Creating New Measurable and Predictable Revenue Streams Through ProfitPaths with Dave Conklin: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archive, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down how to create new, measurable, and predictable revenue streams through profit paths. To drop these value bombs, I brought Dave Conklin into EO Fire Studios. For 20 years, Inc. 500 entrepreneur Dave Conklin has used his trademarked method, Profit Paths, to create new scalable revenue streams for businesses.

0:36He is the author of Lost at 30 ,000 Feet. And today, Fire Nation will talk about how to stop marketing your business as a whole, have a niche, and look at them as separate revenue generating entities, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Dave and our sponsors. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business.

1:08Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Is this your year? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at thrivetimeshow.com. Dave, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know. So what is up Fire Nation? John, I am so honored to be here hanging out with you today. And I know you're probably enjoying Puerto Rico, which is awesome.

1:54That's the interesting thing about you that I learned actually. But the interesting thing about me is that I have two sets of twins, and that is something that people are often surprised about. Are they identical, fraternal, or one of each? That is always the question I get, and both sets are identical. Wow, that is something I did not know about you, and very, very interesting indeed. And Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the introduction, we're going to be talking all about creating new measurable and predictable revenue streams through Dave's trademark system, ProfitPaths. It's going to be a fun episode.

2:31I tease a lot about what we're going to be chatting about, but I just want to start, Dave, with talking about how ProfitPaths specifically is changing the way that businesses grow. We have gone into companies that do billions of revenue, and then we've gone into really small mom-and-pop companies. And when they latch onto this whole process, it creates, as you just described, it creates these insurance policies, so to speak, where there's multiple streams of predictable revenue coming in, whereas before maybe they only had one channel. And now when things, like obviously a while back, we were in the heat of this COVID thing.

3:14And a lot of our companies that had these set up had these extra business models where they didn't lose massive amounts of revenue because they were only focused on one sole stream of leads or income in their business. So it's been incredible through the years. We have a lot to get into. And for me, I always like to break it down to the lowest level so Fire Nation can really see how they can apply it to their business. And what it comes down to, Dave, and you know this as well or better than most, what is the return on investment? We're We're talking time-wise, we're talking bandwidth and energy-wise.

3:54How can Fire Nation specifically fill in the CEO marketing team gap when it comes to ROI, when it comes to that return on investment? What does that mean and how can we do it? So a lot of times we'll work directly with CEOs and they're incredibly frustrated because their marketing person will come to them or we'll be working with a small entrepreneur and they'll be frustrated because they feel like they're just dumping money into whether it be Facebook ads or SEO or whatever. And what we do when we work with a company in these profit paths is we break out their business so finite that we're going after a very specific avatar.

4:37So we always encourage, for example, a business owner to look at their highest profit customer. Um, we were, uh, I can't get into the details because of NDA on the name of course, but, um, a very large knife company that you've probably heard of. And, you know, we worked with them and we found out that, um, brides that have high incomes are their biggest customer. And I think it's because often they'll actually get, you know, uh, these, these knife sets, for their bridal party or different things. But they end up ordering these mass quantity of knives for whatever reason. So that was their magic customer.

5:20And then so what we did is we created specific assets for brides and grooms to go through in this marketing channel. And then they ended up selling a lot more of these specific type of engraved knife sets to these brides. And, you know, that's just one example. But what it does for ROI is it allows them to actually track the specific spend that is spent on that exact avatar and watch them travel through those assets, which are, you know, guides and checklists or, you know, videos, whatever created. And the CEO or the business owner can look at the money they spent and see the actual dollars and cents that comes in at the end.

6:06And from a time perspective, it's huge. There's a big time investment up front to plan these out, but then it's kind of hands off because a lot of these profit paths, because they're so niche and so targeted, they end up kind of running themselves, which is incredible. Fire Nation, these are the type of processes, the type of systems, the type of knowledge you want to be applying to your business. And I know you couldn't get into super specific details with that company, but you do have some examples of success that Fire Nation can model. There's a carpet company, there's Mary Grove awnings, construction leads.

6:40Get into some of these specifics. Let's go as in-depth and as specific as we can get with this so that Fire Nation can really be like, you know what, I get how I can apply that to my business. I'll share one that's very basic, and I think everyone will understand it right away. General contractors or contractors that do general home improvement type projects. This is a perfect example. So we have a site called finishmybasement.net that we created, and it only targets people via Google search. And we've specifically targeted about 10 ,000 keywords that are focused on finishing a basement. And a lot of people go, wait a minute, why would you want to not go after the people that want to do windows or the people that want to do flooring or painting because contractors want to do all that stuff.

7:30And that's great. But the conversion rates are through the roof and the quality of the leads are through the roof when you specifically target something. So that's an example of where we only really used Google search for the cold traffic, meaning that to target people that have never heard of us before. But then what we do is we follow those people around the internet using Google Display Network to then bring them back if they didn't actually fill out a in-home estimate. So in that specific case, we had a contractor come to us and they said, hey, we want to do more basements because basements tend to be$30 ,000,$40 ,000 projects and they tend to lead to other opportunities in the home.

8:17So we built that very specific site and now we actually operate that site nationwide. So that's a very basic example. On the flip side, something more complicated with the carpet company you mentioned, we had a flooring company that I think they have five locations in the Arizona area. And they came to us and they were like, look, we're tired of being brick and mortar only. We want to sell something bigger in an e-commerce world where we can really scale and really grow. And we asked them the same question. And this is in Fire Nation, this is the there's two questions you need to ask yourself.

8:57Number one, what is your highest profit and not by percentage, but your highest dollar profit product or service you offer? And then who's the biggest buyer of that? And that's what we asked this carpet company. And they said, you know what? Carpet tile, because carpet tiles, high profit margin. We can ship it nationwide and you can use different types of tile to create all kinds of designs and things. And I said, that's awesome. Tell me about the best buyer of carpet tile. And his response was churches. Churches happened to be his, you know, number one source of high, you know, quantity purchases, you know, larger bulk purchases.

9:40So what we did is we built a series of videos and I'll actually link this on the page so that people can see it too, John. But we actually built a series of videos and assets directly targeted to a pastor. So we did a survey of a bunch of pastors at churches that generated large amounts of funding, funding drives. and we created a tool for them to send out to their congregation where they could see like a chart on how much money has been invested in the sanctuary carpet project. Stuff that's so not related to selling carpet, right? And that's the point. You're creating these really great resources and these really great assets for the pastor so that it pulls them in and gets them exposed to the brand.

10:32And then my favorite part, and again, I'll have this link up on that page, My favorite part was this video we did. So, you know, some of you probably don't go to church. And so at churches, a big common thing for a pastor to do is run a video, like a sermon video prior to the sermon that he preaches. And they kind of have this typically like a funny kind of a theme. They're kind of quirky, kind of corny, but they have high production value, if that makes any sense. So what we did is we created what looks like a sermon series video that a pastor would play. And it's kind of themed where this pastor asks for prayer requests.

11:16And these people start to give these prayer requests and they're about help us help the children and all this kind of stuff. But then every one of them during the prayer goes, you know, and God, please get us new carpet so that the people that come through our sanctuary don't think we're disgusting and, you know, things like that. So it's kind of a joke. But the point is, it resonates with that audience of the pastors. And we just use different technology to make sure that these pastors are exposed to these different assets, you know, as they go about the process and eventually end up making carpet purchases.

11:53Fire Nation, there are so many value bombs just shared there. And for me, it's all about thinking outside the box, going to the source, and doing what other people just aren't thinking about doing or aren't executing upon and getting there first and making it happen. And I love the focus on the riches being in the niches, Fire Nation. That's why you need to focus. Are you focusing? Are you following one course until success on those two questions? Number one, what is your highest profit product or service? that you offer? And then number two, who is the biggest and best buyer of that product or service?

12:27When you answer those questions, then it starts to become clear where your energy, where your focus needs to be, and then you can execute on a plan. And speaking of plans, we love step-by-step guidance, Dave. It's just a huge thing. Fire Nation loves it. So break down the specific steps for Fire Nation to take when we're applying these type of processes to our business. Absolutely. So number one, we already talked about it. You got to identify that product or service that has a really high profit dollar for you. And then number two, you've got to look at who is the biggest bulk buyer of that product.

13:04Because again, you can spend the same amount of energy or the same amount of dollars targeting a lower quality audience and you're going to end up not having the same ROI. So once you do that, and we actually have some sheets, too, that we're going to give to Fire Nation for free on the link we'll give at the end here. And they can actually download these planning sheets that will help them walk through this. Because I know sometimes it's tough with just audio. But the next step that you want to do is think about that audience and what's valuable to them. One of my favorite websites on the planet is called BuzzSumo.

13:45and it's B-U-Z-Z-S-U-M-O.com. And on Buzzsumo, you can put in a topic and it'll spit back the content online that has gotten shared the most through social media. So for example, if I'm a carpet company or I sell LED lights or whatever, I can put in my topic there and all of a sudden the brainstorming starts. Another great thing you can do with that tool, and I'm not affiliated with that tool in any way, by the way, But another thing you can do with that tool is if there's a large trade association in your industry, you can put that website in there and it'll also spit back that website's most popular content on social.

14:28The reason you want to do that is this is going to help you brainstorm some really great ideas that you can create that'll get people actually interested because the point isn't to generate a lead immediately anymore in 2020. 2020. The whole point is to get people to trust you and like your brand and build a relationship with them with this content. So that's step three. It's to brainstorm these assets and things. Now, a lot of people don't have the team, even large companies don't necessarily have the team to make these assets. So we love Upwork. It's a site where you can go and you can find people that have talent and they'll build stuff for you.

15:11And you can look at the reviews, just like buying something on Amazon. You can look at their actual reviews from other work that they've done. So if you need a video done that explains something that's complex, like there's been a ton of videos, you know, on, uh, you know, things like PPP funding and stuff like that recently. So, um, if you need something like that done, you're like, well, I don't know how to do that. Upwork is a great place to actually get those, those created. So I like to start small then. So once you have an asset, get it on a website and make sure that website is very specifically themed to that avatar that you're going after to that highest profit customer that's going to buy the most of whatever you're selling and create that site and get that asset there.

15:55And then step five is cold traffic. So you have to introduce people to this concept. Now, one thing I love, love, love to do is instead of just like emailing like, hey, come look at my great thing. I love going on Facebook and saying, hey, does anybody have anyone that fits this specific avatar? So maybe it's a bride, you know, using the knife example. Maybe it's someone who owns a carpet company or is in the carpet business. And ask for their feedback on that asset. And that helps you to build those initial relationships. and then you can actually ask them for referrals of other people in the industry to take a look at the asset.

16:35But while you're doing that, you're actually selling your stuff, like all through asking for feedback and, you know, things like that. But you get that feedback and that can be invaluable. And then the next step, six, would be your actual cold traffic. So you might take a list that you can find online and email some people, make sure that you're CAN spam compliant with your emails, of course, but you can email some people and you literally just say, hey, you know, I understand you're in the carpet business, for example. You know, if you don't mind, you know, we have this really cool resource that we wanted to give you for free.

17:11You know, here it is. Check it out. Let me know if you have any feedback. But here's what's neat. You set up your Facebook retargeting pixels and your, you know, whatever other retargeting you're going to do, whether you have Google Analytics installed or whatever on that page, You make sure all that tracking is in place. And when you do that, those people that landed there and then leave, now you can target them with YouTube videos. You can retarget them with Facebook ads. You can retarget them with display ads as they're traveling around the internet, and that'll pull them back. So there's a lot of, and you've had some amazing people on fire that have talked about Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff.

17:55And a lot of those same strategies apply here, you know, where you can actually go out and target people that own carpet companies by, for example, looking at people that attend specific industry events or they've liked certain groups on LinkedIn and things like that. So that cold traffic comes to your assets. Well, now once you that's kind of you've started dating as Ryan Dice would describe it, like, you know, marketing is a dating process now. and as they go through and they see more and more of your content, you can use different systems like Entreport is an amazing one. There's probably some that you use as well, John.

18:34Yeah, we use Infusionsoft and I'm actually going to break in on you here because let me tell you, I just literally heard two Fire Nation skulls explode by the excess information you've been dropping here. So Fire Nation, this is exactly the type of step-by-step guidance that you need to be implementing into your business. I mean, these tools, Upwork, BuzzSumo, like implement these value bombs that Dave is sharing, make it happen in your business. And if you think he's even close to done, obviously not. We got a lot more coming after we thank our sponsors. We all want the same things for our business, more leads, faster sales, and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level.

19:11One thing we all don't want, to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize sounds too good to be true, right? But this CRM exists and it's called HubSpot. What sets HubSpot apart is it's easy to use and integrate. Instead of wasting days or even months trying to figure everything out, HubSpot gives you tools like their AI content assistant, which helps you save time on tedious manual tasks right away. Looking to step up your game with email broadcasts and landing pages, HubSpot's drag and drop builder makes it easy to create attention-grabbing emails and pages in minutes.

19:43And that's only the beginning. HubSpot has 1 ,300 plus integrations that you can add for customization like you've never seen before. HubSpot CRM's powerful tools will help marketers wow prospects. Sales teams lock in deals and service teams improve response times and overall service. Get started for free at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. Are you ready to grow your business now? What if you could learn the proven systems and processes that have been used to grow thousands of multi-million dollar success stories? At Thrivetimeshow.com, see testimonials of how Clay Clark's proven business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 clients to increase profitability dramatically.

20:22Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Sound too good to be true? Go to thrivetimeshow.com to see over 2 ,000 documented success stories. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients, he personally designs your business plan for you. Then Clay's team of talented designers, videographers, web developers, workflow mappers, and accounting coaches will help you implement that proven plan. See over 2 ,000 verified success stories and schedule your free one-on-one 13-point assessment with Mr. Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com.

20:55Knowledge will not attract money unless it is organized and directed through practical plans of action. Become the next success story. Schedule your free 13-point assessment today at thrivetimeshow.com. So Dave, we're back and I want to move on to your book, Lost at 30 ,000 Feet. First, what does that title mean? And what does Fire Nation need to know about this value packed beast? Well, thanks for even bringing that up, John. I appreciate that. So I noticed at events that I would speak at with Vistage International and a lot of other, we're going going to be at TNC here soon. Every time I speak, these CEOs would come up to me and they're like, almost every time it was the same thing.

21:42They'll say, Dave, I have no idea what you just said, but it is awesome. And I know we need it. Give me your card and I'm going to get you in touch with my marketing people. And at first I'm like, wow, that's really cool. Like that, that's, that's neat. And quite frankly, we love that because when the CEO says to the marketing guy, You got to hire this guy. That's huge for us, obviously, because we don't have to get approval then from the top dog. But then as time got on, I started realizing this is really sad that in 2020, I'm going into Vistage groups and speaking to these Vistage groups. And they're companies of$10 million to sometimes a billion dollars in revenue.

22:25And these CEOs don't even understand what a retargeting pixel is. And that's when I realized I just got to put this in writing. I got to do a book So the book is really geared toward the ceo that just doesn't understand how this digital stuff really applies They really don't know how to get the roi to happen in their business And it's a guide to help a business owner to communicate more effectively with either their marketing team Or you know a marketing agency or whatever and it puts them in a place of knowledge so that they have the same knowledge base as those people and they can guide their businesses even better.

23:03So Dave, you've been dropping so much value and you have so much more value that we're gonna be talking about. I mean, you have some downloads for Fire Nation, you have a killer course. So break down those two things and let's just keep dropping this knowledge. Yeah, so number one, we've got worksheets, planning sheets, and we're always making them better. So these are the same sheets that we use when we're asked to come in and consult. So we'll go in and we'll sit down with a team and we'll go through these sheets and they really walk you through step by step how to go about actually putting these profit paths together.

23:36And once you have them, it gives you a template for leadership in a business and the marketing team or the marketing agency to clearly communicate together and show on paper, which is what CEOs typically love, you know, and see where you're at in the process of actually, you know, developing these. And it helps you to, you know, really get your ROI, you know, completely defined. Then we have a course that people can use, which we're actually going to give for free. The first couple of lessons. Yup. Which we've never done before, by the way. And we're going to give it for free. So you can go through and you can actually learn step by step how we go through these sheets, how we create these campaigns.

24:22And we actually go into detail on how to create your first pay-per-click campaign for your profit path that you're putting together. We have a really cool tool as well, John, called CEO Know, K-N-O-W. and you put your website into CEO No, and it spits back a full-blown report on all kinds of information about your website as well and your competitors. It gives you some competitive analysis in there. I'm dropping eofire.com into there today. You got to. I may have already done it. Uh-oh. Don't tell me. I don't want to be called out on the air. So Fire Nation, I mean, look at all this value, these download sheets, this course, you get the first few tutorials and modules for free.

25:17He's got CEO, no, that's K-N-O-W. You can enter your website in and I'm going to enter in eofire.com and I might even put my results on the show notes page, Fire Nation. So definitely go check it out. But Dave, let's do a couple of things right now. Give us just kind of a full wrap up. Like what is the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets and walks away with, with everything that we've talked about today, then give us a call to action. Like where can we go to check out these downloads, to check out the CEO know, to look at this course, and then we'll say goodbye. Yep, absolutely.

25:50So the biggest takeaway is stop marketing your business as a whole. If you have profitable campaigns there, you know, keep it going, but add on specific niche portions of your business, your products or services, and look at them as separate revenue generating entities. So if you've got 60 different products or services you sell, build one at a time, but eventually you can have 60 different unique profit paths coming into your business. And actually more because each of those could be sold to different types of avatars that are out there. That's the huge, huge takeaway. And we have a link we're going to put up at profitpaths.com forward slash fire.

26:38And that has all of the different resources we've talked about today and a lot more that you can check out. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with DC and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And if you head over to eofire.com and just type Dave in the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with links to everything because Dave is literally giving a lot of awesomeness today to go over those things. The CEO know, which I'll be using to give my website a little once over that download those sheets that he was talking about the course with those free modules.