A Conversation on Business Success with Jarrad Markel

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Ryan Chapman: Hey, this is Ryan Chapman Fix Your Funnel interview series. I'm excited to be with Jarrad Markel. I'm really excited for you guys to hear from Jarrad today because, every now and again we get to have somebody that's really mastered the craft, is the way I like to say it. And, just as Jared and I were talking before we started today, I immediately knew that he had mastered the craft because of just the things he was saying. So I'm really excited for you guys to hear from Jared today. Jared is with the Mastermind Media and Consulting Group. You'll of course, tell us more about that and what you're doing with that. But it's a pleasure to have you, welcome.

Jarrad Markel: Thank you for having me, Ryan. I really appreciate you bringing me on today.

Ryan Chapman: I'm really excited because, you, you guys have a few things going on. But we were talking a little bit about, the podcast and how would you call it? Like it's almost like a television show, right?

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. So we actually, it's called Student of the Gun, and we started out as a TV show, and that was before I was really involved in the [00:01:00] company. My dad is the host of the show, and so I kind of shadowed the producers and the videographers for a little while, and I did some video work in high school. And so it came to a point where dad wanted to transform it into a family run business and he's like, Hey, can you take over this production and, and the videography and all this stuff? And I'm like, Oh, sure. You know, I'll do it. And so I quit my day job and I started doing production full time. So I was doing video, the videography, the video editing, the distribution, anything related to the TV production I was doing when, when I first jumped off and my day job and started with the family run business. And then we were able to bring my brother in who's, who's actually running the board right now, and he's learned so much in the last few years. It's kind of amazing to me. And then I, my mom works with this as well. She does a lot of the billing and customer service stuff, which is, in my opinion, one of the most important portions of a business...

Ryan Chapman: 100% agree.

Jarrad Markel: Service. Yeah. [00:02:00] And then she does shipping in Sacramento shipping too.

Ryan Chapman: Very cool. So how were you guys monetized in the early days? I know that wasn't necessarily the question you were expecting, but you know, I'm always interested in TV, you know, cause you're kind of old media there before you transitioned to what you guys do today.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. So old media, the way that TV works, unless you have a network produced show, is that you buy time on the TV network. So you'd spend 60, 100, 150 a it depends on which network you're looking at or. You know, 50 grand and half a million dollars to run one season of a show. And so what you'd have to do, unless you just wanted to, you know, cut that loss and call it a tax advantage, then you'd go find sponsors to pay for this TV show, right? And so, you know, if you've got a $500,000 bill to run one season on TV, then you've got to get 10 sponsors that are paying you 50 grand or you know, a very, yeah, just to break even. Not even make money. Yeah. And you know, that was [00:03:00] before the days that, I really understood the internet and how it was working. And so, you know, the TV show went, I think to 2010 to 2013. 2013 is when I really started producing. And so it went for three years with no real online presence. Like we had a website, but there was nothing there.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: And I don't remember how. How would you know what in my brain made me think, Hey, we should probably transition this over to digital to start finding the people that are watching the show and actually communicating with them. And so whatever trip my brain, it's probably a conversation that dad and I had because he's a smart dude and I'm either smart or I'm really good at pretending to be smart. One of the two. So, probably a conversation, you know, that we had together, stemmed, and then we, we started making the, the website different. And so we would actually put all the TV shows on the website and to start [00:04:00] capturing leads. And of course, back in the day when, what was 2012 or so back when I first started learning this stuff, the magic number that was told to you is all you need 10,000 emails and that equals $1 million. Okay. So I was like, Oh great. You know? So we got 10,000 emails pretty quickly. But what I didn't realize is what really mattered was the segmentation of the emails and understanding each segment that you have. So if you have 10,000 emails and only 1% are opening them, it doesn't matter at all. And if you have 10,000 emails and you don't know what those people are interested in or what they want you to talk to them them about, then that also doesn't matter. Yeah. And so somehow I got into the, the, the mindset of, Hey, let's take these, these essentially buckets of people and talk to them because I want to learn more about why they're here with us and, and why they're watching the show. And, dad actually [00:05:00] brought in, I think he started doing this the first season, is he would bring people on and, and get them to say, Hey, I am a Student of the Gun. And here's why. And so what that did from the beginning is it actually got people engaged with the show and engaged with the brand. And so I think that from the beginning, well, we started with an engagement mindset.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: Which is super important.

Ryan Chapman: That's super critical. Well, and some of them were talking about before we started recording was, the importance of the relationship with the customer. How you see them inside your mind at an unconscious level. Yeah. Because, how you think about prospects and customers comes out in everything you do.

Jarrad Markel: Right.

Ryan Chapman: And so you can't fake it. You can't pretend like, Oh yeah, I like this. People. You either genuinely unlike your customer base or prospects or you don't. If you don't, then you have to, you tolerate them and see them as moneybags.

Jarrad Markel: Right.

Ryan Chapman: And so [00:06:00] you'll, you'll deal with them because of the money they're going to bring into your business. I think that's the worst way to go about it. I can tell from just a, it was just a few seconds of talking that is not at all how you see your customers and your prospects, your market.

Jarrad Markel: No, absolutely not. We actually go out of our way to, to do things for our customers and show our appreciation because they are the lifeblood of our business. We didn't have our customers then we wouldn't have a business and we wouldn't have the opportunity to do what we do. And so we go out of our way to send handwritten cards, you know, Christmas cards, get well cards, Hanukkah cards, thank you cards, that kind of stuff. And then we also do like when we travel, so we'll do a road trip to an event. We make a point to let people know where we're stopping so we can stop along the way and actually meet them in person. Because yeah, we're super interested to know who, who our customers are, who our people are that are actually watching and listening to the show. And it's, it's a [00:07:00] genuine interest. Obviously that leads to a more loyal customer base, which leads to more money and all this stuff. But that's not the purpose. You look at it with a goal of, Oh, if I do this thing, I'm gonna get more money from these people, then what you're going to do with that mindset is perpetuate and perpetuate that mindset and you will attract customers with the same exact mindset that you have. So, if you have a mindset of, I want to know these people because I have their best interests at heart and I want to actually make a difference in their life, then in turn, you will attract people that are gonna, that are thinking the same way.

Ryan Chapman: So this is an interesting concept because you do still make some strategic plans and like we're going to organize the company in this way so that we can receive revenue in these areas. So you still do that kind of business thinking, but that's not the driving motivator behind everything. So you organize the business such a way that it can allow you to [00:08:00] do what you want to do to serve the community, but your focus is always on the community, not on getting to that number or whatever.

Jarrad Markel: Right. Yeah. I mean, obviously we have to make revenue and the business has to pay for itself and make money so we can pay our mortgage and all that stuff. And we like to have nice things, right?

Ryan Chapman: Sure.

Jarrad Markel: It's, and this is a really interesting conversation cause I don't know exactly how to explain why it's important or how to like have a mindshift and, and think that way, right? And I don't know, and I've been thinking about this for a while, is it is the way that, that we think about our customers, is that something that you're, you're, you're kind of born with and that, or that you learned along the way as you're growing up? Or is it something that you can develop as an adult and just change the way that you think about people?

Ryan Chapman: Because I think to a certain degree requires some level of [00:09:00] empathy and you know, some people just don't have that developed. And most people do, but there's some people that don't, they don't have that self awareness and consciousness, you know, in terms of being aware that there's other people on the planet that are trying to do the same things they are and facing struggles just like you. I think you have to be empathetic to some degree in order to see your customers as humans and not just devices by which you get money. Cause I think there really are some people that almost act as though the whole world is set up to serve them at the exclusion of other people. And if you really believe that everybody's real on the planet and that they're here, you know, going through the same struggles in their own way, then that gives you empathy towards them and a desire to want to help them, you know, navigate that area that you know better than maybe they may at this point.

Jarrad Markel: Right. Yeah. And the way that, you know, in, in the firearms industry where Student of the Gun [00:10:00] sits , my dad's been in the industry for 35 plus years, and I've been in it now for, well, since I was a little kid, but actively, essentially since I turned 18. So 12 years. And in there, there you, you take firearms training to learn more about the, the tool that you have and how to use it because as a business owner, and I assume that most people that are listening right now either own a business or entrepreneurs.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: So you could look at, let's say, text messaging as a tool, and so you dive as deep as you possibly can to learn how to use that tool, right? It's the same thing in the gun industry. So we'll go to training classes, and one of the most, I would say probably the most popular school in the United States is called Tactical Response. And what their methodology is, is they treat the students not as if they're an instructor. You know, they don't teach the students as if the instructor knows more, or is is a, I can't remember how [00:11:00] they phrased it, but essentially what they're doing with the student is they're helping them get down the path because the instructor, they're on the same path, right? They're on the same exact path. The instructor is just a little bit farther down the path. So the instructor, instead of marching forward and not looking back to the student. They turn around and they go back to the student, they grabbed their hand and they say, Hey, how can I help you get to those footsteps up there? 'Cause that's where I am right now. And so, right. And so that's kind of the philosophy that I've taken with the business is, Hey, how can we help you guys get here because we all want to be in the same place. And if you don't, then you're probably not the best customer, the best person to be in our audience. If you have this common goal, then there's probably somewhere else that you could spend your time that will be a much better investment for you, right?

Ryan Chapman: More enjoyable for them and for you too. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about that then. Where are you right now? I mean, what's your journey? Cause you, there's the, the Student of the Gun business, and then there's the [00:12:00] separate business, which is the Mastermind Media and Consulting Group.

Jarrad Markel: Yup.

Ryan Chapman: What are you guys doing in that business?

Jarrad Markel: In Mastermind Media?

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: So what we do in there is I, I took, I founded Mastermind Media and Consulting Group because I had, I didn't have to, I chose to, learn everything on how to run student of the gun as a, as a digital media business and how to communicate with the customers.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: And I, early on I looked at, Hey, I need to hire a consultant because I want to learn how to do this stuff or I need to befriend somebody that's, that's where I want to be in the future. Yeah. No matter how hard I tried, it might've been because I just didn't know anybody. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find anybody that was willing to, take me under their wing for less than 25 grand. And at that point, I wasn't convinced that $25,000 was worth, what I would get out of learning about this stuff and knowing what I know now, $25,000 is, that's like nothing, right. [00:13:00] So, what I did is I chose to stick with entrepreneurs and small businesses. That's who we service through Mastermind Media and Consulting Group, because there's tons of people that that service enterprise level companies, and there's a lot of help for those size companies, but there's not a lot of help for the small person. Yeah. So what I wanted to do with mastermind meeting consulting group is offer something that was A. Affordable and B. Would provide ROI almost immediately.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. And those are absolutes in small business because most small business are running on this fine line of cashflow that just keeps them in.

Jarrad Markel: Right.

Ryan Chapman: Hopefully close to the back, if not in the back, right?

Jarrad Markel: Right. One bad month. And you're done, right?

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Before they get set-up, right?

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. And so that's, you know what I've learned, building Student of the Gun, and it's not just me. When I say what I've learned, I mean us as a team. Sure, what, what we've [00:14:00] all learned together. I've tried to take those, those lessons and put them into the system that we implement for our clients through Mastermind Media and Consulting Group.

Ryan Chapman: So, you said that you were saying earlier before we started recording, that you guys record four episodes a week.

Jarrad Markel: Yup. Yeah. So Student of the Gun, we do a podcast there. Two of them are public, and so we live stream it everywhere that we possibly can. We have our own OTT apps through Amazon, Fire, Apple TV, et cetera. And then we do two that are private for our, what's our grad program. So, going back to what you asked before about early monetization, where we had sponsors, so we still have sponsors for the show.

Ryan Chapman: Sure.

Jarrad Markel: But we also do a membership now as well. So we run a membership site through a couple of different systems. And I don't know if if we can go down that rabbit hole or not, but...

Ryan Chapman: Yeah, I think that would be interesting cause I think there's a number of people who are part of this, new [00:15:00] media transformation of...is it.... From my perspective, at least, we're witnessing a pretty incredible time because you had this old legacy media that controlled the flow of information from decades. And, the internet's, you know, picked up and then, you know, there was a discovery phase of figuring out, well, what can and can't this do? And what happened was out of that came this situation where information can be distributed to specifically the people that want it. And the side effect is that old media is dying and it is not going to go down easy. So it's doing everything it possibly can to strangle out alternative voices in the process. And it's, to me, it's kind of funny to watch some of these, media distribution companies on the internet play evolve with old legacy media. It's like, what are you doing? These guys are your competition. They're trying to trash you and you're just falling right into their hands. But there are lots of new people that are springing up that have [00:16:00] developed communities, they've got great content. They've got these, you know, very loyal communities, but they don't know how to monetize the thing beyond maybe having YouTube, give them ad dollars or whatever. And if any of that gets threatened in some way, they're toast. And so, you know, they're feeling this kind of agitation of wanting to take control of their own media company, but they're not sure how do I transition from just working off of somebody else's sponsors, to creating my own business that can be somewhat independent. And you've done that, right?

Jarrad Markel: Yup. Yeah. And so, the, the way we don't actually use ad revenue for YouTube, it's just kind of like a, an extra thing, right? Yeah. My philosophy this entire time that we've been building the business is that you want to own your, your customer. You want to own your, your own market, your audience, your audience. Then that's where I was looking for audience. Yeah, guys, if you have like with Student of the Gun, we've built it up to a couple hundred thousand [00:17:00] followers through a couple of different ways...

Ryan Chapman: So by the way, subscribe, like hit the share button, I'm just kidding!

Jarrad Markel: We can pop the buttons on the screen now.

Ryan Chapman: That's what people will do because they have to, because they don't even own their audience at any level.

Jarrad Markel: Right? Yeah. So, so what we're doing is, you know, we have a relatively low volume of followers on social media for what you would quote unquote call influencers or whatever they're called nowadays. But what we've done this whole time as we've built our internal system, so we're using Facebook, YouTube, there's a one that's specific to the firearms industry called Full 30. It's like a gun YouTube. And we use those platforms to send people back to our email list, our texts lists and whatnot. Because if Facebook says, Hey, I don't want you guys to have a page tomorrow. We, you know, we run some ads, but it's a free platform that we're using to, to gain followers. So I can't really be mad at them if they, they can...

Ryan Chapman: Because [00:18:00] the reality is, is what we started to see is people that are more on the fringes of, of topics getting kicked off of these platforms or being demonetized or arbitrarily being punished in some way because somebody may not like what they're talking about, and while that's on the fringes, I may not directly impact somebody that's in the mainstream that's just today we don't know where that goes. I mean, we saw the same thing in the early days of Facebook ads when that was the only, or not Facebook, when Google ads was the only game in town, someone at Google that was reviewing would say, Oh, this page is out of compliance. They turn off your ads and suddenly that business is out of business because they were relying strictly on a third party to supply all traffic for the business.

Jarrad Markel: Yup. And so if you can own your....

Ryan Chapman: That's a real pain point. That's a real problem.

Jarrad Markel: Absolutely. And so if you, like right now, if you're, if you're focusing on building your social media presence, then Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, they own your audience. [00:19:00] So how can you kind of shift your mind and thinking, okay, how can I, I'm not going to get 100% of the audience from what, what Facebook and YouTube and Instagram own. But how can I get 30% of them in my own list that I own myself and then just start building it from there.

Ryan Chapman: That's called really intelligent business. You're creating some autonomy from outside forces. So wait, what did you guys do in the very beginning when you started playing with this? Cause obviously you're, you didn't do it the way you do it today when you started, there was an evolution . Where did you start it and where did you end up? Where are you today, I should say?

Jarrad Markel: So we started with just strictly email and so we would collect emails and we would communicate with people. And I like to think, I can't really remember back to the beginning, but I like to think that we've always done a pretty good job of engaging with our audience.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: And I might be lying to myself. That might not be true.

Ryan Chapman: So [00:20:00] what does that mean? You guys would say, Hey, go to our website. Student of the Gun and come on...

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, but actually, you knoe, reply cause we want to talk to you. So because nowadays what we do, and I, I'm almost a hundred percent positive that we've done this whole time, is we would ask people to reply and let us know, you know, we would ask the specific question. So hopefully they would answer that question.

Ryan Chapman: Was that question like in the first email you sent back to them when they subscribed or filled out your form?

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, like if somebody, nowadays, if somebody subscribes or actually if they buy a product, this is good example, if they buy a product, they get an email asking what made them buy. And, obviously it tells them, Hey, out, here's that access to your product. But the most important thing you can do right now is reply and say, Hey. This is why, this is what interested me in your product. This is what interests me and your brand and this is why I bought from you instead of another.

Ryan Chapman: This is super, super smart. Everybody listening should be taking notes. Even if you're, all you're doing is using email right now. 99% of all the emails I've ever seen in marketing [00:21:00] automation never want to reply.

Jarrad Markel: Oh, I love replies.

Ryan Chapman: They just want to push you. Go buy this before this timer expires. Go do this. Here's your registration information. Make sure you show up on time. It's always a speak at medium, which is tragic because, you know, direct mail was a speak at medium because of the nature of it, right? Yeah. I sent you a direct mail piece, read it, and then you don't have to do something because, we're not gonna be able to have a conversation. Email had the ability to have conversation, but everybody applied the rules of direct mail to it and just started speaking up people, they ruin it, which you guys have done this really phenomenal and I, from my perspective, I really want to call this out there to everybody listening is from the very beginning of the relationship you've established that we communicate with you.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, we care.

Ryan Chapman: We care. And it's interesting that you say we care after I say we communicate with you, because that's really what that communicates, doesn't it? In fact, I want to hear what you have to say and not just as [00:22:00] a, Oh, I'm NPS. Is that what the net promoter score there? I'm going to NPS you. Go ahead and tell me what you think and I'm never gonna respond, so don't worry. You guys actually reply to those emails that you ask for reply from?

Jarrad Markel: Yup. We, we do NPS scoring for most of it. So we do online courses and all of our online courses at the end, after they've completed, they don't get the NPS score before they completed the course. Cause that would be kind of, yeah, wouldn't make sense, right? So after they complete the course, they get the NPS score. Based upon that score, they get put into three different buckets, you know, neutral or, or negative or, detractors and all of those three have a human followup element to them. It ping somebody on our team and it says, Hey, this person is a detractor because they voted less than six, I think is the number.

Ryan Chapman: Well Jarred, now we know why you're a one percenter because you're the 1% of the people that use NPS, that atually respond to everybody that [00:23:00] goes through that process. It blows me away how many companies think that they get what the, I think it must be that somebody up above them said, Hey, we've got an NPS. And so they go and they check the box thing. They run it through, but they never reply to anybody. Good, bad, and different. It doesn't matter what group that they fell into, they don't reply to anybody that fills out that form. So the fact that you do is why it actually works.

Jarrad Markel: Yup. Yeah, there's, there's tons of things you can automate, but if you. I use automation so that I can ask as many open ended questions to my audience as I possibly can and I can actually spend time, you know, on my phone, if I'm taking a break from doing something on my computer, I'll be on my phone answering emails cause somebody replied to me and I want to make sure that they know that I care.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. That's great. Okay. So you guys started with emails or some people to the website have a fill out a form. What's the next step in the evolution?

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, so the next step and the evolution was naturally [00:24:00] text messaging. And I landed on Fix Your Funnel was actually the first company that I did text messaging with. And thank the Lord. Cause I've, I've now worked through Mastermind Media and Consulting Group, I've worked with other platforms. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Ryan Chapman: There, there's a call for you.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, there there's a lot that are not as user friendly for the person that's using them. And so in my, my theory on new tools, it's actually have a flow chart that I send people every once in a while that says, you know, especially on black Friday, I'll send them this flowchart. It says, Hey, this thing's on sale. The next step is do you need it? And there's two options, yes or no. If it's no, then it goes around and it says, Hey, this thing's on sale. Do you need it? And then you're just in a, in a loop, right? No, I don't need it. It's on sale. No, I don't need it. It's on sale, no, I don't need it. If it is on sale and you do need it, then buy the dang thing. So my theory with software is, if you're buying this new tool, the faster you can get [00:25:00] an implementation done with that tool, you're going to see success with it, or you're going to realize that probably wasn't a good investment. But if you never use it, you never know.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Okay. So how did you guys start using texting from the beginning? So you well first let me back up on this question because I think this is a fascinating question to get an answer to, which is what made you start thinking about texting in the first place, cause obviously you are on the hunt for a texting platform. Before you started that hunt, what caused you to want to hunt out a texting platform? What made you think, Hey, maybe there's something better than email for us to be using for engagement.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. So my thought process wasn't even, Hey, maybe this is better. It was actually another medium that I would own an audience. So I'd own an audience. I'd own a text messaging audience.

Ryan Chapman: So the diversification strategy.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. Cause I know that, Hey, some people use email and some people prefer text. And the way that I run our marketing stuff and, or the systems that I've set in place, cause [00:26:00] I don't run everythingas much as I used to, right. The systems that I've set in place is that if somebody doesn't want an email from us, they're not going to get one because it's a waste of our time and it's a waste of their time.

Ryan Chapman: Absolutely.

Jarrad Markel: And if they don't want a text message and then they're not going to get one, and we, we actually ask people and we let them know, Hey, if you don't want this, you know, click this button or just reply, stop or whatever and you won't get them anymore. So, my thought process there was that we would have another communication medium that we would own. Instead of having to rely on Facebook and YouTube and stuff. And then I quickly realized when I started using text messaging that the best way to get engagement from somebody was via text message or... Did you say? Why is that? Yeah, because they're already used to, when they get a text message, this is why. Here's why. Because marketers have not ruined text messaging yet.

Ryan Chapman: They're trying.

Jarrad Markel: That is why. Because [00:27:00] they, when somebody gets a text, your phone dings, you're like, Oh, I'm going to look at that. And it's probably something important. You know, emails now you're like, object that maybe once a day and just kind of skim through it.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Cause it, yeah. There's a totally different feeling when you get into your email, then there is your text. Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. And, and dude, I, I love the, the app and the ability to send pictures and stuff too because when we first got, when we first started using a text message, text messaging platform, I was actually on a business trip and I believe I was at Phoenix. That was in the back of a car and one of our automated text messages, it says, had went out in it. All of them say, Hey, reply, you know, if you, if you have any questions. And so I got a reply from somebody and I replied back and they're like, Oh, I don't believe this is a real person I think it's a bot. So I snapped a picture of me in the back of the car and I sent it to him and they're like, Holy cow, you're actually like responding. I'm like, yeah.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. You know, it's, [00:28:00] I think that the thing, cause I, I just think, I distinctly remember it was like 2009. We're running our, our training company, the first like OneClickUpsell tool we had, we'd started developed that would become Fix Your Funnel, but this guy came up and he was at one of our conferences we were running for our training company. And he's like, Oh yeah, I do text message marketing. I'm like, what a loser. Because I didn't, you know, at the time it was all short code stuff.

Jarrad Markel: Right.

Ryan Chapman: And, I was just like, you know. Yeah, I don't, I don't really know where that would go because it seems like all the text messages I ever got from businesses were just promotional, you know? And so in my mind, I, it didn't even register as being something that would be positive at all. And then as things have evolved in, you know, we've built tools allow you to do things like you do as a person with your friends and your family. Then I realized, Oh, okay. So the real secret is treat people like people. [00:29:00] Have conversations with people and if you have conversations it's going to be really hard for you not to do well in business. Yeah. The guy that's sitting, reading the magazine all day because he's waiting for a customer to walk in the door, is the guy that starving. The guy that's engaged in conversations all day, he's got to do some really stupid things to not make money for himself.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, and it's funny because one of my clients runs a business called Online Great Books. And, I actually started going through the program because how can you market a company without knowing what they do, right? So I joined the program and we, we read the great books of the Western world. And so I've read Plato, Socrates, et cetera. If you, if one person, could, could be the, I don't know, the, the icon, I guess. I would pick Socrates because he went about his day generating conversation with people just for the fact, just because he wanted to talk and so there it was. [00:30:00] He was very polarizing. People hated them or they loved him, but he was very, you know, the people that loved them were really loyal and I view business the same way. You cannot, it's almost impossible, if not definitely impossible to service and make everybody happy. And so you have to find who you can serve and make them really happy and make them loyal, right?

Ryan Chapman: And the okay with the fact that they're going to have detractors and haters and stuff like that because they're just not your people.

Jarrad Markel: Right.

Ryan Chapman: So they're not going to resonate with your voice and message.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. And the faster you can use communication mediums, email, text message, message bots, whatever, to get those, to really find out who is not the best person in your audience. If you can do that and find out who that is before they buy anything from you, that's the goal.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. So what's your philosophy on automation generally speaking? Like you kind of alluded to it a little bit with you, you said, you know, [00:31:00] like I'm using the automation to do some of these things. How do you view automation? What is its proper role in the business?

Jarrad Markel: So I don't remember where I heard this line, but I heard it somewhere along the way of this marketing stuff. Automation is used to scale the human touch and that's the only role it should have in a business.

Ryan Chapman: Oh, I don't think that was me cause I said different than that.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, I don't know who it was. I thought I had, who knows, but I'm pretty sure I got it from somebody.

Ryan Chapman: But I have, I've always seen it as, because when we were running our training company, we were working with real estate agents, and real estate agents typically don't treat the business as a business. And because of that, what it is, it's a real expression of them as a human. And so for a lot of them, it's feast and famine. You're either doing great or they're doing terrible. Never in between. And so I thought that was fascinating. It was something we were looking at cause we had tons of different types of real estate agents that we were [00:32:00] serving at the time. I was looking at it going, why is it that there's this feast and famine that is with all of these guys and gals when they know so much about what they should be doing? And what, what I determined is the, the problem is our human nature tends towards cycles. That's why you see cycles throughout history is because the human is quick to forget and then the neglect, and then once it hits rock bottom, then it remembers and then is diligent for a period of time. But then it forgets. Then it goes... So that creates the cyclical process. So whenever I saw business that up and down income, I just said, Oh, the humans are in charge. And the best way to to fix that was to say, well, where do we need to be super consistent order for the business to be successful? Let's put automation handling that key component, and then where are we have two humans that should be interacting. Let's make sure two humans are interacting. So let the, let the automation do the stuff that needs to be done consistently, [00:33:00] but then let's have it always setting up a human human interaction. So the purpose of automation is to mitigate the impact of human nature while maximizing humanity.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, I like that. That's good.

Ryan Chapman: So that's, that's what I think that you guys have demonstrated through your story here is just this process of having this clear goal of we want to make sure our market knows they're important to us. We want to be serving them in a way that's meaningful. And then you guys have just arranged everything around you to facilitate that.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah.

Ryan Chapman: So when you guys first started doing the texting, what did you do for call to action?

Jarrad Markel: Hmm. That's a good question.

Ryan Chapman: Did you send him to a website to fill out a form with the phone number, or did you use a keyword or...?

Jarrad Markel: Keywords were the first thing that I implemented, because I thought, Hey, if we, you know, if I'm going to send somebody to a website that then I can get their email address. It's like, how can I get the phone number from people that aren't on a website? And so keywords were where the first thing.

Ryan Chapman: Did you guys always [00:34:00] go name and email in the conversation?

Jarrad Markel: Yep. Name and email. I tried to do full name. And what I really appreciate now is I noticed you guys have the, you no longer have to run a name splitter bot. You just have the option to when somebody replies to the full name, to put it in first name and last name. And so that gives me the ability to communicate with a person as a person instead of just saying, Hey, friend.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. You know, one of the, one of the good things about that we can kind of bring to the market is that before we ever became a developer, you know, adding an addition to a CRM, we had used Infusionsoft. The gen, like in our first 12 months, we went from zero to 1.3 million in revenue. And so we had used it to create, and then that would go onto 2.4 and then 3.4 you know, so we grew a business using Infusionsoft, and so we knew what it did well, what it didn't. We knew what socked and what didn't [00:35:00] psych in terms of trying to get strategies implemented. So when we started doing stuff, you know, we were like, okay, well what would be the best thing for, for us if we were doing it using this particular thing? That's kind of been our core philosophy across all of it, is how do we facilitate for the business owner so they can do what they want to do instead of them worry about all these little details. And like when you ask for somebody's name, you know that some people think, Oh. Just my first name. Other people think, Oh my, my whole name. So what are we supposed to guess? You know, it made it easier for you as a customer of Fix Your Funnel to say, I'll just give me here and put the name in there, figure it out, Ryan. You know, that's your job. My job is to give people the education that we're giving and then ask them to text in. Okay. So you capture their name, their email, their phone number. Do you, you talked about knowing who your audience is and segmenting and how have you guys gone about segmenting your audience?

Jarrad Markel: So [00:36:00] it depends on what's called a lead magnet. You know, what lead magnet are they requesting? We do a pretty good job of developing lead magnets for, for a specific audience.

Ryan Chapman: So you're using the keyword to create a context.

Jarrad Markel: Right. Yeah.

Ryan Chapman: Segregate them into different groups.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. And we've done a lot of book launches with keywords. And so actually, you know, this is something that I forgot that we did. When we produce books, how do you get a lead? You know, if somebody buys a book on Amazon, how do you get them to come back in your system? There's several ways that you can do that. You know, the standard, go to the website, put in the, the confirmation number from the order and you get this bonus stuff. Or you can wait until the person reads the book. You can give them a code inside the book to text your number and get more, some kind of bonus that's related to the book. Yeah. And so we set that up too, because...

Ryan Chapman: It's beautiful.

Jarrad Markel: It gives you another way to, to grab that, that contact.

Ryan Chapman: And [00:37:00] so you guys sell a ton of books on Amazon?

Jarrad Markel: We've got, I think 11 or 12 books that are on there that are all written by my dad through Student of the Guns. So through Mastermind Media and Consulting Group, I've, I've got what's called the Markel Methodology.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. I want to talk about that. Okay. But before we do, so how have leads been coming from books? Cause that's a method that I've used for a long time too. I'm just curious how your, your lead flow has been from the books or after you've looked at it.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, it's not as good as I thought it would be. But there, there are still, I know, I still get people, and there's, there's two ways you can measure that. You can say, okay, how many people am I getting from that? Or you can say, what's the value of the people that do come in through that, that method? And so...

Ryan Chapman: I have to guess that they're pretty good.

Jarrad Markel: Yes. Yeah. They're, they're much more engaged. They spend more money with the company, you know, they, they are, are more apt to meet us, live in person and, and hang out.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. I think that that is a really important [00:38:00] concept that you bring up that has lost a lot of people when they first are getting into this market and sometimes people never understand it, which is, it's not really about the quantity. It's about the quality. You want quantity too.

Jarrad Markel: If you can maintain the quality.

Ryan Chapman: If you can maintain the quality. Yeah. So, and also you have to understand that everything fits into a gradient. You've probably heard about or talked about the Predo Principle before. Yeah. The prey to writ ratio, which normally people express is 80/20 but it's really a curve. So it goes from the 1/99 you know, the 95/5 the 90/10 you know, it's this curve of where you get the most results from the smallest amount of the activity or effort. Well, that curve represents a distribution. Everything ends up distributing in that way. So a small percentage of your leads are going to be the most valuable. And then there's gonna be a section that's a little less valuable and so on, all the way to a bunch of leads that aren't worth anything. And so if you understand everything lays out [00:39:00] in that Predo Principle where that distribution. Then you recognize, Oh, then I need to make sure that my marketing allows people to express that difference. Because a lot of people treat all, and this is what you're getting at with, you know, putting them into different groups is that a lot of people put all of their leads into one group. And they don't allow any way in their lead capture for people to express that they're one of these more valuable prospects that wants to spend more money with you and do more things with you. That's like the whole idea behind One Click Upsells. When we started with that was the upsells allow people to self identify as, Hey, I, I'm really interested in what you're talking about I want to get more from you if you'll give me the chance. And so those, if you don't have these mechanisms in your business that allow people to express themselves differently, like if you didn't put that lead magnet in the book, right? If you didn't put that call to action in the book, you could never find those people. They just read your book. And then they'd go, well, now what do I do? [00:40:00] But the fact that you had that in there allows them to go after that.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. And that gives us an opportunity to, to build the relationship a little bit more with them as well.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Well talk about this, this Markel Method.

Jarrad Markel: Okay. So, what I'm, what I'm calling the Markel Method, TM, is the system that we implement through a Mastermind Media Consulting Group. And it's, it's a predictable system that you can, the, as a business, you can say, okay, I know that all business owners know what funnels are, right? And so the funnel doesn't actually start when you generate a lead, it starts way before that. And what I call that as controlling conversation around your brand. Because before you generate a lead, that lead is going to have a conversation about your brand with somebody or something. It could be a friend, could be a search engine, could be Google, could be, a random person on the internet.

Ryan Chapman: I love that.

Jarrad Markel: That you had served prior to this, this lead looking for the problem that you can solve, right? So it really starts before [00:41:00] the lead is generated. And so what can you do to, to control that conversation? And you know, my theory is to really segment and only serve the customers that you know that are going to get a good benefit from you. Because if all your customers and, and all your prospects that are on your list talk really good about your brand and your product, then it's going to transition into to, to people that have not yet become leads. You know, I, that'll actually drive them to search more about your company or your product and then become a lead.

Ryan Chapman: I think that Goodwill's super underestimated a lot of people.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. Like, like with Student of the Gun, we produce so much content and we just deliver it for free because we know that A. Can help people. And B. It's entertaining for people and C. The people that are really interested. We'll come back to the website or the text phone number or whatever and, and come into our system. But after you've established that and the person decides, okay, I'm ready to become a lead, I'm [00:42:00] ready to show these people that I actually exist, then I might be interested in what they have. So, so you had your first impression that with the prior to becoming a lead, you made your first impression with them, with whatever they found out about you before they came to, to your company to look for a solution. So there's a first impression, then you generate the lead, and then you educate the lead about your, your either your business as a whole or your product or both and then you, and so what we do is we actually have what we would call microconversions, because if you, like, everybody knows this, the old adage, you never ask somebody to marry you on the first date. And so what we do is the stage three of our system is, is working on converting the person that's come in there. So you, and by converting, I mean not, not purchasing, but figuring out what they're actually interested in. And so you'll deliver content and you can actually, through automation and Infusionsoft, you can actually segment these people. When they click on [00:43:00] something to show interest, you can tag their accounts so you can identify them later, later, and then segment through automation later. And then after you've identified, Hey, they might be interested in this thing. Then is when, when I start the sales process. And so you, you, you and I don't start the sales process by asking them to buy. I start the sales process with a story and I tell a story about, you know, how this product has worked in, in my life, you know, how this product has worked for other people that we've serviced. And, and then, so I'll use my company as an example. And so we'll talk about how our clients that have worked with us in the past have a doubled, tripled, quadrupled their revenue in a short period of time. And so that tells a story of, and it makes a connection possible through, because the person that's reading this stuff is actually in the same position. You've done a good job at segmenting them. They're in the same position that your [00:44:00] past clients were in before they worked with you, right? So then you do the sales process. And, and then when they come out on the end of that, they're either gonna have purchased or not. If they didn't purchase then, then we've got stuff we do to identify to see if they're actually a good fit to being a customer, but I like to focus on if they did purchase, now is your time to have a, the second opportunity to make a first impression, because, you know, a lot of people were like, Oh, they purchase from me. Awesome. I'm gonna take their money and I'm gonna deliver this product. And that's it. So what you really have the opportunity to do as somebody who's selling a service or a product, is to reach out to the customer and make sure that they're able to consume your product to the best of their ability and build that relationship with them. Because the odds are if you're selling a product, you're interested in that product. If somebody buys that product, they're interested in that product so you have something in common immediately. And so you can build off that relationship there. [00:45:00] And then, you know, further along in the system, we'll talk about upselling and, and, getting more value out of the customer while also giving more value to them.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Jarrad Markel: And then how do you get somebody who's went through and, and bought a couple of products from you and they're super happy with your company and your product, how do you get them to actually refer you or your product to their friends and, you know, strangers on social media and whatnot? And then you know, something that's really important also is a reporting. And what I tell people is if you're a leader, you can't only rely on reporting because you're blazing the path for the data gatherers to actually gather that data. So you really can't rely on reporting to make decisions. But what you can do is, is use reporting in your business to see if what you're doing is working. And also analyze stuff for the future. So if you're being a leader, you can also use that data to, that you're generating, and you can use [00:46:00] data from other companies as well.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. So that sounds like a book. Is that been made into a book yet?

Jarrad Markel: It's in a really long document that, that I, that I give people for. It's a worksheet type thing, so they can actually plan out their process. It will be a book eventually, but right now it's just the, the worksheet.

Ryan Chapman: That's great. I love that approach. I love that whole process mentality in terms of thinking the whole funnel through, and you know, what's our approach going to be? You know, it's, it's fascinating to me how quickly people can see a turnaround in their business when they implement the right system into it. I'm always, you know, it's, you kinda think, well, surely we can't have this company double the revenue. You know, certainly can't have this company triple, you know, sales. Is it possible that with, there's still this much left and opportunity, but it's fascinating how it happens over and over again, isn't it?

Jarrad Markel: Yeah. Yeah. It's [00:47:00] amazing. And my personally, my favorite thing to do is to, to have, you know, sit down with a company or an entrepreneur and, and have them map out and actually pull the process out of them, map it out on the board, and then look at it and say. Okay. You know, you assign, assign a time and dollar value to each portion of the process, and then they get really clear vision of, wow, if I just cut down, you know, 30 minutes on this process, I'd save a couple of hours a week, which saves me a ton of time.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. And it's going to be done consistently.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. I love it. Well, thanks so much. This has been great. You know what? We're going to have to do? We're going to have to have you back.

Jarrad Markel: Cool.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. I think we just scratched the surface on a number of different important topics, but I can tell that there's more that we could, we could cover. What's the best way for people to reach you? I'm assuming, Oh, hold on. Put on my cap here. You should be picturing Johnny Carson putting [00:48:00] on the...

Jarrad Markel: I can envision. Okay.

Ryan Chapman: You're going to, you're going to give us a keyword and a phone number that people can text if they want to...

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, that's actually true. If you are interested in, in this a Markel Methodology, there's a worksheet that you can get for free. It'll actually take you through all that stuff, and you know what? It's actually not free. It takes your effort to complete the worksheet, so it's just, it's not free to take your effort. So text funnel, it's "FUNNEL" to my number, which is 385-217-6624.

Ryan Chapman: And that will be in the, in the show notes too, so you guys can go ahead and get that there as well. But it's "FUNNEL" at 385-217-6624. Yeah, I memorize that that quickly. That's how great a phone number and a keyword are, is you can, you can pick them up, put them in your brain. You've got it. So, Hey, it's been a pleasure, Jarrad. Again, we'll have to find another time to chat because I think we've got a lot more area we can cover for folks. I really [00:49:00] appreciate you making time today.

Jarrad Markel: Yeah, that'd be fantastic. I appreciate you having me on.