Fast-Track Your Business w/ Virtual “Lunch and Learn” Workshops (Greatest Hits)

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1:17What's up, what's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show because building your own income streams, well, that's the best way to recession-proof your life. One challenge that most new businesses face is the awareness problem. Nobody knows you exist. In this episode, you'll learn the fast track strategy to make that problem go away, how to build your email list quickly and connect with your ideal customers. Ready? Let's do it.

1:45I haven't had and still currently don't have a big marketing budget for going and getting new clients. I don't have thousands of dollars a month to run on ads and hope that it works. I also didn't start out knowing a bunch of VP of marketing at big companies or knowing a bunch of founders or anything like that. So you kind of find yourself in this situation where you have an expertise and you can actually help a lot of brands, but they don't know you exist. And so when going through that process of how do I grow, how do I find places to market that will actually get me real clients, that isn't going to be a waste of time.

2:20this strategy of just getting in front of someone else's established audience that already has an audience full of people who are potential clients for you. And they have trust built with that other brand you're partnering with. So you can kind of borrow that trust and get it placed on you when they bring you in to teach a workshop to other people. And it really helps establish trust with you a lot faster between you and their customers. That's Dustin Lean from jumpxmarketing.com, an agency focused on email and SMS or text message marketing for e-commerce brands. We last heard from Dustin back in 2017, and he was just ramping up JumpX after shutting down his own physical product business.

3:02Since then, he's grown it into a six-figure operation, and he's built it in such a way that it only requires part-time attention. One of his key drivers, partner workshops. these virtual lunch and learn sessions where he can showcase his expertise and build his client roster without advertising, without bidding for work. This works in just about any niche. And in this episode, Dustin breaks down his exact process so you can go out and apply it in your own business. To help you keep track of the steps involved, I put together a free cheat sheet at sidehustlenation.com slash Dustin2. Once again, that's at sidehustlenation.com slash Dustin2, D-U-S-T-I-N.

3:40and then the number two to grab that free partner workshop cheat sheet. Now, back to the interview. I want to replicate this thing, maybe, you know, for whatever freelance service or whatever agency service that I may have. How did you go about identifying your like dream targets? Was it a dream 100 list? How did you go about saying, who should I first reach out to? That's funny you mentioned dream 100 list. Yeah, like that actually is exactly what I did, but I didn't quite make it to 100. It's a lot to find. I guess backing up, there's an avatar that has to be established first, right? You have to know who you're actually trying to target.

4:15And that's another reason why I think freelancers or agencies that are niched down, not necessarily to like something so specific that literally no product exists like that. If you're trying to go so niche that you're like, I'm only going to help e-commerce brands that are selling garbage cans to women that are 54 years old living in Wyoming, like you're not going to find any clients. It's impossible. But niching down enough to where you can establish yourself as an expert is really useful. It helps you decide who these other brands and websites that you should partner with that actually is going to bring you the types of people you want.

4:53And it establishes this trust that you're not trying to pretend to know everything. I found myself in that position in the beginning, and I just niched down. And that's why now it's e-commerce, email marketing, and SMS marketing. And it's specifically for health and wellness brands. That's all we work with. And it's really helped close clients easier because when you have those conversations or you're teaching on a workshop or something, you know that those people know who you help and who you don't help. So the ones that see themselves in the category, that's the exact right fit. They get really excited because they think, oh, that's me.

5:27That's exactly me. And it helps them to trust you over a competitor who's maybe claiming they can help everyone with everything. And that makes it, I imagine, an easier pitch. I would love to come and do an educational workshop on the seven critical elements of a killer email campaign or something like that. How to grow your e-commerce email list versus like, let's just have a workshop about broad digital marketing strategies. It seems like it's much more actionable for the audience and for the potential audience conduit or who might be your influencer that you're reaching out to. Dream 100, by the way, this comes from a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes.

6:05It's got a bright red cover. You can't miss it. Highly recommended reading. And this is the Dream 100. It's like your dream client list. Like who would you love to partner with, work with, connect with in some way? And then you can kind of start chipping away at that and really focus all your energy on those people rather than every other client, every other potential connection under the sun, because these are the ones that are really going to make or break your business. But let's talk about those. Like how did you identify those? And then we'll get into kind of the initial outreach? The first thing is getting really clear on who your customer is.

6:36Really the biggest main question is, where are they already hanging out? Where are they online already? What other brand or website or company has, maybe they have a really big budget and they've already spent the money to acquire the customers that you also want to acquire. So maybe it's a software company. When you're filling out that Dream 100 list of who to partner with, think about who has your exact same target audience, but is not a competitor. And that brings us back to talking about why niching down is important. Because in my case, I'm doing email marketing and SMS marketing for eCommerce brands.

7:11Now, I can go to another agency even, or someone who's a blogger with a big audience, but they teach about SEO, specifically SEO for eCommerce. And now we're not competitors. So they don't have to worry about me trying to siphon their audience for my business and I don't have to worry about the same thing from them. So we can actually form a good partnership, do a good workshop and cheer each other on instead of feeling like we have to compete because our target audience is the same. They're also providing SMS and email marketing services. Like, why do we want to put this guy in front of our email list, in front of our audience?

7:44But that makes total sense. I remember Joshua Lysik, we did an episode on the OPA plan, other people's audiences, where he was doing these in-person virtual lunch and learns for his copywriting business or web design, web development business back in the day. And it was like, I target kind of local small business owners. So he would reach out to accounting offices, legal offices in his town and bring people in that way. It's like, these companies don't offer what I do, but their customers need this or their customers might want to learn this. And so he followed this kind of same strategy on an in-person basis.

8:18But let's say, okay, now you have your list. I like this software companies, bloggers, online influencers, even YouTubers, people who may have a list with some of your target customers on it, even other agencies, if they're not direct competitors. What's that initial outreach like? Hey, I'm just curious to see what that email or direct message might look like. Definitely varies. It comes down to a few key things. One thing that I believe is that there's no such thing as a good cold email. You can read all kinds of blog posts or watch YouTube videos on how to write the perfect cold email. But I just don't believe that even exists.

8:50Anything that feels cold is cold and doesn't get opened. The cold emails that do well are actually warm emails. So if it's someone you don't know, which in most cases it's going to be, you have to find a way to make it feel warmer. So a good example of this is when you're making your list of people to reach out to, to teach these workshops in front of their audience, think about what services you've already used or what blogs you already read to stay on top of some of this stuff for yourself. And then that way, when you're reaching out, you can say, hey, I listen to your podcast every week. I love it.

9:23This last episode with so-and-so really made me look at my business differently in this way and that way. And it really helped. And I just wanted to say thank you. So that's a really easy way to give a compliment that's genuine and authentic. But that just makes it feel warmer. It makes it feel like there's some kind of connection, like you know who they are, even if they don't know who you are yet. And that helps that opening line get read and the email continue to be read instead of it going straight into the trash. Right. I'm starting to think of cold emails that I get and they do, they do a good job of making it feel warmer.

9:53Hey, Nick, long time listener here. Something like that. You know, yeah, that gets my attention versus some random. And now of course I'm going to get, that's going to be like the first line of every email that I get. Yeah, sorry. The other element here that might be worth looking into, and this is something that I try and do if there's a guest that I want to get on is looking for mutual connections and saying, hey, would you mind passing along an intro? So through Facebook, through LinkedIn, like you probably only one or two degrees of separation away from anybody. So I imagine that may be another way to make that introduction a little bit warmer.

10:29But what else do you have on this outreach and pitch part? That's probably even better in most cases is if you know somebody who can give an intro kind of vouch for you. The other thing to think about is I learned this from Noah Kagan and it just stuck with me. He said, always remember WIFT, what's in it for them. So I always think about that when I'm writing an email is look at how many times you wrote I in your email. Like how many sentences start with the word I? Like I listen to your podcast. I want to partner with you. I think that I will do a great job. Is your email so focused on you that it's not even providing any value to the person you're trying to partner with?

11:06Because at the end of the day, if it's not a win for you, a win for the partner and a win for their audience, then it's a lose. It has to be a win-win-win. So focusing on what's in it for them. And it doesn't mean you can't talk about yourself a little bit because you need to, to establish some credibility and you need to say, I'm reaching out because there's this specific topic that I know a lot about. And I get really good results for our clients. And I think that your audience would get a ton out of this. So that's the value then is I think your audience would get a lot of value out of this because...

11:40And so always keep getting there as fast as possible so that they start to think, is this actually good for my audience? And so if you can establish that it's good for them and their audience, they're a lot more likely to say yes, which is the third and final part of cold emails, or I should say warm emails, is making it as easy as possible to say yes. If you have a specific pitch for them, break down exactly how it's going to go. And in this case, workshops, breaking down, I want to teach this workshop. Here are the topics that I want to cover. We can use my software. I already pay for it. You don't have to pay for it.

12:16I will build the landing page. I will create email copy that I'll send to you to send out to your audience so you don't have to write it. I'll create a graphic and send it to you so you can post it on social media. Put things in there to assure them that this isn't going to be a laborious project for them and that you're going to handle all of the hard work. All they have to do is help you promote to their audience and get the pats on the back. Still to come in this episode, what Dustin calls the magic sauce for his business, how he structures his workshops and the soft sell way he converts attendees into paying clients.

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14:48If you want to give your customers the best shopping experience this holiday season, you need Shopify. This Black Friday, join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash side hustle. That's shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle and make this Black Friday one to remember. Okay. Do you ever get anybody coming back to you and say, yeah, that sounds good, but I want a 50 % referral commission on anything you sell off the back end? And you're like, well, it's an agency, so the margins are, you know, that's a little more tricky than a digital product.

15:27Do you get that kind of like, oh, I want a piece of the action? Man, you know, it's funny. I don't think I've ever gotten someone reply with that. But that is something that I offer sometimes, depending on who. I'm actually doing one next week, next Thursday, where we have an agreement of how much, you know, how we'll split the commission. So like you said, it's a fine line with margins on an agency, you can't give away everything, or it's not worth it, of course. But one thing that I do is I like, I also have some digital products and stuff. So sometimes that'll be a part of the, of what the workshop is.

15:57In that case, if it's a digital product, I mean, it's pretty much 100 % margin, right? So I can give them 50%. And that's no problem at all to me, I'd much rather pay 50 % of a$100 product for everything that's sold to people that I never would have gotten in front of to begin with, or I would have had to spend$99 to get in front of them to sell them a$100 product. It's still a better deal than straight advertising. So on the agency side, what we do is a$500 referral. So if we get a client and they stick with us for at least three months, which everyone is contractually obligated to stick with us for least three months.

16:33So that's easy enough. Then we pay out 500 bucks. That's a nice way to push someone over the edge who isn't quite sure, or maybe they have a really big audience and they have a tight calendar. That's a nice way to kind of squeeze yourself into their calendar. Okay. That makes sense. So most people are not necessarily looking for that or asking for that upfront, but it can be a way to sweeten the deal. Especially like you said, if they're giving you a warm introduction to their audience and you're making money off of that, then you make it a win for them. And we've talked about different strategic complementary partnerships.

17:06I think this is an interesting way to do that too. Anything else on the outreach and pitch front that you have seen deliver success? One example is, this isn't necessarily a strategy to seek out because you can't really, it's kind of more of an inbound type of thing. But I recently had a software company set up a call with me to pitch me on using their software for my clients. in the call. I guess just looking for opportunities to pitch also. So on the call, I said, we actually already do have some clients that use your software. And the other ones, I will definitely put it in front of them and tell them the pros and cons of using it.

17:43What do you think about also doing a workshop in front of your audience? That was the fastest 2000 email subscribers I've ever gotten in my life. It was just from this software company that was pitching me just being able to say, honestly like we already use you so this is great let's do something together and i was able to give a lot of value back to them and teach their software to their customers so looking for opportunities to pitch where it's kind of a no-brainer yes it really comes in handy so keeping it top of mind and not always thinking just about it's not all about going straight for the sale sometimes it's trying to do these workshops and keeping it top of mind how you can partner with different companies yeah i like this a lot especially the software angle we've talked about the software with a service business model business angle before i've seen people do this with asana and quickbooks and salesforce and you know sem rush and all these different ones where it's like if i'm an hrefs customer for example for seo and keyword research hrefs doesn't have at least to my knowledge a an in-house team where they're like we'll just do it for you so it's like that might be if you're an seo service provider if you're an agency to reach out to them as just as an example to say, hey, I want to teach people how to use your software better.

19:00Or, you know, here are seven things you didn't know you could do in this tool to skyrocket your thing. Because a certain percentage of that audience is going to be like, that sounds super cool. I just don't have the time to do it myself. Could you do it for me? And that's like your ideal customers. I like this software company angle, like piggybacking on the popularity of an existing software and existing audience. In your email, you say, well, I'm going to make it as easy for them as possible to say, yes, we'll use my hosting software, we'll use my landing page, anything like that. What does a tech stack look like today?

19:31What makes the most sense for you for email collection, for webinar hosting, all that stuff? For my website, I use Webflow. I used to use WordPress. I still really like WordPress. I think I have a couple of sites still on WordPress. But Webflow has been really cool as far as being able to drag and drop design a little bit easier and make it look a little cleaner. So I've been enjoying using that. So I'll pair that with ConvertKit is what I use for email capture, things like that. And obviously for the email marketing side of things, which ties into the workshops because in the workshops, there's always a call to action for them to go opt into something.

20:06And then there's drip campaigns that come after that to help me close sales that way. For the actual webinar, I use Webinar Ninja, which I've been really happy with so far. competitive on their pricing and the streamability is really strong for the most part. And also, when I build landing pages, I just use Webinar Ninja's landing page for signing up for the workshops. And it works really well. They have good kind of automated emails after people register. It sends them a sequence of emails like, you're registered, here's your information, all that kind of stuff. And I like that you can go in and edit those and you can add more or subtract.

20:44So they have a lot of... Webinar Ninja does a good job of getting you 90 % of the way there. And then you can kind of just add in the extra little parts that you want to make it personal for you and your business. Okay, so the process flow would be this outreach and pitch. Like, hey, I'd like to host this workshop. Here's the email copy to send people out to, I'll build the landing page. People register for it on that landing page after your partner sends out that email. And it's like, here's the date and time, enter your email to register. At least for my business, that's the magic sauce, is if you can be the one who hosts the workshop yourself, using your software and having it go to your email list.

21:23That's not always the case, especially with bigger brands or bigger software companies who don't want you to have their customer data, which I can understand. A lot of software companies, like really big ones, they already do workshops, like they'll do monthly workshops. So they kind of already have a system for it. So you're really just pitching yourself to be one of those guest workshop people. they already have it all figured out. And that's great too, because you can go on there and still get in front of thousands of people in an hour. But I really like when I can control the setup process and collect those emails.

21:57Because then even the people who... Let's say you get in front of 300 people that signed up for the webinar, and maybe you get one sale out of it. That's still awesome. But what's more awesome is now you have 299 other email addresses that you can put into a drip campaign. I'm explaining more about your business or teaching them so that they become more comfortable with you for when they are ready to work with you. They work with somebody, they pick you. You can put them in your newsletter. So it's just establishing that relationship even stronger. So if you can set it up yourself, it's great.

22:30And a lot of companies appreciate it because they might not have the internal teams to even know how to do that. Maybe they've never done a webinar in their life. So it seems daunting. So to come in and say, don't worry, I'll handle all the tech is really a big win for a lot of brands. Yeah, totally. That would be me. I don't know if I've been on the hosting side of a webinar, co-hosted lots, but never been the one to fully run and set up the whole thing. Going back, especially the company that already has, oh, we do a monthly webinar for our customers already. That's a fantastic target. And Tailwind comes to mind.

23:01It's like a Pinterest scheduling software. You have some killer Pinterest strategy that might be worthy of sharing. Or you're like, here's how to design eye-catching video pins in Canva or something like that might be compelling for them. ActiveCampaign comes to mind as well. Like, here's the crazy, simple sales funnel that worked for me in ActiveCampaign. I don't know, like maybe they're already doing this and it's easier to insert yourself into their existing process rather than have them create a new process for you or do this totally one-off thing. So that was Webflow, drag and drop, Website Builder, ConvertKit for the email capture, or webinar ninja for the hosting and scheduling of the workshop itself.

23:39Any other must-have tools for you to make this happen? A couple more I was thinking about. One is just something like Keynote or Google Slides or PowerPoint, whatever. Something to make some slides. I just find it easier to teach that way on the workshops. But then for the outreach part, sometimes you can identify easily what company you want to partner with or pitch for doing a workshop, but you can't find the right person. And so that comes up a lot. I know I want to partner with Klaviyo. It's a big company. I can't just email their CEO or founder. It's not going to work. So a tool that I like to use is called hunter.io.