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From $80k in Debt to The Inc 500 (Meet Entrepreneur Casey Graham)
About Today’s Guest on The Sales Podcast
“Third iteration of an idea that went bad.” “Fired myself as a CFO of a church.”
86% of churches were behind budget or at break-even.
He had $36,000 in savings. His wife was working. They had no kids. July 1, 2008, not knowing the financial world was going to collapse.
Things worked but he didn’t like how it was working. He was traveling, etc. Then he saw that churches needed bookkeeping…but it didn’t work. But even when times were at the lowest point he kept his eyes open.
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That’s when he learned about residual income, email marketing, membership sites, etc. He was being paid monthly as a bookkeeper… Out of desperation found Infusionsoft and they asked him what his first broadcast would be. Had 800 email addresses and sent them to a link to a 3-hour recording and he made a few thousand dollars in a few days.
Then he created 3 brands within the church niche. He was $80,000 in debt. Took four years of figuring it out. I bought into the lie that it’s easy to just setup a website and get online and make money. It’s as hard as anything… But the replication is easier online once you figure it out. The fundamentals in any business are the same.
Putting out tons of free content on Casey Graham. These practical tips are key. People don’t need 17 page guides.
I kept going because I had a family to feed.”
“I just had to succeed.”
“We were desperate on cash flow but we always had some customers and were able to make a sale. But is was a desperate feeling knowing I had to make a sale over and over and that wasn’t good on my family.”
Friends and family were key. Their support and belief in me were so important.
Keep selling something. Sell what the market wants and is asking for. “Pivot when you find a new opportunity.”
“What are people asking you about?” Sell what people will buy.
“Be careful who you’re learning from. For example, I stopped reading Success Magazine because I was struggling and I was reading the ‘successful’ people. I learn from people that tell me the back story.”
Get with a real coach that you pay money to. My coaches hold me accountable, not just give me advice. Entrepreneurs have good ideas but most don’t take action on those ideas. Zero investment in learning = zero improvement.
I paid for people that had niched advice at first. I hired a lady for $12,000 to teach me how to sell online. She had won Dan Kennedy’s Marketer of the Year and I walked up to her and asked her to help me.
As you grow get different coaches.
Work inside your strength but make sure you weaknesses don’t hurt you. For example, I’m not administrative at all. But when I didn’t have assistants and staff I’d stay up after the kids went to bed or would binge half a day at a time and knock out the administrative stuff.
Now I don’t do emails or that administrative stuff because I’ve been able to slowly pull myself away from it. Outsourcing can’t be done too quickly. You still need to keep your finger on the pulse.
He spoke at a conference and it was recorded. He did a 3-hour session as a breakout from a larger conference. The principle here is to look around at what you have and offer it for free if you have to get started. “What if your next big thing is your current small thing?” I didn’t have a Success Coach until Infusionsoft asked me. That idea they forced me to create from their questions is worth millions.
I had a list because I just kept email addresses over 2.5 years and entered them into Zoho. “It was terrible. It was a cemetery for email addresses.”
Sold the recording for $99. Hosted the recording on eJunkie…some product thing…it may not exist…I had to email a code and if they didn’t download after 3 days it expired.
We didn’t have a payment gateway / merchant account, etc. I just had PayPal and it worked. The email was terrible. There was no headline. No copy. But I had a relationship with these people over 2.5 years.
It’s simple: sell something. Sell it now. Sell it today. Quit creating the perfect thing. If you are starting out you need an email address. Send it out manually if you have to. Complexity is the killer to momentum.
It’s the lack of desire to sell something that holds people back.
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Make Your Marketing Magnetic: This is where it all began for me. You can attract qualified, eager buyers like clockwork when you master the concepts in this valuable program.
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