3 years ago, Casey Graham was at rock bottom. He was $80,000 in debt, he’d just missed out on a major family event (because he was on the road making sales calls), and things at home weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

For many early-stage entrepreneurs, this is an all too familiar story.

Fast forward 3 years, and Casey’s company has become extremely successful, all thanks to a major realization he made on a trip home from overseas (when we was missing out on that important family event).

While on the plane, Casey realize that the way he was delivering his product was wrong, he sales strategy was wrong, and if he was going to ever realize his dreams of owning a successful business, he was doing to need to do a number of things differently.

In this episode of the Bright Ideas podcast, I’m joined by Casey Graham, founder of The Rocket Company, and also the winner of Infusionsoft’s 2013 Ultimate Marketer award. Having made some pretty big changes to his business 3 years ago, Casey now generates over $2 million a year (with very high profit margins), is completely debt free, and is having more fun than ever!

When you listen to this interview, here are some of the things that you are going to hear Casey and I talk about:

How entering his company in the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketing Finals really helped his team to get ultra focused
(10:52) The story of how Casey fired himself from his last job to start his own business (and how awful it turned out)
(19:12) How his very first email broadcast from Infusionsoft earned him a few thousand dollars (something that he’d NEVER done before)
(20:12) Casey’s traffic generation strategy, and specifically, how Twitter played a pivotal role in growing his list from 832 to over 47,000 in just 3 years
(25:12) How Casey sets up automated nurturing campaigns in Infusionsoft
(28:16) How Casey warms up his new leads in a very special warm up sequence, which is then followed by a webinar sequence that results in the vast majority of their product sales
(32:42) How webinars play a crucial role in Casey’s sales funnel and how he structures them to produce maximum conversions
(34:00) How he presents an offer in his webinar so that more sales result
(37:30) How Casey generates substantial additional revenue via up-sells and cross-sells
(38:30) The 3 types of up-sells that Casey uses and how to replicate what he’s doing in your own business
(47:12) How Casey is building “relationship capital” with his customers with specific examples
(52:00) How the success of all of this has massively changed Casey’s life
(55:10) What he is most excited about for 2013, his favorite business book, and how to reach him

..And so much more!

More About This Episode

The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.

It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.

Listen Now

Transcript

Trent: Hey there bright idea hunters. Welcome to the Bright Ideas

Podcast. I’m your host, Trent Dyrsmid and this is the podcast

for marketing agencies and entrepreneurs who want to discover

how to use content marketing and marketing automation to

massively boost their business.On the show today is Casey Graham, founder of The Rocket Company. I

first learned of Casey when I was at Infusionsoft’s annual

conference. His company one the annual 2013 Infusionsoft

Ultimate Marketer of the Year award. To do that, he had to beat

out some pretty impressive competition. You’re in for a real

treat with this interview.In the interview, we’re going to talk about how Casey, a couple years

ago, was essentially broke, driving around in a little red

pickup truck, and really trying to make his business a success.

Fast forward three years later – He’s got a mailing list of

47,000 people, he’s doing over $2 million a year, he and his

family are completely debt free, he’s got a wonderful team of

people helping the company continue to grow. He’s actually now

removing himself from all operational roles so he can focus more

on strategy. Like I said, this is going to be a very fantastic

interview.Before we get to that, a couple of special announcements – My tool

tip of the week is a brand new tool called PlusThis. You can

get there, if you’d like to use our affiliate link, by going to

brightideas.co/plusthis. PlusThis is essentially a library of

add on tools for Infusionsoft users. One of the tools there,

for example, is the integration with GoToMeeting. One of the

things, if you’re doing webinars with GoToMeeting, wouldn’t it

be valuable for you to know who attended and who didn’t attend?

You can get that information from GoToMeeting, but you have to

manually export it from GoToMeeting and then import it to

Infusionsoft, and that creates duplicates, labor, and

inefficiencies. That is one of the many things PlusThis can

help you automate.The other announcement I wanted to make is that our next webinar on

life cycle marketing – If you haven’t yet seen one of these

webinars, they’re a huge hit because it really goes into detail.

I show what I do, and what guests on my show have done to

increase the pace at which they are attracting new customers,

which obviously makes our companies more profitable, which

allows us to invest in further growth. If you want to get

registered for one of those, just go to brightideas.co, join up

on the mailing list, and you’ll receive a notification of the

next time I’ve got that webinar running.Please join me in welcoming Casey to the show.Hey Casey, welcome to the show.Casey: Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.Trent: No problem at all. First off, congratulations on your

recognition as one of the Ultimate Marketer finalists this year

for Infusionsoft, that’s quite an accomplishment to say the

least.Casey: Thank you. I’d never heard about it until a year ago, and then

we went to InfusionCon a year ago, and we saw them on stage and

decided to apply for it this year. Somehow we were able to make

it through the rigorous interview process and the cuts and all

that and be a part of all that. It was awesome. We learned a

bunch from the other guys that were finalists as well, and are

actually continuing to learn from them. I would highly

recommend being a part of the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketer

process, just from the relationships that you build.Trent: Yeah, no kidding. Both Dustin and Andy have been on the show

as well.Casey: That’s awesome, you’re getting it done.Trent: I try to make it my effort to get all of the Ultimate Marketers

on the show now. I think you’re being a little too humble here,

you didn’t just make the grade, if I remember correctly, you

won.Casey: Our team won. Me and Michael, and The Rocket Company won the

award. It was awesome to win, and to be a part of that. I

don’t know we won, the other guys were so awesome. Dustin and

the other guys, BlueChip, they were doing so much. It was cool.

Like I said, the process – I don’t know if everybody who

listens to this in an Infusionsoft user or not, but people that

Infusionsoft should be a part of the Ultimate Marketer process,

because it helps you think through your processes, since you

have to present them to people. What it did internally for us

was great. The award was awesome, but what it did internally

was solidify a lot things that needed solidifying. I really

appreciate you giving us a shout out for that.Trent: For the folks who don’t know who you are, and I normally start

my interviews with this, but I kind of skipped it, a little bit

on purpose because I wanted to send you that congratulations.

People don’t necessarily know who you are or what The Rocket

Company is. I want you to introduce yourself in just a moment.

For the folks that are listening, the big why on why you want to

listen to interview, and I think Casey is probably going to get

into it, is he was driving around in his little red truck trying

to find customers, and was not having a real good time at it,

and I’m going to let him tell that story, and then here he is,

some amount of time later, I don’t remember if it’s a year or

two later, he’s the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketer of the Year,

and his business has absolutely blown up, in a good way, as a

result of that. We want to get all of those things out in this

interview, and I think we’re going to do a real good job with

that.

With that said, Casey, thanks for being on the show. Please take a

moment and tell us just a little bit about what your company is

and does, and who you are.

Casey: The Rocket Company is an online learning for pastors and church

leaders. Church leaders get caught a bunch of things in college

or seminary – It’s kind of like us, even as entrepreneurs, you

can go to business school, but then there’s all of this stuff.

People that are actually listening to podcasts now, they’re

going, “That’s great, I learned that in business school, but

what is it really?”

That’s what The Rocket Company for churches, go, “That’s great, you

learned all that stuff, and you learned some theology, you

learned something in school. There is real stuff you have to do

as a pastor, like preach better sermons, and raise money, and

deal with volunteers. The Rocket Company provides online

training, learning and coaching for pastors in that way. It’s a

totally online model, except for some live events that we do.

It’s all digital, it’s all online, and it reaches all across the

world now. We have about 5,000 customers that are connected to

The Rocket Company, and that’s the niche which Rocket Company

serves.

Very simply, why we do it is that we believe in the church and we are

trying to help the church be successful. We’re tired of pastors

preaching boring sermons, we’re tired of cheesy TV pastors

trying to raise money on TV and doing it the wrong way and

turning people off, and we’re tired of volunteers burning out in

churches because there aren’t enough. We’re creating solutions

and coaching in those areas, that’s what we currently do.

Trent: If I was to really shorten that into a super simple

explanation, you help churches become more effective at the

business side of being a church.

Casey: Yes, and no. Yes, I think that’s right in a lot of ways, but

there’s a heavy relational slant on it. It’s not just business

as usual, we help them develop the interpersonal skills to be

able to pull off raising money, volunteering, preaching, and all

that stuff. Yes, you’re right. It’s where the rubber meets the

road. Simply, when people ask us what we do – We help the

church succeed. That’s what we do, and we feel like these are

the areas that make the most impact right now.

Trent: The reason I said that is that I think that probably few, if

any of the listeners right now, are involved in the church

business. I don’t want them to click the stop button, thinking,

“Oh, this is for churches, it wouldn’t be for me,” because that

couldn’t be further from the truth as they’ll learn, as they

keep on listening to this.

Casey: Well, we’re a business that serves churches, so you should

listen because we’re [inaudible 08:55]. 86% of churches are

broke or behind budget this year. The clientele we’re serving

do not have a lot of money, and the other reason, the clientele

we’re serving don’t get a financial benefit from using our

services. If they’re giving [inaudible 09:14] to the church,

they don’t get a percentage of it, they’re not a salesperson,

their salary stays the same.

It’s all on goodwill, so it’s much harder to sell to somebody. If

somebody is buying a product and you’re increasing their income

or business revenue, they’ll keep buying from you because they

get a personal benefit. For us, it’s the complete opposite.

We’ve still been able to find success even with having niche and

as 86% of them are broke or behind budget.

Trent: How much success are you guys having? How much revenue are you

guys doing a year?

Casey: We are over two million last year, for 2012. In 2013, we’re

projected to be 2.4, 2.5.

Trent: That’s a pretty nice growth rate.

Casey: Actually, this year will probably be the slowest one on

purpose. We grew about 832% over the last three years. We went

from about $212,000 in revenue to over two million in three

years. We need to catch our breath, hire the right people, get

the right people, get the systems in place, that kind of thing,

because we just grew [inaudible 10:18] and we’re trying to

organize now.

Trent: I’m so glad you mentioned that, because that’s the story I

really wanted to dig into. Let’s go back to the red truck,

let’s go back to pre-Infusionsoft. Tell us a little about what

your life and your business was like, and how you got into this,

because you had a real struggle. I want people to understand

that anybody can go from a real struggle to where you’re at now.

Casey: Here’s the deal – I was on staff at a church. At 27 years old,

I fired myself from being the CFO of a church, and I hired

myself as the CEO of a startup company, that I was going to go

out and help churches. I had no plan, no strategy, I’d never

started a business before. Here’s what I had – A wife that

wanted to stay home with a one year old baby, that is the

hardest work you can do, but unfortunately, she doesn’t get a

paycheck for staying home. That was that, and then we have

$36,000 saved up in the bank. I said, “We’re going to go after

this, I’ve got $36,000, and I think churches need to have money

for ministry. They need to learn how to raise money better.

I’m going to go out and do it.”

We started, and we did the good old fashioned Casey driving around,

in my 1998 Red Ranger Ford pickup truck that I got as a junior

in high school, and literally going into churches and walking up

to secretaries or assistants, and say, “Hey, I want to talk to

your pastor about our services.” Just doing the old fashioned

cold calling.

Also, cold calling anybody. In fact, I would drive by churches and

see the phone number on the side, and call it. It was cold

calling, driving around doing that. I did that for about two

years, and the strategy was so amazing that second year in,

here’s what the results were – I missed dad’s night at my

daughter’s school. People listening to this may or may not have

kids, or are maybe single or whatever, but the point is this.

I started a business, not only to help people but to create autonomy

where I could be at dad’s nights, and I was missing them. I was

missing family dinners, I was traveling around the southeast to

try to get deals. We ended up being $80,000 in debt in the

business. I had a business partnership I got into. I ended up

the worst, the bottom of the barrel when it comes business is, I

had to lay off three people at one time – Not because of

anything that they did, but I just thought business was all

about sales and growth, and I wasn’t managing the back end of

the business, and it just got away from me honestly. I had to

tell the ladies – I set them down and said, “Hey, in two weeks

we’re not going to have enough money to pay you, so I’m going to

have to let you go.”

Being at the rock bottom, at that point, I literally went around the

world. I went to the Philippines. Only a dumb entrepreneur

would do this, and I said I was going to go to the Philippines

to outsource, we did some outsourcing for churches, and decided

to outsource the outsourcing to try to save money. While I was

there, literally, I can’t get all the story, but a guy climbed

through my window, it was a totally random act of violence, he

came in literally with a knife, bloody, trying to kill me,

randomly. I ended up running down 13 flights of stairs with an

armed guard in the middle of the Philippines with a machine gun,

looking up at this guy hanging off the side of a building on the

13th floor getting in there to kill me. I know this is the

craziest story you’ve ever heard.

Trent: It is a little unusual.

Casey: Here’s the point – I got so low that I was traveling around the

world trying to save a business $80,000 in debt, with a bad

business partnership, and I was rock bottom. I said, “You know

what, something’s got to change.”

In that moment, at being at the bottom, and literally being around

the world and flying back is when I started the process of

realizing the problem’s not the market, the problem’s not the

economy, the problem is not anything – The problem is me. The

way were doing it wasn’t working, and we needed some changes.

That’s what happened in the first two years of our business.

That was probably too many details, but that’s the real story of

where this thing came from.

Trent: I wish we could have got those last two sentences out to the

entire planet, because you said something there that was so

incredibly profound, that entrepreneurs say, but that few others

do – The problem wasn’t the economy or the world, or this or

that or the other thing, the problem was you. That is something

I find is unanimous in entrepreneurs, we are never the victim.

Our success and failures are always our own. As soon as you can

adopt that mindset, in my opinion, you set yourself free,

because then you’re in control and you can choose to change the

outcome, which you did, and we’re going to tell that story.

I do want to offer up one other idea. You mentioned at the beginning

of this, that you were doing it the good old fashioned way, and

then you went on to tell how you were prospecting. It may have

been old fashioned my friend, but I don’t think it was good.

Casey: That’s funny. That’s true, it was terrible.

Trent: There was nothing good about making about making cold calls,

missing your daughter’s event, and being around the world, there

was nothing good about that.

Casey: [inaudible 16:03] everybody I met said this was how to do it –

You go to leads groups, and you pass business cards out, and

this how you do it, it was the old fashioned way to try to do

this deal, and we live in a different time. I just had to learn

the hard way. That’s what the story was.

Trent: You and me both. I have often said to people in conversations,

and maybe even on my show here, that I never get it right the

first time. I always duff it the first time, and then I get it

figured out the second time around.

Let’s get into your discovery of Infusionsoft, when was that?

Casey: That was at that point, right after that trip around the world,

about three years ago, middle of 2010 – I was searching online

and I saw a donate redirect on a website I was on, and it said

Infusionsoft, and I was curious what it was, so I Googled it and

went to their website. I was low with no money, no team, I was

worn out and they’re making these promises on their website like

– Infusionsoft is like having 25 people sell for you while you

sleep. It’s automated, and all this stuff.

I thought, yeah, whatever, but it was worth me putting in my e-mail

address for the demo. I got an e-mail back late at night, and I

thought man, these people are on top of it, they work all hours

of the night. I’d never heard of an auto responder before. They

sent me e-mails, and finally got me on the phone and sold me on

Infusionsoft, and I put money where my mouth was and did things

differently. That’s how we found it.

A big transition happened though – When I used what was called the

Infusionsoft Success Coach, there was Brandon Steinwig, he got

on the phone with me, and said, “Thanks for getting in on the

call today. When are you going to send your first broadcast?”

I said, “What’s a broadcast?”

He said, “Well, that’s why you bought Infusionsoft, right?”

I said, “Well, I bought it because of all these promises.”

He said, “Let me tell you what Infusionsoft actually does. Do you

have an e-mail address?”

I said, “We have 832 e-mail address.”

“Do you have anything you can sell online?”

“I’ve got $80,000 and a red truck if someone wants it.”

He helped me understand that you can sell something online, and that

people would buy stuff that we had done, it was just sitting

around my office. I was like, “I’ve got this old seminar I did,

we just recorded it because there was a machine there, so I

recorded the three hour seminar I did for church leaders.”

He said, “All right, let’s put this on a website, let’s send an e-

mail out to them. I’ll help you write the e-mail and get things

started.”

Within a couple of days, we put it up there and I sent the e-mail out

to the 832 people I’ve never e-mailed before. I said, “Hey, I

just want you to know, I’ve been driving around doing all this

high-end consulting, here’s a $99 product you can buy right

now.”

Within the first couple of days, we sold a few thousand dollars

worth. I was like, “You have got to be kidding me. I have been

doing all this stuff, driving around, missing dad’s nights,

trying to make money, and I just sent out one e-mail and made a

few thousand dollars?”

That was the point when everything started to change, it was an aha

moment for me.

Trent: In three years you go from guy in the truck, no money, to guy

with a $2 million plus business which has a very healthy profit

margin. I hope people who are listening to this get inspired

and fired up, and think man, if this guy can go from broke,

selling to churches that have no money to this wonderfully

successful business, maybe there’s something about this whole

marketing automation stuff that I could use in my own business.

The answer of course is “Yes there is.”

Let’s try to dive into more details, and let’s talk. It all starts

with lead generation, can you tell us about the process that

you’re using for attracting and capturing leads for your

business?

Casey: Yep. Our attraction strategy is very simple. After going

through hell and back, we said, “We can’t do everything, but we

can do something.”

When we learned about attracting traffic to our website, we said,

“Here’s what we’re going to do – Number one, we’re going to have

blog.” Everybody on this call can have a blog, and everybody

can write three times a week. If you say you don’t have enough

time to write a blog three times a week, that isn’t true, unless

you’re incapacitated and almost dying in a hospital.

Every single person can do that and add value to people who could be

their potential customers. That’s the outpost through which all

of our stuff happens. We put stuff on the blog.

Our strategy to attracting traffic is that we know where pastors are,

unlike business people, because a bunch of business people

aren’t on Twitter. Most pastors, when you speak at a

conference, say how many guys are on Twitter, 80%–I don’t know

the exact number–but it would be 8 out of 10 people would raise

their hand. That’s where pastors are, so what we said is we’re

going to dominate one thing. I know there’s Google+, I know

there’s pay per click, I know there’s SEO, I know there’s

Facebook, I know there’s all these other things, but we’re going

to dominate one thing and what we know how to dominate is

Twitter.

I’m on Twitter, our teen is on Twitter, we know Twitter, we know

pastors on Twitter, so that’s what we decided to do. We put all

our eggs in the Twitter basket, and so here’s what we’ve done –

We went out and found celebrity pastors that we can either buy

their time, you can rent anybody’s time, and we get them on an

online event, and we have them tweet out the links to our

landing pages. Part of them being a part of it is that they’ll

promote it, and that drives a tremendous amount of traffic to

our website.

In the last three years, with the Twitter strategy of getting famous

people to tweet to us, and for us using Twitter to generate blog

content, we’ve grown our list from 832 contacts to about 47,000

contacts in a three-year time period. That’s what we did.

That’s it, and that’s all we did. We know there’s other things

we should do, and we’re going to do those in the future, but to

start out and be simple and dominate, that’s where we started.

Trent: Man, that is impressive. 832 to 47,000, wow. I think anybody

could do this in a business, they could find out who the

celebrities are in their space or niche, contact those folks,

because they’re all looking – Did you have to pay them, or did

they come on because they wanted the exposure?

Casey: Most wanted to just help people. Most wanted that, but we paid

them anyway. What I found is that you had to pay some, it’s

just the way it is. The point was, people hear that and go,

“Oh, I don’t have anybody. I’m in the salon business, there

aren’t any salon celebrities.” Yes, there are. There are

absolutely places you can go where there are salon people that

other salon people learning from and listening to.

People say, “I’m in a retail location, what is there to do in a

retail location?”

Well, that’s why smart companies have Justin Bieber as a celebrity

that drives people to their retail locations, because they’re

renting a celebrity at the top end of their of funnel. It

associates them with that person, and that is a lead driver, a

lead attraction, a lead magnet that they can pull people in.

Every single niche has people that people listen to. If you can

align yourself and go as hard as you can to reach those people,

don’t quit because the first one tell you no, you can get

aligned with those people and they’ll help you significantly.

Trent: That’s a very good idea. I want to give a quick shout out to a

resource on this topic of defining your nice, if you got to

brightideas.co and on the navigation bar, you’ll see the life

cycle marketing guide, scroll down through the links, and that

links to a whole bunch of articles, but in the attract interest

category or section, you’ll find an article on how and why to

define your target market. There’s a whole bunch of details

there for you.

Let’s move on. Your strategy worked exceedingly well, your list grew

like mad. Here’s the thing – Just because they’re on your list

doesn’t mean they’re whipping their credit card out and willing

to buy your stuff, right?

Casey: Totally different.

Trent: Correct. So, what happens between getting them on the list,

and getting them buying stuff. There’s something that happens

between those two things, what is that?

Casey: What we found is that–I hate to say this, I probably shouldn’t

say this but I’ll say it anyway. It’s a great way to [inaudible

24:55]. Most people try to treat this like sex on a first date.

They get somebody on their list, and then they try to close to

the deal. It’s like, come on. People do that to me all the

time. I get on a list and they’re trying to close the deal with

If that’s how you do real life, I’m sorry, but if you

understand that a healthy relationship is built over time and

built on trust.

Between attracting traffic and converting the sale there’s a whole

thing we call building relationships on the list so what we try

to do is build the relationship. Here’s a couple things that

have worked. I’m giving everybody practical things that you can

I like everybody to know that I’ve had a red truck. The

reason why, is that the only thing you remember from my

introduction speech is that I had a red truck. It’s a red

truck.

I like people to know I have a family when they come onto our list.

When we’re e-mailing our list, and we’re sending stuff out, I’m

not only introducing them to stuff that can help them, I’m also

introducing them to my family. The reason why, is that we’ve

found people trust people and have an affinity for them if

they’ve seen their family, and they see they have kids, and what

they look like. Do they look like weirdos? Are they normal

looking? Can I relate with these people? That kind of thing.

The red truck story, like a story of struggle, here’s where

we’ve been, here’s how long we’ve been doing this, that sort of

thing.

The third thing we like to send is connecting us with famous people

in our niche so that we gain credibility. If we’re sending out

e-mails or doing videos and people see you and they associate

you with the leaders. That builds credibility. Inside of that,

we’re building a healthy, what we call like a dating

relationship via e-mail, via video, and warming people up. We

don’t send people directly into a sale unless they ask for it,

if they ask for it or click on a link to buy something, they can

go buy something. For most people, we do what’s called a warm-

up sequence. We are warming them for the point in which we feel

like we can move in to take action and create a purchase, so

that’s what we do.

Trent: Let’s dive into that a little bit. Let’s say I come to your

site, and I get one of your lead magnets, I fill out the form

and give you my name and e-mail address, hit the submit button,

the first e-mail, is it going to give me just what I asked for,

“Here’s the free report,” or whatever it was? Is there going to

be anything else in that first e-mail?

Casey: The first e-mail, we’re just giving them what they ask for, but

we’re also tell them there’s more coming.

Trent: What comes next? When do you introduce the truck, the family,

and the celebrities?

Casey: That’s a great question, and it depends on where they came

from. We have a very complex business now. I’m going to start

where it was really simple. We used to do 10 emails over 30

days as our warm-up sequence. The point of those e-mails was

those different things: likeability, trust and credibility. If

say something about the red truck, it’s, “Hey, I used to drive

around the Southeast in a red truck, and here’s what I learned

about that and learned from pastors.” Then we do something very

helpful.

Again, the whole thing’s not about the red truck, it’s just a mention

in a what we call a by the way moment. We’re mixing those in

throughout the 10 over 30 days, and that’s how, when we first

started, when we were selling just one program and it was a very

simple operation, that’s how we did it and we mixed a little bit

of personality in with a lot a bit of helpful content. It was

about 20% personality, 80% helpful content.

Trent: Okay, excellent. Yep, go ahead.

Brian: Key in that, we would put in the PS, “Oh, by the way, we know

you downloaded this report on church giving, we have a cool

coaching program called Giving Rocket, and you can click here

and you can go check out all of that kind of stuff.” Again, it

was there. If somebody wanted to go get it, they could. During

that first 30 days, we’re building the relationship and

nurturing them and getting them to know us and us to know them.

I’ll tell you a trick – One of the best e-mails we ever do,

especially when you’re small, and you’re trying to get off the

ground or try to grow in Internet business, just do an e-mail

that says, “Would you please reply and let me know?” [inaudible

29:36].

Just ask them a question and the question and the question of what we

found out is a question about either their personal life. I

would send one with a picture of my family in it, and say, hey,

tell me about their family. I’d love to get to know you and who

you have in your family. Again, I ask them to divulge some

information to me, and I divulge some to them, when it’s a two

way street and a conversation starts, those people end up being

low hanging fruit that will buy just about anything from you.

Trent: I do something almost like that now, and you’ve given me an

idea how to improve. Anyone who’s on my list will know that in

one of my first e-mails, I say what they’re struggling with the

most, and I ask them to reply because I want to get a

conversation going with these people, and it does work. Not

everyone replies of course, but the ones that do become your . .

Casey: No, but the people that are opening and reading and engaging

do, and those people, man, those are some of the best people.

Some of them are weirdos, but a lot of them are great people.

Trent: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. If you don’t have an e-mail

in your warm-up sequence that says reply, you might want to

consider doing that.

I’d love to dive deeper into what you’re doing with your advanced

strategy, but I’m going to keep on keeping on here, because

we’re going to run out of time, and there’s still some other

categories of life cycle marketing I want to talk about.

Before I move on, you’ve got the 30 day warm-up sequence. What

happens the end of those 30 days?

Casey: We transition them to a webinar sequence after that. A webinar

is where we sell the most, and so after 30 days we put them into

our webinar sequence. It’s built for over a two-week period to

get them on a webinar, and to get them to hear helpful content.

About 80% help, and there’s 20% sales. Sales is woven

throughout the webinar, and that’s where we get the most sales.

What we found is that when we consistently did webinars like that,

every single month per niche topic we have, that’s where the

huge growth came from, was consistently doing new content

webinars. They got everybody on the nurture list, after they go

warmed up to us, then we got them on the nurture sequence, which

is where we’d move people to listen, buy, and hopefully become a

customer.

If they don’t become a customer, they still get helpful content, but

they’ll be invited to the webinar that happens next month. If

they come to that one, we’ll come to different topics to reach

different types of people, so that’s how that works.

Trent: In you webinars, you mentioned you weave in 20% sales

opportunities. Do you make an offer at the end of the webinar

that says, “Hey, if you want more you can go this page and you

can click this buy button and get this thing.”

Casey: Our webinars are very simple in structure. Most of them around

about 45 minutes long, and the beginning of the webinar we

always do success stories. After I introduce myself and success

stories, we tell them that’s why we have Giving Rocket. You’re

going to see a button below as I talk throughout the rest of the

webinar, and you can just click that button, and by the way, you

can click it if you want to right now and see everything that’s

listed for this webinar offer, and my voice will keep playing

because it’ll open in another tab. That’s right within the

first five minutes.

We come back as we’re doing helpful content, so we’ll say that when

it comes to fundraising, here’s something they could do. And

that’s why we did it with Giving Rocket. With Giving Rocket, not

only do we tell you what to do, we’re going to do it for you.

It’s done for you, fundraising resources. If you click the

button below, you’ll see all the stuff you get da-da-da. That’s

what’s called a by the way pitch.

Then, at about the 70% mark of the way through, we turn it and we do

about a ten minute full on explanation of what Giving Rocket is,

why we have this Rocket, how it can help them, special offers

and bonuses if they do it within the next 48 hours, click the

button below, that kind of thing. Then go back to helpful

content at the end. We found that putting it about 3/4 of the

way thorough, with pitching the by the way moment as you lead up

has worked very well for us.

We have a page, and on the page it has one button, and the button is

always below they video, and they can click it, and there’s a

special offer per webinar. That’s how we sell.

Trent: Are these webinars live, or live simulation?

Casey: No. We got away from live webinars a long time ago. I am not

a fan of live webinars. If you want to do a live webinar,

that’s great for you. I don’t like doing them for many reasons.

Ours are prerecorded and pre-done in advance, and that’s how we

do all of them. [inaudible 35:00]

Trent: I would imagine, in you particular niche, these folks have

probably never even heard of a webinar simulation, and I know

that you’re not saying these things are live, but do you say

they’re recorded, or do you just not say?

Casey: We don’t say either. We say we’re going to have a webinar at

this time, and that you can sign up and show up. Here’s what we

do: On the webinar, I’ll say, “Guys, tweet us right now at the

Rocket Co., we’ve got our teams, they’re waiting right now.”

They’re interacting with The Rocket Company on the webinar, not Casey

Graham who’s doing the webinar, or Michael Lukaszewski, my

partner who’s doing the webinar. They’re interacting with the

company, not us as a right to interaction. We still get

interaction, but it’s with the company. We always have somebody

scheduled to be available during those times do all of our

social media interaction during the webinar.

Trent: Brilliant. What software tool are you using for the recorded

webinar?

Casey: I have no idea. I know that the video is on Vimeo, but I don’t

know what the technology piece is. I’m not the technology guy,

so I have no idea for that. I just record the things and send

them to our team, and they do all the technology. I’m sorry, I

hate it that I don’t know that.

Trent: That’s okay. One of the ones that is very popular, it’s by a

guy named Geoff Ronning, it’s called Stealth Seminar. It’s been

around a long time, a lot of people use it, I’ve used it in the

past. There’s another one I’m not as much of a fan of us,

because I tried it and it sucked initially, but apparently it

works quite well now, it’s called Evergreen Business Solutions,

I think what its name is.

There’s more and more of these webinar recording software platforms

that are available, so if you just Google around you’ll find all

sorts. If you type the word review after whatever name, then

you’re looking for, you’ll find people reviewing those products.

Be mindful, when you’re reading those reviews, most people are

an affiliate with that particular software platform, so read

between the lines and make sure it’s as objective as a review as

possible.

Casey: That’s good, good words.

Trent: Now we’ve got some conversions happening, we’ve captured leads

in this discussion so far, we’ve nurtured them, we have

converted them with recorded webinars – Which is brilliant by

the way, because you can put it all on autopilot. Once they buy

something, they probably might by some other stuff. In other

words, would you like fries with that?

Could you talk about what you’re doing to upsell, cross sell, and

generate repeat business?

Casey: Yes. The upsell that we’re working very hard on, which has

worked very well, is something we’re really excited about is, we

sell on CustomerHub. CustomerHub was bought by Infusionsoft.

We use it deliver all of our content.

Let me tell you why we use it deliver all of our content – It’s that,

and I didn’t know this until recently, that’s why we implemented

all of this, this is what we’re currently doing. You can one

click upsells inside of CustomerHub. People that are in there

consuming content of module one of your program, how to be a

better real estate agent or whatever, you can have a little

video on the side or inside CustomerHub, that says click this

button and you can get this da-da-da for free, because you’re

watching module one and we’re going to give you a special offer.

They go to a secondary page in CustomerHub, and it’s a one click

purchase. It says, add this to my account or I agree with this,

or whatever. It’s just one click, and it goes on their credit

card, which is on file. That has been huge, because we’ve taken

all the go get your credit card back out to customers, and we

can just create banners on the side.

Does that make sense? I know I’m beating inside the weeds here, but

one click purchase inside of CustomerHub, and if it’s not

CustomerHub, you need a solution that creates a one click

solution for repeat buyers. It’s the PayPal effect.

What I mean is that people ask me to give money all the time, but

they’re little project fundraiser things they’re going to do.

Anytime there is a PayPal button, I will click the PayPal, and I

can just enter the amount and be done with it. I don’t have to

get my credit out and all that kind of stuff. That’s how your

customers feel.

Don’t make them get their credit card out again, that works really

well. That’s number one of selling inside, it’s where your

customers are consuming content. If you’re not giving them

places to consume content, I would rethink that. I would give

them a portal or a place to consume content that also has

natural upsell opportunity in the same area. That’s just my two

cents, that’s not how we started, that’s where we are now.

That’s number one.

Number two is what we’ve done as well is the good old fashioned build

the sequence out in advance. If somebody buys core coaching

project – Let’s just keep using Giving Rocket, to help increase

church giving – We just go ahead a write a three day sale into

that sequence that happens automated whenever they get to day

78, 79, and 80, whatever those days are, and those e-mails just

go.

It’s a three day sale for everybody in that sequence, and it’s on a

product that is related to the core coaching program of Giving

Rocket. That is the fries that come with it. It can come two

months in, we have some six months in, some 12 months in, that

kind of thing. That works really well. That’s just scheduling

e-mails in advance for people who have currently bought

something.

The third thing we do is we upsell [them the] store. At the point of

purchase, if you’re buying this, we’ll give you 50% off this

systems bundle or whatever, because you’re buying this product.

Hit add this now, and they can just click inside the

Infusionsoft checkout and add it, and we have a lot of people

who do that. It surprises me. A lot of people, and I don’t

know the percentage, click on that and take that offer. Those

are three ways we upsell.

Trent: All right. So I want to dive in those a little bit. Let’s start

at the back, and then we’ll go backwards. The way you just

described on the Infusionsoft order form, you can very easily

put an upsell on there, is that what you’re talking about?

Casey: Not the order form, but in the store. You can’t upsell on the

order form unless there’s something we don’t know about.

Trent: You can.

Casey: You can?

Trent: You can. I do.

Casey: I need a blog post or something, I would love to do that.

Trent: I’ll just send you an example on one of my order forms, and

you’ll see. I put a little video in. My videos are hosted with

Wistia, which is a sponsor of Infusionsoft, a shout out to them,

thank you for that. It says, “Hey, here’s another thing that’s

complementary with what you just bought, if you want to add it

to your order, click the button right below.” They click the

button, it adjusts the total, and they check out.

Casey: That’s great. We want to learn from that. Ours is done in the

store, if they buy a store product, the e-commerce thing

Infusionsoft provides.

Trent: I haven’t messed with the store yet, I’ll make sure I do that.

Maybe your way is better than mine, but I’ll make sure to share

a link with you.

Casey: That’s awesome.

Trent: I’ll also put it in the show notes, this episode, so if you’re

listening to this and you want to see what the heck I’m talking

about, there will be a link in the show notes. I’ll give it to

you at the end of the show, in the post production there will be

a link to that.

One other question I wanted to ask on point number two was – You said

you built the sequence out in advance. Are you, for Giving

Rocket, dripping the content over time?

Casey: Yes.

Trent: Can you talk about little bit?

Casey: It’s 12 module program. They get one module per month. They

can unlock all the modules by paying an upfront fee with a

discount, but we still drip the content out over time. The

reason we do that is that… This is where we’re different from

a lot of Internet marketers that just want the payment and all

that stuff. We found that there is a significant amount of

customers, that if they get all the content at once, they never

do anything with it.

Trent: Yeah, it’s too much.

Casey: What we’re trying to do is to continue to market them to watch

a video, not all the videos. Even if they buy up front, we

still drip out, “Hey, did you know in module two, you can watch

all this.”

We give them benefits to pull out and that kind of thing. They’re

busy, just like us – How many times have we bought a book or a

seminar, or something. With great intentions, you listen to the

first thing and then you don’t ever do anything else with it.

It’s because they didn’t continue to sell to you after the

purchase. We keep continually selling. Go to the content now.

There’s another reason we do this as well. Guess when they go

to the CustomerHub, and they watch a video inside CustomerHub,

guess what they’re seeing on the side?

Trent: An upsell.

Casey: Getting them to consume the content again and again we found

works well for us in all the programs we sell.

Trent: Do you have an e-mail sequence that is reminding them to go

back, saying that there’s more and more content?

Casey: Yes. It drips out. There’s two e-mails a month. One says,

there’s module one, it’s available. Here’s what’s you’re going

to learn, blah, blah, blah. In the second one, we do some kind

of piece that’s helpful. For example, something like a written

version of something helpful. We also do two other e-mails a

month to our customers that we can put in our sequence that are

sales e-mails that are upsells, “Hey, you’re in Giving Rocket

month 2, but did you know that we have something called

Volunteer Rocket, and if you click this link you can just add it

on with one click, and it’s only another $49 per month, and it’s

50% for the next… whatever.” I’m making that up, 90 hours,

whatever the deal is.

You can build that stuff in, build the upselling into your e-mail

sequencing of delivering your content. Most Internet marketers,

actually none I’ve bought stuff from do that.

Trent: Brilliant. Giving Rocket is a monthly pay for 12 months,

correct?

Casey: Yup. $99 a month for 12 months.

Trent: If they want to unlock it, get it all now, what is the discount

they?

Casey: $997. They save about $200, basically two months for free.

Trent: Very good stuff man. You’re giving me lots of what I call

golden nuggets, so love getting those.

How are we doing for time? We’re at 44 minutes. I’ve a got a few

more questions in what I call the lightning round, and I want to

ask you how you’ve changed your life from the red truck to

today. Before I get to that, is there anything I haven’t asked

you, Casey, that you think has been a huge aha for you that you

want to share?

Casey: Here’s the number one I think would say creates the

competitive advantage. If somebody comes to your McDonald’s and

plops down a Burger King, what’s the difference? If somebody

comes and does your exact business, what’s the difference?

Here’s the number one difference is that we spend an inordinate

amount of time and money building relational capital with our

customers. We don’t Infusionsoft the whole customer life cycle

marketing, to me, it’s 50% of it. The other 50% is that it’s a

care software, it’s building – We are caring for our customers

in unique ways using Infusionsoft. We are reaching out to them

and deeply caring about what’s going into their lives, who they

are, who their family is, that stuff isn’t tactics, it’s core to

us.

For anybody in the info business, or anybody that’s trying to sell

something online, or whatever you’re doing, whoever is listening

to this, I would say that your differentiator is not your

marketing, it’s not your product, but it’s the relational

capital you have with your customers. I would build in as much

capital as possible to love, care for, take care of them and

deliver a tremendous – you can sell an average product with

great customer care, and people will love you. A good enough

product.

Everybody tries to have the best product, but they suck at taking

care of people. Take care of people, period. We have great

customer care, great response times, great service, all that

stuff, and that’s where we put our eggs for long term. It’s not

in being a better marketer. We love being the better marketer,

but what we believe is the best is taking care of people and

treating them right.

I know everybody will agree with that, but here’s my question: If I

looked at your business budget, how much are you spending in

customer care? How much are you spending in proactive customer

care? How much are you sending direct mail to them that’s not

asking for a sell, but thanking them? How much time and money

do you spend on referral partners, thanking them for referring,

not just asking for more referrals, and really building that

side of it out? That’s where the gold is.

You see I get real passionate when I talk about that, because most

Internet market people you learn from are just about getting

paid, and getting some money out of people, and selling. Or I

live on the beach, or I’m a guy that’s just on the mountain

somewhere and I just live in my mansion and I have all these

customers that pay me millions of dollars. Well, that’s great,

but we care more about our customers than anything else so

that’s what we spend time doing. Sorry for the long answer, but

that’s my heart.

Trent: That’s okay. Can you give us an example of exactly what you’re

just explained?

Casey: Every customer that buys from us, we send a personal,

handwritten thank you note every time they buy something. When

was the last time you or anybody listening to this has bought

something off an Internet marketing website and gotten a

handwritten thank you note from somebody on the team, that’s

personalized to you and what you bought? It’s rare.

Trent: Let’s go with… never.

Casey: That’s one that everybody listening can do. What people do is

they send that crap on Twitter. They’ll go “I got a thank you

note for The Rocket Company, I just bought a $79 product, and

they sent this.” Here’s the other thing – we ship a box.

In the box, we’re The Rocket Company, so we send a bunch of finger

rockets. They’re things you shoot across the room, and they’re

awesome. We send a coffee mug and a Rocket Company t-shirt

that’s actually a cool, nice looking t-shirt that’s not a piece

of crap. We send that out and tweet that stuff, they put it on

their Facebook pages, and they say, “The Rocket Company is over

the top when it comes to customer service, I just bought this

$99 product, and they sent all this stuff to me.” That’s

practical stuff we do.

The other thing I’d say we do is, we hired Call Ruby. Have you ever

heard of Call Ruby?

Trent: No.

Casey: It’s an outsourcing company that we use that answers our

telephones for us all the time. Nobody knows it’s Call Ruby,

it’s just an answering service. When anybody calls our phone

number, we always have somebody who picks up and answers the

phone, they get routed – They may go to voicemail ultimately, or

they may go to whatever, but when they call, somebody answers.

That’s a $250 a month investment we make, and it is a huge

investment because nobody ever says that they can’t get in

touch with The Rocket Company – They won’t e-mail me back, or

answer the phones, that sort of thing. Those are practical

things we do.

Trent: These finger rockets, the coffee mug and the t-shirt, you don’t

tell them in advance they’re going to get that stuff, do you?

It’s not on the sales page, you didn’t like say hey, if you buy

this, you’re going to get a t-shirt? No.

Casey: No. It’s surprise and delight.

Trent: How has all this good stuff changed your life from the days

back of the red truck?

Casey: We went from $80,000 in debt and then I had about $200,000 in

personal debt from a mortgage. About $300,000 in total, to now

our family is debt free and business is debt free. From a

personal standpoint, we’re all out of debt. That’s huge for us,

and the reason is not so people can go, oh great, you’re out of

debt, because nobody cares if I’m out of debt.

What is cool is now that we can make better decisions, because I’m

not making business decisions on I wish I could get out of debt.

It’s allowed us to then go we can invest more money here, we

can put more money there because we’re really caring about the

business not just about trying to make a rich owner. That’s

huge.

The second thing is from a time off perspective. Obviously, driving

around in a red truck doesn’t promote much time off. You know

what, if I’m your listener – People hate when people talk about

how good their life is, but honestly, selling online and selling

recurring income online – I took four weeks off last week and

went to Belize and went on a Disney cruise, and went to the

mountains with my family for some rest and relaxation. I wasn’t

worried one bit about what was happening because I know that we

have automated processes that work. We have a great team of

people of that are helping people step off. From a time off

perspective, it’s been huge.

The other thing is that we’ve been able to help so many more people

by Casey waking up and realizing that I was the problem, and

that I couldn’t do it one at a time, this is not working, and

being willing to say that I’m going to struggle as a business

owner and I’m the problem. There’s two problems and I’m the

problem and I’m the issue. From that point of saying that it

wasn’t anyone else’s fault but mine, and saying that we’re going

to create this has allowed us to reach so many more people.

Now we have 5000 people we’re serving. I couldn’t serve five

effectively when I was driving around doing it the old way.

We’re able to accomplish our mission, and that’s where the

personal satisfaction comes. It’s not that we created an upsell

opportunity, that doesn’t make me satisfied. What makes me

satisfied is when we get the success stories back in from some

guy in Australia who says “I’ve bought you product, and here’s

what’s happening in my church,” and we get a success story

unsolicited that comes back.

We get, I think the last count was 109 success stories in the last

100 days of people, unsolicited who just come in and say, “This

is working, thank you for what you do.” That’s really the pay

off and the reward, so that’s how my life has changed.

Trent: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. All right, lightning round – Three

questions and then we’re done. What are you most excited about

Casey for what remains of 2013?

Casey: I’m most excited about getting out of all the operational roles

from Rocket Company, and I’m focusing on creating the exact same

thing we did in the church space, I’m doing in the business

space. We’re creating a place for people listening to this, for

you, for anybody who wants to create content for the life cycle

marketing thing, for any piece of it, for attracting traffic,

for building relationship, to converting the sales in webinars,

and we’re creating a high end opportunity for them to come in,

and for me and my team to be content creators and do it for them

in two days by the time they walk out of the room.

We’re excited about doing that content creation machine which is

awesome. We found that that’s a huge thing. I can create a

webinar in fours hours and have people on it in 24, some people

think that’s hard to do. It’s so easy, so we’re just going to do

it for people who need to create content that will be part of

life cycle marketing. I’m super excited about that. That’s

probably the thing I’m most excited about right now.

Trent: What’s your favorite business book?

Casey: My favorite business book is “The Advantage” by Patrick

Lencioni.

Trent: “The Advantage”, okay. Lastly, for anyone who wants to get in

touch with you Casey, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Casey: It’s Casey C-A-S-E-Y@ultimatemarketers.com.

Trent: Okay. All right, man. Thank you so much for being on the show.

It’s been a fantastic interview. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I

learned some things and I hope the audience has as well. In

just a few moments, when Casey and I sign off, I will announce

on how you can get the show notes. If you have questions for me

or Casey, just go to the bottom of the post where this will all

be help, and just leave your comments there and we’ll be sure to

leave you an answer.

Thanks very much, Casey.

Casey: Thank you.

Trent: To get the show notes for today’s episode, go to

brightideas.co/62. When you’re there, you’ll see all the links

we’ve talking about today, plus some valuable information you

can use to ignite more growth in your business.

If you’re listening to this on your mobile phone while you’re driving

or doing whatever, just send text “Trent” to 585858 and I’m

going to give you access to the Massive Traffic Toolbox, which

is a compilation of all the very best traffic generation

strategies that have been shared with me by my many proven

experts that have been guests here on the show. As well, you’ll

also be able to get a list of all my favorite episodes that I’ve

published thus far on the blog.

And finally, if you really enjoyed this episode, please go over to

brightideas.co/love, where you’ll be able to find a link to

leave us a rating in the iTunes store. I’d really appreciate it

if you’d take a moment to do that, because it helps the show

build its audience, and of course the more audience members we

have, the more we can help to massively boost their business.

That’s it for this episode, I’m your host Trent Dyrsmid, and I look

forward to seeing you in the next episode. Take care, and have

a wonderful day.

Announcer: Thanks very much for listening to the Bright Ideas

podcast. Check us out on the Web at brightideas.co.

About Casey Graham

In 2008, Casey Graham started The Rocket Company out of a passion to reach church leaders worldwide – to train, speak, coach, consult – all to help the church. With barely any money in the bank, a stay-at-home wife and a one year old daughter, he set out on a dream which almost failed a few times. Five years later, The Rocket Company is reaching thousands of church leaders and expanding its service offerings. In 2013, they won Infusionsoft’s Ultimate Marketer of the Year award and are now helping other business leaders grow their businesses. Casey lives in Atlanta with his wife and kids.