Running a business will not always be a smooth-sailing ride. There will be failures and struggles, but there is also a way to stay positive and productive amidst those setbacks. That is what Kim Sutton shares in this episode. Kim is the host of the Positive Productivity Podcast. She started (and failed) out as an interior designer before encountering the Law of Attraction. After going through more trials, she found her calling in helping entrepreneurs achieve success without the burnout. Today, Scott Carson talks with Kim about the simplicity of creating funnels to help you serve your network.

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Positive Productivity With Kim Sutton

I got a special treat for you in this episode. We have somebody who does an amazing job for entrepreneurs and who’s also a successful entrepreneur on her own right, who does an absolutely badass, kickass job in helping entrepreneurs like myself be able to get their message out and be able to communicate and follow up with our clients. The person I’m talking about is the one, the only, the badass rock star Ms. Kim Sutton, from the Positive Productivity Podcast. Kim, how is it going?

I can’t even tell you how much I love having badass attached to my name. I’m sure the people who know me are probably thinking, “Did you say badass?”

You’ve done an amazing job. Why don’t you share a little bit with our readers about what positive productivity means to you and a little bit about your background and how you got at where you’re at now?

Positive Productivity is all about keeping our chin up when we’re having those crappy days. Staying in bed, as much as we want to do it and I’ve tried, it doesn’t help us get anywhere. When I say I’ve tried, I mean it. I’ve tried to go back to sleep and cover up my head and escape the anxiety, the depression and the business that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. What we need to do is keep our chin up, turn on the playlist of our kickass music and plow through all the stuff that’s happening and keep on going. I have seen the worst of the worst. Scott, you’ve heard of it, but I don’t know if you’ve heard this story.

We’ve had days where we haven’t been able to pay our utility bills so our water has gotten shut off. Thankfully, I’m in Ohio and on that rare day in Southwestern Ohio that it snowed. My husband is like, “Boys.” I have two teenage boys. I have five kids all together and this was years ago. He’s like, “Go outside. You can go pee outside but bring the snow inside, put it in the toilet so mom can go. I kept on pushing forward because if I don’t keep on going, if we don’t keep on going, how is that bill going to get paid? The water was back on that day. Is that something I’m proud of? No. Is it something that we’ll be laughing at for Thanksgivings in 30 years? Yes.

All entrepreneurs go through ups and downs, no matter what it is. We have had some ebbs and flows in the note business with deal flow and things dragging out and things not closing near as what it should be. Many entrepreneurs feel like they’re a one-man band out there. They’re trying to have to do everything, especially when it comes to marketing. They don’t know exactly what to do or how to follow up with things. I appreciate your being candid and sharing. I’ve had the power turned off before. I forgot to pay the bill or I was out of town or I’ve got to get a closing to come in. It’s turned on the next day, but I think most people only see the success.

It’s like the iceberg method where everybody sees the top part of the success, they don’t see all the stuff at the bottom, which is many years of working and trial and errors of the stakes. It’s learning from our errors to get to the point where we’re at the peak of that summit. The thing that’s important about being productive is even on the days that you say you don’t want to crawl out of bed. We had Matt Brauning on talking about NLP and how the words we say to ourselves, “Let’s get out of bed. Let’s get rocking. It’s a great day. It’s going to be an awesome day,” can program our mind. You have done an amazing job of working with other people to help them program and automate some of the mundane things that they’re going on to help them be more marketable.

Can I touch on something that you said though? It’s the sharing of the crap that connects us more to the people. I had a whole fail of an eCommerce a decade ago. In my lowest of lows, in this entrepreneurial journey, it was 2016 and there was still a lot of perfectionism on Facebook. I saw people sharing the best of the best and it was rare or maybe I was looking in the wrong circles that I saw the dirt. I hit a low because I thought I was failing. When I came out of that, I launched a podcast. It’s no joke, the week that I launched a podcast, one of the mentors who, not on purpose but I felt inferior to, she put out a post that she had been dealing with anxiety and depression for six months and it had crippled her business. My first five episodes went out the same day and I had shared my own story and I was like, “My gosh.”

Had I known that she was going through this, it’s probably good I didn’t because I probably would have felt a lot better about myself and maybe I wouldn’t have pushed myself hard and felt like a failure myself. Number two is I don’t know that I would have been here because I felt like it was important to share. When I’m working on funnels with people, I feel like a feel-good funnel has to share the good, the bad and ugly. If we don’t share the humanness of us, then it’s going to be a lot harder to connect and get money in our wallets.

You hit the nail right on the head there. It’s important. I understand that people are positive, but some people are like, “When are you having a rough time?” Not everybody isn’t always up. That’s across the board. I don’t care if you’re Tony Robbins, you’re not always up with different things. Everybody has down days. Let’s talk a little about that. I want you to describe what a basic funnel is for people because I think funnels and systems can help people get through those rough times when they don’t have those things in place. If they’re an entrepreneur out there, they’re trying to do it all themselves. It gets overwhelming and when you have those down times that marketing, the boulder that we’re rolling uphill rolls back down a little bit. If you’ve got things in place like funnels, it can keep going for you even when you’re not feeling like you want to drive the cart that day.

A marketing funnel and what I’m talking about is a lead generation funnel is a way that you initially exchange a free piece of information, whether it’s an audio, video series, a checklist or an eBook. It’s something that doesn’t take any of your time to get to the person because it’s all automated in exchange for their email address. The greatest asset that you can have in your business is not your Facebook followers, it’s not your YouTube subscribers, it’s your email list. As long as you don’t violate them in their inbox and have your email list shut down, which does happen. “Scott, I’m going to give you the top ten tips to find awesome properties for no cost. All you need to do is give me your email address.”

You give it to me, I email you the checklist, as far as that’s your expertise. It then begins a series of emails and usually there’s an immediate upsell, “I gave you the checklist, Scott, but do you want a little bit more, do you want a ten-day training series? It’s going to cost you,” you think about what sounds good to hear people. This goes for any market segment. It can go for Scott. It can go to anybody. It’s going to cost you a little bit of money and there’s a nurture sequence and then you eventually take them into higher-level products and services. It can be group programs, it can be evergreen courses or it can be one-on-one coaching. It can be selling houses for all I care or selling whatever you have.

There are many ways and I shared it with you, the 404 pages. How many times a week do you wind up on a 404 page? I am all thumbs. I don’t even try to thumb them anymore. I speak to them and Siri and I are not Kimpatible. They still have typos. When I’m using my thumbs to type something in, I always wind up somewhere else and I wind up on a 404 page, but that’s another place. Instead of saying, “You’ve got a bad link,” put a video of you up there plus a free offer and use your 404 page as a way to build your funnel.

What Kim is referring to is when you type in a website and it says, “It’s not there or this page is no longer valid.” That’s a 404 page. When she said that to me, she messaged me as we were preparing for this, I was like, “Is this what you’re talking about?” I typed in WeCloseNotes.com/404 and she’s like, “Yes,” because that’s what happens and things like that. She did a great job of putting her video in there and said, “We’re positive productive but not perfect.” I loved it. It was short.

 

It was less than a minute. We had bloopers at the end too.

Pull the link to something else to get people back on the right track and that’s a great thing. Going back to what Kim mentioned about because everybody’s in the media aspect of things. We’re all trying to capture real estate. I’m talking about property, but real estate, an email address is still the most valuable thing to have because it still has the highest ROI when it comes to marketing over 4,400% on a dollar for dollar basis. If you use it correctly and use it properly. Most people will capture some of this email like on a business card. This is the thing that drives me bonkers, Kim. It’s people going out and networking. They’ve got stacks of business cards that they never do anything with.

I always joke that most entrepreneurs have that Nike shoebox full of business cards sitting on their desk, underneath their bed or in their closet. It’s worthless now because emails change or those relationships die if you don’t nurture them. You came up and discussed a great thing. Nurturing isn’t, “Buy my stuff.” It’s like, “Let me give you something valuable, a ten-point checklist into your due diligence on your note deals. Greg, give me your email. We’ll continue to follow-up with you.” You do a kickass job and you’ve been doing this for podcasters, entrepreneurs and real estate people for years now. You’re helping them convert their word, their speaking spots or the guest appearances, or even using some of their social media pages to connect with their audiences and start that nurturing thing. It’s a big keyword. I like to use nurturing, not selling.

Can I share another example because this one hit me out of nowhere? I was an interior architect for several years and I lost my job in 2008. In 2011, I started my business as a VA and I was having a lot of trouble finding VA jobs. I started a virtual assistant job group on Facebook. This is not a promotion for it. This was in 2013. I was not expecting this group to go anywhere and I don’t have a whole line of products and services for virtual assistants or want to be virtual assistants. I’m not even a virtual assistant anymore, but this group is 45,000 now.

Until a couple of years ago, I wasn’t doing anything. People would join the group, people would put up job postings, but I got questions all the time. “How do I start a virtual assistant business?” Because I was the head of the group, people were coming to me for it. It’s like, “Why don’t I do a six-day quick start for free?” It’s delivered via email and it’s nothing special. It’s like, “Give me your email address or click this link, put in your email address and you’re going to get it rolled out in over six days.” Scott, when you get something like that, do you want it over six days?

No.

Do you like it right away?

Yes. I’m the cat at the automatic feeder. Keep it at the point of feed me.

I was like, “There’s an opportunity here.” I took all six days, put them into a PDF and offer it to them. Initially, it was $7. I had hundreds, if not thousands of people take the upsell because they don’t want to wait six days. They want to get started right now and then we raised the prices and it’s still selling. People want what they want right now. We’re not trying to scam them. We’re trying to help them. There are going to be people who don’t even have the $7. It’s sad but true. You’ve lost your job and you’re trying to make some money. You might not have the $7 but here’s a freebie to get you started. If you had the $7, we’re happy to help you a little bit faster. There’s the nurture sequence. I shared my story of the growth and it’s all about give, give, give. For many people, it’s like a bad first date or maybe for some people, it’s a good first date. I don’t want anybody shoving their body parts at me without permission. That’s what it’s like when you try to sell me your $497 product before I even get to know you.

We’ll come to the best opt-ins, the things that you see working and the best stuff in the industry. When you’re talking about nurturing campaigns, this is the follow-up besides the first, “Give me your email,” or the first little opt-in. What do you see as an ideal time frame as far as a follow-up? Are we talking six emails over a week or 30 days? I know it varies depending on what’s going on. It’s three days before an offer is made. Gary Vee keeps ringing in my head, the Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook aspect. Before we do the ask, what do you see works? I’m sure it varies a little bit too.

It does vary and I’ve got to tell you that the sequence that I’ve had running for years now, I was scared to sell. I didn’t think I had anything worth selling. This series, which I’m now thinking about how do I work something into it earlier, has 10 or 11 emails that go out over 30 days and there’s no selling in that. I’m not saying that that’s the right way to do it. I give much value in those emails that I could definitely be offering, but I would say get them warmed up to you, build the know, like and trust over the first 3 or 4 emails and then gently work in your offers. “Do you want to learn more about how we can work together? Click here. Schedule a discovery call.”

Especially because I have all these kids, clients and stuff, I love to keep them off my calendar. My dream day has no appointments on it. If they could go directly into my courses and I love talking to people, don’t get me wrong, but stay off my calendar and go directly into my wallet. That’s going to be amazing but I don’t want to be shoving my tongue in their throat before they’ve gotten to know me. It’s not going to be a 30-day sequence before they start getting sold anything in the future but it’s also not going to be in the first three days.

Also, you’re adding value because what you’re giving in those 7 days, 30-day series is valuable things. One of the things we’ve done in the past is we did a Raising Private Money series, which people loved and we gave away the first seven days for free. We gave the first seven days away. It was a daily email for seven days and in the end, we offered up a 30-day series, a 30-day with more videos on that. 75% of those that went through this full seven days, it clicked on it, watch the videos, ended up converting into something later on and are still following on a regular basis with things. For those guys and gals out there that are thinking that they want to be teaching more in the future, setting up an opt-in campaign or a funnel as what Kim is talking about is a great way to get started to test the waters in your audience and your list and go from there. If you don’t have a list, this is also a tremendous and great way to start one. Is that right, Kim?

Absolutely. One of our mutual connections, RichE Otey, fed into my brain. I have chronic idea disorder. I’m writing the book on chronic idea disorder, but I have chronic idea disorder so it’s not finished. I have a 30 Day Work Smarter, Not Harder series. I wasn’t working smarter, I was working harder so the series wasn’t done and I told people it was launching and RichE says, “You don’t have to have them all ready before you start, Kim. Stay a couple of days ahead of them. You’re doing this for free.” I was like, “Yup.” He’s like, “It’s hard to keep people going these days. What if you tell them that they only have three days to watch each day’s content unless they buy lifetime access?” I am guilty. How many challenges have you signed up for or courses that you never got through?

 

I have a ton of them. I was cracking at one from Digital Marketer.

There’s something like 3% of people who get through the courses that they purchase. By not giving them a nudge, an incentive and a reason to keep on going and sometimes investing. I have gone through the content that I have purchased, not all of it but more of it that I purchased, that I got for free. By taking away the free stuff and making them pay for it after a certain amount of time, you’re giving them the added weight on their shoulders of, “I paid for this. I better keep on going.”

The thing that’s free has no long-term value. Somebody asked me to speak on an online summit. It’s going to be free too. I was like, “No offense but I don’t want to be there.” If there are no investments, at some point by the audience, the people who are opting in are going to fizzle out. They’re not going to have that incentive or that driven kick in the butt to consume that content before it goes away. If it’s free, they are like, “I’ll get around to it whenever I get around to it.” If it’s like, “It’s not free if I don’t get it done in the next 48 hours.”

What RichE told me is he’s like, “In the first five days, they can get it for $47 but tell them that they have to get it in the first five days or it’s going to double in price if they wait. You wouldn’t believe how many people come back to me, “Kim, I’m on day six. I can’t see day three anymore.” You should have acted on it, but if you want it now and I’m not mean when I do it, but I see it with clients all the time. I’ve had clients that go $250,000 in debt on courses that they never even logged into. As the host of Positive Productivity, if I’m going to do my community justice, I need to keep a fire under their butt to keep them going and take action. That’s my biggest thing. If I don’t keep on taking action, I’m not going to get stuff done. Stop signing up for stuff and overloading your inbox unless you’re actually going to act on it.

That’s a big thing is we are inundated with many different things. We have to be focused on the things that are going to make the most message. Being focused is on putting the blinders and quit chasing all the shiny object syndrome out there. Quit chasing those squirrels. Pull a gun out and shoot those squirrels so that you’re not chasing things. Put the blinders on, be focused and finish something. Don’t drift. Don’t fade off somewhere. You said, “I’ve known people who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on training that they went to or they never act upon or they never finished.” That’s not what we’re talking about. We don’t want people doing that kind of stuff. We want people taking action and completing things.

That’s probably what hurt me in that funnel that I was talking about because I didn’t want to burden other people financially with my stuff. By not offering what we have, our services, our knowledge, our expertise, we are burdening them because we’re not sharing them. We’re not benefiting other people when we keep it all to ourselves. My husband is a video game designer and I’ve had it in my head of what does next level Kim do for all you multi-players online or MMO players? You level up in the game. I am a gamer. I know that’s counterproductive to productivity, but what would it take for me to level up my personal and professional life? What do I need to do on a daily or weekly basis to reach it?

I created a chart and I assigned a point value to each of the items that I want to do on a daily or weekly basis. I have a goal now that I want to hit 250 points a week. I haven’t hit it yet, full disclosure, but I know that when I’m consistently hitting those 250-point weeks, something awesome is going to happen. Think about what next level you have to be doing, whether it’s giving out free stuff so that you can be benefiting people. Remember, free has its benefits because you’re building the know, like and trust. You’re showing your expertise. Amy Porterfield got me on this with her Webinars That Convert Program. She had this amazing 90-minute webinar where she gave out so much for free that I was like, “If this is free, what’s the paid going to be like?” I didn’t have money for it and I signed up for it.

That’s the biggest thing is the free is initially the content that you’re growing on and diving into like YouTube videos or doing some video series, an audio series or a webinar aspect of things. It works out well in providing content for a while. The thing is there are plenty of prize pigs out there, as I say in the industry, that will take you for everything and never take action. You want to spend your time with those that are going to be the action takers. Those are the people that are going to sign up for your stuff and continue to sign up for your stuff as long as you keep delivering great content. That’s what’s important about a funnel that takes all these people out here that you don’t know. It’s your LinkedIn, your Facebook or your Twitter peeps as you’re posting and marketing what you’ve got going on. It filters it down to the serious people that you want to work with. How do you know that people are serious? They pay for stuff, either the initial opt-in or the upsell. Let’s talk about what an upsell is to those that maybe don’t know what it is.

Going back to the 6-Day VA Quick Start, when I packaged it together in a PDF and offered that they could buy that, it was an upsell. It doesn’t have to be the same thing, but it’s taking the knowledge that you are already presenting to them and expanding on it. That’s my favorite one is, “I gave you this. That’s level one. Here’s level two when you want to take it a little bit further.” I wouldn’t go off in a completely different direction at all.

You want to stick in that same direction that you’re taking them down. Start with the initial opt-in of something and then you get somebody to pay a dollar. What we use a lot for our opt-ins is my 63-page book on How to Buy Real Estate for 40% Off. “Buy a buck and you get that.” We’ve got people that, “We’ll give you the book for free for shipping or if you want to get the eBook, get the eBook or we’ll upgrade you into an actual physical copy. We’ll ship it out to you.” It’s building some trust and then then it’s either $97 simple course or going to a $199 thing to a $497 to $1,000 and then coaching or one-on-one training.

Can I touch on the business cards? Please don’t take people from business cards without their permission and put them on your list and also don’t take new LinkedIn connections and automatically put them in your list. It’s violating CAN-SPAM laws to do that and you can get fined upwards of $25,000. I had a client try to sue me because I would not take a list that she bought and put it into her email marketing system. If I had done that, I could have been fined. Spare yourself the fine and make sure that those people actually want to be on your list because the ones that want to be there, they’re more likely to give you their credit card number than if you put them in there involuntarily.

That’s one of the things too. I think people have lost the art. We’re talking about two different things. She’s not saying to email them initially because that’s one thing. If I’ve spoken somewhere and I get an email list, I do send out a hello email. “It’s great meeting your or great networking with you. Here’s my list to opt-in to or if you want to get my newsletters or learn more about what we do, click here to opt-in.” Those are important things to do. You always want to have that hello email, “It was nice meeting you.” That’s a thing that everybody should do but don’t go and throw them into everything. We see a lot of that with LinkedIn, “Let’s connect with LinkedIn.” You’re in a campaign where people are trying to sell you through LinkedIn and I’m like, “That’s a waste of time.”

I was going through a point where I was accepting every LinkedIn request. I’m no longer doing that but all of a sudden, I’m on all these cannabis industry emails and it became medicinally legal in Ohio, but there’s a way. As of a few years ago, I wouldn’t have even thought about building a cannabis business. I’m still not thinking about it. I have chronic idea disorder, but I’m not thinking out there so I know I didn’t sign up for this. It’s like an STD to be added to a list that I didn’t sign up for. I don’t need all these extra things in my inbox.

I didn’t ask for this. What made you think I wanted in? I don’t need any drugs. I don’t need any HGH or whatever it is. The HGH is the Human Growth Hormone was another list I got added to. What are some tools that people are using? Can they use their Gmail account for this stuff? Are there services that they should look into if they’re wanting to add this to their entrepreneurial endeavors?

 

You need an email address, but no, you’re not using your Gmail. What I want to see is you’d be able to take your hands off, go to sleep and build your list. A lot of people are like, “No to MailChimp.” MailChimp is getting better so you can get a free MailChimp account. I recommend going for at least the low-level $10 a month if you’re getting started. You can always upgrade to whatever other systems you want to in the future. Getting started is the first step but something that will allow you to send out a series of emails over a period of time.

MailChimp for $10 a month can do that and you’ll want a way to create a landing page. If you have WordPress, you can do it in there. Even if you have Wix, you can build a landing page in there. You connect to your MailChimp, you tell it, “When somebody gives me the email address here, I can go here.” There are a lot of ways that you can get started, but there’s ClickFunnels when you’re further along or Leadpages and there are plenty of people out there who can support you, including me. You’ve got to put it out there to build this for you. The most important key is getting started, but before that just take one thing off your plate that you’re already working on, please. Finish the one thing that you’re already at 99% for because having a whole bunch of 99% is not going to make you money.

I call that the Rule of Unfinished Bridges where we all start things, but we never finish them. Chronic ideas, “Let me start this.” I think everybody struggles with it. I know I do with different campaigns and things like that, but I look forward to the holidays because it allows me to finish and put things together for the New Year, which is nice. Let’s talk about the things to go into. We’re a big fan of MailChimp. It’s an easy way to get started and it works if you’ve got less than 25,000 contacts for the most part. When you start building a bigger list, then you’re going to want to look to move to something like Buzzsprout or Infusionsoft or Keap that has merchant options in there. If they need a CRM, Customer Relationship Management software or even an ESP, MailChimp with some of these other things attached. Leadpages is what we use for a lot of our events. It’s an easy plug and play and some opt-ins. We use ClickFunnels for our coaching. If people want to watch, they can go through and watch all the different videos once they sign up for something. Merchant accounts, most people don’t think they’re going to be selling anything. What are some easy merchant accounts that they can use that interact well with either MailChimp or Keap?

I’m going to recommend Stripe over all others. Personally, I use PayPal in my business, but what I found with PayPal is you have to upgrade to do the recurring payments. If you have a mentorship community and you want to charge $67, $97 or $297 a month, to do the recurring payment, Stripe makes it much easier. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit more work if you use something like Leadpages, but ClickFunnels, it’s like a two-click connection between the two. I love mindless activities when they make money. Stripe takes a little bit to get approved. You have to have your EIN number or you have to be officially set up as a business, which I love actually. I love that it takes a little bit of extra work because it means that we’re not getting scammed. Get a Stripe account and regardless of whether you use Leadpages or ClickFunnels, you can still use it to collect funds.

It’s easy to create a link and set up on Stripe with a product that you’re using than using that link and if you want to put, “Buy here now or opt-in now to this,” it’s a simple process to do that. It’s important that people have something like that because you never know when you’re out about. Worst-case, have a Square account that you can swipe a credit card if you need to. It is mindless activities where people can click, that you don’t have to jump on the phone and take that order or type it in manually. It’s all done with them handling it and then it leads to automated stuff coming in. Let’s thank our good rich buddy RichE. You don’t have to have the 30 days all done upfront before you start selling. Having three days, having seven days so that it keeps you motivated to get it all out. Once you’ve got it done, now you’ve got an amazing product that you can rinse and repeat on a repeat basis.

Thank goodness he told me that because I’ll tell you, I’m still struggling with day seven. I’ve got 45 people in this funnel already because it’s on my site. I put it up as soon as I have the first three days. If I’ll stay ahead, but Scott, Positive Productivity is not about perfection. The first time I recorded days 7 through 13, I forgot to unmute Zoom. I recorded them, download them all because I kept on pushing stop record in between each one. You don’t need expensive video recording equipment either. That’s important. A lot of people think that they need a fancy studio. No, you are your secret magic ingredient.

I am sitting here in my home office and I’ve got twin four-year-olds in the next room. I have a $50 light set from Amazon that I got, but I didn’t have that when I was creating the first videos. I love it, but you don’t need it, but then I went back and recorded it again. Scott, for those, I wasn’t even looking at the camera. I’m looking at him and I’m like, “What are you doing?” I could have used them but at that moment I was a perfectionist. I finally re-recorded and I’ll have the second week done and then I’ll work on a little bit at a time. Don’t overstress yourself thinking that you have to get it all done all the time. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should right now.

That’s the thing is to record it and everybody has a series in them of some sort. We’ve all started off the beginning and sometimes, “Here are the seven biggest mistakes I made early on,” or “Here’s my updated checklist in due diligence, here’s what we go through, here’s what we look at.” Those are all great things to do. Let’s talk about some of these lead magnets out there because it’s changed over the years of what works well. It used to be a free series. It used to download my eBook and I still have that as a funnel that we use depending on where I’m at. Is it a checklist or is it a series? What do you see with your clients that seem to be converting the best as of 2019 for people opting into things?

I’m a little bit scared that my clients will see this because many of them are about their book funnels, but I’ll tell you, I don’t have time to read a book. I want to give my people something that they can act on right away and knowing my schedule and knowing the schedules of many of my clients, they’re lucky if they can find a half-hour in a week. Expecting anybody to read my book to grow the know, like, and trust, I don’t do that. A one-sheeter with quick actionable strategies that they can take right now or the email series. If you’re going to do an email series or a video series, give them the option to take the upsell right now to get it all done.

Basically, it’s where they can download everything at once or are we talking to the seven days at once?

When I did the unlimited access for my challenge, they still get it dripped to them, but it will be available to them whenever. That’s up to you, but for the seven-day virtual assistant thing, they get it all now because I took all the emails and put it all on a PDF. I may even offer an advanced upsell that once the whole 30 day series is ready, you can buy it. It’s a course. It costs you $197 and you can get it all right now. Thank you, Scott. I hadn’t even thought about that. They are hot to trot. The second they take out their wallet for the first time to give you a dollar, that’s their prime. Don’t wait. They’re ready. They heard you on a podcast. They heard you on the radio. They saw you speak from stage. They want something. Give them the opportunity to get it from you without feeling that you’re being scammy or spammy. You’re giving them the value that they’re looking for. The eBook is still a great way. If you have a book, I would still have that funnel out there but don’t use it as your main primary driver.

Because people download eBooks, they don’t read them. People with eReaders we’ll go through it and I’ve had people that have read my book from the eBook and have reached out for more information. It does happen. It is a good thing but you want to switch things up. The checklists have done well. We’ve seen it up there and we get my one page easy to read, easy due diligence checklist or get hot market checklist. Your checklist to looking at an asset or to converting better. That’s the big thing is we see checklists work well, especially to get opt-ins. We talked about a variety of tools. You do a great job of helping offer us this stuff. Let’s shine a little light on Kim here now on some of the cool things and talk about how long does it take for a funnel to be created? What are the costs and what kind of clients that you work with the best at and helping them put this into play?

I’m going to address how long it takes first. My clients are told from the beginning that they are the genius here. They are the expert. I am not creating their content for them. I’m doing the design, I’m doing the integrations, I’m doing the bills, but I need their content. I need them to sit down and take their time to develop it or get behind the camera and record. It takes as long as they take to actually sit down. If you’re ready to build your funnel, the first thing that you have to do is block out some time every day or every week to create the content. It’s not going to get done if you don’t do that. These things I have for myself, this is what I do all the time.

I’ve created funnels for myself in a day. I had a sick kid on me. I wrote all the emails and there it is. It depends on you and your commitment to yourself to get this content created. I do everything from the landing page, sales page, design and technical integration to building out the email nurture sequences to the strategy. I love the strategy. You’ve experienced the strategy side of me. Chronic idea disorder has its perks and I am like a sponge that is constantly taking in new ideas and seeing how it can use it. I think outside the box, sometimes outside the box, but my whole focus is sharing the message and the mission that my clients have. I work primarily with business and life coaches.

 

What have you seen? Is it as fast as a day depending on if people are dragging their butt to get their content over to you?

If it were an all-out build, I would say 3 to 4 weeks because there’s a lot that goes into this, especially in making it look good. For building a lead magnet, a workbook or something, that can be done as easy as a day or two. If you’re doing it yourself, you could have Canva. I’d love to throw that out there. You could put together a workbook for your people or a one-sheeter in a night with a beer at your kitchen table. You could be offering it to your people the next day. It doesn’t take a lot of work. I have the whole Adobe Creative Cloud, but I’ll tell you that for most of my clients, I’m in Canva.

Canva is a beautiful thing. We use it on a regular basis. We’ve talked about that as one of the ten cool tools to help us rule. We mentioned that in an episode. It can take some time, but if it’s a video series and you are recording quick videos, quick webinars are one of the easiest things because then you can always transcribe those and turn those into a written book or a workbook as well too. Putting it as a sequence together. What goes where, what actions when they click or what do they get? Where are those videos uploaded? Where is that landing page? It takes some time to it. What’s a typical cost for somebody to look to invest in the entrepreneurial business in the New Year if they wanted to hire you? What’s the cost for something like that?

For done-with-you, I start at $5,000. For a complete done-for-you, they start at $10,000 and that gets everything from the graphic design to the tech, to everything. If you want to have an online course, taking the course modules and building out your online course with all the graphics and all the worksheets and everything that’s accompanying it in something like Kajabi or Thinkific, but don’t look. Start at step A. If you’re wondering how to get your funnel started, start thinking about what those FAQs are that you’re being asked constantly. How do I get started? You could put those FAQs together and create something awesome if you know what they are and if you give yourself that time to figure it out.

I’m getting ideas on my stuff here on some new funnels we need to put together and some different things on new FAQs that people ask me all the time. If you’re seeing the same type of questions come across your board, those are the greatest things to put into a workbook, a one-pager or a series, an FAQ aspect of things. People are asking you things on a regular basis, instead of you having to repeat yourself a million times, why don’t you record a video and throw it away? “If you want that, sign up for this. My time is valuable. Your time is valuable. Let’s go straight to the point and get rock and rolling along.

I have another 30-day series as well but what I realize again is our email platform is the biggest asset that we have. There’s a challenge with people opening emails right now. Anything that we can do to see our message is great. I’ve started working Facebook Messenger bots into these series. They opt-in and I’m asking them, “Could you use a little bit more accountability to get this done?” If they click the link, then I opt them into my Facebook Messenger subscription and now they’re getting a daily message telling them to go click this button below, go in, access the content and take the action. What I’m seeing is an 80% to 90% open rate on the Facebook Messenger bot. Depending on the week, it’s anywhere between 15% and 30% for emails. I’m loving it and I like seeing people take action because I’m holding them accountable to take action and I don’t feel spammy. I want them to see results off of the content that I’m giving them.

The big thing is you’re not sitting there and spamming that they’ve opted in. Those that haven’t opted in or haven’t paid, you’re not reaching those out too, but those that want accountability, they click on the button to get the accountability sent to them. They can easily hit stop or unsubscribe. It’s a simple thing. Molly is a genius when it comes to this. I’ll give you an example. Our Facebook message back and forth was about her transsexual turtle. Her father-in-law unfortunately passed away. She had an event and she was like back and forth, “This is the most interesting text message. Luckily, this is not in my chatbot thing.” If you’ve got a bigger Facebook audience or you’ve got a LinkedIn audience, you’ve got a Twitter following, you can share some of the things that Kim is talking about to help those people that want to reach out a hand and say, “I want more information.” If you don’t want, don’t worry, we won’t bother you,” and you can go from there.

If you think about it, an investment of $5,000, if you’re going to do a lot of the work and I’m talking about you, those that are out there reading, if you’re going to put this stuff together, great. If you don’t know, it’s worth picking up the phone and what you might have or might not have. Pick up the phone and give Kim a phone call. Talk to her. She’s great at brainstorming and helping you squeeze some of that knowledge onto that sponge in our heads to help you, “Do you have something there?” If you don’t, she’s going to be the one to tell you, “I don’t think you’re at a point right now where you need something.” She’s a busy lady. She doesn’t want to create more work that’s not going to get finished.

If you’re not ready, I could use a nap any day of the week.

One of the things that are great too is you’ve got this amazing podcast, Positive Productivity out there. You’re cranking out and doing an amazing thing. What episode are you on right now?

I recorded episode 650. I was scared to launch the podcast. I was like, “Who’s going to want to be on my show?” At first, I was like, “This is all about the guests.” The whole business has been an evolution and I realized, it’s not about the guests but it’s about the conversation. I’m free to talk about me as well and share my experiences. That’s where the biggest wins have come from. I think you already heard this story. I was walking through the toilet paper aisle at the store one day and I was having a particularly crappy day and somebody sent me a Facebook message, “Kim, I marathon-listened and I was going through a lot. Hearing your vulnerability and your transparency helped me.” I’m literally going through the toilet paper aisle and my crappy day disappeared because by being real and sharing, I’m able to impact people. I love it. Plus the podcast is giving me millions of dollars of free coaching that I couldn’t have otherwise afforded.

You’ve got some amazing people on your podcast. Who’s been your favorite or maybe top 2 or top 3 so we don’t sit in there making anybody feel left out?

Perry Marshall was huge for me because while I thought we were going to be talking about 80/20 purely for sales and marketing, he opened my eyes up to how the 82/80 Rule impacts all parts of our business. I hung up with him and went and let go of two clients because I realized that those two clients were taking up 80% to 90% of my time and contributing to maybe 5% or 10% of my income. It’s amazing that when you take out 20% of the people who are making up 80% of the drama, a new 20% develops. It’s always going to be there but the business immediately shifted when they weren’t taking up the 80% of the time. Nancy Levin, the author of Worthy, her show will be dropping in soon. She’s all about boundaries, which is something that I am still working on. I had to throw my phone to the other side of the room. I don’t even want to see it. We need to know when to say no or when to tell people to leave us the heck alone. She was huge.

A lot of people struggle with that and that’s the thing with social media and text messaging. Those boundaries have been erased away or have become invisible. I won’t answer text messages on a Sunday night or even emails on a Sunday night. I don’t have the time to look at my email on the weekend. I’m off. I’m not working. I’ll answer it on Monday. People are like, “I sent you two emails over the weekend.” I’m like, “I didn’t see them until Monday morning.” Some lady was upset that my voicemail was full. She sent an ugly email and I was like, “My voicemail gets full every day because I got all these spam phone calls. I say, ‘Send a text message.’ If you don’t get a text, send a text message. It’s easier for me. My voicemail even says that to send a text message and I’ll answer it as fast as I can,” and if I’m available too.

 

Scott, my voicemail on my cell phone and now on my home phone as well, they both say, “Don’t leave a voicemail because we won’t listen to it.” Send me a text or an email. I finally have reclaimed my weekends. We have to protect our time because our clients and our customers aren’t going to be the ones who remember our names in many years. It’s going to be our loved ones. Take back whatever time you can and protect it with everything that you can.

There are no truer words spoken here before because that’s the most important thing. That’s what I wanted to have you on to talk about. The funnel creation is helping people take back their time, helping to set some of the things they have that are in that 80% of the time, wasting a lot of time that we have when they can systemize it and put some things together to help them make it more valuable. Separate those that are tire kickers or people that are going to be time vampires and then focus your time and energy on those that are truly the more valuable ones out there that are going to help you with the bottom line. Let’s face it, we all learned a lot of stuff. We’ve paid for time and experience and that’s not free. That’s one of the biggest things I tell people. Nobody’s going to value your time until you start valuing it and here’s a great way for you out there to take advantage of that. Kim, whenever people are reading this, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you? I know that you mentioned to me that you’ve got a room for maybe 2 or 3 clients taking on some new funnel stuff and that ebbs and flows, but what’s the best way for people to reach out to you to get ahold of you?

The best way is to head on over to my website, which is the TheKimSutton.com. There’s an Ask Kim on one of those links, or you can experience my Messenger bot right there on my website. Talk to Cookie. She’ll hook you up with a time to talk to me. Cookie is my Messenger bot. Name them. People shouldn’t feel like they’re talking to a robot. Give them a personality.

If you wanted to reach out to TheKimSutton.com and talk to Cookie, the Facebook bot, she’ll get you on Kim’s schedule to schedule a phone call. Kim, you’re an amazing person. You’ve got a big heart. You love helping your clients succeed and that’s one of the biggest things that I wanted. We’ve been trying to get you on for a while and schedule these and events and things like that. I’m honored. You’ve dropped some great knowledge and nuggets on here for those that are reading. You’ve all got things inside of you.

We’ve all got educational, we’ve all got learning things inside of each and every one of us. I don’t care if it’s from painting with watercolors to basket weaving to the note business to fix and flipping to whatever it might be. You’ve all got something that others out there want to know and need to know and why shouldn’t you be offering that out to them? I’d rather see you do it versus other people out there. Take advantage of it. Go check out Kim at her website and schedule a phone call with her. Go on over and check out her podcast, Positive Productivity and subscribe. You’ll love it. Binge it. Leave a great five-star review. Kim, thank you so much for being a part of the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Scott.

Take advantage of those offers. Check her out. Trust me, one of the biggest things we’re excited about is working more with Kim in the future. Maybe you need to do the same thing as well too. Go out and take some action and we’ll see you at the top.

Important Links:

• Positive Productivity Podcast
• WeCloseNotes.com/404
• Facebook – Virtual Assistant Jobs
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
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• TheKimSutton.com
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About Kim Sutton

Kim Sutton is a marketing and automation mentor, mom of five and wife, and the host of the Positive Productivity podcast. Her passion lies in helping burnt-out, broke and broken entrepreneurs get away from their computers and back to the people and activities they love.

Author of the forthcoming book, Chronic Idea Disorder: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Overcoming Idea Overwhelm, Kim Sutton learned the hard way that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. The Positive Productivity podcast launched in October 2016, after Kim recovered from a three-year cycle of chasing everyone else’s successes and severe sleep-deprivation.

In addition to her podcast, Kim is a marketing automation mentor, wife and mom of 5. She has found her passion and purpose empowering broke, broken and burnt-out business owners to set up the systems and support they need to make time for the self-care they deserve.

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