Session #287: Howard’s Marketing Epiphany

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

This is the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast, session number 2 87, Howard’s Marketing epiphany. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here and welcome to the program.

And you might have noticed we had a special guest. Do the pre-roll there and Howard Cooper, how are you? I, I’m great. I’m really good. Say it’s wonderful to be here again. Again, I know. In outstanding previous episode. Including more of, you know, the sort of back story, the origin story aspect of it. One of my favorite episodes ever named Howard Cooper ruins a magic trick and, uh, connecting with you again for Howard’s marketing epiphany and the perfect timing of this.

Just to set the stage for everything we’re about to just jump into and chat about. We’ve kind of changed the format just for the month of August, 2020. Coming at you with a lot of solo episodes about the restructuring of my business, giving you some strategies to restructure yours. And if only like last week Howard and I connected for a call to chat through some things that he’s working on, to then realize, oh wait, what he’s doing right now is completely reinforcing everything that we’ve been chatting about here.

So Howard, for those of you that might not yet know you, could you give a quick intro to yourself for those to, for those to. For sure. Yeah. So Howard Cooper, I build myself as a rapid change consultant and hypnotherapist. And really the way I look at myself is I, or certainly the line that I give to clients and prospects, is that I spent 18 years developing and practicing and coming across as many rapid change methodologies as I could come across so that I’m more likely to have something that’s gonna help the person sitting in front of me.

Um, I take on the idea that therapy needs to be this in week out model. Where change takes a long time, I think it’s outdated and I wanna help bring the message that rapid change can happen out there. So a lot of the stuff that I do is all about working with anxiety, fears, phobias, depression, stopping smoking habits and addictions, and really selling the idea that change can happen quickly.

And that’s what, uh, first through the Rapid Change Matters Podcast first led me and you to connect and we’ve been, uh, hopping on like this ever. Exactly. Yeah. Which check out that podcast. Absolutely. And then a number of training programs available over at Howard’s website, including one that we did together with Dan CandE, which will link to that in the show [email protected].

So we’ve been talking at times over the years around the structure of. Your business, whether it’s, you know, hosted trainings and infiltrating appropriately Facebook marketing, though there’s some things that you’ve put into place immediately. And that was the sound of Howard banging his own hand on his own desk.

By the way, please do not edit that out. I wish you all that’s fine. That’s . I wish you all had the visual that I had. It was remarkable and that was a rapid. See how I did that. Yeah. So there’s, uh, c could you walk us through sort of the bigger picture aspect of what you’ve been plugging into your business, of seeing clients and building that global brand the last couple of months?

Yeah, so I, I’ve always been interested in processes. Always been interested in how can I streamline things, but I’ve also been a little bit too short term focused in the past. Mm-hmm. so very much, you know, I loved the idea and I would read stuff about marketing and processes of, you know, having processes where client contacts you.

I have a 15 minute initial chat with them. I then send them out an email and lot of this stuff might be standardized or templated and so on and so forth, but, I, I, I’ve heard you talk about this idea of set it and forget it before and gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense. But right now, right now, this person needs this email.

A and to set up a whole back system backend, whole doar with technology that I might not be familiar with right now. Seems like a big ask and I just need to send this one email. So I’ll just send that one email. And I probably spent, if I’m very honest, many, many years just sending that one email, having to do the same email repeatedly and do the same things over and over again.

And actually a couple of months ago when I had a bit more time after there’s something going around, I’ve heard Corona. Yes, Corona. It might catch on. It might catch on. Yeah. Which has given me a little bit more time to stop and kind of take a step back and reexamine everything that I was doing from a business perspective and say, okay, if, and here was the question that I asked myself, if I could throw everything out, just everything and start from scratch with a blank canvas, what ideally would I want to?

How ideally would it work? And the reality of it was, is that there was no world where ideally I’d be sending out the same email myself repeatedly and doing the same mundane tasks repeatedly, and I started looking at what are the solutions out there. There are, I was inundated with, I couldn’t believe how many things that there were that did, would automate processes.

Yeah. So I signed up to a thing called Kartra after doing a lot of research and looking at things like LEAP and Infusionsoft, I know they’re kind of the same people now. Yeah. There’s beauty that there’s so many tools that are out there and you know, I forget if I’ve mentioned this in one of the recent episodes in the series that I’ve started using Click funnel.

But really using it more so for a, you know, productivity shortcut that we’re migrating a bunch of websites and by utilizing Click Funnels. Now some of those sales pages are hosted, and I’m using it for both Work Smart Hypnosis as well as Virginia Hypnosis. But that allowed me to put my sales on an external page, which meant my sites could then continue to be updated and the external stuff was then untouched.

So that’s why I was using that. But this, this was the catch that I ran into was that there’s so many tools that. Have to talk to a little bit of everything. You’ve done really well utilizing one Well, and what I liked about it, it was an all in one kind of package, which integrated some calendar functionality as well as web building and marketing funnels.

And it was funny because I always told myself that I couldn’t afford that. They always seem very expensive, you know? Cause guess what? I already pay, you know, 18 pounds a month for my existing calendar appointment stuff. And I already pay, I have a customer relationship management system on my Mac called Daylight, which I, I was using for years, and I pay a subscription to that each month.

And, and I have my email marketing provider, which is separate. My pay already. How can I take on something else? And then it, it was like, it suddenly realized I don’t have to take on something else entirely, cuz this one thing can do all the other stuff so I can get rid of the other things. So by signing up to Kartra, um, one of the benefits is I’m actually saving money cuz it’s doing everything under one roof.

And it all plays together really, really nicely. Well, it plays together nicely. There’s one little nuance of something that we, we spoke about before. Which is that, and I want you all to hear this before I say it and make a judgment on it, that there’s a funny little glitch in the way that it’s built that makes it difficult for Howard.

It doesn’t make it difficult for the user and that, what was it? You had to set up the calendar system. In my time zone here in the New York City, Washington DC Eastern daylight time, when meanwhile, you are very clearly not around these parts. For the user. For the user, it recognizes where they’re logging in from and puts the time zone.

In their time. But here’s the catch. That would be a place where so many people would go, Oh, but this isn’t gonna work for me. And they’d bow out. You embrace that. Here’s this one funky little thing, which I’m sure enough people are gonna complain about that, you know, in the cart reforms that they’re gonna fix that eventually.

That they are gonna fix it for sure. And I’m seeing those movements, right? Those are those things that don’t tend to be long term. And you know, here’s this funky little thing that we used to have to deal with at Infusionsoft and enough of us requested it. That’s what I use. Enough of us requested it and then they gave it to us.

But again, this is where I wanna highlight that moment because that’s one where so many would go, This isn’t gonna work for. It became, Okay, so here’s this. Well, let’s automate the email. Here’s this annoyance, annoying, little tedious task I have to do once, but now that I’ve done it once, I don’t have to do it.

That what you just said, that is the beauty. That’s what I fell in love with because I, I realized I spent years doing the same thing repeatedly, and in about two hours of playing around with Kartra, I had basically built automated systems that did everything that I’ve been doing manually, and now it just runs.

So, you know, I, I, I kind of log in sometimes and just look and I go, Oh look, I, I sent out emails to Chase, paperwork. I’ve got paperwork back. It stops sending the emails to chase them. It’s sending out reminders about my appointments. It’s sending out, uh, reminders over 50 minute initial chats that I’m gonna do.

It’s checking to see have they, uh, signed up with me yet, or have they bought something yet, and, Oh, no they haven’t. Or then prompt them and. And there’s just thousands of email communications going out for me every month, and I haven’t done anything. Yeah. Um, it’s, it’s marvelous. It’s absolutely fantastic.

This, this is where I could now reveal the moment where people would call me up to go, Hey Jason, I just got your email and I have to hold back from going, Oh, which one? That, you know, there’s systems that are built on, again, two different sides of the business. For me. There’s Virginia Hypnosis, the seeing of clients, and then there’s work smart hypnosis.

The, the training aspect of it in the podcast, and I mean, there’s an example of, we, we had this chat about programming emails to come out at times that look as if they’re seemingly random about the email will come out at one 30 and then two days later it’ll send out again at 10 45 in the morning, and then a few days later it’ll come to you at seven 30 in the evening.

And it’s not that I. It’s not that I’ve tested and seen which times work better, though I have. It’s that you don’t know for that one specific person which time will be the better fit. And I, I have a sequence right now that if somebody takes one training 82 days later, if the system can then tell you don’t have the other training.

It’ll then give you an invite to start to gather information and build the rapport with that other product to then eventually make that offer the same as you mentioned for Virginia Hypnosis, that you know, the client now pays for the stop smoking session, which then immediately sends them into the sequence to get them to schedule themselves.

which then immediately last week episode was position yourself at the end of the funnel. So they pay for the process because the website has sold it to them. Then from there, it automates, Go ahead and schedule your appointment. Only then gives them the opportunity to now actually then fill out the forms, which at that point gives me the calendar reminder to call the person so we can flip the dynamic of our business.

Where now I’m not doing that phone consult with someone to then decide whether or not they want to buy the surface. I’m doing that phone consult now with someone who’s already decided to do it and paid in full for it. That’s a whole lot better of a place to be living. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

And what it’s done by automating a lot of the stuff that I was doing, and it was, that was eating up my time to do is given me time to start building stuff that keeps giving back and to build products. And I mean, I, I kept say, Well, I just don’t have time. How can I have time to create an online product that I could sell?

Because I’m so busy sending these flipping emails to people and it’s like, No, no, let that do that. And now I’ve got more. Now there’s one specific thing I wanted to highlight here, which is that there’s a real time quality of testing that we bring to this to see what’s working right now and what’s gonna bring in the income.

Cuz there is a dance. Between, I can see that client on this specific day and let’s bring in the business and get paid for it. But then again, I can block off. An example would be today I’m in my home basement office right now. That’s the lovely, uh, is that mov color balls, Salmon, mov, mov mov. I’m, I’m from the uk you know, Niche.

Yeah, niche . That would be niche, I think to find. Watch it. Yeah. So anyway, yeah. So today’s the day, which is just about content creation. And, but it’s the investment of time today that’s then gonna pay off a bigger dividend in the future. But you have employed a kind of really cool real time testing phase, which is that depending on your calendar that week, correct me on this, you are directing people from one specific opt-in offer either to schedule time to work with me or buy this product.

Can it, Can you chat a bit on that? Mm. Yeah. Well, it. It kind of came about by accident, really, which is I created opt in about to help people with anxiety, which has hugely built my list, and I’ve been really impressed with that with three emails giving three video tips. The intention always, originally had been, I was going to segue after the three emails into a bunch of emails that would then sell them on an online anxiety program, but I hadn’t built it yet, so I was like, Ah, I haven’t built the program at the anxiety program yet, but I’ve got this, like the beginning of the sequence, which I’ll do something with.

Well, why not send them towards seeing. So I wrote, like, spent a couple of hours, wrote a bunch of emails and automated the sequence so that people sign up and then it encourages them to have an initial chat with me to see if I can help. And that was working really, really well. People were ringing me and I’m getting, I’m winning business.

And this was, I was like, Wow, that this is working really well. And while that’s on the fly and going on, I then created the online anxiety program, launched that and thought, Well, hang on. I’ve got people signing up at the initial phase. I’m just gonna send them over and I. Coming to see me. Can I turn this into passive income?

So flip them over. So I, I redirected them over to get the emails about selling the online anxiety program. But I’m gonna be honest with you, it, it’s, while that was going on, not huge amounts of people were buying. So meanwhile, my. Inquiries for one on one work are going down, and I’m thinking, Okay, this sucks.

Well, but I went back and looked at the figures and I start playing around, and we talked about this as well and played around with how can we make this better? How can we move this around? But I suddenly thought, Well, hang on a second, while I’m playing around and getting the email structure better, or the course better so that it’ll sell more effect.

It’s like turning on a tap. I can just literally take the same set of people that are already signing up and just redirect them into getting the emails of outcoming and signing up to see me face to face. And I did. And it was, it’s the first time, which I would argue is an absolute epiphany of like, I feel like I have a tap that I can just go ding, and then my phone starts going and people start booking calls with me, which to give everybody the visual representation of this, which what you.

And again, all of these platforms, my, my opinion, now all of these platforms work. It’s a matter of getting in there and figuring out which one you like best, and then just using the heck out of it. So I’m, you know, a user of Infusionsoft, which the, the nature of what they have with mine of what’s called the campaign builder.

And this is gonna sound familiar. You’re not gonna see it, but Howard’s already nodding, Yay Audio podcast, which is the nature that it’s icons on a screen. And to do what I do in mine is I detach the arrow connecting point A to point B to then make the arrow now point from point A to point C. So if I wanted the opt-in sequence to go to a product, it points to the product.

If I want it to, then instead go to client side. That’s an option too in mind. I have the ability to randomize that selection and do a bit of a blind split test that based on when someone comes in, it can pick and choose which one they go to, and there’s different if then factors you can then plug in, which is I, I would say unless you’re selling a scalable million dollar a year product, Is more, just out of curiosity, I think you need to be in higher numbers to get the real, real value of the split testing.

We’re a much smaller community. Not to say that there’s not, you know, high potential, but even in Howards with Kar. It’s again, the same thing. Disconnect this arrow, attach it to the other, which means the one that’s not currently running. You could then be work, shopping, testing, asking what do I need to better do to educate these people?

To educate and inform. So by the time they see the product offer, they go, Yeah, this is the thing I want to do. So we can, we can troubleshoot, we can workshop this in real time, which is where I have to quickly talk about Richard non guard that, uh, , I’ve told this story on here. That I bought a product from Richard before we really knew each other.

And it was a mechanism with Google Ads, which was that you used to be able to buy unused radio and newspaper space through Google. And Richard was just virtually printing money with this feature. And he put out an amazing, amazing two DVD set talking about exactly how that worked. And the day that mine arrived, I got an email, I got a call actually from.

I had never talked to him. It just suddenly there’s that voice and he’s calling me and it’s him going, Google discontinued that service. Sorry, I’ve got a box of DVDs that I’m throwing out. You paid a hundred bucks for it. Find something on subliminal science.com. That’s like 300 or less, and. You know, we’ll send you that instead or refund you.

So the problem with the digital video product, the DVD was once it was published, it was done and set in our digital era. You can hear how Howard is constantly tweaking and refining what’s there in that system based on the realtime feedback. A absolutely. And what are the things that used to hold me back, I think is like, can I create the perfect product?

Can I, how do I write the perfect email? And then I realize it doesn’t exist. And what I can do is just write. And create something and then see what happens, and then tweak, then change, you know, And it will grow and develop over time. But so many people are trying to aim for perfection. They end up getting nothing done.

Right. A and the real beauty of it is, is that not everybody is, Looking at your information in a spot where they can make a buying decision, which is the most polite way to say they’re looking at their phone on the toilet. So this is that value of staying top of mind, continuing to add more value, and keeping up that consistency of the messaging of send The next email a few days later is the polite reminder.

Yeah. So then looking at the shape of this, are there other things you’re looking to streamline and the nature of your business? Everything, Yeah, , everything. I wanna streamline everything. In fact, the idea of having to do stuff for me, it’s like I only wanna do stuff if I’m gonna be able to reuse it repeatedly.

Every time I’m doing something, I’m asking myself, Is this something that I’m doing right now as a one off, or am I ever likely to do this? Because I could build something, set it and forget it. You know? I know I’ve done countless podcasts now, and that’s why this is not even live. This is just a recording of me that I recorded once and whenever anyone wants a podcast with me, you know, you just selected which responses you’d want.

And that’s what you’re getting now. I’m not even live. I’m right now, I’m on a golf course. Like just ha having fun. Well, it goes back to Tim Ferris for our work week. As you approach every single task, ask yourself, How do I do this once? Jason Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program and power.

You’re still here though, right? I’m still here. Okay, good. Yeah. This is the part where usually we plug something, which for. Business insight. Of course, you can check out hypnotic business systems.com. If you want more of the hands on, you know, do it with you work. You can check out the private consulting that I offer though, Howard, let’s share the stage here again, How can people best get in contact with you?

They can go to rapid change.works and there they will see a whole host of really cool resources, so not just a podcast interviewing obviously some of the leading therapists and change workers as well as yourself, Jason. But they will also find online trainings where they can get access to some of the cutting edge methods for helping clients change.

So if anyone’s really curious and head over to Rapid change.works, and you will find a whole host of really cool resources that will help you take your change work to the next level. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.