Top 3 Entrepreneurship Secrets with Jason Wright
Guest: Jason Wright works with entrepreneurs and small businesses to help them automate their marketing. He values providing clients with help and guidance in everyday language that they can actually understand.
Overview: Jason Wright, Founder & CEO of Intentionally Inspired, speaks about strategies for expanding your business in digital marketing.
Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YKmGimglF4
Transcript
Intro
Billy: All right, everyone. Welcome to Digital Conversations. I’m your host Billy Bateman. Today I am joined by Jason Wright, founder and CEO of intentionally inspirational. Jason, thanks for joining me.
Jason: No problem, man. Thanks for having me on.
Billy: Yeah, really excited for this. Before we get into it, let’s just have you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.
Background
Jason: Yep. I’m Jason, as you said, I’ve been doing digital marketing, specifically within sales funnels for about five years now. It’s been an interesting journey, very, very interesting journey. But we’ve kind of niche down and found our groove. I work with people on their digital marketing strategy and the architecture as well and focused on doing so in a language that can actually understand. What a concept right?
Billy: Yeah, for sure. Digital Marketing, you get into it, and like, there’s all this jargon and acronyms and somebody new comes in. They’re like, What the hell are you talking about?
Jason: Yeah, they get overwhelmed right away?
Billy: Yep. So, tell us a little more about intentionally inspirational and what you guys do?
What’s my niche?
Jason: Yeah. What’s unique about us? You know, I got started with this. People always say, Oh, you have to pick a niche, you have to pick a niche. And it can be very intimidating and overwhelming for people to hear that and try to say, what’s my niche? What do I do, I don’t know what to do. So over time, we’ve actually niche down by platform and not with a specific industry or anything like that.
So, it’s kind of like if you want to work with us, we’re using our marketing stack period, and it works really well. Active Campaign is probably the platform that most people come to us for. So that’s the back end of the sales funnel. That’s the foundation where the magic happens. So that’s a big one, Click Funnels, and Zapier would be the other ones as well. So awesome. Yeah, that’s the main focus. And like I said, we help people, not only with a strategy, but the execution of that strategy as well.
Email strategy
Billy: Yeah. So, what do you guys seen as successful strategies using those tools? Like, what works for people?
Jason: Yeah, I mean, it seems like regardless of industry, if you can get a good email growth strategy as far as continually growing the list, and then how do we engage this list constantly? Like how do we use the list? That seems to be an area A lot of people get hung up, and I relate it to a conversation with a new neighbor?
Right, Billy, if I move in next door to you, and I say hi, the first day I move in. I don’t speak to you for a year, then I come over and I’m like, Hey, bro, can I borrow your table saw? You’re going to be like, who are you? Not going to borrow my table saw. That’s what people do it their list.
Build Relationships
They either try to sell them something, or they don’t know what to say. So, they say nothing at all. And it’s almost worse to say nothing at all than to say stuff that may not seem as relevant. So, what we do is we say, Hey, why don’t we take that opportunity and build relationships, keep them going, we get better feedback, better engagement, ultimately, more sales, and it’s more engaging for the audience as well. So, it’s really what we focus on it a good strategy is to have a mix of automation, and the manual, weekly, or regular emails as well.
I’m a believer that you can’t replace those, you can’t completely take away that human touch. And the reason why is the market changes things, changing your business, things change that you focus on, etc. So, it’s just a more engaging, more effective way to do it.
How often should you email?
Billy: Yeah. So let me ask you a couple questions around the email. What type of what type of cadence? Do you guys find to be the most effective? Is it once a week, twice a week, once or twice a month? You know, what do you guys find?
Jason: There’s a lot of opinions on that. I roll with the once a week. Some people go two or three times a week and I this conversation about a week ago, somebody said I don’t care how much I like you. We don’t want to hear from you three times a week. But everybody’s got their own their own tolerance for that their own opinion, their own thoughts. But I would say somewhere between once a week and twice a month is probably the place most businesses want to play. So, okay, Otherwise, they’ll forget about you. They’ll forget about you if it’s once a month or, or longer.
Billy: I agree. 100% once a month is not enough? For sure. And two to three times a week, I think if somebody’s really engaging with your content. It works if you can get that insight like, okay, every time I send Jason an email, he opens it and half the time he follows the link, and he’s buying stuff, like let’s just keep sending Jason, two or three emails a week and don’t ride that pony. But if he’s not like, I’m probably going to unsubscribe if I get hit up three times in a week from somebody on their mailing list. I’m like, I’m not that interested.
Clients
Okay, so and then with the messaging on those so like, what type of clients do you guys typically work with your b2b b2c. Where things fall for you guys?
Jason: Yeah, so the clients, we work with would be all the above. So digital products, physical products, services, info products, I guess it same as digital products, but one of those are a combination of those. So, it’s really fascinating because our ideal client comes in and falls more into a, they make this much revenue a year or more type of role, who they’re serving, they know how to make money, they realize that the back end of their funnel is broken. Right?
If they’ve got a new lead, and they don’t close it, they’re like, now what? Or we have this huge list of 900,000 active contacts, we have no idea what to do with it, that kind of stuff. So yeah, it’s really interesting, because the industries and stuff vary a lot, which is actually advantageous for us, because we can see kind of what’s working across to everybody, and what’s more industry specific, you know, etc., etc.
Lead management
Billy: Yeah, so let’s dig in on that a little bit. Because that happens a lot, you get a new lead. Hopefully, you can, like, if you’re using a product like ours, maybe that came in through a bot, and you can chat with them right away, or let them book a meeting with you if it’s more of like a b2b sale. But that doesn’t always happen.
Even with the bot, like, maybe they have a conversation. They’re like, Hey, I’m interested in this, like, please contact me. You’re trying to get back to them as soon as you can. That doesn’t always happen. What should we be doing on an outreach side of things? What do you guys see as successful? on that follow up cadence?
Jason: Are we talking about specifically with inbox or just in general.
Billy: Just in general, like, I get a lead I want to get a hold of them in 48 hours. Is my window that I really want to get a hold of them or having purchased something. Depending on whether I’m b2b or b2c. But I don’t like nothing happens after that first window.
What do you guys find is successful in keeping that lead alive and eventually turning them into a customer?
Jason: Yeah. So, if that lead in that example, kind of goes through whatever your automated processes for follow up and that type of thing, that doesn’t happen, I believe, and people will argue with me, but I believe they should end up in some kind of a master communication list. And the reason why is you’ll find people that will buy from you they’ve been hanging out in your list for a year, right? The timing wasn’t right.
So many companies are like if it’s not close, in two weeks, they’re dead. To me. It’s a mistake. It’s a big mistake. So, you have to say, how can I continue this conversation with this person? Because now they’re a member of my audience in some capacity? And you know, if every business focuses on growing that audience, I mean, it’s just gives you so many more potential people to tap into in the future. So, I guess the big takeaway here is find a way to continue that conversation.
Billy: Okay. And then if you guys are looking at somebody, you’re helping them understand. You guys do a lot of different industries. So, you got to understand your customers customer. Yeah. Where do you guys start with your research for that?
Research
Jason: Yeah, it’s a great question. I start with a simple question. And I say, I guess it’s more of a statement, but I say, Tell me about your customer journey. It’s amazing to me. Sometimes I’ll work with very successful people financially, and they’re like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m like, okay, somebody discovers your brand, then what happens? They’re like, I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it. So, getting people to understand kind of what that looks like, is a big step. And what’s interesting, especially when you use a tool, like Active Campaign, you really dig down with the data.
You’ll outline what you think the customer journey is, and you’ll get new customers that will show you that as in fact something different. It’s very, very fascinating. But once you understand that customer journey, you can focus every piece of your marketing and every effort on moving people forward in that process. You shouldn’t mark it just because, you know, you promised yourself you would do it every week. You should have some kind of a purpose with the content you’re putting out there.
Common Marketing Mistakes
Billy: Jason, let me ask you ask you this just marketing in general, like where do you see the pitfalls like a new customer comes to you? What’s the most common thing that you’re like, hey, you’re not doing this very well, and we can really help you with it.
Jason: Yeah, it’s a good question. If you think of just a sales funnel in general, and I’ll break this down into three parts, Part one is traffic.
Front end vs. back end
Part two is the front end, which is the part they interact with could be a chatbot type program, it could be landing pages, website, etc., then you’ve got the back end. What almost everybody does is they focus on traffic front and back in that order. I believe they should be focusing on that 180 degrees the other way back in front end traffic. The reason why is most people think of traditional advertising, they think, Okay, I need to get a bunch of traffic.
Then once I have traffic, I’m going to put it somewhere. Then what happens is, if people go somewhere, and they don’t make a sale, then what they have no idea. It’s a carrying around a bucket with a hole in the bottom, it’s just a complete failure. If people would stop, slow down for a minute, and just think about that back a little bit, okay, where are these people going to go? If I don’t make a sale? You know, and kind of work backwards? I think you would help every company out quite a bit.
Billy: Okay. Yeah, no, I, I see that problem. Like, even with businesses I’ve worked at, you know, like, we’ll get people on the website, we’re worried about getting them to engage, we’re not really sure what’s going to happen on the back end once we get a lead. When we get started. So interesting that you need to start with what are you going to do with that lead? Once you get it? I think it’s a good way to look at it.
What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur?
So let me also ask you just a little bit about his entrepreneurship in general, you guys work with a lot of different a lot of different companies. You know, some fairly small, you know, but a lot of their big but what do you see makes a successful entrepreneur, what do you think?
Jason: Funny that the answer to this question has changed over time. But one thing that makes somebody successful is just the willingness to keep going. It’s incredible how quickly people give up. I talked to a guy one time and I’ll never forget this because it was, I thought it was a joke, but he was serious. He was so upset because this new business venture he was going after wasn’t working. Okay, what How long have you been doing? I don’t even ask him what it was, how long have you been doing it? Two weeks. I was like, Are you serious? He’s like, I’m dead serious. He’s like, they make it look so easy online.
And it took me two and a half years for I made any money at all. I mean, it doesn’t the timelines unknown, if you’re willing to stick out what you’re trying to do, and not commit to a timeline that you can’t control? That right there can help you be successful. I think that’ll help a lot of people.
And I think, you know, having a purpose, you know, if it’s just money, I’ve been in that position where was just about money, and I failed really bad and put my family in a horrible spot. Because when it got tough, I was like, I don’t want to do this. And if you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re trying to go all in, that’s going to lead you making no money, it’s a bad thing. So just having some resilience, not giving up so easily. Will take a lot of people long way.
Billy: Yeah, you know, I agree with you on like, man, just don’t give up. And two weeks is nowhere near enough time to know something’s going to work or not. But you can be two years into something you’re like, man, I don’t know if this is going to work now. And you got to decide, like, half the battle is just deciding you’re going to keep fighting. Yeah. You know? I agree with you there.
Mistakes
On your own journey, like, tell us a little bit like, what are some of the mistakes you’ve made that you’re like, man, I, I made this mistake, but I’ve learned from it. Your life journey that?
Jason: Absolutely. One of the big mistakes is, when I quit corporate America the first time Yes, there was a second time, I was making 80,000 bucks a year and I told my wife, I said, Hey, I’m going to quit. And I’m going to recover all this monthly income in three months. And to this day, I don’t know where I came up with three months. I just made it up. Yeah. She was all in, I quit. And then after I quit my job and went and bought a brand-new Infiniti, which was a horrible decision. Then I couldn’t make any money, which is a horrible decision. It got us in a really bad spot.
That was really stupid to assign a timeline to my success that I couldn’t possibly foresee.
Build an audience
And the other one was, I wish I would have started focusing on building a list and an audience from day one. Any brand with an audience can do a lot with it. I worked with a company one time, they had 400,000 YouTube subscribers 400,000 they didn’t have anything in the description, not a single link anywhere. They had no idea how to monetize that. And I was like, are you kidding me? You can make so much money from an audience at size. It’s Oh, yeah. I was like,
You have videos with like 5 million views. They’re like, Is that good? I’m like, oh God. Audience building. being patient. I’m not a patient person. But in this in this world, you have to be you don’t have a choice. And the other thing is, the mental toughness is I kind of started the journey with intentionally inspirational that I was going to build a motivational company. And then I was like, yeah, where’s the money. But now I’m coming full circle saying, if you don’t have the mental toughness, the marketing doesn’t matter. The mindset doesn’t matter.
Mental Toughness
Mental Toughness is essential. Because in business, you may have success and set off on a path. And then by your doing or environmental circumstances, you may need to pivot. And sometimes that means taking three steps backwards to go 100 steps forward. So just because things are going great for a while, doesn’t mean you can’t go back to almost square one sometimes.
Billy: Yeah, no, I think those are all really good points. The mental toughness, you got to have it, building the list. I agree, you know, the first mistake that I’ve made, as well as not building that list from the very beginning. Yeah, focusing a little too much on product rather than an audience. And, and yeah, that timeline. That’s tough three, three months to turn around the ADK. Annually, that’s not easy to do.
Being and entrepreneur
Jason: I had literally nothing to show for it. It was weird because this is another hard part about entrepreneurship. And I’m just kind of going off on a whim here. But isn’t it weird when you tell people your intentions and everybody goes to family and friends, which is usually a horrible decision, especially if they’re not entrepreneurs? It’s like talking to your dentist about What color should paint your house like, is that really the person to talk to?
But people love, it sounds bad. They’ve kind of love rooting against you, or like rooting for your failure, you know? And they get a hint that you’re struggling, and you get people that you don’t even know reaching out to you twice a day. Okay? You okay? And then once they see you starting to stand on your two feet, they stop asking questions. It’s so weird, but it’s kind of, and maybe everybody’s experiences are the same. But nobody asked me about business anymore. The people that used to say that stuff, they never asked me anything. They don’t even understand what I do, but they just don’t talk about it. It’s really interesting that people can flip like that.
Billy: Yeah, it seems. I mean, I would agree with you, it seems sometimes it may look like if you’re the entrepreneur, they might be rooting against you a little bit. But I don’t think that’s where they what it actually is. I think it’s just people are worried about you, because it’s a big risk to go out on your own to not take, you know, a safe job where you’re like, yeah, you know, I’m going to get this paycheck every two weeks. And I think a lot of it is they’re just like, Okay, do you? Are you okay? You know, are you not crazy to do this, and you are a little bit crazy to start your own business.
But I think it’s people are concerned, but it can seem that way. I remember when I’ve started a few ventures and everyone’s like, so what is this thing? And are you actually going to make some money and you know, like, they just until they are convinced you’re making money? They they’re just not sure.
Wrap-up
Well, I think that will do it. Unless there’s anything else you want to hit, but it’s been a really good conversation. I’ve enjoyed it a lot.
Jason: I appreciate it. Really appreciate this opportunity for sure.
Billy: All right. Well, with that, let’s, we’ll chat later, man. Okay, sounds great.