Becoming an 8 Figure Influencer with Kris Krohn: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to become an eight-figure influencer. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Chris Krohn into EO Fire Studios. Chris is an eight-figure influencer in the space of money, business, finance, and personal development. He's a four-time bestselling author, has a wife, four kids, and loves elevating other people.

0:32In today's foundation, we'll talk about how there's a group of people out there for anyone who wants to step up and is brave enough to become a leader, how to let go of things that don't matter, become obsessed with the preferences of your tribe, and so much more. And a big thank you for sparsing today's episode goes to Chris and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

1:06A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Chris, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Ooh, well, first of all, hello. And John, it's great to be back. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's so good. Okay, so right out the gate, I'd have to say obsession. I think there's a lot of people that criticize me for being, you know, they would say, Chris, you've gone too far. You're obsessed. And I'm like, you know what?

1:43For me, obsessed is nothing more than ever present focused. I'm always focused on the thing that I'm working on that matters most. And I think anyone that isn't bringing that level of commitment should not expect the highest level of reward. I love that because people said that I was a little obsessed with podcasting when I launched the first daily podcast. And I said, you know what? if I'm going to do something, why would I just not go all out? Why would I not go all in? And I know you resonate with that because you're that kind of guy as well. And for me, it's like, I'm either all in or nothing.

2:15Like there's a lot of people in my life, Chris, who think rightfully so that I'm a lazy person because in certain things in life, I'm lazy because if I'm not going to go all in on that thing, I'm not doing it at all. And so I'm like that way side of things, but in the things that I want to like crush and dominate, I am all flipping in. And you are going to talk to us today, Chris, about becoming an eight-figure influencer. So let's start off with the secret to getting discovered on social media. Reveal that to us. There's a lot of people that need to be on social media that are not. They just haven't transitioned.

2:49They haven't realized that we're now living in this crazy digital world. And if you have a business, you're either branding a business, so like an idea, or you're branding yourself as a person. I don't think there's really a way to brand yourself as a person unless you're actually on social media. Um, and yet there's a lot of people that are just posting a lot of things. They're mimicking what other people are doing and they're not really getting the traction. And first and foremost, if you're an expert in an area, if you, if you know your stuff, if you've got your message dialed in, then the only way for you to really get discovered is if you deposit yourself where the conversations are happening for, for years, John, I was, uh, you know, making these YouTube videos that weren't really getting any traction.

3:28And the reason why is because I was making the videos that I thought people should watch. And my websites, I would, you know, offer products and give things away that I thought people should have. And at one point there was, I stopped and realized, wait a second, Chris, do you even really know what people want? And so I started just, I tipped my whole company upside down and I said, you know what? Everyone here has heard of keyword research. What keyword research really means is that you care where people are asking the meaningful questions. And so I started researching, um, in my level of expertise, where, what, what are people asking?

4:06So now, um, you know, I, I, you know, when I take a look at that eight figure mark, I don't do any paid advertising. All of it is purely organic. And it's because every piece of media that hits the street is me only talking to what everyone else is already talking about, asking questions about, and you know, with search engine ranking. I don't have to pay any money for this. People find me. And, um, you know, if you've ever run a business where you were doing any kind of paid media, you were basically paying for people to like you. Those people are frankly, a lot less patient. They're a lot less nice.

4:37They're not as fun to do business with. They're harder to sell. But when you build a genuine, uh, organic relationship, what it means is I just deposited my deposit myself in the conversation where it's happening and then people can check it out. And then if they like me, they can follow or subscribe and then they can binge me. And if they binge me enough, they're certainly going to reach out to my company. And so, you know, compared to years ago, my business today, I've got tens of thousands of clients that just, they love being in a relationship with me. I've got partners in my real estate business from all over the world.

5:09Every week I find people that, that, um, have already decided that, uh, that they like me and they follow me. We've heard this, this statistic in sales, John, that you need, I think it's today, 17 exposures to get someone to buy something from you. Well, before these people ever reach out to me, they haven't had 17 exposures. Sometimes they've had hundreds and it was on their terms. And I really liked that. So it's an easy lift. It's a more fun lift. And then when I interact with people, they're, they're so grateful to be in the talking space instead of arms cross skeptical. And, uh, so I would say for anyone that really says, Hey, you know what, when am I going to get discovered on social media?

5:46I got news for you. You're not, no one's going to discover you. No one cares about you. You've got to care about yourself and care about the other people first and get where they're at. And keyword research really is, I think, that first big clue. Anyone that follows me on YouTube, they can kind of find some of my free content where I just show people, hey, here are some tools I use. Here's how you actually see the keywords, see the ranking. And if you title things that way, then you'll put yourself directly in those relationships. Fire Nation, I want you to be absorbing these words. Don't just hear them.

6:18Don't just be listening to Chris absorb these words because the truth is just oozing out of them. I was asked all the time, John, how'd you come up with that fantastic idea? Podcasters Paradise, the Freedom Journal, the Mastery Journal, the Podcast Journal, now your book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. Like, how'd you come up with all these ideas? I can't come up with ideas like that. And I said, I haven't come up with a single idea since, by the way, Entrepreneur's on Fire. That was my one idea. Ever since then, I asked my audience, what is your biggest struggle right now? And then I would create the best solution to their problem.

6:51And that's all of these million dollar products and services and communities that I just named the best solution to their real problem that they told me. I didn't come up with these things, Fire Nation. I did the research, I asked the questions, and then I produced. So let's move into gathering your real tribe. How does one do this? I want to piggyback on this idea of what do people want? Years ago, I discovered split testing, and it was a new notion to me and something I'd heard about, but I'm like, oh, it sounds like a lot of work. And, you know, thankful, you know, thankfully for like ClickFunnels, a beautiful platform that makes split, split testing for dumb.

7:29And I remember when I started doing my split testing, I was like, oh my gosh, people care about the image. People care about the colors. People have preferences for everything. They care about your message. They care about how it's title. They care about your promises. Uh, they care about your testimonials. They care about everything. And so, um, I fell in love with this idea of saying, you know what, man, I think I have a lot of the right gear. There are a lot of the right products, but I don't think it's packaged the right way. I went on a three month binge of split testing everything from fonts and colors and images to, you know, sequences on my page and every test revealed a preference.

8:08Um, my people on my website, they like to see me in purple and blue. I don't like purple and blue. Like those are not my colors. I like red and black and gray. And guess what? They hate them. They will not click on my crap if it's red, black, and gray. So what I had to do, John, is I had to actually let go of the things that didn't matter. And I said, you know what, Chris, you should become, and everyone who's an entrepreneur that's trying to go social, you should become obsessed with the preferences of your tribe, because guess what? They care about everything. They weigh in on everything. I'm finishing a book right now.

8:42I've got like three more I'm working on. I've written five other books. And the book that I'm working on right now, I had this title for it. I'm like, oh my gosh, I love this title. And so I put it out for a split test and they hated my title. And then I'm like, okay, fine. Well, what about this one? Like I'm attached to this idea and they slaughtered it. And 17 iterations later, they picked the title, the subtitle, the image, the everything. It is not what I would have picked, but guess what? It's what they want. And the moment I, you know, that 90 day obsession led to a 400 % increase in sales in my, in my company across the board.

9:18And it blew my mind. I'm like, Oh my gosh, Chris. And for those of you that are listening, fire nation, like get out of your way, get out of your own box. Stop thinking about what you want and what you want it to look like and become agnostic. Stop caring about the things you're not supposed to. You should be obsessed with creating maximum value. You should care about what's in the box for what you're providing to people, but what it looks like and what's important to them, you should make that your number one priority above all. And since I've done that, man, it sure has changed the look and feel of a lot of things here.

9:50But my people are happiest. I'm gathering the right people and we're getting maximum conversion. So I think if you want to gather your real tribe, you got to just become obsessed with what do these people want? And every split test gives you lots of dope information. Speaking of dope, Tim Ferriss's title was not the four hour work week when he first started. It was something along the lines of like, you know, how to do dope and drugs and run for money. I'm screwing it up. But it was like, that was the phrase. Like it was like all of these things because he was running like a brain supplement company.

10:20And it bombed when he was split tested, you know, out there in the real world. And he came to the four-hour work week, which he didn't love at all. But guess who loved it? The people who bought the book by the million. So real quick, Chris, you can tell me that it's a secret and you can't tell us right now, but I got at least asked, what was the title that got slaughtered and what's the title you ended up choosing? The book is on money. It's about finance. It's about our broken system. So I wanted to label it ROI, return on investment, five secrets that your financial planner will never tell you.

10:50It was something like that. My audience just didn't understand the language of ROI. They didn't connect with it. It wasn't emotional. It wasn't sticky. It didn't mean anything. I didn't have enough benefits driven in it. And the whole book is about ROI. It's like, oh my gosh, like people just don't understand the reason why they will never be financially free is because the financial system says 401ks, IRAs, S and P's indexes. All of these things are single digit ROIs and single digit, even when it compounds. I mean, Albert Einstein said that compound interest is the most powerful financial instrument ever created and yet it's meaningless when it's single digit because you've got to live for like 14 lifetimes for that to mean something.

11:29And if you can just break into double digit ROI, like, you know, my last, you know, 4 ,500 real estate deals, I'm averaging a 25 % annual ROI. I make 26 times more money over 20 years than single digit ROI off of the S and P. But I also show in the book, triple digit, quadruple digit ROI, infinite ROI. So for me, the book was all about ROI and turns out that that would be the most boring and asinite title for them. Fire Nation, if you think Chris is even close to done spewing straight fire, you are wrong. We're going to be talking about the most powerful product you can provide, how to monetize your influence, and more when we get back from taking our sponsors.

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13:52Manage your planning cycles, set and measure OKRs, communicate and collaborate on documents and roadmaps, and access hundreds of templates in Coda's gallery. If you want a platform that empowers your team to collaborate effectively and focus on shared goals, you can get started with Coda today for free, head over to coda.io slash fire. That's coda.io slash fire to get started for free. Coda.io forward slash fire. Chris, we're back. What is the most powerful product you can provide? More than likely, John, it's not the one that you're offering. I think most people build a product that they fall in love with.

14:34We fall in love with our products instead of falling in love with our customers. And so there's this theme, I'm coming right back to it. The question isn't, what do you want to give them? It's not, what do you want to offer? It's not, what did you create? It's not, what's your brilliance, not what your genius it's, what do they want? And, um, you know, the wrapping paper again is something that is, it is most important. There's, there's, it's, it's almost like if you could just know the right colors and the right words and the right features and the right benefits, then they're going to be many times more likely to say yes.

15:03I had built out, you know, dozens of products, you know, that I thought people really wanted. One of my verticals is all business. Another one of them is all real estate. I've done over a billion dollars in transactions. And so when I find people all over the world, they want to, they want to partner with me. They want to get in on, on my deal flow. And when they do that, I packaged up a way that people could partner with me. But when I started pausing and asking what people wanted, I started realizing, wait a second. This is not, this isn't the way people want it. And this is going to be a little bit for me.

15:34This is mind blowing, uh, John, that I had a company that used to say, I'll build your entire portfolio and you keep 100 % of the money. And we struggled over years to get the number of clients that we wanted after doing about$50 million worth of business. I just felt so tired. And then something changed. I started asking what they wanted and you know what they wanted? they wanted to partner with me. They wanted to split the ownership 50, 50. And just by doing that, they started buying twice as much real estate because they felt comfortable. They were less scared. They didn't feel like the whole burden was on them.

16:08They would have preferred to split the profits and go twice as fast rather than feeling scared and alone. And so my, my entire product didn't change, but I tweaked it. And what seemed like a really small benign tweak to me meant everything in the world to them. And so, you know, today, you know, this year I'll buy hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, and hundreds of homes and they'll put up the money. They'll put up the credit. They're going to tap into my team of 200 experts and we're going to do all of this stuff. But I've got to credit the fact that this, this tiny product week grew our company 500%.

16:42And I didn't think it was a big deal. I just had to get in their head and figure out what is it that you guys really want? No one wants to be sold, but they do want to buy and they only want to buy if it's what they want. So you should be asking, what do they want? No one wants to be sold, but everyone wants to buy. Like again, Fire Nation, you need to be understanding and absorbing these words. Now let's talk about something when it comes to influence, because listen, there's a lot of people out there who have influence, who are influencers, but they ain't monetizing crap. Literally nothing, not as zealous.

17:19They're putting in so much work. and if you were to like run the numbers, they're less than minimum wage. I mean, not even close. So how? How do you monetize your influence once you acquire it? You know, the same eight figures that I earned last year with the same audience size, I made less than a million dollars and I became really good at monetization from everything that we've talked about so far. But, you know, I look at it, for anyone that really wants to become a beast online and go social, there's three things that you've got to, that you've got to really nail. Number one is you've got to figure out a system for traffic, a system for funnels and a system for leads, which ultimately leads to your sales.

17:58And so, you know, when it comes to traffic for me, I basically built a machine where I'll spend three hours in front of the camera a week, and then it's going to turn into 700 pieces of content every single week. And last week I got over 5 million hits on all of my stuff. And because it's organic, everyone's finding it. And everyone's like, I discovered Chris Krohn. I found Chris Krohn instead of, wait a second, someone paid me to see this dude. It's like, you Googled me, you found me. So you should have a system for traffic. And then you, you put that into funnels, which is, you know, at the end of all your videos and stuff, links and bios, you should be saying, Hey, I've discovered now what you want.

18:35And in my world, I've got 18 different funnels. Like people in general want 18 different kinds of things for me. So it gives a little bit of variety, but all that does is produce leads, thousands of leads now a month. and I take those leads and I give them to a little sales army, people that fit into my culture, love my company. They're a hundred percent commission. They work for me. Uh, many of them work remote from home. Um, and what they do is they, they offer my clients what they want. So they, they have a conversation consultation, find out what they want. You know, they could offer them something really tiny.

19:07They could offer them something super mega. Uh, but it really is just about matching the client's wants and needs with our offerings, which we know what they are because as we've asked, monetization is really simple. But, you know, to your point, John, most people are actually, this is crazy to me. They're monetizing through the platform. Oh yeah. YouTube's giving me ads. Dude, are you kidding me? YouTube paid me a hundred grand last year, you know, and I turned that into, you know, well over$10 million. And so I think it's ridiculous that some people are really brilliant. Anyone listening to this, it's like, oh yeah, I figured out how to get some level of traffic.

19:40Like now I have 10 ,000 or 50 ,000 or a hundred thousand on Instagram or, or, you know, TikTok, man, my TikTok in six months blew past like six years of YouTube. Like the platforms are so hot right now because I think in our, our post scam debt pandemic world that people are just realizing the new normal is to be digital. It's to be online. People are accepting it. I had 23 ,000 people in my last digital event. I'm like, where do all these people come from? Like, how do they have the patience for hours to sit there and go through this, you know, cause I want to go back to like in person, you know, come hang out in my convention center and let's put on a, let's put on a live event.

20:17World has changed. And, and I don't, I, I don't think anyone's confused, John, this world is not going to bounce back anytime fast, like a rubber band would. Um, we've got to adjust to it. And so anyone that really wants to become a, a very successful influencer, um, they need to figure out the monetization game, the traffic game, the funnel game. And you know what? It's out there. We're in the information now entertainment age. And I'm hoping that some of what I'm sharing today will help up and coming influencers or even successful influencers be inspired to want to just get a lot better at the game.

20:49Fire Nation, how are your systems? Your systems for traffic, your systems for funnels, your systems for leads and conversions and actually monetizing. How are your systems? And if you're listening to Chris, you might be like, wow, I thought my systems were dialed in and I thought that I was producing some good stuff, but at the end of the day, it might be time to step it up a little bit. And Chris, you have stepped it up, brother, today and dropped so many value bombs upon the heads of our listeners, Fire Nation. So give us the one key takeaway from this entire chat today that you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from all of these value bombs.

21:25There's a group of people out there for everyone that wants to step up and is brave enough to be vocal and become a leader. Sometimes people doubt themselves, John, and the reality is that, or they'll say someone else is already in that space or someone's already done it. But the reality is you haven't. And if you feel called to it, if it's what you'd call your zone of fire, if it's a place where you just thrive in, then you should know that it's not about stealing market share from another influencer or someone else. It's about you claiming the group of people that say, actually, I want to learn this information from you.

21:54There's something about you, your energy, your personality, um, that, that really connects with me. And I think people are really starting to pick up on that. So anyone listening to this that's in the game of business, you should be asking yourself, Hey, if I wanted to brand myself and go online, you should be aware that there's ways of doing that extremely successful. I think it's easier today than it has ever been before. And, um, for anyone that wants more, you know, tips on some of the things that we've talked about today, I've got, uh, I've got a website with some bonuses and information.

22:24It's called launch my influence.com. And I put that out there for individuals that are like, okay, Chris, give me more of the science and that, and the basic how-to steps of like, how would you do that? And so I put that resource out there as a way to help up and coming influencers or those that are already, you know, listen, they've hit it big or they're making millions, but they're thinking, man, you know what? I should be making three, five, 10, a hundred times that. I just don't know how. Fire Nation, I told you a couple of times to listen, to hear, to absorb what Chris is talking about. Cause this is a person who does that.