How do you launch a product in 7 days? Let me introduce you to Barry Moore. Barry trained as a combat pilot in the US Marines and
Ash Roy (00:00):
So, Barry, you’re the man who understands funnels and understands how to create beautiful automated funnels. You’ve really been trained and process being a combat pilot, so can you talk to us a little bit about how one goes about thinking about creating a simple offer that converts their skills into cold, hard cash in this very difficult environment today?
Barry Moore (00:22):
Yeah. I’ve had kind of two lives as a military pilot and that I took a big break, 10 to 12 years out of flying altogether and I worked in technology and e-commerce and if you’ve been in the internet marketing for any amount of time, you always hear the phrase your business on autopilot, right? And it’s always been uttered by someone who’s never touched an autopilot ever in their life, right? They wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how autopilot works, but how autopilot works. It doesn’t just do stuff by magic. It only does the stuff you’ve programmed it to do.
Ash Roy (00:55):
Welcome back to the productive insights podcast. This is Ash Roy, the founder of productiveinsights.com and the host of the productive insights podcast and I’m very excited to welcome back Barry Moore, who was previously on episode 177 where Barry and I talked about automation and a little bit about tagging. Now when we spoke before we promised that we would come back and talk about tagging and further detail, which we are going to do in this two-part series, but before we do that, I want to just reintroduce Barry to you. Barry is an ex US Marine who trained as a combat pilot and these days flies commercial planes and when he’s not doing that, he’s cooking up some insanely useful courses on marketing and automation and you can find out more about them at theactivemarketer.com I’ve known Barry for a few years, I think very highly of him.
Ash Roy (01:44):
I’ve had some really bright people on this podcast and I consider Barry as being one of those when he’s not charming others with his boyish good looks and bracing around India in Oderick shows, he is talking to people like me on the productive insights podcast. So welcome back, Barry.
Barry Moore (02:04):
Thanks, Ash. Thanks for having me, man. It’s good to be here again.
Ash Roy (02:06):
Great to have you on the show, bro. You know, just a quick shout out to all the defense personnel out there. The doctors, the nurses, the firefighters, the cops, they really are keeping us safe in a very difficult time right now, which we are all going through in the world facing this Coronavirus, which is nasty as all hell. People like Barry who previously served in the forces and people who are currently serving in the forces. I just want to say thank you to all those people out there. I’m very grateful to everyone, so just a big shout out to those people. So thank you.
Barry Moore (02:38):
Yeah, for sure. All the first responders, you know, Australia’s doing it tough. We had those fires a few months ago and then all the firefighters there and now that all the health workers are kind of under siege. So yeah, my appreciation as well.
Ash Roy (02:50):
Thank you for your service for the years that you spend in the US defense force and I believe sometime in the Australian defense force too, right?
Barry Moore (02:56):
That’s right. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate that.
Ash Roy (02:58):
Welcome man. All right, so very, we talked about automation in the previous episode, episode 177 you can find out more about that if you’ve got a productiveinsights.com/177. In this episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about how to create a quick offer if you find yourself in a very difficult situation. A lot of business owners, our listeners probably are finding themselves in a position where they don’t have a business overnight or their business has fundamentally changed because the government has brought in these social distancing laws for good reason. Some people can’t interact with their clients like they used to. A lot of them are scrambling to create offers online. So very, you’re the man who understands funnels and understands how to create beautiful fluent fluid automated funnels, and you’re a master of doing that, right? You’ve really been trained in the process of being a combat pilot by training. So can you talk to us a little bit about how one goes about thinking about creating a simple offer that converts their skills into cold, hard cash in this very difficult environment today?
Barry Moore (04:08):
Yeah, I’ve had, I’ve had kind of two lives, well three really as a military pilot, and then I took a big break 10 or 12 years out of flying altogether, and I worked in technology and e-commerce and worked in that online space for 10 years and then went back to flying and still have the marketing director marketer on the side there. And if you’ve been in internet marketing for any amount of time, you always hear the phrase, you know your business on autopilot, right? And it’s always been uttered by someone who’s never touched an autopilot ever in their life, right? It wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how autopilot works. But how autopilot works. It doesn’t just do stuff by magic. It only does the stuff you’ve programmed it to do. So if you’ve programmed it to do stupid sh**, guess what it’s going to do stupid sh**.
Barry Moore (04:54):
Right? So it will quite happily fly you into the side of the mountain if that’s what it’s programmed to do. So it’s not about just having automation and having this magic button that’s just going to do everything for you. It’s about building that automation and flows that work and making sure you monitor them. So if you’re flying an airplane on autopilot, you’re not asleep. You’re watching it to make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. And if it’s not, if it’s not, you make corrections, right? The first thing you need to do if you have an established business is looking at those processes that are currently resulting in sales and, and then look at, follow the steps of the process all the way through and look for opportunities to automate that process if you’re starting from scratch. So, you know, at the moment a lot of people have lost their jobs where they’ve been stood down or laid off or whatever, and now they’re worried about where the next kind of money’s coming from.
Barry Moore (05:45):
Do you know? And as Warren Buffet said, when the tide goes out, you find out who’s been swimming naked, right? So a lot of people are finding out that a single source dependence or depending on an employer for all your income, your one single sole source of is now maybe not such a great idea. So people like you and me, we want to help people out there find a new way that they can make some money online or pivot in existing visits to make it online. One of the really great things to watch at the moment with this whole Corona apocalypse going on is watching some businesses pivot and come up with new products and new services and new ways to deliver where you know, some people, on the other hand, are just sitting there clutching their pearls and wringing their hands and saying it’s the end of the world. Right? But the people who are really kind of in control of their destiny are the ones that are pivoting and changing. You know, I’ve seen everything from, you know, all these restaurants are closed down, so we’re going to take away, but now they need people to deliver all that takeaway. And I saw an article where all the strip clubs have been closed, obviously. Right? So all the strippers are now doubling up as takeaway.
Barry Moore (06:45):
You know, so what a great pivot. What a great pivot. And you know, our friend Dan Norris, for those of you familiar with him, he seems around online a lot. You know, he, he started a brewery a few years back and it’s going great guns. And then obviously when all the restaurants and the post got closed down, you know, no more distribution to restaurants and pubs and that kind of thing. So he’s at a pivot wherein a couple of days he built an app where you could go in, log in and say you want home delivery. So now the breweries are doing home delivery straight to people’s homes. So from the roof to the home with all the salespeople that are currently didn’t have any work now, right. Because they’re, they’re, you know, their sales reps for all these pubs and restaurants and that’s all closed down.
Barry Moore (07:26):
So now they’re going straight to the consumer, you know, so you know, he’s done his own little kind of mini seven-day startup there and created a home delivery business. So 24 hours from the time it’s brewed, it’s in your house, you know, which is pretty cool. That’s brilliant. So what I suggest to people, if you’re a little bit panicked about being laid off or out of work or whatever is, start looking for that pivot. Start looking for that way that you can either the pivot in an existing business or start a new one. Just start a new one from scratch, whether it’s a side hustle, whether it’s going to be an ongoing concern, whenever that’s going to be, you have the opportunity here to really make a change instead of waiting for something to happen to you. Go out and make it happen.
Ash Roy (08:04):
Sure. Now I just want to make a couple of points around that Barry, I really liked what you said around when it’s on autopilot. That doesn’t mean you’re asleep at the wheel. You’ve got to watch it and make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. That’s important learning for me because particularly now I do need to go back and check all my autoresponder sequences and make sure that they are not tone-deaf given the current circumstances. And that I’m not saying things that are inappropriate because I am going to be judged by the content that goes out from my email address and is on my website. It’s not an easy job, but it’s gotta be done. So that’s the first point I want to make. The second point is rubbish in rubbish out. So if you, if you don’t have a good clear strategy and a good clear plan as to what you’re going to sell and how you’re going to sell it and to whom you’re going to sell it, right, then you can automate the life out of it.
Ash Roy (08:56):
You’re just going to get to rubbish faster or rubbish the outcome faster. So the underlying asset as it were in terms of when I say asset, I mean the process, sorry, that you’re automating that unload process needs to be solid and make sense. The third thing I want to say is I just recently recorded a three-part series with Carl Taylor from the automation agency. I’ve got a lot of time for him and his structure is called the protect, pivot and profit. And I think that’s a very good framework to use to adapt and survive in this environment. And that will be episodes 192, 193, 194 and you can access them productiveinsights.com./192, 193, 194 respectively. And also on the YouTube channel. Okay, Barry. So look for the pivot. What’s next?
Barry Moore (09:42):
Well if you could get a pivot, um, either your pivot in an existing business or starting from scratch. So let’s just, let’s talk about the starting from scratch thing first. Cause that’s probably where people are. A lot of people are at the moment. So if you need to generate some income tomorrow or you know, by the end of the week, let’s say, it’s totally doable. And I think people get overwhelmed, you know, if, if they haven’t traditionally worked in that online space, they get overwhelmed by all the different things you could do. Or how technically complex it may be or if that’s not for me or you need a whole team or whatever and all that’s rubbish, right? So really just kinda need four core things. You need an audience and offer a landing page, you know, to display that offer to people. You don’t even really need that in a way to take some money away to make some money online.
Barry Moore (10:30):
So, and I think people get all wrapped up in trying to be perfect as well. Just get it done. Just get it started. Like you can, you can fix the train when it’s in motion, but get the train started because there are so many people who, you know, what’s the logo look like, what our college is gonna look like, what our fonts will look like. It’s like you don’t need any of that stuff. Where’s your bank account look like? Right? Let’s get some money coming in, right? You can fix all the rest of that stuff on the way.
Ash Roy (10:51):
So let’s pretend I’m a listener right now. I’ve decided to start from scratch. The first thing you’ve said to me, and I’m like, what? I can start a business in a week. I can be making money in a week. That sounds really hard to believe. And particularly when I’m in this really negative mindset, I’ve lost my job, I’ve lost my business. So one thing I would say is the mindset is important. You’ve got to believe this can be done. I personally have struggled with a mindset for years, so I’m the last person that should be saying this, but I think that it’s essential. So, Barry, you’ve got an awesome mindset. How do you do this? How do you bring your mind from, Oh no, the sky is falling to I can do this.
Barry Moore (11:29):
I think you have to take action, right? I think you really have to just get in the game. Like once you’re in motion, you know, an object in motion was, tends to stay in motion. Newton’s laws, right? An object at rest tends to stay at rest, right? So everyone’s at rest at the moment, right? So get in motion, do something, make something happen. And that first thing will lead you to a second thing. And that second thing will lead you to a third thing and the fourth thing and a fifth thing, right? You are the master, you’re the captain, you’re the master of your fate and the captain of your soul, right? Nobody, you weren’t born being dependent on someone for handouts for the rest of your life. So don’t, don’t have that mentality, right? The government kinda, I always say that you know, the government does a lot of great things.
Barry Moore (12:07):
Don’t get me wrong, they’re doing, they’re doing a lot to help people at the moment. But by and large, governments are drug dealers and the drug that they pedal is dependent, right? You need to depend on us, needed to depend on us for everything you need depend on us for your old age, you need to depend on us. For your safety, you need to depend on us for a license to drive the car. Like you need to depend on us for everything. So people just become lazy, independent, right? I have the mindset that I’m not owed anything. And anything I make, I’m going to create myself and I’m not dependent on anybody. Um, and I understand that everyone’s kind of in that same boat, but you can take action. You can, you can do it now. So find the one thing you can do today to take action. And I don’t mean next week, and I don’t mean by Friday. I mean today. What can you do today to get that train in motion? Right? And just find that one thing. If you want to talk about like starting a business, people will always come up with 20 reasons why they can’t. And I say, Oh, you need is one reason why you can, you know, just forget the other 20.
Ash Roy (13:05):
So last time we use this excellent example about running shoes and I loved how we weave that through the conversation because it made it that much more tangible. So today, let’s pretend that I’m a coach and I’ve had a bunch of clients and 50% of my clients have canceled, or 80% of my clients have canceled. My main method of delivery was person to person. And that’s one of the reasons. So many of them are canceled. I’ve got to come up with who’s my audience, what’s my offer? What’s the equivalent of my landing page? If I need one, maybe I don’t, maybe a Facebook page will do, maybe an email address will do, I dunno. And how do I accept cash? What do I do? What do I do today? Okay.
Barry Moore (13:44):
Today I would say the very first, the most important thing you just said in that whole sentence there is cash, right? So the first thing we need to be able to do is, is take cash from someone. You know, even if it’s, you know, I can ring somebody if I can send them an email. And so even as you know, my existing customers, I can give them a different offer or whatever. I still need to be able to make some money. So have you been taking money in person? We’re bank transfers or whatever you need to move that kind of to an online thing. So the first thing you can do, if you haven’t already set up a PayPal account, takes five minutes, maybe a day or two to go back and forth with the paperwork and then you, you had the ability to take PayPal payments and most people don’t realize you can take credit card, normal credit card payments as well.
Barry Moore (14:22):
Yep. The PayPal interface is a little bit confusing. So if, if you’re trying to get a payment from someone who’s not necessarily familiar with PayPal and they don’t have an account but they want to use a credit card, it’s not really terribly immediate, the obvious. So you might want to have a secondary system to take credit cards. The easiest one I’ve seen and the quickest to set up and the most painless to get going, you might not want to use it forever, is something called MoonClerk. Right? MoonClerk you can be up and running with a payment form in literally five minutes and you can be taken. You can be taking credit card payments from somebody.
Ash Roy (14:53):
That’s very helpful. Thank you. So I was thinking Stripe, but Stripe is more complex.
Barry Moore (14:57):
Well, Stripe doesn’t necessarily have a user interface that goes along with it. It’s kind of…
Ash Roy (15:01):
Right, right. So you mean the checkout cart element?
Barry Moore (15:05):
Yeah. Yeah. So that you know where you put your name and your credit card number and the expiry date and you hit pay, boom. Got you to need that. We need that form. Right. And MoonClerk has that and it can integrate with Stripe and everything else. Right? So, and it’s easy to do, like anybody who can use word or Excel or any kind of computer can have one of these things moonclerk forms up and running. That’s what I first started with when I started my business. Right. Cause that could be up and running in today. And then I would say if you had an established business, like a coaching business, how can you pivot? Right? So if you were delivering face-to-face, how do you deliver it online? And there are lots of ways you can do that.
Barry Moore (15:39):
You can just do what we’re doing now over Skype. You bill somebody for an hour’s time, get him to pay you, boom, you’re on Skype, you don’t need anything fancy, right? Or maybe you want to, to move to a more scalable thing, which is something to worry about later, right? So she’s still tip, you’re still trading time for money. So well how can we scale that instead of having one on ones, how can I have one to many? So you might want to put a, you might want to turn, you know, turn your normal kind of curriculum into an online course and put it onto something or any of the online course platforms. There’s half a dozen of them and you can be up and running with that and you know, in a few days as well. And you might want to look at what have I traditionally taught and what has that taught me as a person who coaches that.
Barry Moore (16:21):
So, you know, if I’m a physical trainer, well that’s also taught me leadership and it’s also taught me nutrition. And it’s also taught me a bunch of other things. Mindset, for example, that I could turn into different separate courses now. So instead of just being a PT physical trainer, now I’ve got these courses on training courses, on nutrition, I got courses on mindset, you know, and you can have varying levels, beginner levels, advanced levels and stuff like that. So you can take that knowledge that you’ve learned along the way and put it to work. And if you’re one of these employees, a traditional employee type model where you’ve lost your job, maybe you’re a, you’re a writer or you’re a graphic designer or a social media person or accountant or whatever skill that you have that you are going to the office and trading your nine to five life for, I guarantee you can almost always sell that online.
Barry Moore (17:08):
Right now if you’re a truck driver, that makes it a little bit more difficult. But if you’re kind of any kind of information worker or any kind of intellectual property worker, you can go to sites like Upwork, right? Where there’s always people looking for writers. There are always people looking for web developers. There are always people looking for editors, accountants, anything you can think of, you could probably take your skill and set it. Now if you’re a truck driver or something like that, then you’re going to need to pivot a little bit more generally. But there are outlets that exist now where you can sell whatever idea it is that you have to say.
Ash Roy (17:39):
I’ve got things like Upwork, Fiverr, but from what I’ve seen, they pay very low wages. Are you saying that’s a starting point? I mean I appreciate Fiverr has got what in marketing we would call a loss leader where you offer something for five bucks, but it’s a way in, and then you can upsell them.
Barry Moore (17:56):
Right? Get the cash register ringing. If that’s your main concern right now, get it ringing with something because something always leads to something else, right? Yes. I love that. The upsell, like you said, right? No one, I guarantee no one’s sitting in the same place they were like 10 years ago. Right? Everyone’s kind of, there’s, there’s a magic to momentum if you will.
Ash Roy (18:15):
I want to say something that really exemplifies what you just said. When I started my membership site, I was giving away four hours of my time, face to face. A lot of people thought that was insane and I was only charging 99 us dollars a month. I still am actually, but I give away a lot less time. Now I’m giving away only two and soon that’s going to get phased outright. And the prices are going up. But for me, I saw it as market research because even though they paid me what was effective $25 an hour, I was learning a hell of a lot about the market. And when I was serving those people in the private discussions thread, which they got access to inside my membership, I could serve them that much better because I’d spent so much time understanding each of their businesses and every one of my founding members, I really understand them very well. So I agree with you. I don’t think it needs to be the finished product from day one. The point is you need to start somewhere, but you got to start. So that’s a great point. So you got your momentum
Barry Moore (19:09):
And you know what, just to capitalize on that point you just made. Yeah, you are learning a lot, but you were getting paid to learn.
Ash Roy (19:16):
Exactly, exactly. So I saw it as paid market research. You know, if you, if you reframe it in your mind instead of saying, Oh, I’m only getting paid 99 bucks for four hours because they could cancel after a month. The fact is nobody canceled after a month. So if the average tenure is something around about a year, I think been doing this for just over a year, but it’s because I invested all that time up front to really understand the business and then create content that was really useful for the members inside the membership program. And by the way, that’s another important pivot. You always have the option to create a hybrid in terms of an offering. So you can have some kind of a membership offering where you have courses and training and so on behind a paywall. We do charge a recurring fee for, but then you can augment that with one-on-one calls, maybe for a discounted fee for the members or something like that that allows you to, to some degree, get off the time for money treadmill, but still make some income.
Ash Roy (20:14):
I’m not saying that you can do that on day one, but I’m saying that’s something you can build up to. The key here is, as you said, Barry, get momentum.
Barry Moore (20:22):
The magic and momentum umbrella.
Ash Roy (20:23):
Yep, absolutely. Okay, so I’m this coach, I’ve decided, okay, I’m going to offer my services via Skype or zoom or whatever. I can no longer offer them in person. Now I come up with an offer, I make it outrageously valuable to the customer. I might say, okay, just for you as a founding member or just for this week, I’ll give you four face to face sessions for an upfront of $200 whatever you want to charge. So that’s a compelling offer. What do I do next?
Barry Moore (20:54):
So you need, you need to make people aware of that offer, right? So the easiest way to do that, if you’re trying to get some money ringing by the end of the week, you probably have, hopefully, you have some email of all those customers and you’ve got to meet in a, in a list somewhere, even if that’s in your Gmail account or your outlook account, you know, you still have a list of customers. On top of that, you probably got some friends on Facebook followers on, you know, followers on Facebook and Instagram, social media platforms. And then I would say put that off or out in whatever medium you have at the moment, right? To get to cash registering and tomorrow it doesn’t have to be fancy. Just send an email out, put some posts on Facebook, Instagram, uh, let people know that it’s available, right?
Barry Moore (21:34):
And have a link to your payment page if for nothing else, if you don’t have a sales pitch, you don’t have a landing page done up yet. Have it how it goes, because these people already know you. They already trust you there. I have a relationship with you. You can probably just drive them straight to a payment page, right? which you can create, on moonclerk right in in a matter of minutes. So at the very least I can take what I’m doing offline, creating an online version of that, blast that out to everyone who knows me already through all the different channels that they know me through, drive them to that payment form and hopefully some percentage of those people will book. And then as you said, I’m going to learn less than, so let’s say 20 people sign up, I’m going to learn lessons from those 20 people and then I’m going to want to find out or I want to take notes on what are the common themes that each of these people struggles with, right?
Barry Moore (22:21):
So 15 out of the people’s 15 out of the 20 people struggle with this. None other people struggle with that. Then those become the elements that I can turn into an online course that anyone can take, right? Because those problems are mass appeal to everyone and they’re not specific. And then I can, I can record that using that same camera that I use for Skype. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Everyone’s got a phone these days and that camera’s well good enough. Yep. To record from and then get that up either on my, either on a website or on one of the learning platforms, like ThinkIIT. I think it’s called now. Something like that, right? Where I can put it up there. They’ve got all the payment stuff already there, right? And then I can just migrate it all to that particular platform.
Barry Moore (23:02):
Now eventually you might want to have your own websites set up, but we’re talking about immediate money. So use the infrastructure that’s there to the best of ability because that’s going to give you the quickest wins. Once you’ve got some wins on your belt, then you can think about what’s next. What’s phase two of this business requires. I know there are some people sitting, standing out there and listening to this going, well, I don’t have any skills, right? I’m not a coach or I don’t have this. I don’t have that. Here’s the magic of the internet. You don’t even have to sell your own product, right? It doesn’t have to be your product, but a guarantee, you know something about something and you can share that knowledge with somebody. The most obscure one I’ve ever heard is a friend of mine is his camper. He loves to go camping.
Barry Moore (23:40):
And in the summertime, I’ll tell you, in Queensland, it’s brutally hot in the summertime, right? So he got like a tent air conditioner. I’ve never even heard of these things. But like a tent like you’ve probably never heard of it. I’ve never heard of that. So he set up a webpage all about 10 air conditioners and just basically sells the affiliate links from Amazon, like $1,500 a month just having a page that talks about 10 air conditioners, right? And linking to a product on Amazon. So my point being, you don’t have to have a product or service that you sell yourself. There are plenty of products and services out there. You can sell somebody else’s product like the Amazon affiliate program but as ClickBank. But there are affiliate programs for almost every online product. You can think of including my own, right? So you can sell somebody else’s product.
Barry Moore (24:26):
So if you know something about camping or you know some like, let’s take that truck driver example again. Sky’s truck drivers out of work now can’t drive a truck online. So how am I going to pivot? Well, you could pivot by talking about all the other things that go along with driving a truck. Like do you want to become a truck driver? Here’s what you’re going to need to know. I’ll do, you know, I’ll do a little free mini course on, here are all the points that you need to know about becoming a truck driver. So you need to get this kind of license. Here’s the truck driving schools that are reputable. You can go to those, you can get kickbacks or, or you know, referral.
Ash Roy (24:58):
You can create content on how to prep for a, for a long trip, how to prep for the exam, how to pack, where the pit stops are and certain routes. You could come up with all sorts of stuff.
Barry Moore (25:08):
What kind of products are you going to take with you on the road? I’m going to take this kind of esky and this kind of stereo and here’s the best music and the best CB radio and link to those affiliate products on Amazon.
Ash Roy (25:19):
And if you use Amazon, I believe, Barry, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think if you sell, say even a book on Amazon and if somebody buys a fridge within 24 hours or within the same transaction or something like that, you end up getting a certain amount of time. Yeah. You get an affiliate commission for that as well. Is that correct? So affiliate marketing, you do need quite a bit of volume, but it’s a start. It’s a way where you can sell a product and fulfill the product without actually having to create the product. And that’s the beauty of the affiliate marketing. You just create the funnel, you find the right audience, you put the offer in front of them and you get paid for that.
Barry Moore (25:56):
Yeah. It. Just think about what you, what are your friends ask you about all the time when you’re talking. Like me, I, I like, I love to ride motorcycles, right? I’ve got a Honda Africa Twin motorcycle in the garage to a bunch of adventure riding off-road kind of stuff. You know, people always asking me, what kind of GPS do you have on there? Kind of helmet do you have, what kind of Bluetooth connected do you have? What kind of jacket do you have? What kind of boots are you wearing? Right? That’s all content you can create and link to those products, right? So find a niche. The narrower the niche, the better is probably a good place to start. And think about all your knowledge in that niche. And if you were going to, if you were trying to talk to yourself five years ago or 10 years ago, what would you tell yourself?
Barry Moore (26:33):
What would you buy? What would you buy? What are the pitfalls along the way? There’s always something you can pivot to. There’s always something you can sell. Ideally, it’s your own product, so you have 100% of that retain a hundred percent of the sale or close to it, 95% but if you want to get started today says a million products on Amazon that you can start selling or ClickBank or what are your favorite products that you use all the time? You know, like I knew a woman who was a flight attendant, one of the airlines that I worked for, she had twins and she could not get them to go to sleep, right? So she started an Instagram account called the sleep mama. Just lamenting like, how do I get these kids to go to sleep? Right? She’s got 75,000 followers now on Instagram has pivoted that business a couple of times now as one of these kinds of personality followings where she sells sleepwear that she’s helped design herself with her clothing line, cosmetics, kids stuff, kids clothes. Like she’s, she’s taken this problem that she’s had and turned it into, you know, she’s iterated it a number of times and turned it into a business selling basically other people’s products. So it can’t be done. It’s not easy. Nothing’s ever easy, but it’s easier if you start then if you, if you never start, right, you never get anywhere sitting on your butt, so get up and start walking.
Ash Roy (27:55):
Okay, so let’s wrap this one up. Action steps and key takeaways for me. We talked about the importance of having a good underlying process before you automate the process and we’ll be talking more about automation in the next part of this two-part conversation. The key takeaway for me on that one though is you can’t be asleep at the wheel. Even when you’re on autopilot. Autopilot doesn’t mean you goof off. Autopilot means you are watching the system to make sure it’s working the way it should be working. And then we talked about finding the pivot and we use the example of a coach who suddenly finds herself out of business because she was a face to face coach and she’s trying to pivot online, but you can insert whatever profession you want in there. The key idea here is you want to be able to productize your knowledge and present it as an offer. Ideally some form of consulting which can be delivered over Skype or zoom or whatever, and you need to have some kind of a way to accept payment. And MoonClerk is a great start.
Barry Moore (28:56):
It’s cheap, it’s easy. It gets you to get done in 10 minutes. Yep.
Ash Roy (28:59):
And we also talked about affiliate marketing. You can be selling stuff that can get fulfilled by Amazon. All you need to do is find the right market, create a compelling offer, and then drive people to that offer. If you create a course, you can use something like Thinkific or Kajabi, the new Kajabi, I think it’s called now, they’re a bit more expensive, but they’re pretty much all bells and whistles included. And there’s a bunch of course software out there that he could use and you can create a course and you can start accepting payments pretty much straight away. The other thing is you don’t have to have created the course completely. You do need to be honest about the fact that you haven’t created, in my opinion. So you might say that I’m looking to create a course in the next X weeks and I’m accepting upfront payments for a reduced fee and if I don’t have an interest I will refund your money. But right now I’m looking to looking for at least 10 people to participate in this course and if I get 10 you’ll get in at a discounted price, then the market price will be blocked. That way you can get some money in the door as well. Any other suggestions or ideas for people to get started today so they can get some money in the bank within a week from listening to this episode?
Barry Moore (30:06):
Yeah, if you’ve got some sort of marketable skill, anything from accounting to zoology or whatever, I guarantee there’s someone looking for that skill. So try places like Upwork, I would stay away from Fivrr, but places like Upwork, you can still get a decent amount of money for consulting. So you know, you’re, if you were going into an office from nine to five and someone was paying you to do whatever it is that you did, somebody else will probably pay you to do it. If possible. I guarantee that you probably know something about a particular subject. What do people ask you about? You can turn that into a source of knowledge and a source of income as well. And like as you said, what products do you use and really like and heavy, heavy used in the past and look about how you can sell those to other people or how you can become subject matter in those particular things as well.
Barry Moore (30:51):
And you know, I think the online course, you know we can create an online course, it’s kind of done to death but it works and it works and if you think you can’t do it, you’re wrong. Like Oh, you need a camera and a microphone and a whiteboard. My first, like I saw a hole in the market when I started this act to market or business, I think it was like 2004 maybe 2005 so a hole in the market for a particular product. It’s like nobody was talking about this product and it’s awesome. So I locked myself in a room with a whiteboard, top myself, the software today, just by going and clicking on everything in the software and going, how does this work? How does that work? How does this work? Test that? Oh, that doesn’t work. How it thought it works like this.
Barry Moore (31:27):
So I spent a day going through the software and figuring out how it works and then every question I had, I wrote down like, how does this work? How does that work? How does this other thing work? Now that I know this software, what would be the best way to get started? And I wrote an outline of a course on the board. I recorded the modules. The next two days, I recorded on an elect 20 modules, put it up on Udemi which I wouldn’t suggest doing that now, but putting it upon you to me and put some tweets out to people who followed me on Twitter, which was not very still, it’s not very many. And I got the first sale within like 36 hours or something like that. So it took me three day weekend to create the course and then two days later I was selling the course. Right. So and it costs me literally like $5 for a logo I bought off the graphic river or something like that for the course. What was it? That was the grand total of the expense. Uh, so it can be done. Like I know it can be done cause I’ve done and that course has iterated itself at a whole business grew out of that course. The six-figure business grew out of this stupid little course I created in a weekend
Ash Roy (32:32):
and fast forward to a few years later. And you became the first certified person to be trained by the active campaign.
Barry Moore (32:38):
First effective campaign certified consultant in the world, right? So, yep. It can’t be done. Like, and I didn’t have any special equipment. I didn’t have anybody helping me. I didn’t, you know, I hadn’t done this all my life. You know, I simply followed a formula laid out by James Schramko about how you created a course, right? You know, why are we doing this? How are we doing it? What’s next? Right? So I just went, okay, I’ll just follow that framework template, right? And boom, done. Like the magic of momentum that went from there to there and it’s still going to stay. That course has been updated because they in the time since then, but it still sells. It still sells every week ever getting money from that course.
Ash Roy (33:17):
What if someone listening will say, alright Barry, you’re a combat pilot and you were a Marine and you’re a machine. I’m not Barry Moore. How can I do it?
Barry Moore (33:27):
Well, um, you know, everybody can be a very moral kind of thing. But, um, I tell you what, I guarantee you is a combat pilot, doesn’t that teach you how to make online courses? Right? So just pivot man. Just pivot. Just do it. Just try it. Just ignore the little voice in your head and says you can’t and just do it anyway. Right.
Ash Roy (33:48):
But I love it. Alright, well thanks for being on the show Barry. How do people find out more about you and how do they get their hands on this awesome active marketer course?
Barry Moore (33:57):
Well hopefully by the time this goes live, the new version of the website will be ready, but just go over to the activemarketer.com and it should all be very self-explanatory. If it’s not, I haven’t done my job right. So just head over there and I’m sure Ash has some links in the show notes as well.
Ash Roy (34:11):
Yes, I’ll, I’ll put some links in there and I’ll also link to the activemarketer.com in the show notes as well. If you’re watching this on YouTube, I highly recommend you subscribe. If you’re not watching on YouTube, I highly recommend you watch it on YouTube. Stay tuned for the next part of this conversation where we will be talking about Barry’s super awesome tagging strategy, which I’m a big fan of and I think will make a big difference in your business. So I’ll see you again soon, Barry.
Barry Moore (34:38):
Thank you.