Dan Martell - Episode #1 - Fitness & Software： Going From 10-100 Customers w⧸ Mike Ives, Founder of Onramp Online

00:00:00.000 So let's do pull-ups, push-ups, pull-up, push-ups, hair squats are kind of dumb.

00:00:08.200 That's pretty much it that we get to failure fast, right?

00:00:11.000 Yeah, so we just kind of die.

00:00:13.000 We didn't plan this.

00:00:14.000 Love it.

00:00:15.000 No?

00:00:16.000 So Jake, you're welcome.

00:00:17.000 That's what came up.

00:00:18.000 This conversation was super fun.

00:00:20.000 We talked about software, marketing, distribution, the right way to create content, the right

00:00:24.000 way to engage a Facebook group, and really just understand how to pre-sell your software

00:00:29.000 your software so you get what's called customer financing

00:00:31.400 because I believe, and it's a big thing I'm going to keep

00:00:34.200 kind of harping on, that crowdfunding has really brought

00:00:37.340 the cost of failure to zero if you choose to embrace it

00:00:39.880 or you can do the opposite of what a lot of entrepreneurs do

00:00:42.220 is invest in software, build, build, build,

00:00:44.520 only to find out that nobody actually wanted it.

00:00:46.580 So this conversation was super fun.

00:00:48.520 We did it in my gym that I'm a business partner in

00:00:50.860 and we even got a bit of a workout.

00:00:52.360 Hope you enjoy.

00:00:55.300 Cool, Mike, what's up, man?

00:00:56.820 Not too much.

00:00:57.660 Cool, what are we talking about today?

00:00:59.000 OnRamp. OnRamp is something I've built to help CrossFit gyms get more members by helping them

00:01:04.680 automate their marketing and onboarding. So it's called OnRamp. What does it do?

00:01:10.000 What it does is it gives gym owners the ability to create multiple landing pages,

00:01:14.080 connect those to Facebook or any other platform that they want to. It handles,

00:01:19.400 captures the lead. It gets that lead to make a booking. It handles all the other bookings.

00:01:23.740 Does it set up the sequence for messaging after the fact?

00:01:26.460 Yeah. It has automatic emails built into it. Cool. It also integrates both text and Facebook

00:01:32.380 messages as well as emails all in one place. So in the lead capture you collect email and

00:01:37.260 cell number? Yeah. Cool and then what's the sequence and then we're going to talk about

00:01:41.580 the business but what's the sequence post capture like what's the timeline what's the message

00:01:47.740 structure? Sure so what happens is that they come in they enter their lead information the thank

00:01:53.900 Thank you screen actually has a place where they can book an available time slot.

00:01:56.880 Cool, so post, opt-in, thank you page, which is awesome.

00:01:59.100 Get them right away.

00:02:00.100 So then we book the intro.

00:02:01.400 About half the people at our gym book right away.

00:02:03.580 The other ones are kind of subsequent where we get in touch with them.

00:02:06.220 Yeah.

00:02:06.720 There's an email sequence that goes out.

00:02:08.960 But we also will usually reach out by text message as well.

00:02:12.560 Yeah.

00:02:13.000 And the system will show you if the email got delivered and opened.

00:02:15.900 Cool.

00:02:16.160 Or if the text got delivered, et cetera.

00:02:18.160 So are we sponsored by Compete Every Day, or is it just a...

00:02:20.840 Yeah, I know.

00:02:21.240 These are kind of awesome stuff.

00:02:22.460 Yeah, I was like, I have my shirt in the car, I'm just going to put it on.

00:02:25.160 Yeah, great gear.

00:02:25.880 Yeah, it worked out great.

00:02:27.780 So, how long has the business been around?

00:02:29.920 And really, like, how long have you been an entrepreneur?

00:02:31.780 Because I know you're also, that's why we're doing it here in CrossFit Gym.

00:02:34.500 You're a CrossFit owner.

00:02:35.880 You have another business.

00:02:36.720 I believe you're a lawyer?

00:02:37.800 Yeah, I practiced law for six years.

00:02:39.840 I got out of that about 98.

00:02:42.720 Worked with a couple of tech companies like Unisys and LexisNexis.

00:02:46.460 And I have a system that does online searching of judgments in PEI.

00:02:50.340 Okay, cool.

00:02:50.760 a lot of the lawyers use, and I've worked with other companies and countries doing that.

00:02:56.140 About four or five years ago, I kind of did a little bit of a tangent into some gym software.

00:03:01.360 I didn't like what I was using for…

00:03:02.860 What was that called?

00:03:03.860 Member Tracker.

00:03:04.860 Okay.

00:03:05.860 That's free…

00:03:06.860 No, there was a competition program you built too.

00:03:08.860 It was CommTracker, which I built for CrossFit gyms.

00:03:10.860 Member Tracker, CommTracker, and now OnRamp.

00:03:12.860 Yeah.

00:03:13.860 So, CommTracker was something free for gym owners to use to run their competitions,

00:03:18.160 and that's still out there, and a lot of the gyms still use it.

00:03:20.360 and it does all the scoring as well.

00:03:22.480 I think we've used it, right?

00:03:23.500 I think so, yeah.

00:03:24.700 Okay, we can say yes just to see the sound.

00:03:25.900 Sure, we'll say that.

00:03:26.840 Awesome, you guys use it.

00:03:27.940 A lot of them in the Maritimes use it across the country.

00:03:31.760 Then Member Tracker was payment software

00:03:33.580 that I built both for my Taekwondo school

00:03:36.120 and for my CrossFit gym.

00:03:38.300 It also automated attendance.

00:03:39.760 It uses their...

00:03:40.280 Do you have a Taekwondo school and CrossFit?

00:03:42.820 Yeah.

00:03:43.420 And a business full-time?

00:03:44.740 Yeah, well, I'm ADHD, so it works out really well.

00:03:48.440 I can get a lot of things done.

00:03:50.360 But the member tracker was also attendance tracking.

00:03:54.500 It used their phones to check them in when they show up for class and then payment stuff.

00:03:58.920 But the last, about eight months ago, we moved into our new space for our CrossFit gym.

00:04:04.480 All right.

00:04:05.060 Yeah.

00:04:05.560 Oh, new space, physical space, new gym.

00:04:07.440 Yeah, so CrossFit 782, which was our gym, we had about 110 members at our old location

00:04:13.360 that was located in my Taekwondo school.

00:04:15.860 So we bought our own building, we moved in, and we started getting a lot of traffic both through Facebook and just our new location.

00:04:23.940 Why do you care about fitness? And I know it's a weird...

00:04:26.260 It just, it allows me to do what I do better.

00:04:30.340 I'm better at work, I'm better at home with my family.

00:04:33.600 My wife and daughter both do CrossFit with me.

00:04:37.260 I've done Taekwondo now for over 30 years. I'm a 7th degree black belt in that.

00:04:41.680 So this is your way of just bringing it to the community, doing something you love doing?

00:04:46.220 Well, it's something like CompTracker I built to help us do a competition we were doing to aid Special Olympics.

00:04:54.600 And we wanted to give all the money back.

00:04:55.840 So I just kind of built this thing to add on to it.

00:04:58.320 Did you have a dev team? How did you build it?

00:05:00.120 I built it myself.

00:05:01.240 Okay. Like you coded it?

00:05:02.860 Yeah.

00:05:03.140 No way.

00:05:03.920 Yeah.

00:05:04.180 Okay, wow.

00:05:05.020 I love coding. It's fine.

00:05:05.880 Yeah.

00:05:06.580 So built that.

00:05:08.240 member tracker same thing but i i kept bolting stuff on to member tracker when we moved i said

00:05:14.900 okay we need some landing pages okay we need something to kind of track people through the

00:05:18.660 pipeline as they move but basically like a crm for gyms yeah um i need something that'll automate

00:05:24.480 the emails so i kept kind of bolting stuff on and as i talked to gym owners about member tracker

00:05:28.700 they said oh well i like can i get i don't i got the payment system figured out i've already got

00:05:33.880 something for that but can I get the member tracker landing pages and the

00:05:36.940 emails. So there was iterations though because on-ramp is new did you feel like

00:05:41.800 the member tracker or whatever was kind of like slow to get market adoption and

00:05:45.760 then it was there was a lot of a lot of competition in that area you have

00:05:50.140 players out there like Zen Planner yeah very well established and they're a

00:05:53.320 great product yeah and so we were kind of competing against them so we really

00:05:57.820 just kind of took a lot of the stuff that our people liked and focused on

00:06:01.900 Off the funnel, which is members, attracting members, and then getting them on board once

00:06:06.120 you get the conversion.

00:06:06.880 Exactly.

00:06:07.340 A lot of gym owners were telling me they were struggling with Facebook ads and what to do

00:06:10.820 with it, and they were cobbling together lead pages and some other stuff to kind of respond

00:06:15.780 back, like Infusionsoft, which is quite expensive when you're trying to tie all these other

00:06:19.960 things together.

00:06:20.260 And you really only got a couple campaigns.

00:06:21.780 Exactly.

00:06:22.400 So what would make our conversation perfect for you?

00:06:26.900 Like, what would you hope to accomplish?

00:06:28.240 We were kind of at a stage.

00:06:29.520 we built Member Tracker back in about April, kind of spun it off as its own thing. Had a bunch of

00:06:35.900 gym owners get really interested in it. We actually have a gym marketing Facebook group

00:06:39.500 with about 300 gym owners in it. Yeah, just teaching them marketing strategies.

00:06:43.160 Exactly. So that's like your inbound content. Yeah, exactly. So we've kind of kept early access

00:06:49.460 pretty limited to about 10 people. We're working on our onboarding. We're using Intercom for that,

00:06:54.340 which is great. So now at this stage, we're getting comfortable with the product. I'm not

00:07:00.880 sure if we're at product market fit there. I'm not sure if you ever are, but you keep iterating.

00:07:05.500 So now we've got to kind of start developing the growth and marketing channels to get people in

00:07:11.260 the door. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to make sure the onboarding was tight and also

00:07:16.540 that we're getting good product out there. Do you have a wait list right now outside of the 10 that

00:07:20.960 using the product? I've got a number of people who are really interested in it.

00:07:23.760 But nobody on the wait list. Not a wait list per se. Cool. I would start building the wait list

00:07:28.080 and I would take deposits. Okay. So what do you charge right now per month?

00:07:32.560 The early access is $50 but the regular price will be $100 a month. Okay, cool. I would get some

00:07:37.680 level of commitment, maybe $100 and it's not to like say that it's $100 for a year or anything.

00:07:42.800 A lot of people that do pre-sales will usually get 50% off their first year. Okay. So instead

00:07:46.880 of $1,200, it'll be $600, and then they'll get grandfathered into that monthly price,

00:07:51.060 but then they'll be monthly in the second year.

00:07:53.300 That's a very traditional model.

00:07:55.540 I'm just a fan of saying, okay, we've got 10 that we're working with to get product

00:07:58.960 like that we're going to iterate with, but we have a backlog of people with commitment

00:08:02.200 because it's just too easy, and there's no cost to the person to put an email in to

00:08:07.060 say, hey, let me know when we launch.

00:08:08.600 Yeah, I've got about 40 emails of people who are just like, yeah, put me on when it's

00:08:12.100 ready.

00:08:13.100 Yeah, so I would take that list, email them out and say, hey, we're prioritizing based

00:08:16.380 on commitment and just to show that we're both on the same page we're just asking people to put a

00:08:19.740 $50 or $100 deposit and then that's going to kind of prioritize. Truth is if your product allows them

00:08:26.100 to make at least one sale which minimum on a monthly basis if you even build any kind of

00:08:30.760 campaigning you're going to get that outcome especially with the text messages. Get and keep

00:08:34.140 one new member and it pays for itself. Exactly so if they're not willing to put a hundred that'll

00:08:38.200 give you some feedback which I think is important to understand because because when you ask for

00:08:41.520 money all of a sudden they start thinking about like what is the competitive landscape look into

00:08:44.960 and that's probably what you discovered in the previous product is like you know people try to

00:08:48.800 compete on price but it usually never wins even in a freemium space like freemium essentially what

00:08:55.440 you're doing is you're transferring marketing dollars right where you're saying instead of

00:08:58.560 spending money on marketing i'm going to give away the product for free my bet is the users are going

00:09:02.400 to use the product and they're going to market it for me word of mouth and then a small percentage

00:09:06.240 are going to pay so essentially just transferring the economics of do i pay up front or do i pay

00:09:11.520 it through free product and then on the back end through word of mouth I get to monetize it right

00:09:16.080 so that would be the first thing you have a wait list or 40 people that say they're interested

00:09:20.020 get them to put a financial commitment if you just called it twelve hundred dollars lifetime

00:09:23.640 value of a customer that's really great yeah usually at 150 to 200 usually the 2,000 a year

00:09:30.920 annual contract value to 5,000 is when you can start investing on inside sales people which

00:09:35.320 allows you to really amp up the sales because at the end of the day unless you're doing freemium

00:09:40.160 even freemium, you know, like Slack and Dropbox,

00:09:43.020 they have sales teams.

00:09:44.900 They just essentially let from like zero to a hundred

00:09:47.520 employee sized companies use the product for free

00:09:50.020 and they have like kind of micro prompts in the product

00:09:52.060 to like say like, oh, do you need to talk to somebody?

00:09:54.220 Maybe it's because they installed an integration

00:09:56.160 or they hit a certain limit of messages or whatever.

00:09:58.280 They qualify off of that.

00:09:59.200 Yeah, they essentially use that as a kind of a trigger

00:10:01.820 to segment and put it in front of an SDR

00:10:03.820 sales development rep and then that kicks it off

00:10:05.460 to an account executive, et cetera.

00:10:07.200 So what's great about a $1,200 price point

00:10:09.480 you have that ability so that's amazing so then it's the decision on like where do I spend my

00:10:14.460 money and and to me it's what's in your DNA it sounds like the community aspect the group right

00:10:20.120 now is a is a winning strategy for you like you like that right love it yeah yeah perfect so then

00:10:25.420 that that I think you take as a core concept you just broaden it a little bit more so right now it

00:10:30.040 sounds like Facebook private Facebook group is a really good mechanism you could just run ads right

00:10:34.260 now to CrossFit owners. Is that how you filled it so far? Somewhat, yeah. I've got an email list

00:10:40.040 I built of about 2,000 CrossFit gym owners, and that's just by interacting with people on

00:10:44.220 the CrossFit affiliate owners page and putting some free content up there that people have asked

00:10:48.780 What's the group called? My group? Gym Marketing. Okay, so gym marketing. So you have not run paid

00:10:54.980 ads to get members for gym marketing. No. That would be low-hanging fruit. Yeah. Yeah, so like

00:11:00.280 just targeted, you know, gym owners, and we all know the same people in the space that are

00:11:03.820 that are selling to those customers so you can create lookalike audiences and just build that

00:11:07.920 free group. So that's one really great strategy. And then what I would do is, it's kind of the

00:11:13.760 ask methods. Ryan Levesque has this book called Ask. Yeah, great book. So the core concept is

00:11:19.780 produce the content that's most relevant to your customers based on asking them.

00:11:23.820 So in the group, ideally, once every two weeks, you're prompting them for their top challenge

00:11:28.100 when it comes to running a gym. Many of them will already post it because it's their Q&A in the

00:11:32.220 the private Facebook group. But if not, you prompt them. Those answers, verbatim, the language they

00:11:37.900 use becomes your content marketing. The best way to leverage content marketing is through OPN,

00:11:44.100 other people's networks. So a lot of people make the mistake of writing or creating content for

00:11:48.180 their own blog. The problem is that you still don't have distribution.

00:11:51.540 Exactly. And that's kind of what if I want a 10x from 10 to 100 to 100.

00:11:54.960 It's a good thing to have content on your blog so that you look relevant, especially for your

00:11:59.020 product blog, the on-ramp blog, but you could get away of saying, what are the top five

00:12:05.080 challenges that one of my customers run into? If you had to name five hot buttons, what would those

00:12:10.220 be? Facebook marketing, getting clients in the door, automatic emails, onboarding. What about

00:12:17.560 the sales script for the conversation when they have the session book? Yeah, yeah. They don't

00:12:21.160 know what to say. Yeah, I hadn't even thought of that. That's a big one. I just created a new

00:12:24.380 member messaging kit that I gave. And I did that based on a poll I did on the Facebook page. I

00:12:30.500 didn't do it open-ended, but I did. So the cool part is you get five of these pillar pieces of

00:12:34.160 content that if you ask, you know, anybody in a gym, what are your top challenges? It's usually

00:12:39.120 around marketing, messaging, converting, retention. Like, I mean, at the end of the day, it's business.

00:12:43.500 Those are the big levers, right? You create those five pieces of content, you put those on the blog,

00:12:48.220 you take the dates off, and then that way it's evergreen. If I come to your site and I look at

00:12:52.240 The answer to the blog, and really the answer to the blog, the question the customer's having

00:12:56.000 when they visit your site on the blog is, are they experts?

00:12:59.680 Yeah.

00:13:00.020 Because if you think about it, when you buy a software, you're deferring your need to innovate

00:13:05.980 through the company and the product that you pay for.

00:13:08.260 So I don't need to figure out what's the best fitness program.

00:13:11.380 I just go to CrossFit, and I trust that the CrossFit coaches are going to continue to push that.

00:13:15.820 Software is the same thing.

00:13:16.780 People are going to use your product on-ramp because they're assuming that you're going to bring to them

00:13:20.920 the best practices for attracting, converting, and getting clients in their gym. Does that make

00:13:26.380 sense? So the blog needs to show that. But outside of that, then you take those questions and you

00:13:31.180 produce content and you get distribution on other blogs. If you had to name five blogs that speak

00:13:35.240 to gym owners, what would they be? There's a number of them. Regardless of their competition.

00:13:39.660 Yeah, I was going to say, well, Zen Planner's got a big following. Barbell Logic, there's a lot of

00:13:47.060 people on it. The bigger ones I guess are just like some of the magazines, Box

00:13:53.100 Business or The Box and all that. So what's cool is you take the top

00:13:57.580 challenges that are current in your community, language, you pitch the ideas

00:14:01.100 this is a mistake a lot of content producers make is they produce the

00:14:03.660 content. I've always, when I was building Flowtown, we did a blog 350,000

00:14:07.640 uniques a month. Within eight months, this is a strategy. We said okay,

00:14:12.800 we did two things. Who's got the content that, who has the audience that we want

00:14:16.420 to get our content in front of, who's got the data, because this was a unique hook that

00:14:19.880 we were doing, we were doing data pieces, so data visualizations, who's got the unique

00:14:23.420 data, and then we would actually pitch, take the data, so let's say LexisNexis had a data

00:14:28.480 set that was interesting to social media marketing.

00:14:32.180 We would then find Mashable, TechCrunch, Forbes, whoever, and we'd say, hey, we've got this

00:14:38.100 unique piece of data, we have this article we want to write, we're looking for placement,

00:14:41.660 do you want to co-create it with you?

00:14:43.160 It'll be placed on Forbes, but, you know, on the next day we get to publish it on our blog.

00:14:46.820 We'll pay for the creation of it.

00:14:48.900 You guys just got to commit to publishing it.

00:14:51.220 That's a great idea.

00:14:52.260 Right?

00:14:52.580 Then you've got distribution.

00:14:54.700 And if you want, if you have, like, you know, if there was a data set you got from a survey from your group,

00:14:59.000 if you could actually approach another group and say, hey, we want to ask these five questions,

00:15:02.980 and from that we're going to actually create this e-book, and we'll co-create it with you.

00:15:06.600 You just have to promote it, but underneath there is, like, created by them and you, right?

00:15:10.480 Right. Which especially if it's a news outlet that's different than a software. So you guys

00:15:15.380 are the software. If they're the news outlet, if they're the authority, then there's really no

00:15:19.220 like they're used to having people pay for a placement. This is essentially your payment

00:15:24.560 is in the form of really high quality content. Yeah. You'll see Beyond the Whiteboard do that

00:15:28.240 on the CrossFit site. 100%. That's the way to do it. So that would be the content strategy that's

00:15:33.540 unique that most people don't think of. Instead, they do a lot of content on their own site. They

00:15:37.760 We then do this spam process of getting link backs to their articles through people.

00:15:45.720 I get those emails every day like, hey, could you link up this article to this post?

00:15:48.880 I'm just like, come on.

00:15:51.320 Don't do that.

00:15:52.320 Instead, co-create with the outlet.

00:15:53.320 Okay, like that.

00:15:54.320 Then what's neat is then, so wherever you get the question from within your community,

00:15:59.480 when you get the content created, go back and submit it as an answer to the comment.

00:16:03.880 That'll create incredible goodwill within the Facebook group because they're like,

00:16:06.720 man, not only were you listening,

00:16:07.800 you actually went and produced this stellar piece of content for my community.

00:16:10.800 Some people are really good at marketing, right?

00:16:12.580 They're great at paid ads or great at landing pages or great at copy.

00:16:16.180 And for those clients, I'm just like, hey, just amplify the crap out of that.

00:16:20.580 It's in your DNA.

00:16:21.920 Don't fight it.

00:16:22.640 If you feel like your best, where the water settles for you,

00:16:28.580 if you kind of poured it on the ground, it's like towards that kind of strategy.

00:16:31.780 I think you're going to get the best ROI from it.

00:16:33.740 So really leaning into that.

00:16:35.860 Another thing that works really well for Facebook groups is interviewing the other members.

00:16:40.160 Yeah, and I was trying to get some other people to kind of contribute more in the Facebook group.

00:16:43.880 Thus far, it's just been mostly me.

00:16:45.920 So what I do is just set up a calendar, set up a schedule, have members that get wins.

00:16:51.360 So people like post it like, hey, anybody got any bright spots, any wins?

00:16:54.840 People like, I just signed up 16 members.

00:16:57.420 And then grab that person and say, hey, I'd love to schedule an interview for you.

00:17:01.160 15 minutes.

00:17:02.420 Get on.

00:17:03.140 Hey, John, from this gym.

00:17:04.520 How did you get 15, 25 members in the last month?

00:17:07.100 Here's what I did.

00:17:07.840 Here's the strategy.

00:17:08.880 Ask the questions and deconstruct it.

00:17:11.140 Take that video, post it in the group.

00:17:12.700 It does a lot of things.

00:17:13.620 It also allows the people that are in the group to start to get to know the other members.

00:17:19.320 See, I've always had a problem when a group brings in experts because I know within the group, we've already got people.

00:17:24.320 Yeah.

00:17:24.840 Right?

00:17:25.500 Well, and I've had some Facebook marketers who work with gyms actually want to join the group too.

00:17:29.780 And I said, as long as you share, that's great.

00:17:31.680 but if you're just going on there and direct messaging people and poaching, then no, we're not good with that.

00:17:36.060 Yeah, so I think that's a really good, kind of the rules of engagement law of the land is set.

00:17:40.940 But that would be foundational stuff, and then it would be, I would say, amplifying the content.

00:17:50.220 So what I've seen, and I'm starting to play around this concept called the brand builder funnel,

00:17:54.380 which is taking the content, I have a lot of friends that do really well on paid ads,

00:17:59.440 and some of them what they're doing is they're shooting 20-minute videos and

00:18:03.100 they take anybody, so they create custom audience bases on engagement. So it used

00:18:08.380 to be like, let's run ads against this content, it's 100% free, we're gonna take

00:18:11.860 the people that click through, so we take those five hot button posts, we put it on

00:18:15.760 Facebook and then of the people that click through, we create a sub audience

00:18:20.260 on that and then we run lead magnets to just that to start to build the

00:18:23.920 conversions. What they're doing now is doing that with videos. So do a

00:18:27.280 20-minute video on how to increase your members or whatever those top challenges and only people

00:18:32.460 that watch 10 minutes plus that you then run the ad against. The thing that you offer for free

00:18:37.460 is really a checklist which it sounds like you've created the... I did a social media checklist as

00:18:42.340 well. That actually to my email list got... What was the one you just created? New member

00:18:46.240 messaging starter. So that would be the lead magnet. So I would do a new member messaging

00:18:51.220 video. Don't sell anything. Don't come off as salesy at all. Anybody that watches more than

00:18:58.000 10 minutes, you do a 20-minute video, then you re-market those people to the checklist.

00:19:03.260 And then you start.

00:19:05.120 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What about webinars as far as...

00:19:09.000 Webinars always happen on the back end of the lead magnet. So the webinars work really well,

00:19:14.400 especially if you have an audience. It says you have 2,000 people on the email list. That's the

00:19:18.320 way to pre-sell the software? You know, if you've been following my stuff for a while,

00:19:21.820 like my big thing is, how do I sell enough of the software? I mean, and people always

00:19:25.820 like, oh, you need to build it to sell it. It's not true. I mean, we got crowdfunding

00:19:29.200 that proves that people are willing to throw down millions of dollars without ever receiving

00:19:32.420 a product based on a video. So if that's true in crowdfunding, it's true in any software.

00:19:36.820 So I've worked with clients that have sold half a million dollars' worth of software

00:19:41.400 without any product being built off screenshots.

00:19:44.200 Yeah, wow.

00:19:45.700 Yeah. So it's a numbers game. You've got to get people on the webinar. The webinar registration,

00:19:50.120 I think you want to run one cold or warm traffic to your audience. So you've got the 2,000 people,

00:19:55.280 invite them to the webinar, teach them the three things you need to do to get.

00:19:58.800 Well, I was saying like Facebook ads and all that.

00:20:00.620 So here's the interesting part. The best webinars teach the thing your software does for them.

00:20:07.820 So your software doesn't teach people how to create Facebook ads.

00:20:10.600 True.

00:20:11.600 Okay.

00:20:12.600 So I wouldn't teach that.

00:20:13.600 Right.

00:20:14.600 I would teach them how to create a great Facebook landing page.

00:20:17.600 Okay.

00:20:18.600 Because your software offers that, right?

00:20:19.600 Right.

00:20:20.600 Yeah.

00:20:21.600 So that's one.

00:20:22.600 Okay.

00:20:23.600 What are the other core features your product does?

00:20:24.600 Well, the messaging.

00:20:25.600 That's two.

00:20:26.600 You know, the ability to just book the intros.

00:20:27.600 Three.

00:20:28.600 The fact that we integrate with Google.

00:20:29.600 Yeah.

00:20:30.600 All that stuff.

00:20:31.600 So literally your webinar teaches one, two, and three.

00:20:33.600 Yeah.

00:20:34.600 Your turn is, hey, I just showed you how to do this and I know it's going to just crush

00:20:38.600 for your business.

00:20:39.600 At this point, usually people start asking me questions

00:20:41.720 about tools and time and where do they find it

00:20:43.720 because they're busy in their schedule.

00:20:45.160 Would you guys be open to being,

00:20:46.760 if I shared kind of a tool that we've built

00:20:48.620 to help people do this a lot faster?

00:20:50.500 Yeah.

00:20:51.420 And everybody's like, yes, please, yes, please,

00:20:53.240 because you just showed them how to do it,

00:20:54.840 but they've also done the math in their head.

00:20:56.200 They're like, this is another three things

00:20:58.160 I now have to do,

00:20:59.400 and I can't even find time to breathe,

00:21:00.980 let alone create a Facebook page,

00:21:02.760 don't know what the copy looks like,

00:21:04.220 set up the email campaigns.

00:21:05.380 I know you gave me the templates,

00:21:06.520 but what's the right way to do this

00:21:08.140 and what tool should I use?

00:21:08.980 and you're like, hey, I've got this tool.

00:21:10.440 Do you want to learn more about it?

00:21:11.560 They go, yes.

00:21:12.560 What's neat is, and this is why it's important

00:21:15.240 because if you think about it,

00:21:16.140 if I taught the Facebook stuff

00:21:17.660 and I wasn't selling a Facebook tool,

00:21:21.060 it's almost like I want to teach them

00:21:23.220 the best practices on how to get outcomes

00:21:25.960 because at the end of the day,

00:21:27.000 you've got to be the person to get some results

00:21:28.420 whether they use your product or not.

00:21:29.920 That's marketing.

00:21:31.540 That's education-based marketing.

00:21:32.780 Before they ever become a customer,

00:21:34.180 get them a result.

00:21:35.960 And you've been following my stuff.

00:21:37.100 So you know about the turn.

00:21:38.140 so you know like I give, give, give, and then for a very small percentage of people that want

00:21:42.140 my specific advice and even, you know, doing these videos is kind of my way to do even more,

00:21:46.740 they come into my world. But there's a strategy to it because if you were to teach stuff that

00:21:51.800 doesn't, that your product can't serve, it's kind of like you could teach, so you have software for

00:21:58.880 on-ramping at a gym, right? You could teach accounting. Yeah. And people would need that

00:22:05.620 and they'd want it but it's not strategic it's not marketing like people need to understand that

00:22:11.140 marketing is not just teaching for the sake of teaching marketing's purpose of content is to

00:22:16.000 move them down the funnel yeah like i think a lot of people confuse they're like oh i'm doing

00:22:19.880 marketing it's like what does that content have to do with getting somebody closer to isn't that

00:22:25.600 interesting like there was nothing in that um interaction that got them thinking this is the

00:22:31.840 guy that is going to help me solve this problem.

00:22:35.500 And I think that's why the first webinar I did was on like Facebook marketing and all

00:22:39.280 that.

00:22:39.620 And I did the turn and my concept on the turn was that, oh, well, we're getting you a lot

00:22:42.880 more leads now.

00:22:44.060 We'll help you process them.

00:22:45.580 But I don't think I was quite close enough in the connection of there's too much of a

00:22:48.800 disconnect.

00:22:48.820 No, everybody wants to teach the thing that makes what they're doing apparently clear.

00:22:53.480 My thing is teach them how to do manually what your software automates.

00:22:57.580 Yeah.

00:22:57.840 So if we were playing this game and, you know, we were talking about project management

00:23:01.480 software i would teach them how to do project management in a manual way critical path all

00:23:08.200 critical path yeah outcome goals uh how to create to-do list uh how to how to delegate how to how

00:23:13.920 to you know do all these parts yeah so that they go wow that's amazing but now i feel overwhelmed

00:23:19.100 and i go hey do you want to talk about some software that might help you get that done like

00:23:22.600 this afternoon they're going of course yeah then it makes sense because you've got them you know

00:23:27.400 sometimes it's interesting where people sometimes forget the pain that they're in and we just got

00:23:32.880 to remind them and i think that it's really great right it's just you just you just got to remind

00:23:36.500 them right that hey i know you feel like you're doing it's just like your gym right your monthlies

00:23:42.540 is probably above the average for most people right yeah but yet the other people that aren't

00:23:48.320 there would almost feel good about where they're at because they would think like oh this is i'm

00:23:52.180 doing good for my city but if you say well oh did you know Canada is 155 that's my that's the number

00:23:57.960 I know I don't know if it's true but 155 a month for my gym and I'm at 115 all of a sudden 115

00:24:03.060 doesn't seem as good as the 155 which is the average for the year right you have to remind

00:24:08.060 them that you have to remind them that like oh you see all these gyms that are doing really well

00:24:12.360 you watch orange theory as a franchise and you're like I want to be uh I want to have more structure

00:24:17.220 like an orange theory then you have to kind of ask yourself or teach them here's what they're doing

00:24:23.780 this is the gap right you need to say like here's what you want here's what you're at this is the

00:24:27.860 gap and our software is going to help you accomplish people either don't know or they

00:24:31.140 forget it we had a girl in the other day who i met at regionals in 2009 ran a gym and she

00:24:37.220 i took it through the software she goes she's from ontario she goes where was this when i was

00:24:41.300 running the gym right so she's actually given us two more people now to sell to yeah so like i

00:24:46.820 said she didn't know the issue most people don't know that this is a thing yeah right they don't

00:24:51.360 even know that um you know most people don't even want to do a sales like like how many of your

00:24:58.300 clients have a allergic reaction to the idea of a sales appointment yet yeah you call it a no sweat

00:25:03.340 intro you call it a you know strategy session you call it whatever you want intro yeah free intro

00:25:07.640 and then all of a sudden now it's approachable and it's like but that's even the right way to

00:25:11.040 do it for the customer like i don't know like this gym is pretty open if you're new and you walk in

00:25:16.160 like there's there should be a wall yeah because it's it's intimidating it's like you come in here

00:25:21.240 and you're like seeing all these gladiators work out and die and pass out on the ground and create

00:25:25.300 sweat angels and you're like you haven't even ran a mile yeah and this is the first experience like

00:25:31.040 i know that yeah but it's no different online right it's like they need to be discussed they

00:25:37.280 need to have a conversation they want to have they want to feel like it's me it's personalized

00:25:41.460 And I think that most folks that come from a, you know, physical training background,

00:25:47.780 they don't have the business side.

00:25:49.560 Yeah, but they need to start the conversation.

00:25:51.460 That's what a lot of the automated emails we do.

00:25:53.280 We don't replace the conversation.

00:25:54.880 We just basically spur it along and make sure they don't forget about people,

00:25:57.980 have them fall through the cracks, because that's really easy to happen.

00:25:59.820 So you're essentially enabling follow-up.

00:26:01.980 Yeah.

00:26:02.300 That's amazing.

00:26:03.000 Yeah, we just streamline it.

00:26:03.960 So if we were to unpack this, you've got the group, you can grow, 10x that.

00:26:09.740 Even before you do that, you're going to get some more deposits

00:26:11.920 so that you can really get some more validated learning

00:26:13.800 because that's the difference for me.

00:26:14.960 Validated learning means money on the table.

00:26:19.060 Then we're going to do top five blog posts for the biggest challenge.

00:26:23.140 That becomes your content that you promote.

00:26:24.820 You can also co-create pieces with folks that have distribution

00:26:29.060 and then use that traffic lead magnet.

00:26:33.960 So create some kind of funnel to get them on a webinar.

00:26:38.240 So the webinar prompt would happen post-lead magnet.

00:26:41.000 Right.

00:26:41.300 Just like you get on the thank you page, it's your funnel.

00:26:43.900 Yeah.

00:26:44.240 Like, you're doing best practices.

00:26:46.260 I'm just showing you the best practice for software, which is give somebody some value that's simple, actionable, goal-oriented, easy.

00:26:53.920 Then on that page, you then say, hey, do you want even more information?

00:26:58.340 Then on the webinar, it's like, hey, do you want to be part of our early adopter program or our founder's circle or whatever you want to call that thing?

00:27:05.100 Yeah.

00:27:05.440 And that's how you get prepayments.

00:27:06.840 because again, I think that the cost of failure

00:27:09.260 can go to zero if you crowdfund.

00:27:10.960 Yeah.

00:27:11.500 Right?

00:27:11.800 Like the customer should fund the development.

00:27:15.500 It's called customer financing.

00:27:16.700 It's a crazy idea, but that's, to me,

00:27:19.280 that's the right way to build anything.

00:27:21.100 It's the right way to open a gym.

00:27:22.120 It's the right way to start a movement, right?

00:27:24.660 We started our CrossFit gym

00:27:26.180 out of my Taekwondo school with like broomsticks.

00:27:28.140 Yeah.

00:27:28.540 Just say like, who wants to pay to learn this in CrossFit

00:27:30.820 and just let them contribute.

00:27:33.760 Anything else?

00:27:34.900 No, that's great.

00:27:36.260 Like I said, we're looking at doing maybe some productized services around Facebook ads.

00:27:41.260 We've had a lot of people asking us about that and thought that might be a good way to kind of get started.

00:27:44.660 I like it.

00:27:45.900 So the challenge, so I think it makes a lot of sense to offer services around the core implementation.

00:27:52.560 Yeah, so give them a success.

00:27:54.260 Yes.

00:27:56.900 Your core implementation is not Facebook ads.

00:28:00.780 But the core implementation essentially is using the product.

00:28:03.040 It's just a different business.

00:28:06.280 The Facebook business and marketing is a different business.

00:28:08.360 I've got a few people who are wanting to kind of get involved with that aspect of it.

00:28:11.800 So I thought I might just kind of make them partners.

00:28:13.880 Referral, take 10%.

00:28:15.200 Yeah, exactly.

00:28:16.200 And let them kind of run with it because if the client's succeeding, we have people

00:28:19.580 coming to us saying, oh, you don't know how to do this, but I want to stay on product.

00:28:22.080 The only thing I would do is add an NPS heartbeat to their work for you.

00:28:26.200 So they're not allowed to do any work without a net promoter score survey and unless they

00:28:30.640 keep a 75 plus they're not a partner anymore oh cool idea because you're referring them the last

00:28:35.520 thing even i don't care if you give me 10 percent my gyms to be happy though i need you to deliver

00:28:39.760 and the only way to do that from my point of view is have that survey sent two weeks after delivery

00:28:44.320 of whatever they offered and if my clients aren't feeling like they're getting value i'm just going

00:28:48.240 to find a different provider there's enough opportunity right now in on-ramp to just take

00:28:53.760 to focus on it right because the adhd is it's powerful but it can also be a little shiny object

00:28:59.120 syndrome it's and so i would say set a goal like get it get it to a million ar that's my that's like

00:29:04.560 every business like people always like well i have multiple streams of business i'm like

00:29:08.640 let's talk numbers right and usually the numbers aren't a million plus in each different business

00:29:13.680 and i and i would just say like focus on getting it there and then start looking at opportunity to

00:29:18.720 to do more yeah perfect that's awesome awesome mike glad you made the drive man appreciate it

00:29:23.120 Cheers. Thank you. The biggest thing was getting our company to grow kind of past where we are

00:29:29.280 right now. We've done a lot of product development. We're at a stage now where we want to kind of grow

00:29:33.200 from 10 to 100. We're in that kind of area where we need to figure out our growth channels and how

00:29:38.820 best to kind of attack that. Got a lot of great focus on some, you know, basically a checklist of

00:29:43.880 what I need to do next, starting with like a Facebook group that I already established and

00:29:49.440 working within that, figuring out what kind of content people want it and then how to

00:29:52.680 amplify that content and get more people onto our site through a funnel that we all

Dan Martell - November 09, 2017

Episode #1 - Fitness & Software： Going From 10-100 Customers w⧸ Mike Ives, Founder of Onramp Online

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