If you think that a guy who, at the age of 29, racked up a string of failed ventures and found himself $500K in debt after his restaurant went bust, wouldn’t be a great person to turn to for financial advice -- you’d be wrong because…
That guy is Jeff Lerner, who…
And he shared it all with me on a recent Rich Ad, Poor Ad podcast . In case you didn’t catch it, I’m giving you the highlights on his financial insights from my interview with “that guy” here.
I promise you it’s worth the read.
1. You Don’t Need 20+ Credit Cards for Facebook Ads.
“At one point we had nine ad managers. If they were on Facebook and YouTube, that meant two cards per ad manager.
Since then we’ve consolidated. We're back down to only three ad managers. We're a lot better now at figuring out who the really good ones are. Now we're basically operating off of, I think probably six credit cards.
And even that is just playing some good defense. You know, like if you lose a Facebook ad account, you don't want to have the same credit card on another Facebook ad account because you can have spillover risk.
2. Using credit cards for Facebook that you have to pay off every couple days is stupid.
“At one point, we were spending about $1M a month when we only had about a quarter million dollars a month in credit. So we were paying them off every two days, which was, which was stupid.
Even knowing what I know -- and I've been doing this for a decade --I still wasn't as prepared as I needed to be.
It's hard for internet marketers because most of us, we don't have 20 year histories of being an executive at Goldman Sachs where the bank will just go, ‘Oh, here's a $2 million line of credit.’.
We’re like these ragtag nobodies that pop out of nowhere and suddenly we're making all this money. And so, you gotta be proactive about it.”
3. Getting micro-commitments adds up to big money.
“I believe we live now in a world of relational marketing. Trust is low. Skepticism is high.
People are in a hurry, but they're also impatient. It’s like they say “I don’t have a lot of time. But also I don’t trust you. So you need to prove yourself. “
And you’re saying, ‘But you're not giving me enough time so I guess we can't do business.’
Well, who loses in that scenario? Me, the marketer.
So you have to find ways to fractionalize the relationship -- building lots of what we call micro commitments. You’ve got to go on a lot of dates before you pop the question now.
It originally took us 21 days to ROA. I think we're down to like maybe12 days to get ROAs positive.
But our long-term sales cycle extends almost 90 days -- sometimes longer. In the meantime, you’ve got to deliver content to fill all those voids and deliver value. It might take them a year to fall in love with you. So you gotta be hitting them with something new every day.”
4. To get, you’ve gotta give -- a whole lot.
“My starting point was doing 10 times more than what's expected. So, I have 595 videos on my YouTube channel that I'vecreated in the last two years. I have 750 videos on my Facebook page.
So you buy my $39 course -- and I deliver you about eight hours worth of really, really good content. People have told me ‘That was a thousand dollar course. Why do you only sell it for $39?’
Also,I pay to put you on the phone with an advisor that actually holds your hand through the whole thing. So I'm over-investing. Over-delivering, over-loving every step of the way.
And I'm doing so patiently -- without insisting on my reward. Then it's Sales 101. The less desperate you act and the more service oriented you are, the more people will spend money with you --- if they feel like you're not pressuring them.”
5. You’ve got to know when to ask for the cash.
“It's not just taking your time as you build your value. It’s knowing when to ask and to cash in on the reciprocity.
So for us, we'll start with an average of a $120 cart value. We'll love on you for two weeks. But you'll hit a point where if you want to go deeper with us, and then there's another ask.
I mean, I can't serve you for five years because you gave me a hundred bucks. So it's like, if you want to go deeper, here's some courses -- here's the middle rung of our ladder that’s a few thousand dollars
It's a filter for who’s really wanting to do this. And then we give you more. We take you through a bootcamp. We give you all this ad training. If you spend $2,000 with us, you get $20,000 worth of value.
Eventually it'll be time to re-up if you want to keep going. But that might happen 60 days later. We have high ticket coaching programs and a Mastermind. People spend a year’s salary to work with me directly.
I know that it's not viable for people to come out of the gate with all this stuff built. But all this thinking has to be in place. So that you'll do the building as you can, because you have to build into it. It's very unlikely that with the big ad platforms, you're going to go out and be ROAs positive selling a thing.”
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