. I think this is kind of a good thing for anybody in the service industry to hear you know, what I do is, I always look, when I am talking to somebody on the phone, I am always in my head like okay, what is the best win here. What is the easy win you know, what is the best way to essentially accomplish a goal for the money they are paying me you know, that is kind of like the filer that I have at all times when I am talking to people.

So we usually go ahead and do that and it basically either works or does not work you know, there is really no like it kind of half works like you really either just, it works or does not.

So you know, in most cases, it will work and revenue goes up and everybody is happy and all that, but in the times that it does not work what I do is because yeah, sometimes when you are working on the project, because you only have you know, you only talk to the client for whatever 30 minutes or whatever on the phone, so you really do not get that deep of an understanding of their business. So if things come up, if the first project works then I will say, okay, here is -- and a lot of times at the beginning we have -- we kind of have mapped out the phase 1 and phase 2 you know what I mean, because a lot of people like to start with something a little bit smaller to get the win, to get like that, just that confidence you know what I mean, and then it is like, okay, let us do this and then the second thing after that is we are going to do this.

So if the first thing does not turned out as plan, what I typically do is go back and look for something that is going to get that like easy win you know, that quick win, that it is like maybe it was like a smaller piece of you know, like a smaller project that was not really -- it did not really like it was, it was -- something that would definitely win, but it was not really, it would have made sense to go in the original scope of the project. If that make sense, I am not really sure for being clear.

Nate Smith: No, no, I get it.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, and then go back and then say, like, okay, you know, you paid me X dollars that did not really work unfortunately, so let us go back, let us at least get you a win you know, because I hate, it drives me nuts to even just thinking about the fact that somebody pays me money and they do not make a return on that you know what I mean.

So I always look at -- that is kind of how I go about it is looking at you know, looking at what has the best possibility of getting them their money back and obviously you know, a big return on their money. Obviously, you know, the goal is to maximize their return

And then you know, if it just does not work which you know, all these and marketing happens once in a while, then you go back and say, okay, well, what is another area that we are just going to add it, it is going to be a definite win. Usually, it is not something that is going to take like a month to do it, something smaller. Could even be, I mean, I have even done things simple as, okay, let us do a promotion you know, to at least get your -- like I will write up the emails for you. Make the sales page whatever which those are usually pretty quick and easy sales page and run that and that way at least you know, the thing that we originally thought was going to work did not work, but at least this way, you are still getting return you know what I mean.

So that is kind of how I -- that is kind of how I approached it you know and I think it comes back to just doing business to help other people you know. I think that is applicable whether you have a product, whether you have a service, a SAS, I mean whatever it is.

You should always be in it. People should be paying you money and you should get them a return on that money and you know, we are in business, so it is a financial return but it could be health, it could be you know, whatever it is.

They should be getting, they should be getting kind of a specific outcome from you know working with you, you know. So that is kind of my thought process I guess on all that.

Nate Smith: Yeah, that is great.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So yes, let us go -- we will wrap it up. Let me ask you this. If there is, if there is one thing, I try to think of the way to -- I try to think of a way to word it that it make sense you know, looking back over your past you know year wow it has been a year and a half, it still kills me. I am still not used to be in the middle of the year already.

Seriously, this year is flying by.

So looking back over the last you know, a year and a half, you know, things were not working out until then, all of the sudden you know, it just turned on, the things started working and then you went -- for the success from the product and now you know, you are starting to get into the consultancy side of things and things are starting to you know move along. Is there any like one thing that you can look back and say if I did not do that, none of this would have happen like that one -- was there any like kind of one pivot point you know what I mean that kind of made everything shift.

Nate Smith: Yeah, 100%, that is a great question.

Yeah and actually, so let me first answer that and then I will very quickly review in your audience with what I do now to try (inaudible 41:05.5).

So yeah, in November of 2014, I was in that and I have been spinning my wheels in this niche, the music niche, and I had products for sale, but they were low price, they were not converting to pretty well and I kept seeing other things that I might want to jump into like, oh you know, maybe I should just help people make videos on Youtube or I forgot, oh yeah, maybe I should just blog, maybe I should just be a travel blogger or something like that and so I really had no faith that it was going to work out and it was almost accidental that just out of frustration that I decided to send that email to my list about okay you know, this clearly is not working, so what can I do for you, and that was the spark about oh, maybe I can actually build this for them.

So yeah, and then, when that was -- like even after (inaudible 42:12.3) even after I had that validation, I still needed a push across the finish line actually really shipped the product and so I had mentor who was pretty stern with me about what are you doing, why are you dragging your feet. You need to ship and so he challenged me to launch and like the next 2 weeks, he is like I am going to call you 2 weeks from now and if you have not launch, we are going to have words.

So that was the other big one and I see now why he wanted to do that because he needed to drag me across the finish line to give me that feeling that dopamine of something succeeding so that I would know what that felt like and be able to chase it and try to recreate it in the future.

So now the question I asked myself and speaking of doing the daily and weekly (inaudible 43:01.6) journaling, you mentioned you were doing that too, but one thing I like to ask myself is, what am I assuming is impossible just because it has not succeeded yet.

Jeremy Reeves: I like that. I might write that down actually. Yeah, I like that. It is a good way to -- I am usually pretty good with like you know, mindset thing and not really putting limits on myself on that, but I like that. I think that would help a lot of people.

Nate Smith: Yeah, and you have also got a lot more experience so I hope that by the time I have as much as experience as you have, I am similarly less in my own way. I look forward to that.

Jeremy Reeves: You know what, I have realized over the course of career that and even now, I am starting to put a lot of focus not just on you know, because I would say up until I do not know maybe a year ago or so, it was like basically everything that I listened to was skill based you know, improving myself as a copywriter, as a marketer, as strategist, that kind of thing, and I have realized that if you do not have, like if you do not improve yourself, you know, your mindset, your beliefs that kind of thing. It is kind of like that is -- I think at most people is the weak link you know what I mean, because you can be the best whatever copywriter in the world, but if you do not -- if you do not have like the internal mindset to know that and to have the confidence and to have the beliefs that you like are worth what you charge, you are still not going to do that you know versus there are a lot of people I mean are charging way more than they should not be charging and it is because they have like kind of the mindset thing on, but not the skill thing you know.

So I think it is really important for people to have like do that personal development stuff and it really just integrate those beliefs of that you know, of that awesomeness if you will you know, that they are capable of accomplishing so much more than they think you know, because it makes you think differently.

I have had several breakthroughs of my career when it was just -- things just opened up and it was like, oh my God I can do this, you know and then you go and do it and if you never had that breakthrough like if you did not allow your mind to open like that, you would never even think that idea, that idea like literally would not enter your mind you know what I mean.

So I have been spending a lot of time in personal development lately you know. Even just, I mean health wise, mentally wise, you know emotional like all that spiritually all that kind of stuff. I think it is a really big you know area of improvement that most people can make.

Nate Smith: Yeah, that is super deep, and I agree like, I think one thing I have really pick up on working with Taylor is that, it all comes back to that. It is sort of the single most important meta skill, like you can have everything else lined up, but if the mindset stuff is not in place, you can end up spinning your wheels, as you said, you can end up charging too much for too little value or you can end up charging too little for too much value and get bitter and burned out, so super important.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and what was your quote is, I am going to write it down. I really like that. I am going to have -- I may have to use that.

Nate Smith: I am pretty sure I stole it from somebody else too, but what am I assuming is impossible just because it has not succeeded yet.

Jeremy Reeves: I like that. I am going to write that down.

Nate Smith: I have got 1 more, do you want that too?

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, might as well.

Nate Smith: Okay, what am I assuming is just going to happen without my taking action to make it happen.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice.

Nate Smith: And that is important for me with the clients in the pipeline and I am like, yeah, that was a great (inaudible 46:57.2) so then, subconsciously, I start to assume that the money is clear to my account (inaudible 47:02.5) but nope (inaudible 47:03.9).

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it is -- I have definitely learned on that one. It is not cleared until not only do you have the check but the check is actually cleared at the bank. It is fun -- I have actually gone into the point where I had one client and the check went through, it was just a small mistake. There was an awesome client, but they actually sent a check, so not only do they say they are going to send the check, but then they sent the check, but they forgot to sign it so I could not cash in. so I had it like, you know, so it was just funny though because that is one thing with a lot of service providers is they do that and it is like, oh yeah, you know, I got off the call. I think I am going to charge him you know, whatever $10k, so in your head, you are like, oh, where is that $10k on, but you have to have that and then you have to send the proposal and then they have to agree to the proposal and then they have to actually send the check and then the check has to actually clear.

So yeah, it is funny though. Yeah, that was the only time that it ever happened, but yeah, it was just a kind of funny mistake. I was actually -- I actually busted their balls for doing that, but yeah, so I mean, that was really helpful. I thought it was you know, (inaudible 48:17.6) I thought it was going to be a cool kind of story you know, that you went through because you know, you are in the beginning stages of all this you know what I mean and I you have done really, really well especially for being kind of the beginning stages and you kind of stumbled across a few things that it takes people longer I think to come across so I thought it was going to be you know, a pretty cool kind of story, inspirational I think for a lot of people listening.

Nate Smith: Man, that is super flattering to hear and it definitely means a lot to hear that you think like I am on the right track and that I stumbled across on things like definitely right that one down and remember to feel grateful for whatever things I may or may not have stumbled across.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely, but hey, you know, before we hop off, let everyone that you know, you know if anybody wants to work with you or you know, get in the blog list and your stuff, you know, whatever you want them to, wherever you want them to go, tell everybody where they can find you.

Nate Smith: So let us do dedicated landing page, let us go to 80/20marketing guide.com/jeremy and if people come and give me their name and email, I will give them my 3 step guide to eliminating the elites in your funnel and the 3 most powerful steps that helped me 4x my profit and in 30 minutes you can kind of do the wants over on your funnel and see where you might be losing money.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I like it. Hey man, it was great having you on and I wish you very good luck in both the businesses you know, the information business and then also the you know, consultancy side of things and yeah, let us keep in touch.

Nate Smith: Thanks so much, great to chat with you.

Jeremy Reeves: You too.