Do you want to learn how to create a seven-figure launch strategy for your online course, membership site, Software as a Service, book, product or service? If so, then this episode number 153 is for you. This episode’s guest is Andrew Fox, also known as Foxy. Andrew is a serial entrepreneur and supercar addict who had sold over $7 million of information software and membership products. His latest venture, Hyper Funnel Formula, teaches people the A to Z Blueprint that he has used for many years to create all of his success.
Transcript
Andrew, it’s great to have you on the show.
How is it going?
It’s been a while since we caught up. We’ve met in person several times. The last event that we met up was in Greg Davis’ and Com Mirza’s event.
That was in Washington DC a few years back.
I’ve had Greg Davis on the show. It was a great episode. We went deep into black hat stuff. That was a lot of fun. I’d love to have our readers know how you ended up with the nickname Foxy.
I’d like to say it’s an extravagant story, but my surname is Fox. It’s one of those things where people like to add a Y onto the end and you become the Foxy. Maybe it’s because of my irresistible charm and all that good stuff.
Has that been since you were a kid or is it in the more recent years?
I was a monkey when I was about seven or eight years old because I was always climbing on things, stairs, up trees and stuff. I always had a keen natural sense of exploration. I was a monkey earlier, but then I’ve sensed greater to the fox.
You’ve got some amazing products, tools, services and things that you’ve built up over the years. I would love to get into what those are and how you identified the market opportunities on that. Why don’t you give us a lay of the land of what the different products, services, information, products and so forth that are available for sale now? I would also include in there masterminds and events that you’re running too. What have you got?
Over the last three or four years, what I’ve focused on are three divisions, which would be info products, software creation products and recurring products. They all have their pros and cons. What I’ve been a master is, for example an info product that’s done over a $1 million. I didn’t create the content as a software product. I’m not a developer. I wasn’t the guy behind creating the software and the same with the other items. I’ve always been the marketer/launch strategist of getting these products to market. I’ve done that by teaming up with the right partners and it’s worked really well.
You've got a lot of competition out there. You have to get people to know and trust you. Share on XYou’re the launch strategist. You’re always working with a partner who’s sourcing the programmers and dreaming up what the infrastructure and architecture of the product is?
Yes. I’ll give you a few real-life examples. I work with my brother, Chris. He’s not a developer per se, but he’s always had a natural talent of looking in the right places to hire developers and programmers. I get his ideas and concepts into real life. To give you a real-life story, your audience will appreciate this, back around 2012 or 2013, we could see that there was a market for WordPress plug-ins, which you put on your WordPress site and it will perform a function, which would save you doing the labor-intensive tasks.
To get more specific, for example, we had one called Content Gorilla. What this did was you could put it on your WordPress site and it would pull content from the Amazon catalog and place it on your site automatically. You would also have your affiliate link embedded. Let’s say for example, you would put in the keyword, Tiger Woods. If your WordPress site was about golf, it would then automatically script the Amazon API. It would pull content relevant to that and would automatically display that on your website. What was good about that was Amazon updated its catalog and plugin, so the software would auto-update on your website. It’s an example of replacing labor cost with using technology to solve a problem.
When we sold these plug-ins for anywhere from $27 to $37 and then we would have various upsells, “Would you like to use this in one website or ten websites or unlimited websites?” Then we would maybe offer some training, “Here’s how to get more visitors to your WordPress website.” You’re always thinking of when someone comes to your website, that’s only part one of the process. Once they become a customer, “What else can I add value on? What other services would they need?” Just like Apple. When you buy an iPhone, then they’ll sell you an Apple TV, then you’ll buy an Apple MacBook. It’s a real indoctrination into the brand.
For any real successful business, acquiring customers is the most difficult and the most expensive part. You’ve got a lot of competition out there. You have to get people to know, like and trust you. As soon as the transaction is made on and as long as you look after your customers, then you’ve got a solid business that you can pivot from. You can always survey them, “What else would you like to see? What other products or services can we help you with them?” I’ve always found that a great indicator to help springboard to the next project.
Is it a viable business to have a WordPress plugin or some browser extension or something that only sells for $20? Can you build a seven-figure business or a seven-figure launch out of a small product like that?
If done right, you absolutely can. To really hit into higher six figures and seven figures, typically anytime I’ve achieved these numbers, it’s probably been where there was at least a mid-ticket range. We’ll define mid-ticket range as a $297 to a $497 and higher-ticket range is as a $997 to $2,000. If you want to have those larger numbers, getting a higher price point is going to make that goal more realistic. To get people to your funnel, maybe get a bit of traction immediately but the lower price point can be an easier sale.
Give us an example of a mid-ticket item that you’re selling.
With Zapable, we sell that for $497 per year. Zapable is a mobile app builder and it’s like a drag and drop interface. To break this down and make it easy for people, a lot of people may have heard of Wix.com or SquareSpace.com, which is a DIY website builder. We created a Wix of apps where you could create apps, a new development experience. Just log-in to an online interface, create an app from scratch. What we did was we targeted the business opportunity market with it. We targeted either people who were looking to get into a business opportunity. They could see the explosion of mobile apps. They knew that this was a good business to be getting into. For example, you did SEO for a while. A lot of clients do search engine optimization and the chances are, “Do they need an app?” Probably, it’s going to become almost as essential as a website. We would also target people who have existing digital marketing agencies and things like that. That was an example of a mid-tech item.
Just to go into the funnel process, we had the actual app builder software but then what we did was we said, “If you have the app builder, you can build apps. However, do you have videos to approach businesses in different niches like real estate, nightclubs and local doctors? Do you have landing pages? Do you have email scripts? Do you have the confidence to approach these businesses?” A lot of people would say, “Andrew, we don’t.” What we did was we created an add-on called Zapable Agency, which would give our customers a done-for-you service. We released that for the first time in November 2017. We sold around $80,000, which is our own customer list, which was a great start. Since then, we’ve obviously had well-over six figures with Zapable Agency.
Just to show people what we’re doing, once they join Zapable Agency, we’d say, “You’ve joined Zapable Agency and you’ve got the done-for-you. That’s great. Would you like a new done-for-you video and a niche voted for you every month? Click here to get in with a low monthly fee.” We’ll give people a 30-day trial. The stick rate has been incredible. We currently charge at least around $49 per month for that service. People love it. It’s an example of once people like your brand, they bought the app builder then they bought the Zapable Agency Package, which was about another $500. They’re paying an extra $50 for one new video a month. That was an example of getting the customer in. Get them to know, like and trust you. Then sell them additional products and services, which create additional value for their businesses.
You also have very high-ticket offers as well. You have a mastermind. How much does that one cost?
The masterminds that we have hosted in the past have ranged anywhere from $5,000 up to $25,000. The high-ticket one is an event I’ve put on with Peter Parks. Peter is a fantastic paid advertising and business in general. He is also a very good dude. This is where we took a small select group of entrepreneurs. Generally, we did pretty well. We take about eight people on maximum, possibly ten. It depends. We would take them on board on my yacht for three days. What we wanted to do was to ensure that they got ROI because it’s always about return-of-investment. If you’re a business guy, you’re not going to pay $25,000 just to go hang out on a yacht.
The funny thing was that we went out for dinner at one of the nights at a lovely restaurant and everyone’s getting in the groove and they go, “Foxy, let’s go. Let’s hit the time.” I’m like, “No way because it’s [1:00] AM.” They’re like, “It will be good.” “You guys have paid me $25,000 and as much as I’d like to party with you, I have a job to deliver to you.” My own attendees were trying to drag me out to get a bit wild and crazy. We would generally do that in the last night, but for the next two to three days we’ve got to deliver good value.
You're meant to go and do new things, irrespective of money or anything. Share on XYou’ve got to deliver massive value to get an ROI on a $25,000-weekend. That’s pretty incredible. Do you have an example of somebody who got massive ROI from that weekend?
The best way I could give examples is that I still speak to a lot of past attendees from events. They have left very powerful testimonials. If you go over to GoFoxy.com, there’s a bunch of them over there. These were people that have been looking for a business opportunity. There were a few people in the t-shirt business and they did really well. Another was in the travel niche and his business got good results. I’m sorry I can’t drop websites and URLs, but it’s client privacy. Some of them like to keep their websites to themselves, but a lot of good testimonials are on the website. The answer to that is absolutely, yes.
What might be a typical ROI for somebody who spends $25,000 with you for a mastermind? Are they going to make six figures or seven figures out of that?
Let me answer this as if you came to me and said, “I’m branding into the internet business.” This does happen where people who come out as ex-corporates and they have a payoff. They’re looking to invest and they want to get into the internet business. They’re willing to pay significant sums of money. If you came to me and said, “Andrew, I’m going to give you $25,000. Do you have a program for me?” I would say, “I’m sorry but not at the moment.” It’s a lot easier to tune something that is already making money and look for the gaps and holes or maybe they’re missing something or their mindset isn’t right or they’re doing something that’s blocking them from scaling to the next level.
We find that with a lot of our attendees, they were typically generating high six figures into seven figures in revenue and profits were in the healthy six figures. It’s a lot easier to adjust a business that’s already making money and making profits than it is to take someone from a standing start. A good comparison would be like someone wants to be a great boxer but they walk into the gym and someone asks, “How many boxing lessons do you have? How many fights have you had?” They’re like, “Zero.” It’s going to be a lot harder to train that person from somebody who’s had a bit of experience.
Let’s say that somebody has made a high six-figures in their business and they want to finally break into the seven figures, maybe even multiple seven figures. Let’s say that they’re missing some key components like a Chief Operations Officer or a Launch Strategist or a great Sales Copywriter or something like that. Do you make the introductions? Do you hook them up with those people? Do you teach them how to become a great sales copywriter themselves? What’s the next step to get to the next level for them?
First of all, we would look at their business. The first thing that we’d like to do and I always find it very helpful is when I say, “Let me see what your business is about. How are you making money right now?” They’ll say, “I’m driving traffic from affiliates. We’re doing some Facebook. We’re doing some Google AdWords around YouTube.” I’ll say, “What are you having the most success from?” Then we’ll break down their numbers and we’ll see where their leverage points are. For example, if they’re on Facebook, could they be expanding into other audiences or could they be scaling up their audiences where they are? If they’re getting great ROI from another from another advertising source, should they maybe look into expanding that?
I’ll tell you a story from a tech hub in Miami. We were at Miami at this tech convention. There were a couple of people that have been funded a few hundred thousand dollars as a seed round. It was for an intercompany survey. It was 30-day free trial and then $25 a month. They said, “We’re advertising on Twitter and we’re getting a customer required for about $5.” I thought, “That’s fantastic.” I said, “In what percentage is converted into $25 a month?” They said, “By 50%.” I’m like, “For the first month, at $25 it’s 50% converted, you’re getting $12 back.” The company was relatively new so we didn’t know what the stick rate was, how long they stayed.
Let’s say we’ll call a number of five months. Five times $25 would be $125. For a $5 investment, that could turn out pretty well. I said, “That’s fantastic. Are you scaling that up? Are you increasing the traffic?” “No, we’re going to Facebook.” This is a bootstrap company. It’s not like they have lots of finances to burn. They’re losing money, they’re burning through a lot of money each month, but they’ve got a good way to start generating more positive cashflow. I said, “Why don’t you expand Twitter? You’ve got that working. Why don’t you scale that up, exhaust that avenue first before you start venturing off into new advertising mediums?” They look at you with three heads and they’re like, “I suppose we never thought of it like that but we want to try.”
This is the thing, especially with technical people, is they want to try new things. They want to poke and fidget. Sometimes that’s not the best path to success, especially if you’re in a tech company that’s burning you $20,000 or $30,000 a month. The answer was right in front of them but sometimes they can’t see the thing that’s always in front of them. It’s a natural human tendency especially with creative people.
Did you keep in touch with those guys?
I haven’t kept in touch with them specifically, but I looked at their website months ago. It was operational, so they’re still being funded or maybe they’re profitable. By now, I’m not sure.
Let’s talk a little bit about this arrangement you have with Peter Parks who’s also a fantastic marketer and technologist. I met him at the event too and at several events where you were also present. You have this DNA Wealth Blueprint together. Could you describe what that is and what the business model is?
I’ll tell you a bit of background in this because sometimes people ask me, “How do you meet content providers? How do you come up with the people?” I released a guide in 2007 called the Guru Slayer and the effect of it told you it was a bit of marketing hype, how to beat gurus of their own game. It was the classic us against them mentality. It would teach email marketing, the psychology behind it and the difference between prospect lists and buyer lists. Peter was one of my customers, not that I knew about it at the time. I got a testimonial about two or three years after that saying, “My name’s Peter. I’m not sure if you know me.” Peter would have been quite behind the scenes too. He wasn’t very public. He said, “I bought a house in Canada. It was $500,000. I paid for it in cash. I want to say a big thank you to you because you are one of the guys that helped me achieve my big breakthrough. You mentored myself and Frank Kern.” I wrote back and I said, “That’s awesome. Thanks so much for connecting. That sounds that you’ve done amazing.” Peter had basically taken my skills and style and he’d understand. That was the first course that gave him an incident of the email copywriting. In fact, James Schramko as well on a podcast, he gave me credit for that too. It obviously had an impact on a lot of people.
The point is that forges relationships. When you put a great value and great content, it always seems to come back to you. Fast forward to four years or five years, it was around 2013, I’m in Cancun, Mexico. Peter hits me up and he goes, “Foxy, what are you up to down there?” I’m like, “I’m doing a bit of work. Meeting a few clients and enjoying the lifestyle.” He goes, “You want to come up to Canada?” I’m like, “What temperature is it there?” Cancun’s 80 degrees, it’s sunnier. I’m like, “I don’t want to live there.” Peter’s like, “Come up to Canada and I’ll pick you up. We can chill.” I’m like, “It’s minus six degrees or something. Are you crazy?” He’s like, “No.”
I’ve turned down conferences all the time that are in the middle of winter in freezing cold climates. I’m pretty spoiled that way too.
There was an event in Portugal, and because I live in the UK, even though I do travel a lot, the fact that it’s in Portugal and the weather is great, I’ll probably go there and that’s because of its location. Peter says to me, “I’m doing over $100,000 a day with Facebook.” I’m like, “What?” Some people would think these are quite absurd claims, but I’ve known Peter for about six years at this point and he’s a pretty straight shooter. He was generating massive ROIs by using Facebook as the traffic source. They’re driving people to CPA offers, which is the cost per acquisition. For example, things like teeth whitening or skin care or weight lost pill or things like that. The advertiser would pay you a commission for any leads you refer to them. Peter was doing this on a mass scale. You don’t get to those numbers without a good team and structure and an organizational brand. He was fantastic about it.
When someone makes that offer, you’re thinking, “This is pretty intriguing.” I get on the plane and I land in Canada. It’s freezing. Peter’s in this big duffle coat and he’s like, “Welcome to Canada.” We went to his house and hung out. He took me through some of his numbers. He was doing amazing things. He’s like, “Do you think people would want to learn about this?” I’m like, “Yes.” The challenge that we have is if you try to put on the internet, and bear in mind Peter wasn’t public, that you’re making $100,000 a day, that’s revenue as well and the profits were pretty eye opening. Making those claims, most people are going to be like, “That’s nonsense. That’s rubbish.” One of our biggest challenges was how to break this down into achievable numbers. This was my job and Peter was the content provider. I was the launch strategist. I was handling the email swipes, creating the sales copy. It was quite a tricky product.
Everyone was selling products and teaching about Facebook advertising. Most were not that good, there were a lot of copycats. There were some good courses out there. For every good one, there were four or five mediocre and maybe five copycats. We decided to price out $2,000. Ours was a higher premium product and we wanted to attract a premium. We charged $2,000 and we were up front. When people go, “Do we need any additional costs?” We’re like, “You’re probably going to need $30 to $50 a day advertising budget over 30 days because effectively you’re going to be paying for advertising. You’re going to be acquiring data, analyzing that data and seeing where they’re biting.” Effectively, people are going to need $3,500 upfront. We were pretty honest with people. Obviously selling is one thing, but if you sell to people who want to get rich quick and wanted to buy this type of product, it wasn’t going to work. We then lined up some great partners. You’re asking about the business model at the start of this question. Just from networking and knowing the people in the space, and having met Greg Davis at the event. Greg was another good CPA marketer.
I introduced Peter and Greg together. They had a lot of synergy and stuff. I said, “Greg, would you be interested in promoting our course? Your listeners would like it.” Greg’s not going to promote something that doesn’t deliver value, especially in that niche because there’s some very bad training out there. He knew Peter was on the level. Long story short, Greg promoted that product for $2,000 each and he sold over $70,000 the first time around. Over the coming years, we released different versions and updates. Greg has probably sold around a $250,000 in revenue for us. Shout out to Greg Davis. He’s a great guy. That’s the part of one good product.
Focus on the quality of partners rather than quantity. Share on XGreg’s a good guy. He puts his marketing power behind your product. You’re pretty well-set. Did you have other marketing partners that were big like Greg or was Greg your main powerhouse there?
Greg was our main powerhouse, but we did target other partners. It was a very specific partner. You can’t just send an email to your list and say, “Here’s a product, go buy it. It’s good and it’s a couple of thousand dollars.” That’s not going to swing it. You’re going to have to commit to the promotion so you’re going to warm people up with some prelaunch content. It was my job as the launch strategist. We created a bit of teaser content for prelaunch video one and then prelaunch video two. We had a live launch webinar. Any partners that got involved, they would also promote that as well and have warmed up their lists. We focused on the quality of partners rather than quantity. If you’re doing a launch and you’re selling a $27 product, that’s a much broader market to pay because it’s a much more of an impulse purchase because it’s $27. It’s not too bad. When there’s $2,000 involved, people will still buy but they need to be warmed up accordingly and you need to be targeting your audience with a lot greater precision.
Were you using Product Launch formula as your formula for doing the launch or some other program?
I had figured most of this stuff out myself inadvertently. I’ve been doing launches since probably 2002 or 2003. This was when I was building a product, building up anticipation and then releasing it at the time. I wasn’t even aware I was doing a launch. I was releasing the product and they seemed to do pretty well. I released my own and it wasn’t anywhere near as in depth as Jeff’s. I know Jeff Walker well. He’s a fantastic guy. He came out on the yacht with me in 2005 in the side of France. We interviewed him there. It was good times and good memories. I brought up my own version, LaunchYourProduct.com, which is gone now. It must have been ’04, ‘05. I figured this stuff by myself. Launching a product is a massive evolving marketplace. Email is still king, but with the social on the rise like Insta Stories and Messenger bots, the deliverability and the opens and clicks on Messenger bots is phenomenal. I enjoy experimenting with that.
Are you using ManyChat or some other Messenger bots?
I used ManyChat and I haven’t tried out other bots because ManyChat is definitely a company that is growing and they’re always changing features. They’re on top of it. It does what it says in the team. They have a good Facebook community. It’s still not anywhere near the limit of its potential. I have a guest on my own show called Philip LeCoutre of Messenger Marketing Experts. He’s producing some good PDF flows.
I’ve had Mikael Yang, the CEO of ManyChat, on this show.
ManyChat looks great and they’re very much in their infancy. I honestly say that conversational marketing is going to be colossal. It’s going to be one of the biggest marketing mediums in the next five years. Back in the day, when text messages were released, I said, “This is the way people are going to do it and this is the way people are willing to communicate with each other.” That’s what happened. For example, I was getting a cleaner for my house and I went on Facebook. I contacted them via the Messenger Bot, which had a few preset replies. I said, “What are your rates? What services do you offer?” That’s where we did the whole transaction on.
It’s only a matter of time before mass adoption occurs and you can pay for it online, and you’ll be able to book it on Messenger. I know you can do this now but from what I’ve seen, it has not had mass adoption yet. It’s certainly going that way. It’s the same with Apple Pay and Android Pay as well. I leave the house a lot of the time without even a wallet. I use Apple Pay to pay for everything. It’s certainly the way the world is having. I’d like to turn that question on you because you’re pretty technically savvy. Things like Apple Pay, Android Pay and conversational marketing, what do you see in the future for those?
They’re huge. I’m very bullish about Blockchain and AI. There’s a lot of cool stuff coming. One analogy that is very powerful for people to recognize is that the speed of things is not linear. If you look back 100 years into the past and think, “What was going on 100 years ago for people? What technology did they have? What was the speed of technology advancing and adoption of those technologies?” At the speed that technology was advancing 100 years ago in comparison to now, you could fit the next twenty years into the last 100 years because it’s faster now with Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and so forth, the Law of Accelerating Returns.
When you consider that we’re continuing to speed up, it’s not staying stagnant. It’s not that the last hundred years of technology advances would fit into the next twenty years. It would be the next twelve years. This is according to Ray Kurzweil, who’s one of the most accurate predicting futurists in the world. He’s now working at Google. He Cofounded Singularity University. He’s a brilliant guy. Imagine thinking like, “What’s going to happen in the next five years? What do I need to do to future-proof my business? Should I be investing in ManyChat? Should I be doing this and the other thing?” You can’t possibly keep up because you’re thinking linearly, “Five years was like the last five years.” It’s nothing like the last five years. It’s all new and it’s speeding up at a faster and faster clip like beyond our ability to wrap our heads around it. We need to not think about things like conversational marketing. We need to start thinking about nanotechnology and general artificial intelligence. This is the AI at the level where it can out think us and not an expert system scenario with specific small use cases, but generally. It’s a pretty crazy world we’re living in.
If they want some nuggets on how to get rich, I’ll show the top end of this. You have to turn the tide and make it your friend because the word exponential and not linear is so correct. This isn’t just about online marketing. This is what’s happening in your world. Look at the way cars are evolving to electric cars and simple things like how you can book your car in from a service from your smartphone. You can see how much fuel it’s got and you can check if the doors are locked. With home automation, you can turn lights on and off. There are wireless doorbells as well. Even if you go to look at kitchens, they can detect what type of food it is. It can steam your food to the perfect level. It can detect moisture levels. The linear thinking, it doesn’t apply to it, sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming.
What we’ve learned, just to circle back and give some people some gold nuggets, is it going to be hard to create things? Especially these companies like Instagram, Facebook and Google with infinite resources. Apple is now a trillion-dollar company. To try and compete with these companies ever is going to be hard, but where your advantage lies is that they are paving the way. They also allow some good APIs, which is how you connect to their websites. I’ll tell you some of the lessons we personally learned from running our own businesses.
When we were building Zapable, we built our own appointment scheduler. The sheer involvement of keeping that system up-to-date, keeping on of it and the maintenance was horrible. It was a complete pain. We’ve now learned when we basically alter our system or we will change on the new tech stock eventually, we will tap into other systems like ScheduleOnce or even Google. Our job as an app builder isn’t to basically have all the features contained and not built from ourselves. Our job is to be the connector. If you can start thinking about how you can build software that integrates and pulls data from APIs, just like the WordPress days where you were pulling data from Amazon. Amazon is going to expand as a catalog. They’re only going to get bigger and better.
It’s the same as scheduling software and payment systems. For you to build your own version of that is going to be very resource heavy and it’s probably not going to be nowhere near as good as other systems out there. To link via API into these systems and be an integrator is a much more valuable way to future-proof your business. There’s no such thing as guaranteed, but I see that as one of the greatest ways to protect yourself and to evolve with the times.
Another tip is to find two areas that are quite different from each other and integrate those two areas together. Let’s say that you’re very good at painting or watercolors and you’re also very good at machine learning or at systems administration. Find ways where you can integrate those two very different disciplines together. That’s going to be very hard for any AI to replace you. We’re all going to get replaced by robots. It’s just a matter of when. Your career or business is going to be a lot safer for a longer period of time if you bring together very creative disciplines that are hard for an AI to replicate and will be in years to come. Especially, if you intersect between these two very different creative disciplines that are tough for an AI.
I’m going to go on the line there and say that robots are going to replace a lot of jobs, but what they cannot replace is the natural human touch. Humans naturally always want to be part of the community. They want to have something that’s special. That’s why I believe certain things like I’ve owned several supercars and I’m quite a big Porsche fanatic. Someone says, “What happens to your car if you can’t run on fuel anymore?” I go, “That’s okay, I’ll be worth more.” They’re like, “You’re crazy.” I said, “No, it won’t if you have certain models.” The less we have, the harder to reach it is. Who would buy a car if you couldn’t buy gas? The people who can afford it, the people who want exclusivity and they’re like, “I have this car and one else has it. It’s a 1986 Porsche Turbo last of the water-cooled.”
It’s the same way as in collecting a very fine piece of art or going to a restaurant where you can almost spot the trend where you can say, “You’ll never get this experience online.” You’ve got to think outside the box. A lot of jobs like McDonald’s or the taxi industry, there’s only so much you can do to protect yourself from something like that. You’re going to need to learn a new skill set. There are certain jobs and brand identity that people will always gravitate to, but for a lot of jobs that can be systemized, absolutely. There are some industries you can use technology against yourself and turn it on.
We’ll see how things play out. It’s going to be a brave new world when Artificial General Intelligence kicks into gear. Artificial entities will be able to write symphonies and paint masterpieces that are as creative and amazing as Picasso and Rembrandt. it’s coming. It will be here. That will be an interesting time. The singularity is such a scary, mysterious thing because there’s no way to predict it. There’s no way to predict a singularity event whether it’s a quantum singularity or a black hole. The known Laws of Physics breakdown inside of a black hole, but also all the known Laws of Evolution breakdown when you get to an evolutionary singularity, which is what we’re going to hit in about 2065 according to Ray Kurzweil. These are interesting times for many of us. It will be during our lifetimes at least. I always keep the long view in mind when I’m working on stuff and not like what’s five years or ten years out, but what’s coming in the next 30 years.
Let me go back and this is interesting. I’m agreeing with a lot of what you’re saying. If I was to take people some investment advice, and going against the natural grain of thought, I’ll give you some real-life examples. Ferrari brought the Formula One gearbox, the paddle shift. In 2005, the F1 gearbox and the Ferrari F430 were hailed to be one of the three F1 boxes. The other ones were a bit clunky and they didn’t change the air ride and everything. The F430 was the first one to do that. In 2005, what percentage of people do you think ordered a Formula One gearbox versus the open-gated manual gearbox?
People will pay for originals and things that are different from everyone else every single time. Share on XI have no idea.
I would say probably around 85%, 90% ordered the F1 Gearbox. The manual was disgusting, “Who would order a manual? Why would you want one of these disgusting things? I don’t have a manual.” Five years on, worldwide recession hit. Everything was down in value. Ferrari F430 manuals were sitting around back then on £45,000. Fast forward eight years, the car market in general has gone up, especially supercars have grown a lot since then. In 2018, if a manual F430 was £45,000 and an F1 430 was £55,000, what price do you think they are eight years later? The Formula 1 version will probably start at around £75,000 to £80,000. That’s up from around £55,000. The manual ones with a decent mileage, they are about £120,000 or £130,000.
That’s because they’re rarer.
At the time it was like, “This is a manual. Who wants that? Who would buy a manual? That’s old school.” The old school is more popular. This will happen when the rise of the robots comes and all the AI, it will still be the stuff that is desirable. The stuff that you’re buying but maybe technology will replace this, but this is going to be more desirable. That’s a bit of investment advice for someone. Don’t doubt the rise of machines. If you think there’s something that’s original, trust me people will pay for originals and things that are different from everyone else every single time.
You’re into supercars and I’m not at all. I like that you’re passionate about something. For me, I’m more passionate about experiences and about nice cars. I am going to be getting a Tesla. It’s on order and it’s being built right now. I had a trip to Egypt with my wife and I flew in with two of my three daughters from the US. We had an amazing time. We spent twelve days on the Nile cruise and we saw everything. We went inside pyramids. We went inside of these exclusive tombs and stuff that hardly anybody gets to see. It was amazing. It was incredible. I’m going to Romania and I went to Copenhagen. I’m big into that. I much rather spend discretionary money on experiences than on nice cars. For the average reader who needs to be smart with their money but they also want to live a little too, what advice would you give them about this whole thing?
I’m touching on experiences on supercars and that’s great that you did that way. I still do travel not as many different countries, but I believe changing your environment and meeting different people are essential to your growth as a person and also in life and business in general. My advice would be to try and get ahead. Let’s say the average readers want to grow and get ahead, look at some business conferences in your area related to your task. If you’re a painter or you want to learn how to get into online business or you’re passionate about technology or you want to start up a technology company from scratch, look around some conferences. You can get a bit of education as well as getting a bit of lifestyle.
Honestly, I’m a bit of a crazy-driven entrepreneur. If people say to me, “Why don’t you take off for two weeks to some super luxury holiday and lie your bum and not doing anything for fourteen days,” I’d probably go. I’m always looking at I’ll maybe go to Miami. I’ve got friends there and we’ll hang out for a few days. They’re my business friends as well because businesses are my passion as well. I’ll maybe fly to a conference or drive to Orlando for three hours and then I’ll maybe head over to the West Coast and go there for a bit. Then I’ll go to Hawaii for a bit of leisure for two to three days. That’s the way I try to do things. I try to mix it up and mix business with pleasure. Pleasure lying around doing nothing all the time, that’s not for me. I could do that for maybe four days and then I’ve got to do something else.
Meet new people, go to different places, experience different cultures because there's a big world out there and it's an amazing world. Share on XI don’t like sitting my bum either. I like experiences. I like learning. I like feeding my brain and I like doing stuff that’s outside my comfort zone. Going to Egypt, there’s a lot of stuff there that was outside my comfort zone. There was a lot of comfort there too and cool stuff, but it was definitely outside my comfort zone. I thrive in that environment. It’s good for your brain.
To anyone reading this, if you feel a little uneasy about it or it’s not what you’re used to it, that’s great, that’s normal. To get ahead in life, you need to meet new people, you need to go to different places, you have to experience different cultures because there’s a big world out there and it’s an amazing world. There’s so much abundance. That’s why I love when I want to go around the south of France or something. My friend would pick me up, we drove around the hills and he would show me the mansions, general lifestyle and the beauty and scenery. It’s inspiring to see the world that we live in. There are so many great things out there that meant challenge yourself. You’re meant that go and do new things. That’s irrespective of money or anything, that’s part of growth.
I wanted to switch to a lightning round mode. I want you to answer as quickly as you can. I’m going to give you a bunch of different questions. I’m going to compare one thing to another and you tell me which one’s better and which one you’d recommend to our audience. SaaS versus info marketing if you are creating a product?
That depends on your skill level, are you a technical person or do you have content or something that you think you can bring into the community?
Let’s say that it’s somebody who has the ability to bring a technical person on board.
If they understand marketing or learn how to market, bringing a developer on board is definitely an option.
Do you think a SaaS would be a better option for somebody because of the recurring revenue and the ability to lock somebody in?
Yes.
Build the product first and then sell it or sell the product first and then build it?
Don’t think that the product has to be perfect. Build a version one of the products, so that way you can test the market. In fact, that’s how we grew our company, Zapable, was we didn’t just build this thing from scratch. We released a version of it under a different name and it only had six features. Then we released a Beta access to it, charged a monthly fee and then use that cashflow to reinvest and grow.
You mentioned that on James Schramko’s podcast talking about preselling the product?
Yes, it’s another great way to do it.
ClickBank versus JVZoo?
What are you looking to sell? If you go to JVZoo and look at Top Sellers in the last 30 days, there was a very high emphasis on video products such as products that you can create your own video animation or create an Instagram Story ads or things like that there. If you’re doing like software or video, the best would definitely be JVZoo. With ClickBank, I haven’t studied it as much at the moment. I’m not able to comment on that, but within the JVZoo, software is definitely good to go there.
Where do you see the biggest opportunity in terms of getting traffic and monetizing that traffic? Is it Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn ads or SEO?
I would say first of all, Google, Facebook and Instagram are definitely some huge traffic sources, but there is a caveat to that. You need to be introducing a lead capture system. You need to be getting that data and filtering them into different communication mediums so that can lead. You want to be in contact with them be getting their email address, drive them to a Facebook group you host, and also get them inside your book so you have multiple ways of communicating with them.
What’s the best email system that you would recommend? Is it AWeber, Infusionsoft, MaroPost or something else?
I’ve been with AWeber for about thirteen years and like anything, it has its ups and downs, pros and cons. Overall, they’ve been quite a good system. This is an ongoing saga. Some people switch to a new autoresponder, they love it for a month or half a year, deliverability terms, and then they go to the next email provider and the same story. I’ve been with AWeber and they’ve been consistently pretty good.
Where should we send our audience to learn more about you, to work with various tools and information products and maybe even join your mastermind?
If you want to get into the opportunity of maybe creating your own mobile apps and selling them, go to Zapable.com. You can find out about it there. If you would like to learn the formula that I’ve used to sell over $7 million of info products, recurring products and software. If you head to GoFoxy.com, I’m bringing out a new product called Hyper Funnel Formula, which is a five or six-week training course. It will walk you through step-by-step of how to do this. There will also be a membership club as well that I am deciding the name. I’m thinking of calling it the Fast Lane. Those are the products that I have to offer at the moment.
Thank you, Andrew. This was a lot of fun and there was so much more I wanted to go over. We’ll have to have you back on to do another episode sometime if you’re game.
I enjoyed it. You asked some interesting questions. I know you’re technically a savvy guy, it was interesting to hear your take on AI and exponential growth.
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, readers. We’ll catch you on the next episode of Marketing Speak. In the meantime, go out there and implement.
Important Links:
- Hyper Funnel Formula
- Zapable
- Zapable Agency
- GoFoxy
- Greg Davis – Previous episode
- Mikael Yang – Previous episode
- James Schramko’s podcast with Andrew Fox
- Ray Kurzweil
- Wix.com
Your Checklist of Actions to Take
☑ Do what it takes to build a strong relationship with my customers. Earn their trust and make an effort to know them.
☑ Let go of perfection. Build a basic version of my product and slowly develop it by testing the market.
☑ Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look for gaps or holes in an existing system and discover opportunities where my expertise can be applied.
☑ Be informed about different kinds of Messenger bots that will uplevel my conversational marketing. Andrew uses ManyChat.
☑ Research about nanotechnology and artificial intelligence and learn how it can scale my business.
☑ Step out of my comfort zone. Attend conferences, widen my network and get trained by the experts.
☑ Utilize Facebook, Google, and Instagram in attracting and monetizing traffic while making sure that I incorporate a lead capture system.
☑ Find two utterly distinct disciplines and uncover ways on how I can integrate it with my existing business.
☑ Consider using AWeber to manage my emails and making sure that I stay on top of everything.
☑ Check out Andrew’s Hyper Funnel Formula and be informed on how I can sell my product up to seven figures today!
About Andrew Fox
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