Brad Weimert Interviews Roland Frasier on his
Strategies surrounding Business Acquisition, Personal Brands,
Sales Funnels and More
Last Updated: 2020-05-08
Our CEO Brad Weimert sits down with Roland Frasier to discuss valuable information including business acquisition, personal branding, sales funnels, NoSQL database options and much more. Read the interview below or check out the video above. You won’t want to miss out!
*Transcribed by a robot*
Brad Weimert:
Awesome Roland Frasier. I appreciate you carving out some time today despite me making you jump through some hoops and use my RingCentral meetings. Like.
Roland Frasier:
I know I’m going to like, I like, do I need to bake you a casserole or things that bad? You can’t afford that zoom account. What’s going on?
Brad Weimert:
I feel great about that. If you would make me a castle that, that’d be awesome. No, I will say I didn’t get a casserole, but I did get a bottle of Angel’s Rye at my house from you.
Roland Frasier:
Isn’t that Rye Great?
Brad Weimert:
It’s, it’s actually the only ride that I like. umm. Now you might be able to introduce me to some other rye that I might like, but uh…
Roland Frasier:
Right behind me here, I don’t know if I pick up my computer and try to, you see that’s my bar. Right.
Brad Weimert:
Oh, that’s fantastic.
Roland Frasier:
So I have, uh, I have some ryes there that I think you might like, that would be really fun. One is, um, I’m going to get the name wrong, but it’s like, like owl or something like that, old Al Kentucky owl, something like that. Really, really cool. And pappies rise pretty great as well. Yeah, I got it. I’ve got a few of them too. You just have to come over sometime and we’ll hit this thing and yeah, I got way too many of these anyway.
Brad Weimert:
Well at the moment it’s a long drive to get out of Texas. I know. And you’re not even supposed to do it. So, but.
Brad Weimert:
But I’m into it at some point. Well for, uh, for anybody that isn’t familiar with Roland Frasier, um, uh, you are, uh, I don’t even know what I would say you’re known for. What I can say about you is that, um, a number of things. One, what’s that…
Roland Frasier:
I said exceptionally handsome is usually what makes people…
Brad Weimert:
That was number one on the list. Maybe number two is that you’ve been involved with a whole bunch of different businesses over the course of the last several years. And lately you put a big emphasis on business acquisition and teaching other people about business acquisition. Um, but through that journey, uh, you’ve got a ton of experience and a lot of different things. One of the things, well actually why don’t you give me a little bit of context there. So in the last five years, what are some of the businesses that you’ve acquired or been a part of?
Roland Frasier:
Um, ever bowl, which is a, uh, an OSI bold health super foods chain and the related, um, the related things there. Um, digital marketer, which is a digital marketer, marketing training company, traffic and conversion summit, which is, uh, we have the largest digital marketing event North America right now. In the process of growing that, uh, big block Realty, we’ve got over a thousand agents, um, in real estate in the process of franchising that, um, uh, credit suite, which is a credit services thing that basically helps people get alternative loans and stuff like that. Um, just all kinds of things, try to keep interested in, uh, you know, as many different interesting things as possible.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. And it’s a wide variety. And I wanted, I wanted to, I want to do a couple of those because Mmm. I think that for a lot of business owners, yeah. They get stuck in this idea of my business’s unique. And my business is different and…
Roland Frasier:
It’s the number one objection that I get when I’m consulting with people when you’re telling them here is a playbook that will work for you. And it’s, my business is different. No, it’s not.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. Well I love that. And I think that it’s important for people to hear it and actually see an example of, no, no, no, no. I have 10 companies or do you know how many you’re, you currently have holdings in?
Roland Frasier:
Uh, 36.
Brad Weimert:
So you have 36 companies that you’re a part of in some capacity. Um, and they’re all very different.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. So it’s SAS, e-commerce, physical stores, physical services, um, wholesalers, you know, um, e-learning, uh, every, every, you know, we have, I have, you know, like restaurants, right? It’s, it’s, uh, to me it’s like good business principles apply across the board. Good growth principles, good scale principles, good exit. That acquisition, it doesn’t really matter the actual operations of the business and the people that should be doing the day to day. Absolutely. I think that that is a mistake when you think you can take a manager from a restaurant and put them into a logistics center and they’re going to do just fine. They don’t have the industry knowledge or the contacts or any of the context. So I think that’s hard. But as the, you know, I talk about there’s three levels of working. There’s working in your business, which most people do. There’s working on your business, which, uh, Gerber taught in the, uh, E-Myth, right? And then there’s working above your business, which is kinda what I like to do, which happens when you’re not selling the widgets in the business and you’re not hiring the people to write the processes and procedures. You’re actually, your product becomes the business. And when you’re at that level, then you’re buying and selling businesses, not trying to sell more coffee or courses or masterminds or whatever it is that the business sells. So that’s to me, the level at which these, the core skills of leveraging and growing and scaling and exit and acquiring, they’re universal, but down in the trenches of the business and in ops. I think that it actually does make a difference. Does that make sense?
Brad Weimert:
Totally. And what I, what I heard there was Mmm. The people make a huge difference. You can’t pop one person into, you can’t swap people in a business and expect them to be able to, even with the same role except them expect them to be able to operate a new business.
Roland Frasier:
Just really tough. Yeah. I hadn’t seen it work yet.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. So one of the things that I’ve heard you say to that effect is, I never want to be on the org chart because I don’t want a job.
Roland Frasier:
Right.
Brad Weimert:
Yet, there are two businesses that I know of or two things that I’ve seen you really actively involved in. Um, one of them being war room and the other. Yep. The other, uh, I actually where my, my war room ad I’ll give Wayne during credit for, give me some awesome gear on that front.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah.
Brad Weimert:
But, uh, the other being this Epic challenge that you just did, um, what makes those two different for you? Where you want to participate and you want to be in the center of those? And quote unquote have a job.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. Well actually I don’t, uh, I don’t want to have a job and I don’t have a job in any of those war room would run just fine without me. Um, it’s something that I’m very passionate about. The connections, the people that are in there, you know, including yourself, right? It’s, it’s just, it’s high level business networking, which I think is very, very valuable and I think that’s absolutely qualifies as working above your business. But the people that like I don’t program more room, I don’t, uh, arrange the meetings. I don’t run that business. Deanna Rogers runs that business unit and so she reports to me as an owner of the business, but I’m just like, I’m there for suggestions and then obviously I go, right. Um, but I go because it’s valuable networking. If it wasn’t, or if it stops being that, then I won’t, but we’re removing would still go on without me just like it did before I came in. Right. And with the Epic thing that I’m doing right now, um, it’s a project. And so that’s a new thing. And, um, and now I’ve got, uh, two coaches that I’ve brought in who are, you know, like we don’t tell people when they sign up for the Epic challenge. Um, well actually when, when people move from the Epic challenge into one of our accelerators, we don’t let them know at the time they’re making the decision to make that investment. They’re going to get a one-on-one coach with it. It’s a surprise bonus that comes in later, right? It’s not listed in the thing, but it’s a super high level of service. Well, also the two people that I have that are providing that service, those are people who will move in ultimately to doing all of that stuff. So right now it’s, it’s a launched product division, but to, for me, I don’t have a desire to be, you know, a guru star around that. I would like to build one of those two people up or both of them to be the personality. And that’s easy because you know, they’re going to, they’re better salespeople than I am. I’m, you know, I can do the deals. But, um, that’s, so that’s kinda how that works. So it’s, I think when you’re launching something new that you’re, you know, I’m a very project oriented person, but then I don’t want the job of running that. I want somebody else to do that and we’ll all be happier.
Brad Weimert:
I like that. Um, that’s a good answer. And actually it gives a, I think it gives a lot of context for a lot of people because when a lot of people see somebody, so we’re in the era, right, of people, uh, wanting to brand themselves and wanting to create this image of, Hey, look at me, I’m important or whatever. Right. Some people have a grander plan that, but I think a lot of the times when you see that people get wrapped up in the ego component that’s around it and then they want to be the character, want to be the figurehead. Um, and I think it’s really helpful to hear that narrative of, yeah, so I, I put myself out there. I’m using this project as an opportunity to then step away from it because I have no intention of still being there.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. And I, and I throw my personal brand, I think it’s important to have a personal brand. That’s something that I did not do until a couple years ago. Um, and I saw that it was kind of silly because I watched, you know, Steve jobs and Elon Musk and, uh, Sarah Blakely and Richard Branson and Warren buffet and so on. And so these are all people who are pretty successful and, um, and they are, um, you know, their personal brand I believe helps prop up their corporate brands, but banks and Apple and Berkshire Hathaway and Tesla all run just fine without those personality brands. But I think they, they lend, uh, an extra human element to that. And so for me, I decided I wanted to build a personal brand and kind of share my thoughts and stuff like that, you know, for anybody that wanted to listen. And then when I launch a new thing like Epic, the challenge thing I’ve done with buying businesses, I can lean on my podcast, my Instagram, my LinkedIn, you know, Facebook, et cetera, YouTube and across those channels, send people who are interested in what I’m doing. To say, Hey, here’s this new thing. And that helps. And we watch, you know, as, as business comes from that, but that shouldn’t be confused with that brand, which needs to stand on its own because I don’t want to work in it. Right. That, that to me is the distinction.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that’s very helpful. Um, I don’t think a lot of people have that distinction. And I also think that a lot of the time when people are looking at personal brands, they’re not looking at, uh, at the level that you just spoke of. Right. You referenced, uh, sort of a world changing, Mmm. Entrepreneurs, right. In world changing businesses. And most of the time when people talk about personal brand, they’re talking about this little era that we’re in right now of being, you know, Instagram famous or whatever. Um, yeah, I think that’s really helpful. Um, so one of the things that is true of both a war room and the Epic challenge and the Epic is, was really interesting for me because I, I, I sat through all war rooms, the feeder for this for me, right? So I met you through war room and ultimately I sat through one of your, uh, intensives on scale and exit, which anything that you ever do is like, like a nonstop peppering of facts, insights, thoughts, et cetera. Um, I mean you’ll burn through pencils listening to you talk for two days.
Roland Frasier:
Thank you. That’s awesome.
Brad Weimert:
That’s great. And um, so I also went through Epic and listened to it, which was a lot of the same content but a different format. Mmm. Both of them ultimately were high ticket offers and in high ticket means different things to different people. Uh, inside of the credit card processing space, um, we look at anything over thousand or 2000 bucks as a quote unquote high ticket.
Roland Frasier:
Okay, cool.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got, we have some marketing agencies that sell to universities and they’re doing $250,000 singular transactions.
Roland Frasier:
Right.
Brad Weimert:
Those are actually higher ticket things. Let’s go to this few thousand, you know, like 2000 to $30,000 space. Yeah. One of the narratives that, that we both see and hear from our clients is that high ticket gets sold to existing customers. So it’s kind of sell something small, sell something a little bigger, warm up the relationship and then sell something large. Mmm. My perception is that war room largely functions that way, but the Epic challenge didn’t. So if you could start, if you could give us an idea of what the Mmm war room funnel looks like, whether or not that narrative fits that or not.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. Awesome. Starting point. Yeah. The, the WarRoom funnel is, um, comes from really just three places right now. One is word of mouth. Um, and then one is from our traffic and conversion summit event, which was the only thing that sold war room for years and years and years. And, um, that event costs, I believe the least you’ll spend to come into that now. And I think that’s only if you’re an alum having been there before is about 500 bucks. So, um, so that you would say that entry into war room would be, you come to that event, you invest 500 to $3,000 to go to the event. And then at the event we have, uh, we present from the stage, lots of cool stuff. And then we have a booth that’s in the expo hall with another few hundred exhibitors and you have the opportunity to join there. So that’s straight from that $500 plus investment into 30,000, which is the lowest level that you can join war room at, uh, which is 35,000 at the, at the TNC that’s coming up. So, um, so that’s that one. And then the only other funnel that I built, um, starting about three years ago was to do the intensive that you want to call leverage, exit, grow scale or legs. And um, that’s a 3000. It started at 1,862, or I think it was 1862. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And that was because I wanted a story to tell about it and I was really focused on selling into the war room mastermind. So I looked at all of the years, I Googled, um, most or most important or something like that, masterminds in history and looked at all the dates until I found one that was supposed to 2000, which is what the price point I was I wanted was. And in 1862 was when, uh, Andrew Carnegie started the steel mill mastermind that became one of the biggest leaders during the industrial revolution. So I was like, okay, that’s a cool story. It costs 1,862. So that was how I launched that and we sold into war room from there. That was my upsell was two days of my best growth stuff. Then at the end forum, and I wanted to limit it. I want it to be small. I didn’t want to have the exposure and risk of doing a big event. And I also wanted to sell, um, you know, to sell worms. So we average three or four warring sales to the 15 to 20 people that come to that event, which is a pretty good conversion rate on that. So that’s a funnel that is, um, uh, two it started at 1,862 then it went to 2000 and now it’s 29, 97. So it’s, and we sold it up to 5,000, but the price that it’s really at right now is 12. So that’s a 2009 97 funnel into Oram and that two, nine, nine, seven, which would be considered high ticket under the terms you just said is sold, um, straight from, uh, social media into, into that. And we have, haven’t had any problem, you know, filling that consistently. So that’s, that’s kind of how those funnels work. Now we’re in the process. You’ve, you’ve seen the wicked smart trilogy of books. So I had, I made books from all of the, um, wicked from the wicked smart submissions back to 2013 through 2019 and war rooms. So those are the, the ideas, not ideas, but those are the campaigns that people who are members of war room run that are the most successful. They share them with the group, uh, put them into three books and that will be, uh, some form of that, a book funnel that we, uh, that we launch for war room. Um, but that’s not something we’ve done yet. So that’s kind of the war room funnel stuff.
Brad Weimert:
That’s awesome. Yeah. So wicked smart. Uh, one of the things that I like about war room, and I’ll give a, give a second to plug this and explain wicked smart is that, um, I can’t, I can’t say smart. It’s spelled smaat. Yeah. I just want to say smart. Yeah. But, uh, we get smart as the section of war room where everybody is, I’m given the opportunity to share the thing that’s working so long as you can also show evidence of the result. And so we’re not interested in people in general pontificating. Nope, no ideas. This is the result I got. So you’ve consolidated that stuff into a book and you’re gonna use that essentially as, um, the beginning of the funnel.
Roland Frasier:
Correct.
Brad Weimert:
Awesome. Um, so, but you, one of the things that you just said plays into the Epic side of things, which is you were selling the 1892 or now the, uh, 2997, directly from social, which is contrary to what a lot of people do there. So there’s a lot of people have this belief of, and you may illustrate this cleanly, but a lot of people have this belief of we need a relationship with people before we can sell them something that’s not expensive. Um, what, what happens on social or if anything, what did you, what do you do? Like what’s your social methodology to get people into the 1892 or the 2997.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah, so, so you, you could argue that they, they do have a relationship because there aren’t, they are connected on social cause I’m not running ads. I do boosts. Um, so there are people that are not in my current audience that come and then, you know, and, and learn about that. I boost my posts on social. Um, I have the most ghetto, not a sophisticated, um, dumb way to do it. Uh, you know, ever. But it’s because I just want to do it myself and I didn’t want to, you know, I don’t, I don’t have a bunch of team behind me doing all that stuff. So, um, so I like to write and, um, I’ll shoot videos from time to time and I just share the stuff that I’m, you know, doing or thinking about. And then, um, I will, when I want to do one of those intensives, I will write a series of, usually five to seven articles that will, or videos that talk about the things that I teach in there. And then I say, if you’re interested in coming, um, here’s the link. And, um, you know, feel free to say yes or I’m in, or something like that. Or if it’s in Vegas, you know, but Vegas in the comments and then I’ll just follow up with them. Or I will have somebody on the team, Deanna follow up with them and you know, say, Hey, we’re having this. If you’re interested in coming. I wrote a sales page for it, but I didn’t have any of that stuff for the longest time. Like for the first two years we ran, you know, maybe 500 people through the, you know, that two or $3,000 thing leading into sales of Oram and it was a hundred percent organic social. No, you know, no sales page, no anything except y’all want to come to my event, you know. So, uh, I did about a year ago wrote a sales page. I went through my, my slides and said, okay, here’s the, this is cool. I cover seven things on this, 18 things on that, four things on this. And I just made those bullets and then created a sales page around that. But, um, but like if, if you want to sell something high ticket, just start selling it and start telling people about it and it’ll start slow and you will build momentum and eventually you’ll have a pretty cool business if what you’re selling is good. I don’t think that’s that hard.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. Well, so that’s interesting. And the, there’s a difference in scale between that and selling, you know, 15 people on that for a 15 person event and what you just did and what you just did with Epic was, um, a different process and kind of on some level, um, it fits the more formal framework except a totally different way.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah.
Brad Weimert:
So this essentially with the war room or the 1892, the, which functionally was like a little intensive, right? You’re doing a 10, 15 person intensive where you’re teaching for two days.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. It was, so it was never less than I sold 18 to get 15 there and 15 was like the first three. So I, I ended up at 25 being the ideal number. So just for anybody that’s like, you know, well, what’s the ideal number? It’s 25. Go ahead.
Brad Weimert:
Why is 25 the ideal number for you?
Roland Frasier:
Um, 25 is good. Um, because you, you can still connect with that number of people. We did. Um, we never did fewer than 15. We did as many as a hundred and most numbers in between 60, 40, 30, you know, but 25 is enough for me to have around a table that’s not overly sized that I can get a boardroom at a hotel where I can just buy the boardroom for 500 bucks or 700 bucks a day instead of having to commit to a room block and a ballroom, which then has F and B and all kinds of other expenses. So it’s very inexpensive. Cost about 5,000 bucks to do this two day event, including the AAV and the room. Right. It’s really not a lot of risk. And, um, so I liked that also and because I was just doing this myself kind of on the side outside the company because I, it was just a, again, you know, a passion project. It, um, it just made it easy. I wasn’t really asking for a lot of resources from the company or taking people away from anything else. And the 25 number I could connect with, I could fit in the room and that had the best conversions into the, uh, you know, into the other programs that I wanted to sell.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah, that’s awesome. And those, I mean, those are really, really, really valuable details for so many reasons. Um, if, uh, so many reasons, but one of them being, it helps people understand, it shifts the frame of, Oh, I’m producing a large event too, no, no, you just rent, rent a suite and a hotel, which I think is how you started with the 1892. Right.
Roland Frasier:
It is. And what I, what I ended up doing was because I found that I typically had 50, 60 people that wanted to come. Uh, each time I posted about it, I just added on the back of it. So basically then if I did it in Vegas, I rented the room for, or London, I rent the room for four days. Uh, I would fly in the day before. I have one person that helps me, Deanna would fly in, uh, and we would then do two of them back to back rather than doing one for 50 or 60 people. We would do two, two days. But that was cool because then we didn’t have to travel twice but didn’t have the, you know, that extra time, that expense Avi in the rooms was already set up. We got a better deal with the hotels. So it, it allowed me effectively to have a smaller event. But I mean, out of those events, we were averaging three, $400,000 in sales. Right. So that’s, you know, like, think about, I knew lots of people who have big events that they spend 400 500, $700,000 on that. Don’t get that kind of sales out of it. Right. So that’s kind of cool too as far as thinking you don’t meet all that and they’re spending, you know, a ton of money to do those events.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, exact, a lot of people don’t monetize events at all. A lot of people fail to get anything out of the event. Right. And that’s actually another conversation entirely, but I know that, you know, I know that Deanna and digital marketer and the TNC team has done a phenomenal job monetizing TNC. Mmm. Both through sponsorship and also, uh, through aura. Um, so, uh, I love all that. Um, the Epic challenge, uh, was interesting because you open it and I want to talk about the audience that you used, but you opened it with a really low ticket, um, and ended up with a large audience of people that you walk through things with. Um, can you, can you run me through, uh, both kind of the starting point, like what audience you spoke to? Was it only social, did you do paid for it and what were the numbers like and what was the funnel like?
Roland Frasier:
Yes, so, um, it was, uh, it was social and um, the email list of the people who we had from legs, which was, I think, I don’t know for sure. It was somewhere between 600 and a thousand people, I believe on that email list. But those were mostly people who had already been to the event. So I wasn’t looking for that. And it didn’t ultimately turn into a lot of folks that, uh, you know, that attended as a result of that. So it was, um, I, we, uh, posted, I posted several times, boosted, and then we also did social ads on Facebook and Instagram, and then also dynamic insertion into my podcast. So we’re on Libsyn, so you can actually go back and you just insert one time and then it puts your current ad across every episode that you’ve ever done. So anybody that’s listening to those old ones, here’s the current thing that you’re doing. And, uh, and LinkedIn, I posted on LinkedIn, we didn’t buy LinkedIn, so that was, that was what we used to do it. We spent $9,700. And, um, we got 755 people who came into the challenge who paid $55. And the, that was way higher than, uh, we had, uh, a really smart guy, Pedro Dayo, who’s in in war room who, uh, advised us on this and kind of, uh, he and Pete Vargas showed us this, you know, Hey, challenges are super hot right now. So what’s interesting is we were in Las Vegas, um, uh, Ryan dice and I were in Las Vegas because Ryan was speaking at an event there and we were meeting a couple of people, the guys from, um, peep, which used to be Infusionsoft, we were meeting them there. It was just kind of a convenient, we were all going to be able to get there from Phoenix and Las Vegas and San Diego and, uh, in Austin. So we met and then, uh, Pete Vargas to be speaking at that same event. And Pedro was there with him. So I said, well, why don’t you come on over? And I always rent a hospitality suite. So it’s the suite that has like, there’s a, if you ask for a hospitality suite, you don’t just get like sofas and stuff, you get a boardroom table in the room in addition to the bedroom. And so I do that. And then when I check in, I asked for a white board and flip chart because I just, you never know what’s going to happen, right? If I have ideas I can write them down. But usually there’s somebody else in town and I always post socially, I’m in town if you want to get together. Right. And um, so Pete and uh, Ryan and uh, Pedro and I got in the room and then Matt Swan, who I had stolen from you apparently, uh, as, as a potential hire and god he is so good. I can’t even read where we would be without it now.
Brad Weimert:
Still hurt by that.
Roland Frasier:
That was in Las Vegas. He lived there and was in the process of moving to Austin. So I was able to have him in there too and they just shared. So I’m saying all this because I think being spontaneous and open to what’s working is really important and then taking action to be able to do it. And so I think it’s a good story because that was like, okay, let’s, you guys are here. Great. Come on over. Let’s do it. Would you mind breaking that down for us? Pedro’s very generous. He’s like, absolutely breaks it down. I’ve got Matt there, my marketing guy, my business partner, Ryan and me were watching. Um, and um, I said, this is something that we need to do. You guys need to do at digital marketer. I kind of want to play with it with this because the world had not shut down. Then I had like three days later, uh, scheduled March 16th and 17th, a legs event and the 18th 19th and the 23rd and 24th. Right. So I had all these events right before traffic and conversion summit and I literally was sitting, you know, we left Las Vegas saying, yeah, we’re going to do this soon. Went to do the live event. And then I’m sitting the Sunday before and they say, okay, all hotels are shut down, all restaurants are shut down, all people should stay inside the next day. And I was like, Oh. And so I had to, you know, and I had people that had flown in to attend, right? So I had to say, we literally can’t do it now. And we had already set up the tables with the seats six feet apart and all that stuff. Right? And I had these little kits for people that had a toilet paper since it was so hard to get and a hand sanitizer and a mask in it. And, um, and so we were gonna, you know, do it, do it safely, but also have a little bit of fun and I couldn’t do it. So all of those events got canceled. And I have all the people who’d paid to attend that were, you know, potential refund, uh, risk, right. Cause you know, Hey, when you’ll be able to do it again. And so, um, I asked Matt, I said, uh, I said, man, I, I want to do this challenge. And he said, ah, he said, cool. When do you want to do it? And I said, next Thursday, next Thursday. Huh. And I didn’t have any content for the day challenge. I didn’t have, you know, we didn’t have any ads, nothing. So it was, I had my event, which ultimately I was going to teach some bits of that in the challenge, but had no idea exactly what it was going to be, what we were going to sell, anything like that. Or initially I thought we would sell a, you know, a virtual version of that event. And I’d sit in front of my computer like this for eight hours, for two days, you know, and hate my life. But, uh, but ultimately, you know, we just said, let’s do it. Which to me goes to that, do things now. Right. Don’t wait and don’t be perfect. Um, so Matt was like, okay, well let’s do it. You know, and he was, he was all in. So, um, uh,
Brad Weimert:
you froze there for a second. So you said do things now, but don’t be perfect.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. Do, do things imperfectly, right? Don’t, don’t wait. Do it now rather than getting it perfect and doing it a month later when, you know, the timing is, is everything to do it now. So, um, so we said, okay, we’re going to do it that following Thursday we, we did. And, um, we created the ads, I created posts and you know, we charted out what was the, you know, the whole thing going to look like and launched it. And, um, we’re, you know, our goal, like our initial goal was maybe we can do 400,000. And then it was like, well, not really, cause if we can get 500 people in at $55 and then we sell a $2,000 thing to 10% of those people, that’s about $150,000. And, um, we were really surprised at the, the amount of people that came in, the conversion rate was, you know, started out around 57% and settled in around 55% of bought the $55 thing that came to the page. Um, we did not spend as much money as we should have, but we did. We’re just like, you know, we didn’t want to have, we didn’t know if it was going to work. So we were like, you know, okay, 10 grand, we’ll invest 10 grand in it. So we spent that 9,700, we had 755 people that signed up. And then I had to create the content. So, you know, I’m, I’m telling my wife, I’ve got to create the content, you know, then another day I create that content and I really got to create that content and then, Holy crap, I’ve got to do it. So I sat down and spent maybe five or six hours, um, creating the challenge content for the, for the, you know, the five days. And, um, then we ended up and I, I kept, I kept, you know, my little click funnels app, refreshing, refreshing. And we did it in click funnels by the way. And Pedro shared his funnel with us. So it was very quick build, very down and dirty. It was just me and Matt that did it. No high tech. And I’m watching and I, and if I go back to my screenshots where I was screenshotting the, you know, the money, it was like, you know, 3000, 5,000, 8,000, twelve thousand fourteen thousand. It was like, this is really amazing over the five days, cause you start on a Thursday advertising and advertise through the next like Saturday and a week after you start advertising on the following Thursday, you, you start giving content. So it ultimately got to about 95 or $6,000 on the sales of the $55 units. And um, and we had a, we had a couple of upsells, uh, with it and it was like, wow, this is like, if this was all we got, this is a huge win. It’s like nine times what we spent on it. Right.
Brad Weimert:
That’s great.
Roland Frasier:
And then it was, okay, well then the next, the first two days of delivering the content, we’re like, well, what should we sell this, this the idea of, you know, like having to have people watch me for eight hours for two days sounds horrible. Well maybe let’s do it three days. And they only have to watch your first, you know, four and a half hours for three days. And ultimately we polled the audience, uh, Adam Lyons, who’s a member and a buddy of ours, you know, I was like, I don’t know. You know, should we do this two days? And he, he’s like, well, I never saw anything without asking people what they want first. And I was like, I hate you and I love you. It’s fine. And I was like, fine. Yeah, so let’s pull the people. So we, during the Q and a session on the third day, we, um, we did several polls and we were like, you know, what do you want most? What’s holding you back from going from doing for moving forward with the stuff we’re teaching? That kind of stuff. And we use that information to decide that it was still delivering the course that I had taught before. Um, only instead of live, it would be a recording of the one that I did in January, which is the most recent one. And we would do it over eight weeks. We would release roughly four hours of content. Um, every other week, four times and then follow that with a Q and a with me and you know, to clarify an answer for like a two hour thing every other week. So that was what we decided we were going to do and we priced it at at 2000, 19 97.
Brad Weimert:
So you had the initial thing you sold was $55 and it was a.
Roland Frasier:
yeah, yeah.
Brad Weimert:
An hour. A day of content.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah.
Brad Weimert:
And through that process you talk to the audience to decide exactly how to structure what you kind of knew you were going to be selling. You just didn’t know how you were going to structure it or deliver it or, or price.
Roland Frasier:
I had an idea. Yeah. And we had two upsells. We had a VIP upsell for $97 that had about a 20. We with upgrades about a 22 or 5% 22, 23 take rate. And then we sold a the book trilogy of the worm books for one 97 and we had about a 24% take rate including the front end for the $55 offer. Yeah, exactly. So that was how we got to that 90 95 $6,000 then.
Brad Weimert:
I want, I want to highlight something real quick too because I think it’s really important. A lot of people look at the, this kind of thing as the initial part being solely lead gen and it’s like, Hey, how do I get people to buy my high thing? But I think it’s really important to illustrate that, Hey, people didn’t, I mean some people knew there was going to be an offer later, but a lot of people were like, wow, $55 and I’m getting this content. And you were focused on delivering this content. Absolutely not offered anything. People would have left that and been thrilled with the content they got.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah. And this, this is the thing that is important to me and everything that I do is complete. So I don’t like, I really don’t like people that sell anything at any price that is incomplete. Like if you promise something, then the thing you sell should, and in my opinion, better deliver what you promise, not. So people completed that and I could have, you know, people told me that they’re like, this is like better than most $2,000 courses that I buy for 55 bucks. Oh my gosh. Right. And the goal was to overdeliver like crazy. And um, and we lived inside, me and Deanna and Matt lived inside the Facebook group during that time, answering questions, supporting people, you know, me personally, I’m going to be in there and, and, and help people. And we gave them everything they needed to do what we promised. And then the upsell was just, if you would like additional support and more content and strategies that obviously you can’t deliver in a five hour time. We’re going to do eight weeks to give you everything we’ve got. And so many people were doing deals. It was about buying companies with no money out of pocket. Right? So many people were posting deals that they were doing on day four and five in the Facebook group. And that was really, really fun to see. So we did design a very good five step plan for getting them there. And then we said, now you’ve got everything that you need to do this. Here’s this. If you’d like more support, we’ll give you all of our strategies, all the things. We didn’t have time to expand. You know, there were there like 18 steps in the process. We gave bits and pieces of, uh, eight of those steps, but everybody, but I picked the pieces to be complete within the challenge. And, um, and so then in talking to people staying in the Facebook group, um, through the polls and things like that, ultimately decided that, um, the, that, that thing that we were going to do originally was that we were going to do with the, the eight weeks was great at 1997 and then we added in additional the ability to have a couple conversations with me, you know, talk with our M and a attorney, um, and have a supportive a deal team and some other stuff. And that was 3000 more. So that was 49, 97. And what was really cool was, um, every time I could think of something that would really help them, I added it and announced it later. So it was just bonus stacking kind of unintentionally, uh, throughout the process. But that is how you should do it. Right. We just didn’t know exactly what it was cause we threw this together in five days and, um, good. In the end we, uh, I watched and remember, you know, we were thinking we might sell a hundred thousand if we got 10% of the people in the, you know, uh, and at that point, uh, we had 755 people I think in, so call it seven 50. So we would have hoped for 75 sales at $2,000, which we’ve been 150 plus the hundred ish that we had sold 95 or so. So, you know, would have, it could have been 250,000 total. And, um, it just really took off like crazy and, um, and Pedro gave us lots of good advice on, you know, do this thing here, do this thing there. Um, and I watched it and I kept refreshing my thing. Cause as you know, the more you refresh your app, the more money you make. So a lot of people realize that there’s a direct connection. So, you know what really fast, uh, and it kept going up and up and up. And, um, it finished when we closed on Sunday. Uh, we, we closed the offer to anybody that hadn’t already said they’re in. Um, cause some people send wires and PayPals and it takes a while to, you know, to go through all that. But we finished at, um, I think it was 750,000, right around there. It might’ve been, it might’ve been a little less than that. It might’ve been seven, 10 or something like that. Um, but it was 700 and some thousand on something we had only thought was going to be, uh, you know, a hundred and something and then, and then 200 and something. And then, um, in the followup after, uh, was crazy too. And because it was a $5,000 in $2,000 product, um, it didn’t take that many more people, but we ended up around eight 56. Right? Just over 850, 6,000 and still on a $9,700 ad spend with, uh, a great list of pixel people. A great list of email. Optins a great list of buyers that didn’t convert. And a great list of people who did convert, but the people that converted, we had 243 of the 755 people became buyers of the two or five K.So that’s a 33% roughly conversion rate, which was just, we never even dreamed would be possible. And had I not added the 5k, um, we would have lost about, um, we would have lost about $300,000 because a hundred roughly of the 243 bought the 5k. So we had a 39% take rate on the higher offer and 61% take rate on the two K offer. So that was interesting too. And then looking forward, um, we seated in one of the bonuses to the 5k buyers was the ability to attend. As you know, we’ve got war room, which you remember of, and we’ve got another one called scalable mastermind. So we gave those people a preview day at the mastermind because we know that people that come to masterminds, number one, we believe strongly in our masterminds. I think you’ll attest to that. They’re great. But we also know that if we get people there that they’ll see how great it is and they’ll, they’ll join, you know, very, very high success rate. So I think there’s another million, million and a half to come on the back back of that. And again, all three of those things are complete within themselves. Do the challenge. You can go and do everything you need to do, want more support and guidance and even more content. Join the accelerator or the elite program and we’ll give that to you when you’re done. Lots of deals, no problem. Want to join the mastermind so that you can have other smart people that are doing stuff like this, then come do that. So those are all complete in themselves and at the same time, they’re all part of a bigger funnel that ultimately, that 9,700 I think will generate close to two, two to five, right in, uh, in revenue.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. That’s awesome. I think that there’s a lot of, uh, good lessons out of that. Um, and I think that you said, I mean, you said a lot of things that I think are good takeaways. Uh, one of the things that sunk in as you went through the funnel was that, um, and you just highlighted at the end that you had qualified lists, you know, a relationship with the buyers in different way, so in different ways. So Mmm. And you mentioned this with war room also in some way you do have a relationship with them, but, uh, you also built the relationship through those five days, delivering a ton of content, a kind of a ton of value and literally interacting. Um, but you could be also building a relationship through video if it wasn’t live. Um, but you built that rapport and that interaction on a $55 buy before you asked for something significant.
Roland Frasier:
Correct. And I do think it would be very, well, I mean, we we do sell those $3,000 things without a low end on the front. But I mean, look at the difference of, you know, I, I got 755 people into the program. There’s no way I would want to, you know. And that’s the nice thing about that you learn from, uh, you know, that’s the good and a tragedy of having a pandemic is you’ve got to pivot or freeze. And so if you decide not to freeze and you decide to pivot, then it’s like, okay, how can I do what I did before? And then it turns out we figured out a way better way to do it. So we’ll do fewer of the live events now, maybe none. And we’ll do more of this. And now we’ve built this because we had to as well. So now we have a whole new product to sell that we didn’t have before to sell in a different way. And the interestingly enough, so I got the five days of challenge into a book and um, there were a few bonus sessions. So ultimately now it’s five books, books set box set that we’ll be using as a lead magnet for a book funnel that we got from her. And because the challenge, the front end and the backend lend itself really well to a webinar. So now that’s our webinar funnel and that will also be our application funnel. And then I had somebody in the UK that speaks at TNC on video ads say, Hey, how about if, uh, with, I’ll write the scripts for you and, um, I’ve done this for a bunch of other people and you pay me a CPA, I will write, I mean, I will run all of the ads, I’ll write all of the ads. You just record me a video that has all these parts in it. And, um, then I’ll send you buyers and you pay me X dollars on every buyer I send. I was like, okay, nothing to lose there. So we’ve had all these like, you know, so now I’ve got video funnel, book funnel, application, funnel, challenge, funnel, right? All just because we decided how do we go forward, right? My events tomorrow is canceled. How do I go forward during this time when, you know, we’re not supposed to get out and talk to each other live and do this. And it’s pretty cool.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. Well, I think that that’s, uh, that’s the, that’s the other, um, highly relevant thing is this question of, um, how to execute, um, during, um, the pandemic is so unique, you know, so it’s like a, the snapshot in time where it’s almost like, there. It’s almost Mmm. Worthless to think about. What if this happens again because it’s, it’s such a unique scenario in a lot of ways, um, where people aren’t fully prepared. Um, the world’s shut down in an instant, right? This is the, this is the prepper thing, right? This is the prepper mentality is we’ve been preparing for this our whole lives, right? They’re excited right now, but the rest of us, I wouldn’t even have an intention to prepare for this. What I do have an intention to prepare for, or downturns in general, right? Are what are the lessons that we can take from now that we can replicate later.
Roland Frasier:
Uh, I think, I think if you look at this, there have been 47 recessions in the history of the United States, uh, 17 in the last hundred years and five since the eighties. Right? So it’s not like this doesn’t happen regularly. So whether the cause is an energy crisis, like it was in the seventies or a.com bubble bus, like it wasn’t 2000 or subprime lending, uh, you know, uh, craziness in, in the great recession in 2007, eight, nine. We do know that the economy is cyclical and here we happen to just flick a switch and say the economy’s off and they’re going to flip that switch back on mid may, end of may. You know, the people are out now on the beaches. They’re saying, you know, ain’t gonna last that much longer. We won’t be able to keep us at home no matter what. That’s, you know, that’s the prerogative of the people. Um, and at some point they’ll flick that switch back on and there will still be a lot of businesses that went out of business and I think it will be, I think that it will be a really interesting, unique time, but I know that the world will be on sale in terms of like, I think that the strong businesses will buy the weaker businesses that can’t make it. Um, and that we’re not going to see a prolonged recovery like we like we did in 2007. So, um, that being the case, you still can prepare and say if you don’t think that the economy is cyclical, you’re just dumb because history is very clear. If you look at recession recovery, recession recovery, right? It’s just why, I don’t know. It seems kind of dumb. Why can’t we just do this? Right? That’s how it is. So as long as you are innovating and thinking about how do you go forward and being smart not to over leverage yourself, then I think it’s kind of hard to get hurt because if, because you’re always going to be thinking about what the next need is. Right?
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. Well those are, I think that those are right. Those are two good takeaways, which are, you know, how do you behave in moments like this? And this is a moments like this being recession and that is, um, innovate and not over leverage.
Roland Frasier:
And most of the people I think that get hurt. Um, you know, my wife had, uh, friends in the, um, in the 2007 recession who wouldn’t sell their house at a high value that was less than the super crazy high value that existed only a few months before because they said my house is worth more than that. And logic would not prevail for you to say, but this is what your house is worth. Now remember when your house was worth half of that when you bought it? Like, you know, you’re a really good spot, but people won’t change their reality of the world, their, their vision of the world. And I think that the people that really get hurt are the people that don’t do that, that live, that want to live, you know, huddled down in this fake reality that doesn’t exist any longer. And so they’re not willing, they’re either too scared to look at the real real or they’re too, um, unaware or bought into the, the, they just can’t break out of the pack that’s worth that, right? But market value is what a willing buyer pays a willing seller absent any forces to the contrary, right? That’s, that’s called capitalism. So as long as you’re thinking about what is my stuff worth that I’m selling or my service or product that I’m offering today, and what do I, based on what looks like it’s coming, what is it worth tomorrow and how do I make what I need to make and serve my customer based on that actual reality, not my past reality? Then it’s kind of hard to get hurt because you can move, but when you artificially constrain yourself and lock yourself into a belief that what it was is what is, I think that’s what really crushes people.
Brad Weimert:
I like it. I think that that’s helpful. Um, well I appreciate that man. That’s good insight for the moment. I also think that, uh, you know, per usual, uh, your, uh, your own insights and teachings are full of things that people need to take notes on and jot down. So I appreciate, um, I appreciate you putting your time into teaching other people cause that’s ultimately what it is.
Roland Frasier:
Right? And you too first doing this, doing these, uh, in these interviews is, it’s awesome.
Brad Weimert:
Thanks man. I appreciate that. Well, on that note, I’d be remissed if I didn’t take a moment to ask you about easy pay direct because we have done processing for digital marketer rival brands, other big block, other companies that you’ve been a part of.
Roland Frasier:
Pretty much I see it Easy Pay direct is responsible for everything that’s going on right now. I mean, we, we were damaged now. I’m just kidding. Now you guys are awesome. We love you, you, you’ve been super helpful. And in a whole bunch of areas that our other processors didn’t provide as well. Um, services that they didn’t tell us existed and you’d be like, well, go, daddy does this. And you know, you’re like, Oh, well that’s that. Oh, can you do that? Yes, I’ll come are other people, you know, so, um, really been awesome and uh, uh, as a service. And also I like having you to be able to talk to, um, which is really, really valuable and you know, and not only just for credit card stuff, but just general, um, you know, you’re, you’re out there interested in all of these things too. And so you have lots of business inputs from lots of different people who are really smart, uh, to filter through your own smartness and then share. And that’s, that’s really been helpful to us.
Brad Weimert:
That’s cool. I appreciate you saying that. And, uh, yeah, one of the things that I like about, uh, in this was I try to be very deliberate in my life and the, if I ask people for the, so the word bubble, the word clouds that describe me deliberate and disciplined are the two that consistently are large in that picture.
Roland Frasier:
I will never forget you, uh, with the weights on jogging up and down the staircases getting ready for Jesse’s thing. That’s, that is disciplined.
Brad Weimert:
It is, it is. That’s a, that’s a good example. I had a very clear goal and a very clear timeline and that was a Everest thing. [inaudible] dot com was, that was a, so triple of an experience. But, um, one of the things that I like about the chosen path that I had here is that we get to talk to people like yourself that have tremendous business experience. Mmm. And in a lot of cases, we obviously, uh, have, Mmm no ability to share financials and don’t talk about those things. But we get to see them. So like, I personally get to learn from, Hey, this is how this business works and does it work? Or not, what’s the financials on the backend? Right. And that’s really interesting because it really, it helps both me personally, but also our team learn about, um, effective business and business practices and operations. And in turn, that allows us, like in this conversation or for my team to help other people say, Oh, you know, this is, that makes sense. I know the business model. So it’s been a huge growth mechanism for me. Mmm. But, but I appreciate that. Cool, man. Well, I appreciate you taking the time.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah, man. Thanks for having me.
Brad Weimert:
Yeah. And where are your, what’s your social stuff?
Roland Frasier:
Uh, I am a, so I have a podcast called business lunch. Um, and then it’s on all the podcasts he places and then, uh, on social, I am forward slash Roland Frasier everywhere from LinkedIn to YouTube to Instagram, Facebook, et cetera.
Brad Weimert:
Love it. Thank you so much. Roland.
Roland Frasier:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
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