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A Program Guaranteed to Get Referrals 1 Easy Fix to Guarantee More Sales Next Quarter Zapier Is Here to Cut Out the Busywork Tasha Hussey Is Back For More The Not Sexy but All-Too-Common Reason Businesses Get Stuck and Stop Growing
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Trader Joe’s Bucks the Trend
Success Is Right In Front of You, You Just Can’t See It
DON’T GIVE UP
But there was one thing I never dreamed of. I never dreamed of making $150,000 per year and owning a lifestyle business. I never dreamed of retirement. I’ve had and have a ton of friends who are entrepreneurs, and one of the surprising things is that I can’t recall a single person telling me their dream is to stay home all day and not work. I’m sure there are people out there who have that dream, but my suspicion is that, even for those people, if we go back to the first time they dreamed of being an entrepreneur, that is not how the dream started. Why So Many Entrepreneurs Let Their Dreams Die
solution to that hole was a nailed-down piece of plywood. I can’t count how many times I stubbed my toe or tripped on that plywood. When I got a bit older, I moved in with my dad and his wife — my wicked stepmother — who mentally abused us kids for sport. She’d routinely tell me how fat or dumb I was. She’d call me names. And heaven forbid if my dad went out of town (which he often did). When that happened, I’d be stuck working as her slave for 3–6 hours on the weekend, cleaning part of the house only to be told to reclean it, again and again, because it wasn’t good enough. Because I wasn’t good enough. I dreamed of being an entrepreneur and the freedom of riches. I dreamed of the vacations I’d take and the cars I’d drive. I dreamed of the empire I’d build and how, one day, I’d change the world.
As a kid, I dreamed of being an entrepreneur. I had this dream because I desired freedom. (Little did I know, that’s not exactly how it works as an entrepreneur, is it?) Like so many other entrepreneurs, I was very poor growing up. My mom and dad were divorced, and my mom supported my little sister and me on a civil servant’s salary and $300 per month from my dad. We lived in the ghetto, with a swamp cooler in the kitchen to cool the whole house. Our slumlord didn’t like to fix anything. At one point, a spot on the floor in our kitchen rotted, creating a hole. For years, the WE NEED ENTREPRENEURS to keep the economy thriving, to build and grow their companies.
So, all of that begs the question: Why do we settle? Why do we give up on our dreams?
I think the answer is simple. We get beat down, maybe even abused.
Have you ever been abused or taken advantage of by an employee or customer? I have, as recently as
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KILLER REFERRAL STRATEGIES
NEW CUSTOMERS FOR YOUR COMPANY A KILLER REFERRAL PROGRAM THAT IS GUARANTEED TO GENERATE LOADS OF
Our new experience is going to allow anyone who qualifies (by referring one person who becomes a customer of The Newsletter Pro) to join us in Vegas. But this time, we’re going to jump in a plane with a former military pilot, take to the skies, and dogfight above the desert. Yes, it is as cool as it sounds. In this experience, you’ll have the opportunity to take the control stick of your plane, maneuver it so your plane is behind an enemy plane, and use lasers to figuratively shoot the enemy out of the sky. When you score a hit, the bad guy’s plane will start to smoke. This will be one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences you’ll never forget. Between the Top Gun experience, the hotel, and a few other surprises we have in store, this will be an incredible trip. KILLER PROMOTIONS But, all this being said, having an amazing experience is not enough. You must have marketing muscle behind the mind-blowing event. This year, we took what we learned from last year’s program and have totally revamped how we encourage people to refer, and how we’re helping our referral sources promote the event to their customers and prospects. I don’t have the room to go over both, so I will go over some of our promotion strategy to get people to refer to us, as that tends to be the more difficult part. The first part of our strategy starts with our employees. One of the mistakes we made last time was not offering the employees a chance to win for helping us get new referral sources. So, this time, we’ve created three ways for our employees to win prizes based on how much they encourage customers to sign up and refer to us. My experience in helping other companies come up with referral programs tells me this alone will be a game changer. A recent Disney World experience we created for another company landed them 348 referrals, and one of the contest’s big drivers was the employee engagement and mini-contest we ran for them. Once we have someone interested in becoming a referral source, we send them to a landing page to opt in. You can see an example of that page at thenewsletterpro.com/topgun. Once they’ve opted
Last year, we introduced an amazing referral campaign for my company, The Newsletter Pro. The campaign offered a trip to Vegas to any client whose referral become a client, including airfare, hotel, and the chance to race exotic cars on Las Vegas Motor Speedway. As you can imagine, this was not an inexpensive prize, nor was this merely a chance to win. We guaranteed that everyone who gave us a referral that converted to a customer joined us on the trip. Some people thought I was crazy to offer such an expensive prize, but in reality, I didn’t spend more than I’d have spent if I had acquired a new customer from a cold lead source. Once the program was complete and we did all the math, our cost per new referred customer was just under what it would normally cost us to get a new customer from a cold source. To me, that sounds like a huge win. I talked about this subject in my book “The No B.S. Guide to Maximum Referrals and Customer Retention.” Basically, you should be willing to spend as much or more per referred client as you normally spend to acquire a customer from a cold medium. Many times, when I make a statement like that, people ask why. Why would I want to spend as much or more on referred customers as I would on any other new customers? The answer is simple: Statistically, referred customers are worth more than customers from other sources. There is one problem with my advice, though: I’d only ever taken half of it myself. I’d never actually run a program that would require me to spend more per new customer than I normally do when acquiring customers from other types of media … that is, until now. A CAN’T-MISS EXPERIENCE Our new referral program is all themed around the classic movie “Top Gun.” When we sat down to come up with the next program, one that would cost us more than we’d normally spend to get a new customer, we asked, what’s bigger than racing exotic sports cars around the Las Vegas Speedway (which was the highlight of our last referral campaign)? The answer we came up with was dogfighting above the desert in acrobatic airplanes .
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COVER CONTINUED ...
smart and talented entrepreneurs talk to me about how they don’t want to keep growing, how they are settling or even giving up, and that is not okay with me. We need these smart people. We need entrepreneurs to keep the economy thriving, to build and grow their companies. We need them to step up in the community and help support worthy causes. Five percent of the world’s population are entrepreneurs, and without us growing and thriving, the entire civilized world disappears. No pressure. I, for one, am committed to growing, and I’m committed to helping you grow by providing no b.s. info about what it really takes to grow a successful business. I will continue to beat the drum of building a solid business foundation that focuses on your customers and referrals first, because this is the least risky and ultimately most profitable way to have a successful business.
about lifestyle businesses on the internet, and if that is truly what you want, go get it. But if you want a lifestyle business because you are throwing in the towel, we need to talk. I’m not trying to retire at 38. I’ve come here to build something, to create generational wealth, and to win. Anyone who’s been reading this newsletter for any period of time won’t be surprised to know I’m a Christian, and so I look to the Bible for words of wisdom. And there is one word that never shows up in the Bible, and that is retirement. We live in a time when infinite knowledge is available to us to solve most of what ails us, which is both a blessing and a curse. The blessings of the information are obvious, but the curse can be greater than the blessings. So many people are so paralyzed by the number of choices they have that they end up doing nothing. Now, add in the data — which is at everyone’s fingertips, but may either only paint part of the picture or is translated by someone with an agenda — and you end up with smart people making bad choices. I know this is a bit of a different opening letter than what I normally write, but recently, I have just seen too many people throw in the towel. Too many One big mistake many make is thinking that once they’ve told someone about the contest once or twice, if that person were interested, they’d be done promoting the contest. But that’s simply not the case. Personally, I get busy, and even if I have intentions to promote, without reminders and some poking, you won’t get much out of me — even if it’s an amazing trip like the one we’re giving away. To some extent, that’s just the world we live in, and you have to navigate that line between helping someone remember to promote and nagging them. If the above info seems simple, that’s because it is. But simple doesn’t mean easy. If you’ve nailed the contest and promotional materials, you’ll be well on your way to success, but it takes effort. Every day, a little bit needs to be done to make this program work. This year, we estimate we’ll have 50 people qualify to join us on the program. That may or may not sound like a large number to you, but considering we primarily only work with million-dollar-plus businesses, 50 would be a success. Now that you have a brief overview of our program, I want to challenge you to think bigger and take more risks with your own referral program. Don’t be cheap We were created to work, to grow, and to build.
this week. Have you ever had a good idea that you felt the marketplace would love to have, only to struggle to sell your product or service? The stress and pressure we are under is immense. I’ve watched smart and ambitious people change their dreams and decide they want to be a lifestyle entrepreneur, simply because they want to escape the stress — or because they find out their chosen business isn’t a Porsche, but a Ford Taurus, instead. The company people really want is a company that is growing. But instead of figuring out how to go from a million dollars in sales to 10 million dollars in sales, many give up on their dream. Have you ever given up on a dream? You constantly hear FIVE PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION ARE ENTREPRENEURS, and without in, we create a landing page for them to send their referrals to. This page tags the referral to a referral source inside our CRM software, so we know who referred whom. Here is an example of the page each referral source gets to send their referrals to: thenewsletterpro.com/freegift. On the page above, you’ll notice that we’re promoting a free gift, which is a copy of one of my books. This lead magnet is just one of many we will use over the course of the referral campaign. Last time, we discovered we didn’t provide nearly enough lead magnet options for our referral sources to promote, which meant that once they felt they had promoted the book enough, they had nothing else to use to send referrals our way. DEDICATED COMMUNICATION After someone opts in to be a referral source and they have their own landing page, we now need to encourage them to promote. We’re doing this with phone calls from the employees, regular emails, promotions in our newsletter, and direct mail to keep the referral source excited about going on the trip. PAGE 2 CONTINUED ... us growing and thriving, the entire civilized world disappears. No pressure.
You can grow, you can have the dream, you can make a difference, and you can touch more lives than most can even imagine. The only question is, are you up for the challenge?
– Shaun
and try to get referrals for 20 bucks. Go big! Spend as much or more on a referral as you would pay a marketing company to generate a new customer for you. Create promotions. Help your customers and referral sources promote by giving them tools they can use. If you take my advice, at the end of the day, you’ll have a killer referral campaign, your customers and referral sources will earn a cool prize or experience, and you’ll get dozens, maybe even hundreds, of fantastic new customers. Honestly, I’m not sure business gets much better than that. - Shaun P.S. If you haven’t already signed up for our new Top Gun Referral Program, I’d encourage you to do so now. Last year’s experience was unforgettable, and this year’s trip is going to be even better. There really is no better way to learn how to create a killer referral program than to go through one from start to finish. Go
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to thenewsletterpro. com/topgun to sign up today.
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RESOURCE OF THE MONTH
ZAPIER IS HERE EASY FIX TO MORE SALES NEXT QUARTER TO CUT OUT THE BUSYWORK GUARANTEE Meet Your New Favorite Automation Tool
When it comes to creating and managing a scalable business, automation is key. Ensuring the smooth operation of hundreds or even thousands of nitpicky little daily tasks in your company can be overwhelming, especially when you factor in your website, CRM, landing pages, and the dozens of applications you have in
all know, developers are expensive, and the result can often fall short of expectations.
play. The time you and your employees spend manually completing the micro-tasks needed to ensure these applications are working adds up over time and distracts you from driving the success of your business. It can be tempting to hire developers to code automated workflows, but as we
Luckily, there’s Zapier, a robust online automation tool that links your apps together into one seamless package. Want to automatically download all attachments received in Gmail and save them to Dropbox? Easy. Need to streamline your social media output? Have Zapier send new RSS items to Facebook as posts. Remind your team of upcoming
I have a really easy way to guarantee you’ll have more sales next quarter. In fact, I’m a little worried about writing it here because this is a short article, and I don’t want people to overlook this tip. But I’m going to throw caution to the wind and reward those who read all of my articles in the newsletter.
Guess Who’s Back Not too many Pros have been featured in these illustrious pages twice, but that’s just how Tasha Hussey rolls. Since we talked to her last November, she’s continued to lead her team to great things while still being one of the “realest” people in the office. She’s also dipped her toes in the waters of stand-up at a local comedy club, so we caught up with her to ask the most important question of all: What makes for a good joke? A TASHA HUSSEY REDUX
Here it is: Increase follow-up of leads both online and offline.
If you’re thinking that sounds too easy or “I already know that,” you’re probably right on both accounts. But there is a big difference between knowing you should do something and actually doing it. Last year, we generated $1,300,000 in new customer revenue from people who had been on our list for more than 12 months and never purchased a thing. Why did this happen? Because we followed up with prospects month in and month out with both our weekend reading emails and our print newsletter. To even further encourage prospects to convert, we made prospect-only offers using FSIs (freestanding inserts) in our newsletter to entice them to become clients. If you want to see real growth, all you have to do is make sure you are nailing the basics, because so few businesses are. Focus on what has worked for decades or longer, build a diverse communication system, and you’ll watch sales and profits soar. –Shaun
harder-working mother of 7 (with 5 kids still in the house), it’s no surprise that a lot of her material comes from her family — especially to those of us who work with her. She’s got stories about her kids that will have you rolling on the floor, and that’s just who she is day-to-day. With a little preparation, she knocks ‘em dead every time.
She says, “A good joke is one that we feel we are all in on. I love the buildup of a story that draws you in and is inclusive.” That’s not the direction that many comics take, but Tasha isn’t most comics. For one, she freely admits suffering from stage fright. “I have a severe case,” she says. “If anyone has tips, hit me up!”
Don’t worry, we asked Tasha some other important questions too, like would you rather be a dog or a
For another, Tasha isn’t cruising around looking for material all day. A hardworking team lead and
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SUCCESS STORIES
Google calendar events by automating a Slack chat blast to a specific channel, automatically generate
Trello to-do cards from received emails, or convert new Wufoo forms into new leads in Salesforce. Zapier works with over 750 common applications; there are thousands upon thousands of possible ways to save your entire company precious time. The best part about Zapier is its simplicity. Zapier operates via “Zaps,” which are discreet automated workflows.
“I’ve been a very happy Newsletter Pro client for the past four years. I trust them to help me retain my current customer base and add more customers! And if your peers tell you direct mail newsletters are not for your type of business ... that’s perfect ... it means YOU will be the only one gaining profits from a printed newsletter. Thank you, Newsletter Pro!” – Wally Conway, Home Pro
Each Zap consists of at least one Trigger (the event that starts the Zap) and one or more Actions (the event that completes the Zap). Select and customize from a massive library of premade Zaps or create your own in Zapier’s easy-to-use environment, completely free of coding and hassles. Zapier does everything in the background, allowing you to redirect your efforts to more important tasks. The time you’re wasting posting individual blasts to Twitter could be streamlined with automatic RSS integration. The hour you spend assimilating employee data from a Google Form could be spent generating new leads. You don’t have to let busywork bog down your company. Automate your workflows with Zapier and make every second count.
“Our newsletter has been published monthly for almost a year. I always look forward to doing the cover story with our copywriter and it always comes out better than I imagined. Clients and friends of the firm seem appreciative that they are on our publication list, and we have seen a rise in referrals since the printed newsletter has replaced a prior email approach. I am impressed with the professional quality, entertainment value, and production efficiency The Newsletter Pro provides.”
– Art Swerdloff, Swerdloff Law
Have You Heard the Good News?
John 15:8 — By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Galatians 5:22-23 — But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Romans 12:12 — Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Colossians 4:2 — Devote yourself to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
cat (“Cat,” she says. “They do what they want.”) and what her favorite albums are (Florence and the Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is high on the list). But then she had to run back to her desk to keep everything running smoothly. It turns out that for Tasha, the woman of many hats, time is at a premium. She did leave us with these words of wisdom, however, before jumping on the phone with one of our awesome clients: “Have you ever seen a badger fight? They have no fear when provoked. They’ll take on lions, bears, whatever they need to.”
Words to live by.
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MARKETING TOOLBOX
THE NOT SEXY BUT ALL-TOO-COMMON REASON BUSINESSES
GET STUCK AND STOP GROWING
exit from the business. It sucks, but it’s the reality of business and growth.
your first manager. This is no small feat, as you’ve now doubled the amount of management you had by going from just you, to you plus one. But when do you need a third manager? Far too often, we entrepreneurs don’t invest in our team soon enough. We get scared about the cost or if they will have enough work to do. We come up with a dozen reasons why this is not a good time to hire a new manager, and if that is the position you’re in right now, in all likelihood, you should have hired a new manger weeks ago. By not hiring and growing your management team, you will eventually stall and get stuck. Your business will move forward a little and back a little, and this process will continue until you increase the company’s capacity by hiring a competent manger. You can also get stuck and stop growing when the business outgrows the management team. I’ve had this happen to me on multiple occasions. When you’re first starting out, you typically aren’t hiring high-level managers with years of outside experience. As you grow, most people can keep up with you. But after a while, you will outgrow your managers’ skillsets and need to replace these employees. This is one of the more difficult things to do as CEO. These are the people you are in the trenches with. They’ve been there for you through thick and thin, and you feel a loyalty to them, but those feelings don’t change the fact that your manager is no longer the person for the job. And, as the person responsible for doing what’s best for the company, you have to delicately work with the manager who isn’t the right fit anymore on their
When I was just starting out in business, I couldn’t understand why any company paid for a group of managers. I know it sounds dumb, but it didn’t make sense to me at 17 or 18 years old. Here were these people who got paid a ton of money and appeared to do very little actual work. It kind of sounded like the best job ever. You tell people what to do, but don’t actually do anything yourself, and you get paid well for it. As I’ve become older and wiser, and become a manager of people, I’ve realized that we managers do a little more than 18-year-old Shaun thought we did. A good manager can add so much value to the business. They can train people to be better at their jobs and motivate employees to push through a hard time or task. They can figure out complicated problems and even create or fix systems. Managers can help with customer service and customer retention. They keep the team accountable, prioritize tasks, and make sure everyone shows up and gets to work. The list goes on and on, but we all know a good manager is a must-have for any business. The manager, in many cases, can literally make or break the business, kind of like a good football coach can make or break a team. That leads me to the first area where a business can get stuck: not enough management. When you first start out, it’s just you, and maybe you’ve gotten to the point where you need some help, so you promote a high-performing employee to be
The final way that management can get you stuck comes as you approach $5 million-plus in sales. Most of the time, at that point you need to start looking to hire outside talent to fill at least some of your managerial positions. Promoting high- performing team members simply won’t work any longer. What you’re looking for is someone who has seen the path you’re about to go down and understands the normative model, so they can assist you in achieving the company’s growth goals. instructions to fire some people and not promote others. Depending on who is reading this, they may think I’m a jerk — and some ex-employees would likely agree with them. In real life, these decisions aren’t easy, and they are one of the top three worst parts of my job as CEO. But my duty to the company and every other employee is to make these hard choices. My job is to make sure we keep growing and create opportunities and a healthy company for every employee, not just a few people. Does my job suck sometimes? Hell yeah, it does, and if you ever find yourself in one of the unpleasant situations above, it will suck for you, too. But this is our job, and it’s what we get paid to do. So, rip the Band-Aid off and get back to growing your company. In today’s competitive environment, you have no choice. It is grow or die out there. I know I’ve just laid out black-and-white explanations that, in a nice way, include
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• Use numbers 1-9 only • The full grid is 9x9 cells • The full grid is broken into 9 regions, 3x3 cells each • Each region can contain only one of each number 1-9 • Each cell can contain only one number • Each row and column should contain only one of each number 1-9 Sudoku Basics
Grid n°27048 easy
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We have all the free sudokus youneed! 400new sudokuseveryweek. Make your own free printable sudoku at www.PrintMySudoku.com BUSINESS PROFILE TRADER JOE’S BUCKS THE TREND The Secrets to the Grocery Giant’s Success
instrumental to its success: a tendency to take a drastically different approach than its supermarket ilk and teams of consistently satisfied, happy employees. You won’t find Coca-Cola on the shelves at any Trader Joes, nor will you find a bag of Lays potato chips. Instead, the company buys products at significant discounts from businesses large and small and sells them under their own brand. True to Coulombe’s original vision of the company as a market for overeducated, underpaid shoppers, Trader Joe’s ruthlessly culls its product line until only high-quality, niche-friendly products remain, whether those products are secretly manufactured by national brands or not. They don’t accept coupons, don’t use an arcane loyalty card system, and don’t offer weekly
The experience opened Coulombe’s eyes to the numerous untapped niche markets that existed in the grocery industry. He began supplying fancy mustards, gourmet cheeses, and other specialized goods. The chain bucked the growing supermarket trend of stores carrying dozens of options for any one product. Instead, they focused on products that fit their demographic, and only those they could sell cheaply relative to their competitors. As Coulombe told Businessweek, “We adopted a policy of not carrying anything we could not be outstanding in, in terms of price.” Now, Trader Joe’s ranks among the most beloved and profitable grocery chains in the nation, consistently ranking in the top three for customer satisfaction in Market Force surveys. Two components are
In 1967, when 7-Elevens began sprouting up like weeds across Los Angeles, Joseph Coulombe’s small chain of convenience stores was in peril. It was clear that the saturated market would be imminently dominated by this leaner, meaner competitor. It was all Coulombe could do to keep his business afloat. That is, until he read a fascinating tidbit: Consumers with higher education were buying more alcohol than their less-educated counterparts. In response, Coulombe began stocking his stores with 17 different brands of local California wines — the largest selection in the state. Soon, he had to restock, and then again. The wines were a huge success, which goes to show that even when a market is mature and seems to work well with the formula it has always used for success, there is still room for innovation.
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sales. Instead, they streamline everything so that they can offer quality products at the lowest possible price every day. But it’s not only the prices or products that keep customers coming back, it’s the positive shopping experience the chain offers. Spearheaded by teams of well-paid, satisfied employees, they ensure shoppers are well taken care of. Other big supermarket chains view labor as an avenue to ruthless cost-cutting, but back in the 1960s, Coulombe instituted a policy that full-time employees would always be paid at least the median household income for their area. Their employment package comes with health care benefits, even for part-time employees. This respect for even the lowest-level workers creates an environment of positivity and service within Trader Joe’s, where employees are more than eager to help busy shoppers. Not only that, but it increases operational efficiency and drives sales.
always a fresh strategy with the potential to launch your business to the top of the “food chain.” You might just have to think outside of the box to find it. Who knows, maybe big-name brands will one day be clamoring to put your label over their own!
All of this just goes to show that bucking the trend can pay dividends for shrewd business owners. Instead of aping your competitors blindly, learn your niche inside and out, take risks, and cultivate talent within your company. And think again if you assume your market is tapped out on innovation. There’s
BOOK REVIEW Success Is Right In Front of You, You Just Can’t See It
thriving company. Everything, he argues, is centered around your business being equipped with a “unique selling proposition,” or in other words, framing your product and approach so that it gives unique value in the midst of a competition-saturated marketplace. Part of this USP, he says, should involve establishing personal relationships with your clients. This way, not only will customers flock to you, they’ll leave loving your product and their buying experience, resulting in constantly multiplying referrals. whether they’re employees, co-workers, or clients. Though one of his central themes is “everyone is in sales,” he approaches the subject not so much as a pushy salesperson, but as someone seeking to make valuable connections with his surroundings. To Abraham, maximizing value is as important as convincing your clients of that value. Abraham also gives extensive advice on increasing the value of the service you provide to others,
As Jay Abraham’s classic book, “Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got,” puts it, “You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence, and success.” Unfortunately, he says, these self- evident golden ideas are all but invisible to the average business owner. In the book, Abraham makes it his personal mission to “recognize the income- and success-increasing connections that are all around you.” His thesis is that business is really not as complicated as people tend to make it, and he boils success down to three processes:
Success is right under your nose. Many of the greatest, most profitable innovations in the history of commerce seem obvious in retrospect. Toilet paper was invented 82 years after the flush toilet became commonplace. The ice cream cone didn’t hit the scene until 3,900 years after ice cream was invented.
1. Increasing your number of clients
2. Increasing the average size of the sale per client
3. Increasing the number of times clients return and buy again
Anybody seeking sound business foundations is sure to benefit from this book.
Of course, these are easier said than done. Luckily, Abraham is dead-set on demystifying the road to a
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