Episode 118 Transcript

Ep 118 (00:04.308)

Well, hello you guys. Welcome back to episode 118. So not too long ago, I was hanging out at an event and this is through a business here in Australia called The Entourage. And I met someone. I met someone amazing doing something really different in the business space. This guy's name is Pete Liston and he has a background as a veteran.

 

And the business that he has created to help veterans is incredible, which we'll talk about in a minute, but he also has another business, Trust the Process, which is where he does a lot of outsourcing and specializes in HubSpot as a CRM and helping to set that up for businesses. And as all good business owners do, we tend to chat with each other and, you know, kind of see what's going on in each other's business. Can we help each other out? That sort of stuff. And if you're not talking to other business owners, by the way,

 

I recommend it. It's hard to be vulnerable, definitely with each other, but if you can find the right people to have the conversations with, it's so valuable. So Pete and I were chatting, you know, and he was telling me how he wants to expand and sort of launch the VCBC, which is essentially the Veteran Community Business Chamber, VCBC. He's telling me that and he's like, yeah, you know, I know you do meta and social media advertising and marketing and all that sort of stuff. I could use some help. So.

 

we started to help him. And here's the thing you've heard time and time again in this series that basically to stay away from that sort of hustle, crazy hustle stress is all about systems and team, right? We've heard it from the guests over and over and over again through our chats. So systems and team. So one of those systems that you would want to work on is the sales process or marketing funnel in your business. And that's ultimately what we started with to help Pete.

 

in his business is a marketing funnel. So I thought I'd just walk you through it because I think having these conversations can be helpful for you listening, right? If you're sort of thinking, I need to work smarter, I need to tweak something or I need to bring in leads more consistently, how do I do it? I just share what we did with Pete and I think it could help. You're going to hear from him later, by the way. We'll plug him up or I'll put a little edit in of what he said about us too. So you can have, can sort of, you know, listen to what he said. So starting with stats, let's start with that, right?

 

Ep 118 (02:31.38)

So basically he had an ad budget of $5 ,000, but we only used $1 ,700 of that. That's it. To the point where he's like, okay, stop, stop. Let's, let's like change gears. Let's try something else. Let's, let's grow now with through the next phase. So through the $1 ,700 ad spend, he got 252 leads. We're talking veterans and their families here in Australia. And he had a 14 times return on ad spend.

 

So he basically made $24 ,000 in revenue. Pretty good. Amazing. So what were we promoting? What was this whole thing going down? So again, his business is VCBC, the Veteran Community Business Chamber. And basically they're an organization that supports entrepreneurship and small businesses within the military community. So veteran owned businesses and or their families, right? So he's created this incredible community where he brings in experts. Actually, I'm doing a training for them this week.

 

come to think of it. So we do, he supports, he brings in experts to teach them how to grow and run businesses. He has like a login membership portal with training. They get access to a certificate where they go through like a process to then be certified as a veteran owned business. They get listed in a directory for that, all sorts. Like there's so many incredible benefits and it's ridiculously inexpensive. I can't believe it. But I mean, he wants to help in more ways than try and make money off of membership.

 

Anyway, so he has this really cool membership, sort of this community and he wanted to start to promote it. So what did we do? Well, sat down with Pete, had a conversation with him. I'm like, well, we need a good solid landing page. Guys, a landing page is just simply a page you send traffic to, to continue a conversation in your marketing. So if you do ads on Facebook or Instagram or ads on Google or wherever you're talking about your offer, you have a page that you send them to that

 

continues that conversation. So rarely is it gonna be the homepage of your website. Sometimes it will be depending on how your process and flow is of your website. But in his case, we had a special landing page. So we needed to build that. So in order to get that going, we did copywriting. I have an amazing copywriter on my team. Yes, we use AI sometimes, but still you need that personal touch in a lot of ways to bring the copy together, to do the market research, to put it in the voice of your market, right? So.

 

Ep 118 (04:55.316)

He went through an interview process with us really easy. We did the market research. We wrote the copy for the offer and the landing page. Boom, done, next. So he has a team that builds their site. And so instead of us doing the build of the page and the design, I just coached him through what the page should look like. And I gave him feedback on it. So, which is something that we definitely do in our business. We don't necessarily have to build all the different pages. So my business website, love.

 

So in his case, we didn't do the build, but we did the copy and then we coached him on the design and then how that page should look to get good results. His team then built it. We reviewed it. We tested it, made sure there was a thank you page. We send people to for tracking signups, all that sort of good stuff from there. So initially this was a free offer, right? So the idea was that they, they can sign up to essentially join trial, the community or trial the membership.

 

they go through a sales process from there. So they sign up, then Pete has a sales guide that jumps on a call with them and sees if they're a good fit for long -term to double check they are veteran, ex -veteran, and then basically goes, okay, cool. So you're fit. So then we can go to the paid membership from here. So that's sort of the flow. So once the page was up and running, then I coached Pete on the videos that I wanted him to make for Meta or Instagram and Facebook.

 

We were doing video ads. He recorded three of them. We had three different, slightly different angles. You've heard me talk about in previous episodes, you know, it's all around smart hooks or angles to bring people in, sort of calling out to the target market and what they want. Not, you know, not wasting time, literally just going, Hey, is this you? And is this what you want? But with different angles and pain points. So you had three different sort of videos with different entry points or different hooks at the start of each video, coached him on that. We took those videos.

 

We edited them down, we put captions on the top of them and had that. Then we set up all the ads and the targeting. And that's ultimately the flow you guys, we did the sort of strategy and the copywriting and making sure that the page was built so it would convert and helping with him to create the videos, editing them, doing the ads for him. That was the flow that he got in order to get the leads that he got. And it...

 

Ep 118 (07:14.004)

absolutely changed everything for him because this was a brand new business or organization that he launched. And this was sort of to know, okay, it's real. There's traction. There's people that want it. So before I go on and what's next, I want you to hear from Pete himself and he can just kind of tell you about the results he got and what it was like, you know, going through the process. So how's that sound? Let's do it. Let's throw it over to Pete really quickly and he'll fill you in on that.

 

Ep 118 (07:46.452)

All right. So pretty cool. Huh? I mean, I, whenever I hear people that we work with that we help get those results, I'm, it just reminds me of why I'm in business. And I recommend that for you guys as well. Like go back through your case studies and your testimonials. And if you don't have any yet, get them, go out there and ask and get them because oftentimes we beat ourselves up so hard. Like, my gosh, I'm not getting people good enough results or

 

Do they really like working with us? Or you go into your little brain spiral stuff sometimes and really hearing what others say about you is so powerful. It just helps you keep going on those harder days. So hearing stuff like that just fuels my soul as well. So thank you, Pete, if you're listening to this for that beautiful feedback. So what's next for Pete? So now that he knows there's traction, now that he knows they can make revenue and go in a really good direction with this.

 

The next step is testing, because now he wants to scale and grow this. So we had this sort of free trial membership flow. And now what we want to do is not offer that, but offer two different pathways. So two landing pages to test what's going to be the best entry point into the business. One is going to be the certificate just to come and get certified as a veteran owned business and be listed in like a community or a supplier database.

 

So that would be one with an upsell straight into the membership where you get all the training and access to experts and all of that and the community. So it's certificate upsold into community, AKA membership. And then the other one is going to be straight to membership. So we're going to have two landing pages. We're going to test two different ads and we're going to say, which is the best entry point for long -term growth? Which one is it?

 

because we don't ultimately know until the market puts their money down and says, this, I want to start with the membership or I want to start with a certificate and then go into the membership, for example. So that's what's next you guys. So that's what we're working on right now. Copywriting has just been delivered for the revised sort of flow of the landing pages over to their team. And then basically we're going to be doing the same thing where we give feedback and review landing pages and then feedback and review for new video ads and then off and running with the new direction to see

 

Ep 118 (10:09.908)

which one and essentially what we're going to be doing is testing, right? So A, B split testing to C testing this versus this versus this, which one's going to get us the most qualified leads going to make the most revenue for the business long -term as well. So there you go. A little behind the scenes of what I work in day in and day out in my business website love. And you guys, hopefully there's just a couple little ideas in there for you. And

 

truly the power of systems and being able to have systems, you can collect data and knowing your data, like we know here, you know what's working, what's not, and then you can test new things. You always hear that to grow a business, you want to keep testing offers. Well, you got to have good systems to test them, right? All right. If you do want to help, by the way, come on over to either website, love .com .au or the hustlerebellion.com and you'll see a little contact button there on that page with all of our podcasts and reach out, just say, hey, who's listening to the show? Could use your help. Either way, you guys, amazing having to hang out with you again, as always. I have so many fun, amazing new topics coming up and stories and things that have happened in my past and what's coming up in the future. So I cannot wait to share those things with you. All the best and we will talk very soon. Bye.