69: Your Only Cost Options...

Secret MLM Hacks Radio

Steve Larsen: What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. Oh yeah. So, here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us, who didn't cheat, and only bug family members and friends, who want to grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A players into our downlines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. What's up, guys? Hey, I'm very excited for today. First off, I want to apologize. I know it's been quite a while, like a month, I think since I've actually published an episode on this podcast here. And it's simply because there's just been so much going on. I've been speaking a lot. We have our third kid due literally any day now, she could go into labor. Anyway, she'll wince in pain just a little bit. I'm like, "Is this it? Okay, not yet. Is this it? Not yet." Weirdly, I look forward to the mad dash to the hospital, like a chase scene from Chips. Hey guys, I'm excited for the day though. I wanted to talk with you about something that's actually pretty important and pretty powerful. I have a slight obsession with the show Shark Tank. What's funny is I'm actually really against VC funding for 99% of businesses that are out there. I just don't think that you need it. I don't. And I know that I ruffle a lot of feathers when I say that. Anyway, I like Shark Tank because I like to see what businesses people are in, and I like to see what they're asking for and what they think that their business is actually worth. Now if you have watched that show at all, you know that after about six or seven episodes, you're gonna start to see a pretty strong pattern. It could even honestly be in three episodes. This is always the way it always works. Funny enough, we were in Orlando. I'm sorry, we were in California on vacation a little while ago, and we were in the hotel room, just relaxing before we all went to sleep, and we're watching Shark Tank. I can't remember what the person's business was, but this question gets asked so frequently. Regardless of someone's business, okay. Now pay attention to that. Regardless of someone's business, the person will always come in and they always do the 30 second little elevator pitch, or whatever. They always say, "Well tell us about your numbers." What's funny is that's the question. We want to know what your numbers are. They always ask them, "How much does it cost for you to acquire a customer? How much does it cost for you to acquire a customer?" Like nine times out of 10, the person has no idea. Are you kidding? Would you invest in something like that if it's not proven to be selling? No. It always blows me away. Oh my gosh. Anyway. People think they get deals based on how cool the product is. There's a very small aspect to that. 90% of it is just proving to the investor that it actually does sell. That they actually could get their money back. Anyway, it's funny to see how it always plays out. In college, we actually had the opportunity to go and pitch several VC firms as part of some of my classes. I took a lot of entrepreneurship classes. Funny enough in college, that's what we think entrepreneurship is. It's putting together proposals in order to get VC funding. That's terrible. That's stupid in my opinion, my very humble and firm opinion. That's dumb. It's dumb. Are you kidding? Entrepreneurs create value. If you don't create enough value, no one's gonna pay for it anyway. Anyway, I'm not gonna keep going on on that. Hey, I was recently listening to Russell Brunson's podcast. Funny enough, every time that we always launched a funnel, we always watched our numbers. We always watched our numbers. Okay. I'm going somewhere very specific with this, guys, and I want you to know that. And why I've been able to do what I have been in that MLM space, because it's a completely different shift of thinking, and I know that. I get a lot of pushback from that. There's a lot of old timers in the MLM community who don't like me, and I know that, and I expected that prior to me getting in. And you can't blame them. Some guy comes along and says, "Hey, you don't need to do it the old way that everyone used to do it." And the old timers are like, "Well I don't know how to do what you're doing, Steven. Therefore, I'm gonna tell my team to not do it." Right? That's pretty much what happens. It's threatening to the empire. They don't know how to duplicate what I'm doing because they don't know how to build funnels. They don't know anything about what I do, so it's threatening. I get it, and I expected that. No harm, no foul. It's all good. So, I do get rocks thrown back at me and that's totally fine. This is the cutting edge stuff and it works. I have lots of students auto recruiting people and I have lots of students selling their products on the internet without them having to actually be the one there doing it. It ruffles feathers and I totally get it. Anyway, I was listening to one of Russell's shows lately and he was talking about a quote. I can't remember where this is from. I think it might be Dan Kennedy. But Dan Kennedy said that you must know. If you know numbers, you know business. As in K-N-O-W. If you know numbers, know business. You'll know business. But then there's a flip side, if you have no numbers, as in N-O. If you have no numbers, then you have no business. Isn't that funny? Know your numbers, and you'll know business. If you have no numbers, you have no business. That's fascinating isn't it? You think about that with that whole Shark Tank example that I was just dropping out there. That's so true. It's so powerful. It's incredibly, that's spot on. That's exactly why so many of the people that are just like, they'll go ask for these ... They don't know their numbers. Therefore, to the investor, they have no business. We're gonna flip this. Right now, I know that I spend anywhere from $5 to $8 per person to get on my web class and watch Secret MLM Hacks, the actual web class. Okay. I know roughly, we're scaling ads all over the place, so I'm just waiting for things to settle a little bit, but I have a very ... It's getting more and more clear how much it actually costs for me to acquire a customer. How much money it costs for me to get a lead. What the lifetime value of that customer actually becomes. Those kinds of numbers ... The only numbers that marketers really care about, and this is MLM multi level marketing. As a marketer, you, a marketer, there's only two numbers that you really need to care about. One is what's your average cost to acquire a customer. That's it. Average cost. CPA, cost per acquisition, which are costs to acquire a customer. Next, what is the average cart value? How much does the average person actually spend with you? I know if I need to spend $3 to acquire a customer, and my average cart value is $4, I'm making money. And I can scale the ads a little. Frankly, I wouldn't want it to be that tight, but right? That's how it works. Well you have to understand, and the reason why I've been able to make a dent so quickly in the MLM space and why my team is doing amazing things that no one has ever done before in the MLM space. Frankly, there's a lot of people like, "Steven, you can't duplicate what you're doing." Well, I am, and we are. What's cool, and here's the reason why, is one of the reasons why. Okay. If you think about cost to acquire, most of the time we all think of that as money, but there's actually a time cost. That's traditionally the cost that old school MLM wants you to spend. Meaning, we want you to go use your time and talk to your relationships, and that's the only form of cost MLM is traditionally okay with. That's it. That's the only form of cost that they actually are okay with. But what's fascinating though is there's actually a second kind of cost. We just went through it. It's actually money. And if you instead stop spending your time and instead be willing on spending just a little cash on testing some ads, testing some acquisition models to get leads in. If you're cool ... and you don't have to spend money to acquire leads either. I get a ton of leads from this podcast. A lot of you guys reach out to me and say, "Steven, what MLM are you in? Steven, I want to join your downline. Steven, let me get secret MLM hacks. Steven, I want to know how to do this with my team. I don't want to join yours. Let me do it to mine." I'm like, "Cool, that's fine." It doesn't matter. I'm spending the time one time to make this episode, and the episode's gonna keep doing the work for me in the future, right? The problem is that the model for MLM historically has been continually spend your time over and over and over again. It's a linear scale. The more time I spent theoretically, the more leads that I get. But I really like the other two models, where I just spend my time one time on something like an episode. Spend my time one time on going in and building out a lead funnel that brings people to me and qualifies them for me before I ever speak with them. That's another kind of cost model. Or the third kind of cost model, meaning I'm gonna go spend some money on ads. I don't start that way, but now that there's cashflow. There's a lot of cashflow, all right. Then I go drop some money in ads. That increases my speed, and I don't have to spend my time. Instead I spend a little bit of cash and I pull people towards me. Does that make sense? The only cost model that MLM is so freakin in love with for some reason is this model of let me spend my time, the same amount of time over and over and over and over and over, and do the exact same freakin pitch every single time I spend that time. Are you kidding? I don't want to do that, and that's why I don't do it that way. I literally developed all these systems to solve my own pain. Are you kidding? I've got a little ADD going on. I don't want to do the same thing over and over again. I don't want to come into the office every day and do the same thing. That's not my cup of tea. I know some people do. That's great. Great for them. I'm not gonna do that. And that's the reason why I developed all these systems and put this stuff in place. Is this making sense? I didn't want to spend that kind of cost. I am all for spending cost where I spend the time one time and it keeps working for me on the internet. Things like a funnel, a piece of content. Stuff like that. Or after I've got revenue coming in to do, I can drop in and actually start, the other cost side is acquiring people and acquiring leads through ads, and spend more money that way. My goal is to spend more money than entire MLMs are able to spend on ads profitably. And I know how, and we're starting to get there. I'm gonna scream so freakin loudly, it's gonna be very hard to ignore me. I almost have this chip off the shoulder attitude about it, and I know it. I know you can all sense it and hear it and feel it. It's because I just feel like it's so ridiculous to me that we've ... The internet became publicly available in 1991. The internet became publicly available in 1991. The military was using it heavily before that. But in 1991, suddenly the entire ecosystem changed. All of it. We're gonna act like we shouldn't be using it? If that's the case, stop using your smart phone. Stop using your computer. It's ridiculous that the marketers that just crush it are the marketers that are adapting. It's the same concepts, just plugged into different vehicles. All right. What I will not do is replace the human element. I'm never gonna do that. I don't, but I will use systems and I will use cost models that qualify people before I ever talk with them, so that the time that I do spend will be used with the right people. Will be used with great people who should be in my downline. Get thinking that way. Get thinking in that model. The ultimate, the reason, oh my gosh it's so sexy, guys. The reason that it's so freakin cool is because when somebody comes in and they join my downline ... and I'm not telling you. I'm not saying, "Hey come join my downline." If you like yours, stay in it. That's great. There's no pressure. Do not feel any pressure from me at all. I hate that aspect of it. I'm fighting that. If you don't want to be in it, don't ask. Don't join. Stay in your own thing. That's great. What I do love about it though is that when someone does join, and go do this again for your own downlines. Figure out how to do this. And if you have no idea how, Secret MLM Hacks will teach you how. There's a lot of people who are not in my downline who are not even in my MLM who are doing great. They're doing very, very well. They're auto recruiting. When somebody joins their downline, or someone joins my downline, the thing I like so much about it is that I don't have to re-spend that time to train those people because I spent one time creating amazing training step-by-step for all of my people in my downline, so that when they come in, all I'm doing is I'm sending them through all the exact same training. If there's this question they all seem to be having, or if there's this misunderstanding that all of them seem to be going, then something's wrong with my training and I just go make that change and that tweak. It literally is the duplication of me. I give them the exact same systems, both to sell products and to recruit on the internet. I give them the exact ... Is this making sense? I hope that it makes sense what I'm saying here because I am very passionate about this thing. I just don't think people take the time to sit back and think about it. What cost model am I actually comfortable with? Right. I'm only comfortable with the model where I don't have to routinely ... It's not that I won't spend time to get great at something. That's not what I'm saying. There's a lot of time that goes on behind the scenes. Lots of it to perfect my craft, to be better and better and better at it. But the actual act, being in the act of recruiting, of lead gen, of qualifying the leads, of getting the sale, both on the recruiting side and the product sales side. Like man, we've got the freakin internet, use it. And if your MLM has serious issues with you doing that, find a way. Find a way or question what you're doing. I'm that strong about it. Anyway. All right, guys. I hope that this podcast is helpful to you. Go ahead. If you wouldn't mind, I would love it if you wouldn't mind reviewing. If you could review the podcast and rate it, that would be fantastic. It helps me dramatically. It's so funny to hear people's feedback. I really appreciate all the honest feedback. Then some people I can tell are just trolls and they'll go through. I got my first one star review the other day, and it's probably from one of the old timers. That's the way it happens. It's not a surprise at all. It's just the way it goes. Whatever. That's what happens when you rock the boat. I expect it to keep happening. All right, guys. I will talk to you later. If you've not checked out secretmlmhacks.com yet, go ahead and do it. What it'll do is it will help you figure out how to actually become truly duplicatable and create systems that duplicate you. These aren't band new untested things. I've been doing this stuff for years, and not just on my own either. I have a ton of people, a ton of people who've been doing it with me. People who are not in my downline. People who are in my downline. It's just been a lot of fun. Anyways. All right, guys. Talk to you later, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Whether you just want more leads or automated MLM funnels, or if you just want to learn to get paid more for your product, head over to secretmlmhacks.com to join the next free training today.