Don’t Sell Beef to a Vegetarian (with Tom McMurrain)

Hey guys, this is Dave Wood, and I'm talking to you, of course, from my home office out in the mountains of Costa Rica. And I'm actually excited for this Inner Circle interview today. And so he's actually the International Business Director for EscapeArtist.com. You know, normally we don't really mention a lot of websites on the Inner Circle interviews, but this site is totally non-related to the network marketing niche. And, you know, he's been around in that for, I believe, several years, and a 15-year-old company.

And I've actually been on his list for a while, and I didn't even know he was in Empower Network until he was actually introduced to me by Raven Starr, who's also one of the top female leaders here at Empower. And he just has some phenomenal ideas, phenomenal connections. And really has a great perspective on marketing. And the way that Empower Network has really kind of fit into his model is that he's a, you know, kind of a lifestyle. He's kind of like a lifestyle coach.

He teaches people how to live wherever they want in the world. And, of course, that's what I do, so we get along really well. And I've actually been interviewed on his site as well, and so this is my pleasure to have you on, Tom. Oh, thank you, David. It's funny, I have a confession to make, and I don't know if you ever got the email, but I remember early on.

When you were starting the company, I was, like, really impressed. I was like, wow, this guy's like the ultimate escape artist. He's living in Costa Rica. He's got this great pad, you know, gorgeous wife. And he's just like, he's everything that our escape artist reader wants to be, a free spirit.

And so I emailed you, and I put in there, I said, you know, David, you could be the Tim Ferriss of escape artist. And I laughed at it now because I look at your traffic, and I'm like, I think Tim Ferriss wants to be the David Wood of the internet. I think Tim Ferriss wants to be the David Wood of the internet. Now, I just want to make that confession on live interview to say that I just put my foot in my mouth, man. You're a beast, and it's an honor to be here.

I look at the numbers you've put up, and the whole community's put up. I know it's just not you, but the inspiration that you've put into this community, it's an honor to be here, and I'm excited about Empower Network. Well, I'm excited to have you on board, man. And, you know, what we'd like to do is a little bit different here because you come from a little bit. It's a different perspective.

I mean, you've introduced me to a lot of people that just have a tremendous amount of influence online. You're familiar with circles of people that I've just never ran into in my life. You're connected in with the people who run and own Google and just, you know, people who, you know, own and run WordPress. And, you know, you have this incredible sphere of influence, but also you've got a very different list. And so, you know, a lot of people do come into Empower Network, and they've got a list, and they're like, you know, this list isn't really marketers.

They're not really network marketers. And one thing we were just talking about just a little bit ago is that every message can be sold to a related group of people if it's put in the proper frame. So why don't we talk a little bit, number one, let's start by just maybe a little bit about your story, just kind of personally, how you got into marketing, maybe some of the tactics that you've used. You have a huge list. A lot of people want to know how do I grow a huge list.

So what are some of the tactics you've used to grow your list? And then also how you can frame. How do you frame a message to sell a product that might not be totally in your niche to your niche? So is that kind of a long question, but could we kind of start there? Yeah.

I mean, just a background on my story. I got into the Internet back in 97, and we were actually getting into the finance business, and it was more of a B2B model, business to business, and just realized the power of the Internet. And then I moved into. I started doing real estate sales online, one of the early pioneers in that, and the model, it was funny, I remember back in 97, I remember reading a book, and I think it was an Aweber book, it was like when Aweber, I think, first came out, or an autoresponder, I can't remember the name of it, but I remember reading the entire book, and I got to the end of the book, and I'm like, it was all about autoresponders, and I got to the end of the book, and I was like, what the heck is an autoresponder? I mean, it was like there was no data.

I mean, it was like there was no definition, no example of it that you could really see, and we got into that early on doing real estate sales and doing follow-up sequences where you had automated emails come out very much like you do with Empower Network. People don't realize the power of that automation, and we used it over the years, and I got involved with Escape Artist early on as an advertiser, made a bunch of money doing real estate sales online, and I've had my ups and downs like anybody. I've battled cancer. I've battled prison. I had a really tough 30, so I tell everybody I don't want to have to repeat my 30s, but now I've got a book coming out, and like David, I battled addiction as well in my 30s, and I haven't had a drink in eight years, and life is just grand.

I've got a beautiful wife of 20 years and three kids that are in their teens that are getting straight A's in school. It's a dream life for me, and I've got a dream career. I guess the irony of somebody who's been through what I've been through running a website called Escape Artist, there is some irony as that as well, and I've got a book coming out. It's going to be called The Ultimate Escape Artist, so once you hit 40 years old, I think they say a lot of times you don't grow up until you get past your mid-30s, and here I am. So I hit 40, and every year I celebrate a year less, so now I'm 30.

I'm 36, so if you're any good at math, you can figure out my real age, but the internet in general has been a tool. I guess I've compared it to offline marketing. I use this example of a beef store on a corner. Let's say you knew a street corner where there was lots of traffic of men who liked beef, and you put up this beef store, but you didn't put any windows on the beef store. It looked very uninviting.

You didn't have a window where the beef's hanging in the windows and no signage. You're not going to have any success in offline marketing, and you're not going to have any success in online marketing if your webpage looks like garbage. I look at your old stuff. I remember when I first saw the commission loophole page. I was like, boy, that's gaudy, but my first question is how's it going to test?

I put it to a test on Facebook, and man, I was seeing 13% to 16% opt-in rates. That means that if I drove 100. people to the page, 13% to 16% would input their information. I was like, dude, that's a really great page. What people don't realize is that commission loophole page is nothing more than a beef store sitting on a corner.

If you put it in an intersection where there's men who like beef, this is all an analogy, by the way, and this is for internet newbies who really don't understand internet marketing, you have to find the right traffic. Then you have to put up the right. Page that attracts that relevant traffic. Well, we find people that are interested in making money online, whereas an escape artist, we find people that are interested in living anywhere in the world on their own terms. In reality, they're very similar products because you're selling freedom and we're selling freedom.

So at the end of the day, it's not as much the application as it is the outcome. And, you know, when I look at the empower network product. As it relates to escape artist, I go, here's a great vehicle, here's a great beef store that I can show people and it's not just a cinder block beef store. I mean, these dudes, they, they have got fancy windows, they've got beef hanging in the windows, they've got a rotating sign that says Kobe beef this month, Brazil beef this month. I mean, you guys put out some of the most incredible marketing material.

I don't have to dress up the beef store. You've already done it for me. So now when my traffic drives by that beef store, that corner. Whether I'm marketing USDA beef or I'm marketing Kobe or Brazil beef or Argentine beef, I have a store that 13 to 16% of the cars that drive by are going to pull into the parking lot. And if they pull into the parking lot and don't get in out of their car and come into the store, I know that you've got people out in the lot with coupons running around enticing people to come in the stores with all of your great swipe copy.

So, you know, it's just crazy example. I've made this video on YouTube and a lot of people have really liked it. And it just shows people that if you find the traffic, which you can do, obviously through organic search results and what you guys are doing with blogs, and I'm not going to get into that because SEO is a whole nother discussion. But people can get free traffic. And that's the great thing about escape artist with our website is, you know, we've had upwards of a million people a month coming to our website, you know, compliments of the top major search engines for over 10 years.

And we've been real blessed. We don't have to pay for traffic. And you know what? With Empower Network, you don't have to either because you all do have a very powerful blogging platform. But getting to your framing question, you know, if I was a chef, you know, I would talk about obviously writing blogs on recipes.

Of course, when people come to my blog, it says at the bottom, are you interested in becoming a chef blogger in doing what I do and allowing this informational sales business to function? I'll do that. Tony, you're a great走 But, you know, the escape artist reader, let's talk about how I've actually framed this business. Now, obviously, my readers are interested in living anywhere in the world on their own terms. Our slogan is live where you want to live, live how you want to live, love who you want to love, and make money doing it.

And invariably, when I tell people I want to do this, I'm not going to give them the right answer. I'm going to give them the right answer. our slogan. They go, who wouldn't want that? I'm like, well, everybody does.

But if they can't overcome the four F's, which is fear, family, finances, and friends, they're just going to have a difficult time doing anything in life. And that's why I'm real big on teaching people the beef store analogy. Because I found, you know, David, when they understand the business model, they go, oh, I get it. So I don't have to build the beef store. All I have to do is find the traffic.

And you guys and your great trainings are going to show me how to get that. Some of that traffic may be on posting classifieds. It may be on doing PPC, pay-per-click. It may be on doing Facebook postings, Twitters, you know, whatever people are doing out there. And I can tell you, I've officially been slapped by the big three.

I've been knocked down by Google. I've been knocked down by Facebook. And I've been knocked down by Twitter. And I understand, you know, the challenges of marketing. And that's why I think what you guys, you're teaching, David, with all the different strategies, you really have to know a little bit about everything and practice the techniques and see what works best for you.

Now, I'm fortunate to have a lot of organic traffic and have a big list that we've built over 10 years. And, you know, I can do mailings and sign up, you know, 50 or 100 people at a time. And, you know, that's we're planning on doing now that we got all the now that all the engine room is fixed up and we're ready to hit the turbo. Yeah, I'm excited to see escape artists take off like a rocket with this. But our readers, just to get your pre-fame across, I keep doing what you do.

I keep going off set, but I'm going to get there. Our readers are interested in a portable business. They want a business they can do from anywhere in the world. Finances and fee are probably the two big things that keep people from realizing their escape artist dream in our business. So I'm really happy about this product because it provides a solution to what people actually want to do.

And I think it's a really good thing. I think it's a really good thing. I think it's a really good thing. It gets them from point A to point B if they'll just follow the instructions. And, you know, when they move to Thailand, they don't necessarily have to, you know, sell empower.

They can actually take their blog and turn it into their passion and maybe write about Thailand. And ultimately, other people are going to come on to the page and opt in and find more about it and empower. It's just it's a great business model. And it's so synergistic with escape artists. That we are going to be promoting it.

We've already named it the top portable business of 2012. And I believe that with all my heart. I don't think there's any better business opportunity out there if people I mean, I watched your phone call the other night with David Sharp was just staggering. Incredible. I'm sitting out of my gym listening to it with my son.

And, you know, he's like, man, my son's like, these guys are really passionate about what they do. And I mean, he's 14 years old and he can hear it in your all's voice about how committed you are and how sincere you are. And, you know, I just I'm excited to be here, Dave. I know that people can take this business. They can custom tailor it to the chefs.

They can custom tailor it to the knitting people who want to do knitting. They can custom tailor it to being a travel writer for Brazil or Thailand. They can do this business anywhere in the world. And, you know, once they get the residual income built up to three thousand dollars a month, say that's nothing. That's like, what, 30 inner circles.

And they can live in Thailand. They can live in Vietnam. They can live in Colombia like a king on three thousand dollars a month and have better quality of life. And that's that's really what we sell. And I'm just excited that your product will be a part of the escape artist marketing plan for 2012 in a big way.

Well, and this is a really fascinating discussion to get into. And that's lifestyle marketing from a lot of different perspectives. But number one is a comparison. Traditionally, in the direct sales network marketing industry, you are kind of forced into having to be a certain spot because you're you're you're running around and doing things like this. You're meeting with people and you really are locked in a market.

I remember first business I built. I was up in Alaska and I was locked in Alaska. The second I left, it was like that second I was doing meetings up there. We had we had home meetings going on. And all those are effective strategies.

But I was doing them in the way that we were doing them in that particular company. I left. I was the personality. The second I left, the growth stopped because nobody there could do it as effective as compelling as I could do it. And so the ability where somebody can literally tap into so many niches, live wherever they want to live.

It really is a huge, huge, huge selling point for what we do because we could get money, of course, into 174 countries here in power with, of course, are you with our wallet system. So let's talk a second. So you did, by the way, a tremendous job talking about targeting marketing and targeting a specific kind of person, which is something a lot of people they're really missing, you know, because sometimes we have people get in power and they're like, you know, I just generated a thousand leads and I didn't get a sign up. And another person says, well, I just generated three leads and I got two sign ups. And it's a big difference having somebody who's interested in beef walking into a beef store than trying to drag a vegetarian by their neck into a beef store.

And that's that's that's a lot of times what we do in this business, especially as we're like. Grandma, get in, you know, and we're dragging her, we're dragging a vegetarian by the hair, kicking and screaming into a beef store to buy them our favorite steak, you know, and so and so to address this message in a way and you did a tremendous job talking about it. This is the lifestyle. We're here to tell you how to escape the nine to five. We're here to tell you how to escape living in corporate America where the escape artists, this is the perfect escape artist business.

It's a way to take a niche that doesn't appear related on the front because you're you're not a direct I mean, you don't operate a direct sales network marketing company and you're pulling people in, but it's selling the lifestyle marketing. It really is tremendous. Another thing that I got from you that's that I think is a valuable perspective that just listening to you, a lot of people think that this kind of a business is like it's it's it's like a hit and run. You know what I mean? They think that they're going to come in, get rich and get out, you know, and you've been doing this now.

Successfully marketing on the internet since like 1997. So this is 1515 years you've been doing this. It's a long time to be succeeding in anything. Most people will be in and out of an industry every two years. It's how 98% of the population is.

So what are some things that you've done now for the last 15 years that have kept you not only in the game, but kept you succeeding now for gosh, I mean, this is this is your second decade, man. I mean, you're you're getting old. I was gonna but what I mean, what's what's been able to keep you going this whole time? Keep your list growing this whole time? I mean, what sets you apart from all the businesses that have come and gone since, you know, 97?

Well, junior, I, you know, this is what I tell everybody that in especially all the people that were in our power group when we first started. The first thing I want you to do is focus on getting 100 names in your list. I said, that's our first milestone. And then what I try and do is I look out in 12 months into the future and I say, if you will take 50% of what you make and roll it back into marketing and get yourself to a point where you're producing 30 to 40 opt ins a day, whether you're doing PPC or you're doing Craigslist or however you're marketing your business, if you can get to 30 or 40 opt ins a day, you're golden. And I mean, we're fortunate enough with it with escape artists to have over 300.

100 opt ins a day just because of the mass of content that we have. So we continue to build our list. And funny enough, we have people migrate off. Our list has stayed pretty consistent at 400,000 people. And we're getting ready to change that.

We just recruited in a pretty big Internet consultant that we're bringing in to change that up a little bit. But, you know, the model hasn't changed, David, in a decade. You have. You have to have a hook. You have to have traffic and then you have to have a hook.

And then once you've hooked them, you have to offer them a solution and you have to be repetitive at least five messages to eight messages before they'll make a decision. And that's why when I build out a follow up sequence, whether it's for Costa Rica or Belize or any of the countries that I have featured, I build out a follow up sequence of 10 emails that come out over 30 days and make sure that my message is constantly in front of me. And that's why when I build out a follow up sequence, whether it's for Costa Rica or Belize or any of the countries that I have featured, I build out a follow up sequence of 10 emails that come out over 30 days and make sure that my message is constantly in front of me. And in Internet marketing, it's changed. I mean, we're used to have a 60 to 80 percent open rate and delivery rates and all that.

You can forget that. I mean, dude, you're you're getting 20 and 30 percent maybe nowadays and over time, maybe it ekes up towards 40 percent. And that just makes the business a little bit more difficult. So I just I tell people you start off with 100 people on your list and you market to them and you send them good value. And you send them your own personal story and you do build a relationship with people.

I talk to people that opt in personally, phone to phone all the time. And I think if somebody can come in and just think it's just going to be a cruise control business, it can be if you're running a lot of numbers like I'm capable of doing. But that's not what makes the business fun. The business what makes the business fun is my friend, you know, Barbara down in Texas, Burnett, Texas, small little town. And she's learning.

Dominic over in Thailand, who I, you know, bump into all the time on Facebook and we chat and can't wait to meet him when I go over there. And I think that's what's so cool about this business is we're building contacts all around the world. And when I do go to Thailand, you can be assured I'm going to go meet Dominic. And, you know, he's got this, you know, crazy logo for Spiced Frogs on his Twitter and his page. He's too funny.

But it's just the Internet business is, you know, the model is the same. You've got to find relevant traffic. You've got to find out what your niche is. You know, if I were to market diapers on my website, I would alienate my customers. If you're marketing beef, you market beef.

You don't market. You don't market tofu. You're right. Don't drag a vegetarian into your store. You're wasting your time.

I would spend a little bit more time learning the analytics tools to determine who your customer is and find out, you know, what sites they're on and where that traffic is. And that will increase your return exponentially. I think that's a very important thing. And we ought to do if we haven't done a training on it. I haven't seen one yet.

But really using some of the Internet tools. I know plenty of fish has got a great analytics tool that you can use to identify traffic patterns. I know Google's got them. I think WordStream's got one as well. But there's just some great programs out there that, you know, you can identify where the traffic is.

And if you can take your opt-in rate from 5% to 14% or 13%, that's a game changer. I mean, those numbers are exponential when you look at them in mass. And so if you're new in this business. Get to 100 emails. Just say, I'm not going to quit until I have generated 100 leads.

And I don't care if it takes you 90 days to generate 100 leads. I was laughing last night. You and I were online. I pulled an all-nighter last night. I think I was up 40 hours after that freaking call you did, man.

I was so jacked, you know. And I was just up chatting with people in the Philippines. I was chatting with Dave Wood for about, well, we chatted for about an hour, hour and a half last night. And I just look at this business. And I look at the.

The freedom that it offers, you can't find anything better. And the people that you meet in this business are really great, great people. But I don't know if I answered your damn question, David. Well, no, no. I mean, you answered a lot of it.

And you also brought up some other fascinating things that maybe we could actually have you come out. And we're going to be doing a lot of bonus webinars in the 15K Formula product. Because obviously, the price of that is going to $1,000 April 1st. And we're going to be doing a whole bunch of webinars. For members of that product right now.

And of course, anybody listening to this audio, if you don't have the 15K per month formula, click on that tab and buy it right now. Because otherwise, you're going to be paying four times as much next week. Yeah. I'll just tell you that, Tom. So, maybe we can have you come on there and talk about targeting a little bit.

And this is just such a fascinating subject is to realize not everyone is your prospect. You know. And it's so freeing. Because then all of a sudden, I mean, I remember I used to, you know, we used to have these DVDs and these videos. And I used to just look around for prospects.

Because I didn't know who my prospects were. But to realize not everyone is your prospect. Not everyone is right for Empower Network. But there's, the niche is so wide. I mean, people can talk about lifestyle marketing.

They can talk about travel on the Empower Network blog. And it is a target market. Because people want to be able to make money from anywhere they want. The world. I mean, that's a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge market.

We could talk about affiliate marketing here. A huge market. We could talk about network marketing here. Tiny market. But still, you know, it's still there.

It's a market we can target with very high conversions. I mean, we can talk about making money on the Internet. So, there's a lot of things we can go after if the message is framed properly. And, you know, one thing that I'd be interested in definitely having you come out. On a bonus webinar or something.

And talk about that. Would you be willing to do that? Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say, you know, if you were to lay a color map over the, say, the United States. And do a color grid, you know.

And they could actually show you by color where, you know, men who are 45 to 65 are. I mean, what's so cool about the Internet with the tools that are available. You actually can find out where they are. It's kind of like I was watching the Tuna. Was it Tuna?

Wrestlers Today or something. Some fishing show about the tuna guys, the tuna boats. And, you know, you can actually spot where these people are. And they come out and they zoom this big net around them. And, you know, it's kind of like that.

I mean, it's so laser targeted. You really don't have to spend a lot of money. It's like we used to spend $8,000 on a display ad and rob report and pray to God that it worked. So, we could run another one. And if you do, then your next focus is, okay, on the 0.31 click-through rate.

If we're getting a 10% opt-in rate, how many of those opt-ins are turning into customers? And I like this business. And people don't. They don't think about this. But I spend on average about $200, $150 to $200 to create an $875 sale.

And I don't know if anybody else looks at the business that way. But the ROI, and I say return on initiative because I don't want to talk about investments. But the money I personally invest in this business has provided probably one of the highest ROIs that I've ever achieved in any online business. It's really incredible to say, okay. I can go create leads at $2 a lead if I generate 100 leads.

Now, I may only get two sales out of 100 leads. Dave Wood might get 20. But I know there's going to be a certain amount of those that opt in for the 25. We know a certain percentage of those are going to go up to the inner circle on a certain percentage of those. So it's a pure numbers game to me, Dave.

And that's a whole other discussion when you start talking about numbers. But I am such a numbers person. It's a money printing machine. It's an ATM machine for me. And all I'm really doing is finding all of the avenues, all of the outlets where I can spend that money.

And I'm going to put it into advertising and just keep investing 50% of what I make. But only in stuff. Only in stuff that I've absolutely proven that it's going to get me a positive ROI. I don't want to spend – I look at this business. That's magical, by the way.

And I don't mean to cut you off. We can get back in a second. But there's that attitude that – a lot of people have got the wrong attitude. Spending money is not spending if it brings back twice as much as you spent. It's just not.

It's not losing any money. And a lot of people are afraid to advertise because they're afraid to spend money. It is not business mindset. So I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to kind of comment on that.

It's that attitude is the attitude of a great marketer. And we've always said 20%. And here you're saying 50%. So maybe we need to reevaluate that message. Well, not as a newbie.

You really do need to invest a big chunk of your money back into marketing so you can get your list up to 1,000 people. If your list isn't 1,000 people, you're naturally going to get one or two sales, some type of upgrade every time you mail your list if you've done a good job putting your mailer together. And that's like one of the consultants I was working with yesterday. And we were really doing some high-level stuff. Where does it come from?

I mean he was drilling me down on every angle. And there were some answers that I didn't know. And he's like, the bottom line is you should be earning this much off of this list every time you mail it out. Based on these open rates and click-through rates and all this. These guys have mathematical formulas.

And I love that because it's really, if you don't measure your progress, if you don't say, okay, I spent $200. I generated 100 leads. That means my leads cost me $2 apiece. I know that out of 100 leads, I got one 875 sale or I generated 875 in revenue. So I know I got a 4 to 1 return on my money.

I got to tell you, you can't do that in the stock market. You can only do it investing in yourself and finding a kick-ass vehicle like this business to apply yourself to. And you're right, realizing this business isn't for everybody. And I'll be honest, I don't focus on network marketers. I don't mean to sound flaky, but I've just found a lot of them to be flaky.

I've been focusing on business guys that have the ability to invest $1,500 to $5,000 in an internet business. That is my core focus now. And when I find a person who's willing to do that, I sit down. I explain the beef store analogy and I go, by the way, this is the USDA beef we're going to be marketing. It's called Empower Network.

Well, that's a great message and it's a great perspective as well that a lot of people, they think – and this is one thing that has set us apart from what I would call the attraction marketing niche because Empower Network is really not an attraction marketing company in the network marketing niche like every other company in our niche is. It's just not. We're not teaching people how to brand yourself and be a leader. We're not teaching them how to set up your own sales phone. We teach them how to do that stuff, but we're teaching people how to make money.

And we're teaching them how to earn a positive ROI. We're teaching them marketing skills that can work here and other places. And the market appeal for that is a much higher level appeal. And I like what you say that you're looking at people who say, do you have $5,000 to invest in a business? Because one of the challenges – one of the challenges that you actually do get in network marketing, people want to only spend $500.

They don't want to pull out their credit card and to make decisions that are going to lead to a positive ROI. They're not willing to invest. If you look at any great business person, Richard Branson, to start his company, Virgin Records, he went gangster little kid selling records out of a warehouse and sold some bankers on giving them a bunch of money and borrowed a huge amount of money to start his record company. Now it's turned into this multi-billion dollar worldwide empire that's going to send private rockets into space. He ain't no wussy, as we like to say.

But you know what he did? He actually started with an e-zine. He actually had a little rag that he marketed to college students. And to be honest, Davis, he built a list first. He had a list of subscribers that subscribed to his e-zine.

So his model that he used is no different than we're using. He went out and generated leads of people that were interested in the music scene. And then when they passed that law in England where they allowed mail order albums, that's when he got into the mail order albums. And he leveraged his list. He took, at first, it was his e-zine.

That was his USDA beef. And then they legalized the mail order albums. And he said, oh, Japanese Kobe beef. I can market this to my same list because they like beef. And then, of course, he got record stores.

He started some record stores. And that was Brazilian beef. And he goes, oh, I can market my record stores to my list. Because they like beef. And then, of course, he got recording studios and concert promotions.

And the guy just did a beautiful vertical integration. And you don't know this, but he is like one of my major, major mentors and idols. I'm building Escape Artist exactly around the same business plan that he did. And people are going to do the same thing with Empower Network. They're going to build a 5,000 or 10,000-person list.

I mean, what happens at the end of 12 months? When you have built up a 10,000 to 15,000-person list, people say, well, that's not many names. Yeah, it is. And you know that being in internet marketing. If you have 15,000 names and 1% business.

And 1% buy your product, whatever offering, whatever beef you're selling for the month, you got 150 sales. You just printed money. So a 15,000-person list is a moneymaker. And a lot of people don't realize that. So I try to get them to look out 12 months from now.

And I say, this is where you're going to be. And you're going to be growing your list by 1,000 people a month. Because you're going to be investing $3,000. That's a lot of money. It's not.

Well, no. That's exactly. That is the business mindset there. And that's what we're trying to teach people, man. So if we could drill that into people.

Spending money doesn't mean you're spending money. It depends on what you're spending it on. You know, it's something. You know, where I learned this. I actually learned this from originally.

It was actually right before I got on the Internet. I learned this from reading some stuff by Jay Abraham. Which I'm sure you've read some of his stuff. Absolutely. The Beast.

Yeah. Absolutely. And he said in this book. It was a book on how to write. This book was actually particularly about how one niche usually markets in a particular way.

But they ignore the marketing methods of another niche. And his specialty and his gift kind of came from taking away a supermarket market. And taking away an Internet marketer market. And taking away a mail marketer market. And kind of combining them all to help people learn how to market any business using all modalities.

But one thing he said in there that was really significant. He said, if I can spend a dollar. And it brings back four. I didn't spend a dollar. I just earned 400% ROI.

Which you can't do in the stock market. You can't do investing in real estate. You can only do it in marketing. It's the only thing where you can earn predictable 400%, 500%. Sometimes 1,000 or 2,000% returns for the money that you put out.

Like. I'll give you an example. We send these voice broadcasts out. You probably get them. They're awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. We send these messages out. Now. We only send them out to people that have filled out the join page.

But anybody who's. And some of those are free members. So there's about 11,000 people who have filled out a join page. But they actually haven't bought anything. Right?

And then we've got. And some of those are fake. So there's 3,000 people. They put in fake information. Because they want to see what's on the next page without buying anything.

Right? Right. Yeah. And then we've got members who go and make sure their join page is working. Or whatever it is.

But we've got a lot of real people in there. And we've also got the members. Even if we're not directly selling. And we just send out. What we do is we send out informational messages to the members.

That costs me about. Right now about $1,200 to send one of those messages to our member base. Because we got in that total database about 30. 30. Maybe 37,000 phone numbers.

We can only broadcast to the ones in the states. So there's a lot of international ones that just get excluded. About 35,000 we could broadcast to. It costs me about $1,200 to send out a broadcast. You say $1,200?

And you're. But here's the thing. Because what happens is the members get engaged. And it's either pass up sales from them learning something. That they go apply and make a sale.

It's an upgrade from talking about the Costa Rica product. And somebody goes and they say yes I'm serious about my business. I'm all in. And they go spend $500. It's somebody realizing that you know.

Oh shoot I need to set up my eWallet account. And they're doing it. So it's not spending $1,000. And some people think oh God they'd be afraid to spend the $1,000. But it's not spending.

It's extracting money out of thin air. So great concept. What are some things you've found that have been the most positive ROI kinds of marketing. That you've done in your business in the last. Let's go over the last three years.

Because you've been doing this for 15. So in the last few years. This year. What are the most positive ROI investments that you've found for lead generation? Well you try them all.

And you can get them all within a successful range. And I don't know how to define successful. Except for it really depends on the product you're marketing. Like with Empower I'd be wanting to get my lead cost down to under $2 per lead. And there are ways.

I love Craigslist. But you know Craigslist can be temperamental. And I love. They don't love you right? Yeah.

But Craigslist is still cool with me. I haven't gotten a fourth slap yet. But I'm working on it. But you know it's just a matter. It's doing everything.

I get the most ROI from obviously you know remailing my list. And focusing on building my list. And just building relationships with people. I try a lot. I try a lot of stuff.

I mean I buy programs all the time. Of course we've tried voice broadcasting. We've tried. We've tried them all. I mean I laugh.

I call them the sucker programs. I mean how many of you sucker programs have you bought? But you gain wisdom from those programs. You go you know what? They got this kind of right.

But ultimately what has paid us the highest ROI more than anything has been SEO. Making sure that we have good titles in our articles. I put out an e-zine the other day on Vanuatu. Our e-zine is called escapefromamerica.com. And I did 10 articles on Vanuatu.

And out of the 10 articles, 8 of them got top 10 Google search results. And of course we have a page rank 6. And we have real good credibility from Google with our e-zine. Very much like your communal blog does. And I'm going to be publishing some things on the Empower Network.

I don't know if I'm going to be repurposing articles or doing summaries. But I'm going to have a strategy on my Empower page to help enhance my escape from America page. So I think there's ways to interchange and add value to each other's sites in that way. But SEO has ultimately been finding the niche. I crushed the Vanuatu because there's not a lot of competition there.

And I think that's a good lesson. And I heard you mention it on the call the other night. It's like don't focus on the word real estate. Focus on real estate in the Hamptons if that's where you live. Because you might be able to compete a little bit better.

And you won't have people like realestate.com who are just got PR 7 page rank 8 websites that you're never going to bump them. I mean they've been there for years. It's kind of like live in whatever country. Dude, you got to compete with this beast site called Escape Artist, dude. We've had those.

We've had those search engine placements for a long time. But I would tell people you do all the postings. There's a lot of stuff you can outsource once you get a level of profitability. I know that I've got a friend out there that uses automation, a lot of automation. And she's a pro at it.

And I'm just marveled by all the things that she does. It will be interesting too to see what Pinterest is all about. I've been kind of poking around there to see if there's any opportunities there as well. So. Well, that's a fascinating site that's coming up as well.

And I don't know enough about it to say anything. But I heard something interesting a while ago. And I think that this applies to our conversation especially. And this is actually from Dean Kosage. He's an Amway guy that's kind of – he just – he got in the 90s.

He was like 20. And he's been making a lot of money in Amway for like the last 20 years. And I just like him. I have a conversation with him every month or two. I give him a call.

But he's just one of these guys. Just complete genius on the cutting edge. It's hard to be an Amway on the cutting edge. And he just is, man. He just has still got to crank an organization, a very old-school company.

And he's now developing a lot of internet technology and stuff as well. But one of the things he said when I was on the phone with him – I did an interview with him maybe a year ago for my personal list. And he said that, Dave, one thing I've learned – he said, go where the people are. He said, you go where the people are. He says, you can either do it.

You can either develop where the people are or you can go where the people are and you can get them. And that's the attitude of paying for advertising. Where are the people that we want? And Facebook has been a great source because people just sit there on Facebook all day. P-entry.

It's high quality. I really like Facebook leads. I mean they're decent enough quality to where you can produce a positive ROI all day long with that. And I know plenty of fish I've used there. They've got a very targeted contextual ad system.

Which works decent. But you've got to have a really well-designed ad for it to work good to get the right conversions. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. And there's a whole lot to it. But that's what's great about your program is all of the marketing material, everything is done.

Just teach them some basic things. And that's what I do with people in the first month. I'm like, man, if you're not willing to go out and do postings, if you're not willing to post on your own Facebook page, you're not willing to add friends, go out and do classifieds, and do all the things that are out there. I mean like AdLin Pro Community. I get probably three or four opt-ins a day off AdLin Pro Community.

I think it's called AdLin Pro. It's a neat little community. But I get traffic off of it. It's not going to make me rich. But if I have ten sites like that, I'm producing 30 to 40 leads a day.

And dude, when you're producing 900 to 1,000 leads a month, you can't go broke. It's possible. You're right. But not with Empower. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I actually said it's impossible, but my tongue slipped. No, no, no. I mean, well, somebody could be a real dork and somehow find a way to not ever email out a link to buy anything to a list. Actually, this is a funny story. I've got to tell this because this relates.

And this guy probably will actually listen to this Inner Circle because he's in Empower, and he's a great guy. And he'll kind of chuckle at himself. He says it's true as well. But I was with one of my pals who gets a decent amount of leads, 15, 20 leads a day, something like that. And I was drinking some wine one night, and we were hanging out.

I was like, how much money are you making, bro? Nobody else is in the room. We were off at this convention thing, and we were just hanging out. He's like, how much money are you making, pal? And he really respects me, and we've known each other for a long time.

And he'd been getting 15 leads a day. For like six months. And I stopped. And I said, what? I said, people know who you are, and you've got a list, and you've got traffic, and you're getting opt-ins every day.

And he says, well, I don't know. And I said, dude, come on. Let's pull out your website. And let's look at your list. And this is what happened.

And it's a great lesson. I went to his site. He had an opt-in. His opt-in was pretty good. I opted in, and he had a video.

And the video is a little boring, but it wasn't that bad of a video. But it was like 30 minutes. And it wasn't selling anything. It was just like, hey, how's it going? This is who I am.

And how are you doing? Kind of a video. And then it had a link underneath it. So I kind of turned the sound off and chatted with him for a second until the link popped up. And then I clicked on the link, and it didn't go to a purchase page.

It went to another 30-minute video. And then all his emails, they went back to that one video that went to another video. And you had to sit through like two really long videos to even figure out what you're supposed to buy. So it was pretty apparent, actually, why he's only making a few thousand a month. But the reality is, is that 15 leads a day done properly.

So that's a great thing. I just wanted to kind of toss out a few tidbits. Because it's funny, because seeing these people, they don't understand. It's like the beef store analogy, right? And we take that analogy a step further.

Now let's say you do have a target. You do have somebody who loves beef. And you've got the best beef in town. And they pull into your parking lot, and they walk into your store. And they say, you know, I want that rack of beef right there.

And they kind of point to what you've got, you know, sitting there in your little display case. And you say, oh, okay, we don't have that one for sale. And they say, oh, I'll take that one. And they'll say, okay, you can have that one. And they're like, how much is it?

And they're like, you have to bring me three pointy rocks. And the person is like, I'm sorry, I've only got dollars. I don't have any rocks. And he's like, I need specifics. And he's like, I need specifically three pointy rocks that have to be four and a half inches long.

And if you bring me those rocks back today, we're only open for another 45 minutes, I can give you that one right there. And the guy is just going to look at you like, are you kidding me? But this is the way a lot of people operate their Internet businesses. And that's one of the reasons why Empower Network is beautiful because we just, they go to the site, we sell them stuff. You know what I mean?

It's not hard to buy. You know what I mean? It's like you go there, and there's a message. And the message is pull out your credit card and make a decision, you know? So I just was laughing.

You could live in Thailand like a god for that. But now that guy, I talked him through that, and here's the beauty. He made some alterations and some changes. You know what I mean? And it's that fast of a change.

And people don't realize how small of a list it is. People don't know how to make really good money when you've got the right business metrics. So you're a genius, dude. Well, you know, it's so funny. And you talk about you're going in the beef store and buying that beef.

And I jokingly say that, you know, I think I got like a couple thousand dollars last month in just residual income while everything was down, you know, while we were taking a little bit of a break and getting rebuilt for the relaunch. It was amazing. The money just kept flowing. And people have to realize that this is a genius business model. It works.

But they have to be careful of the way they explain it to people. They try and explain to people a communal blogging system with Internet marketing and all of this. And, I mean, they're going out, they're selling the application. People are like, what the hell is a communal blogging system? You know, I tell people, I say, listen, this is a vehicle that can help you realize your escape artist dream.

I spend $200. And it's just a product that everybody likes, everybody uses, you know. And you want to learn Internet marketing too, don't you, David? And they're like, oh, yeah, I got to learn Internet marketing. I said, well, you won't find a better program for your investment.

I'm looking for people that have $1,500 to $5,000 to invest in their business over the next three to six months. Are you qualified? And, yeah, you're right about those videos. I mean, there's only one dude I know can get away with doing a two-hour webinar, and that's you. But, yeah.

And people stay on it. I said, dude, I was so pumped up. I wanted to re-up again. I wanted to go all in again. I was so excited.

I was like reaching for my credit card going, I don't think my site will take it again. I was so excited. It was such an incredible webinar, man. Well, you know, it really jacked people up. But, you know, here's the beauty, man.

It's all in. It's all in, like – and this is what – this is how I started doing that. This is just so you know. And not everybody can do this because this is a language thing. You have to know how to speak and communicate hypnotically and be entertaining to hold a crowd for two hours.

The Amway people are really good at that. There's not a lot of people in direct sales that are good at that. Most people have a hard time holding attention for five minutes. But that's one of the beauties of personalities, and that's one of the beauties of what we do is that nobody has to learn to do that because I'll do it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But what I learned was – It's definitely a special gift. I mean, to have you as my number one salesperson, people have no idea. And mark my words. We'll be one of the top earners.

And, yeah, we've got a big list, and we're going to crank it out. So, you know, but I think there's people that will start from scratch. And we could do more with those pass-ups, man. That whole pass-up system and getting those just, man, it blows you out sideways like crazy. And I think it's beautiful.

So I'm excited. How much did I say I was going to make for the Atlanta conference? Yeah, yeah. So $100,000. I'm going to put it out there.

I'm putting it out to the universe. Well, we'll do it. No, no. Here's the thing, man. And, by the way, I know you're near Atlanta or in Atlanta.

And everybody who's on that call, if you think that Empower Network is cranking now, wait until you see what we've got going on in Atlanta. And, by the way, just so everybody knows. Here on the audio, I mean, we don't have the details for that yet, obviously. Tom will have them hopefully the next day or two. And we're going to coordinate with you and Tracy for that.

We're both down there. We've got about 500 people in Georgia who are actually in Empower. But this is a worldwide event, launch event. This is an NDA event. So you're going to have to come.

And this is some top-secret info. There's not going to be any Internet streaming. There's not going to be videos of this later. You're going to have to go or just miss out. So just everybody here, just stay up.

And it's not expensive. I mean, we're going to do this for I have no idea on the pricing to cover the cost. It'll be something like $60, $70 a person, maybe $100 a person, just depending on how expensive the rooms are that we get. We just want you to get there. And that's one of the reasons why we're making it an NDA is because if you don't come, you miss out.

So mean as it is, it's going to be fun, dude, and this is going to jack the growth. And I think this is my belief. Not including whatever else business they're in. Just here. So that's my goal.

Great. And can I tell you something? Can I mention something? We don't really talk about this a lot. But I want to bring something up because people don't really think about this, okay?

Is that Dave and I, you know, we make money, you know, as affiliates here. And the stuff that we're doing and the people we're hiring right now for the infrastructure stuff until we got about 3,000 more people on it, right? That's to pay for the company. We're making money like affiliates. Our affiliate position, this is not, no extra pass-ups, Tom, okay?

And I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm just going to say it anyway just as a bonus for people. Our affiliate position, this is talking our position, not the front blog, the one that we do our own PPC from, our own paid ads from, that we market to. To build our community because we've got that one. And it's an affiliate position with no special compensation. Beautiful.

So that's the same comp plan everybody has. That's what we made just from building a team, not from company pass-ups. Now, obviously, we're paying for the company out of that. So we've now put a few hundred thousand back into infrastructure and programming and this crazy stuff that we're doing now with the PPC. We're scaling out our infrastructure.

But the fact is, is that we could have 10 people here making a quarter of a million a month by the end of the year if they'll listen to what we're saying because we've done it. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, that's exciting. I may be thinking too low.

Well, hey, dude, you got a list of, think about this, man. Your list is 400,000, okay? We launched that from my list and Dave Sharp's list. My list is only 28,000. Dave Sharp's list may be 10, you know?

So we launched that from a list. You take that, what, 38,000 people? But they're very targeted, very strong relationships. We're really good at selling. And it was kind of the style and the way we launched.

But so if we launch a list, think about this. If we can launch from a list of 38,000 and make a quarter million our first month, right? And, of course, we didn't keep the quarter million because we had to put that back into the company. But if we can do that, what can you do with a list of 400,000? You know what I'm saying?

Unlimited. And our market is so, how we frame it for our market is so perfect because this is the ultimate escape artist business. Best portable business of 2012 and beyond. I love it. This is a lot of fun.

Let's crank it out, brother. Well, great having you on the interview. I want to get you on a call here. Maybe next month sometime, too. I'm going to pop this up in the inner circle, get this out to people.

And, you know, let me know what I can do for you, man. And, by the way, everybody here, you know, sometimes people, you know, sometimes people ask me. They say, hey, Dave, how can I get featured on an inner circle call? You know, I'm trying to actually do these daily. We're trying to get stuff up every single day.

And here's my answer to you. If you guys are wondering, you know, hey, how can I get some exposure? How can I get back there and do this? Well, make some money, right? Produce.

And deserve it. And we'll get you back here. You know, we just had a guy new to network marketing today right before you. So I'm going to put yours up tomorrow. We just had a guy brand new to network marketing.

First time he's ever been in the industry. From a totally different background, totally different background off the Internet. And so make some money. And we'll get you back here and find out what you're doing. And Tom's no different.

I actually, Tom, and it's not offense, but the inner circle is actually for people. Who are in Empower getting results. So if you weren't in, I probably wouldn't have gotten you on this interview. I would have been missing out. So we bring you out.

So somebody wants exposure. They want to be, have people driving around in their cars listening to them. Well, go make some money. Make some sales. Get all in, too.

We don't let anybody in the inner circle who ain't all in. Get all the products. Every single one of the products. Buy the Costa Rica. Buy the 15K formula.

Get them all. Just decide to be there. Decide to be in Atlanta. Get in. And we will get you.

We'll feature you in the inner circle. And I just appreciate having you on board, man. I think you're a rock star. If I could help you make an extra quarter million a month by the end of the year, I'd be just scratching the goal. Hey, man.

I'm walking in your shadow. I love what you're doing. And I got to tell you, I hope every serious business person, and I know that some people are turned off by some of the things that we do as internet marketers. But I got to tell you what. I used to be a Hickey Freeman wingtip wearing white start shirt wearing full.

And I used to walk around thinking I was the stuff. And it all mattered what car I was driving. But I got to tell you, when you can move and make the impact that David Wood and David Sterling. And I'm going to cry just like David. I almost cried last night like David.

It was pretty funny. But he killed me, man. He made me cry like nobody's business. But when you look at this business, don't look at it and say this is not a serious business. This is for real.

And I'm running a top 1% website in the world. And I can tell you that Empower is a top one-tenth of 1% website in the world. And it's just blowing up. It's just blowing and going. Your numbers are real.

I've compared them against my site. I made the joke the first time I interviewed you. We heard a roar behind us. And you blew so fast by us. And we've been doing this for 15 years, 17,000 pages of content on the internet, a million unique visitors a month.

And here you come in less than 90 days. And you're almost doing our entire traffic that we're doing in a month. You're almost doing it in a day. It's just people. I don't know what to tell you guys.

But you look at the numbers. You look at the stats. You look at the quality of the product. You look at the technology. You look at the marketing.

More importantly, dude, look at the heart. And I want to make sure that call you and David did the other night. Because I could take that call and have 100 of my friends listen to that call. And you guys didn't even really talk about the business. You talked about the heart and soul of this company.

And that's more important to me than anything. So kudos to you, buddy. I enjoy learning from you and listening to you. And I have attention deficit disorder like nobody's business. And somebody can hold my attention.

I got three computer screens in here. And to sit there and listen to you for three hours. My son looked at me like something was wrong. Like, dude, David's got you hypnotized. I was like, yeah, he does, man.

This guy's a beast. But I love you, man. I can't. There's only one other person. I could sit there and listen to.

And you may know who he is. But his name was Hubert Humphrey. And he was one of the top producers in Prime America. And Hubert would start a meeting at 830. And shoot, man, it would be 1230 before he let us out.

And, I mean, people would just be on the edge of their seat listening to him. And you're the same way. You have a great gift. And I hope everybody does what I do. I generate leads.

I direct them to your calls. I send out your swipe copy. That's all I do, folks. I don't do anything different than what you're doing. But the key is go out there, generate the leads, feed them into the system, build a relationship with them, and give them a pat on the back and let them know that they can do it just like you're doing it.

Well, great, man. Well, great to have you on. We'll have you on again. And if you guys didn't get that, you need to listen to this five times. Download these audios.

Don't just sit here in front of the computer. Don't just sit here in front of the website and do nothing. If you're going to be on the website while you're listening, be blogging while you're listening. Blog about what you learned from this audio. Send it to your teams.

Make sure your teams get this information. And especially, I want you guys to do one thing. Realize that he went over something, and I'm not going to even mention what it was, but he went over a key in this audio that we talked about that if you master that key, it'll unlock your business. It'll unlock it for you. Listen to this five times.

It'll change your life. Thank you again, Tom. Appreciate it. I'm going to go ahead and end the recording, folks. I will see you on the beaches of the world and look out tomorrow, of course, for the next Inner Circle call.

Just get your butt to Atlanta for the launch event if you're hearing this before we're doing the launch event. If you're hearing it after, then be at the next event, and we'll see you guys on the beaches of the world. Bye-bye. Be at the next event, and we'll see you guys on the beaches of the world. Bye-bye.

If you're listening to a private recording in a nondisclosure Empower Network customer training, the principles and strategies in this audio can be applied in any business. Although these techniques, philosophies, and strategies may have worked for others, no one can guarantee that they will work for you. We report real average earnings updated daily at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income dot php. The purchase of this or any other audio is not required to earn money in our affiliate compensation plan, and you can decide to not continue to buy these forever at any time. We hope, however, that these ideas and strategies will help you.

Thank you. We hope this will assist you in building a profitable, long-term business. Success takes hard work, determination, skill, and consistent effort. Please refer to our average earnings at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income dot php.