July 2018 Growth Report
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- Revenue, traffic, and visitors are all up
- How we maintain consistent growth
- Exciting new projects in the future
Matt: Hey everyone.
If you've been following these growth reports for a little while, you know that I usually like to do the Matt Hacks videos in just one take.
But this time, I thought it could be better. So, I gave the video to my team and I asked them how they thought we could improve it.
They said, "Matt, I think it's good, but you should go into more of the ‘how’ behind your results."
So that's what we're gonna try to do this time—and we'll keep it interesting, fun, and entertaining.
I know Mariana has like 10 jokes lined up. She actually researched them for this interview. Mariana, let's see your first joke right now. No pressure.
Mariana: No, no jokes.
Matt: I'm just kidding. All right. So, without further ado, where should we start? We can start anywhere.
Wins & Lessons Learned
Mariana: The first thing that I want to know is, how was this past month? What were the wins, and what were the lessons learned?
Matt: Okay. Wins for this month is a great place to start. Everyone loves to hear about revenue first.
Revenue was up 12% this past month, so, pretty good. And we almost cracked $6,000 in terms of month-over-month revenue.
So, up 12% and almost $6,000 in revenue.
I think this next month we'll probably crack 6,000. We're on a good track right now, and we're only about four or five days into the month.
And other wins:
- Traffic was up 6% in terms of just visits to the website. That took us from about 34,000 and change to 36,000 and change, just to give you context.
- Unique visitors were up even more by 8%.
- Email leads are about even—no real change. That’s about 1,250 - 1,300 email leads collected. But we haven't really been focusing on that.
I would say those are the top wins.
Also, I just want to say that my early morning routine has gotten very, very good. It's something kind of foreign to me, but I've been doing it very consistently for a little while now, and it feels great.
You get up, seize the day, carpe diem and all that. I get a good workout in, then tackle my plan for the day.
Mike Murdock said, “The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.”
I have my own little task planning system that I've developed and refined over the last couple of years. I won’t go into too much detail here, but if you guys are interested in learning what that system is,I can make a Matt Hack video on it in the future.
So, leave a comment if you’d like to hear more about that. It's literally the difference between doing half of the work in one day and double or triple the amount the next day.
How We Keep Growing
Mariana: How have you been doing this? How have you been accomplishing all these things? Are you doing something different from the past months? How have you been growing your revenue like that?
Matt: We started off the year really systematic, where each week we would focus on a different level of the funnel and just take action and complete tasks related to that level of the funnel.
So, for example, for traffic at the top we would write more content, change what we were writing, or change how we were promoting the content.
For other parts of the funnel, we might promote something more often, or email leads in the middle.
And then the fourth week we would concentrate on maximizing the lifetime value of an existing customer relationship. So, up-sells, down-sells, cross-sells, this sort of thing.
After all that, we’d kind of go back to the top of the funnel and repeat.
But, recently, in the last three months, we kind of turned off that system for the time being and have just been focusing really hard on the bottom of the funnel.
Part of that is because we have our most premium training right now, which is the Six-Figure Sales Funnel. We launched that so people can get access to it once every three months, but we had to work on making that more evergreen.
Now it's an ongoing launch once per month for new contacts entering our sales funnel. So the doors open, doors close.
I think getting better at that has helped a lot.
But, I think that one thing that has also held back sales. As an example, last year when we initially launched, we were an agency, so we were kind of doing this at the same time.
When we first launched the Six-Figure Sales Funnel, we made over $6,000 in one month from that one product. It was our best launch ever at the time.
Then in November and December of 2017, without even trying, it was just evergreen.
There were things that weren't perfect about it: there were no countdown timers, there was a lack of urgency in some places, and we still made about 5K and change in November and December.
Recently, I’ve been trying to think about how we can up sales for this premium product. One sale for this could equal several sales (or more) for our other smaller products, like the $50 Sales Funnel Diagram Pack, one of our top sellers.
So we've been putting a lot of focus on that and it's gotten better—that's been part of the reason our revenue grew by 12% this month.
But it can get even better because we've uncovered issues. As you go through things, you see issues that keep recurring, and things that you didn't even know about.
For example, we found that Thrive Themes (which I initially thought was the perfect tool) is kind of annoying.
And, as you know, we've been working with it for Vookies a little bit. There have just been some technical glitches where, for example, the pop-up won’t display on iPhones.
In addition, because of how it loads the page, it doesn't load it as fast as it would an HTML page. So, for that reason, this month coming up, we're going to make some changes and we're going to re-launch the landing page without Thrive Themes.
That's one specific action we'll be taking going forward to grow sales. So that's a little bit of the how.
Sticking To Your Guns
Mariana: What has happened with the refund request? I know that you had a particularly difficult case in this past month.
Matt: I'm sure any experienced entrepreneur can relate to this: since the start of this year, we have had hundreds of customers come to us and buy our products, and it’s very clearly stated on every page that we sell with a money-back guarantee.
There's more fine print with terms and conditions, but the most important facts are right there on the page.
For one of our beginner products, the Sales Funnel Blueprint, we offer a very, very generous money-back guarantee because we want people to get in there.
It's a low-dollar value offer relative to our more premium training like the Six Figure Sales Funnel. But we know that if people go through it, they'll want to recommend that other people sign up for it and perhaps also become students of the more premium training later on.
So, this one customer came to us a couple of weeks ago.
She bought the Sales Funnel Blueprint (which she got at a discount), and the money-back guarantee on the page is very generous. It's a double your money-back guarantee.
The way it works is, you can go through the training and within 60 days if you do not get results for some unforeseen reason (and you've done the worksheets and made an honest effort) we'll give you not just your money back, but we'll give you double your money back so that there is no risk involved.
You have 60 days to do that—and the course can actually be completed in about 15 minutes per day, or in as little as two weeks. So, pretty good deal.
But this one customer came to us and was just really unreasonable, right from the start.
She hadn’t completed the course and had actually only had it a short time, but she wanted all of her money back. She was just cursing at us, saying things like, "Give me my money back, or I'm going to sue you.
She even accused me of lying about my own name. She kept insisting that it was “Matt Hacks” and I was being dishonest (but, as you all know, I state my full name at the beginning of every video).
Incidentally, we did a little research and found out that this woman had recently been convicted of $1.5mm in a real estate scam.
As a business owner, these issues pop up and you have to deal with them. Sometimes you get a lemon of a customer and you just have to make the best of it.
In the end, I was really proud of our team. They were very professional in the way they responded to this unreasonable, angry customer.
We just informed her of the policy, which she didn't like, but we said, "Okay, sorry. This is what it is."
"You can do whatever you think is right, but, we're not going to be bullied into giving you a refund. That’s our policy and we stand by it."
And I think that was a win, too. In business, if someone tries to bully you, you don't have to give in.
A Change Of Pace
Mariana: You’ve been traveling for the past 11 months, and you were in Colombia for six months. How do you feel being here in New York, settling down? Is there any difference? Do you feel like you’ve been working better from here?
Matt: Well, in Colombia we had a fantastic view that was worth a million dollars by itself, and the US dollar is very strong in Colombia, too. So it was a great place to get work done, to be inspired by the view, and all that good stuff.
In New York, I'm currently staying with family and I don’t exactly have a dedicated work space. I do look forward to getting an apartment.
Just as an aside: we actually just went through the process of negotiating to get a brand new car that I'm very pleased with. We got a $30,000 car for about $12,000 off the price. I'll explain how I did that perhaps in an upcoming Matt Hack video.
But going through that process, I feel I learned a lot.
For example, the idea that apathy actually sells. To illustrate that point: when I was in a dealership looking at the car, I wasn't willing to give some information or something to the salesman, and it was just very easy for him to just put out his hand.
He said, "Okay, best of luck." and I was surprised by that.
It made me think, "Oh, like does he maybe know something about this car, or the price of this car relative to other cars in the market? Like, maybe he's just that confident that I should go back or do the research, or maybe I should stay and make a decision now? Am I missing out on something?"
So, I think that's one thing that I've learned from going through that process.
Getting back to the question, I think that having a dedicated quiet work space is really important.
I've been getting a lot of work done at the local library, but I look forward to having my own place.
Looking Forward
Mariana: Any new projects coming? What are you working on for this next month?
Matt: There are a few things I want to get done by the end of this upcoming month.
I think a big milestone is going to be just having a working sales funnel. Starting out, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit, because basically the funnel isn't built, but you're constantly fixing things. (You can read more about sales funnels and common mistakes people make in this article from a couple months ago.)
Now that we have a pretty good foundation, it's about, "Okay, how do we widen the funnel, how do we get more stuff in there? How do we, at the bottom of the funnel, just give people the best experience possible?"
And,related to that last point about giving the best experience possible, we want to come out with our own software, and a suite of tools, and longer term talent that compliments the training products that we have and that we are selling right now.
For right now though, what I envision is people being able to just have a better immediate login experience. I’d like them to be able to see their progress and be encouraged as they go through the training.
The goal is to have the new login experience done by the end of this month. Even if it's only 5 to 10% better to start, it's still a start, and getting it out there and getting feedback as soon as possible is important.
I've learned from developing products and launching them, whether they’re info products or software products or services,to get feedback as soon as possible.
Another thing I want to do this month is to work with my team on content promotion. We're going to set up some key AB tests at different points in our funnel, specifically on our checkout page, on our tripwire page, and on our popups.
I choose those three points in particular to AB test because we're getting enough impressions where, in a short amount of time, we'll be able to determine, "Okay, did the new version that we're testing against the control version, the original, is it getting better results? Okay, cool. Let's choose that one and then continue testing."
Finally, in my personal life, I’d like to find more time for games. I think I said this last month, but I didn't do it.
I’ve just been moving around a lot and haven’t had time for game. I’d like to play Rummikube, perhaps, with the family.
And, I don't know if I mentioned this in the past, but I've been working on and finished the first draft of my novel at the end of last year. I’m pretty proud of that.
My new goal is to get the second draft done and completed for a few select people to read and give me feedback before Christmas time this year.
It's been a lifelong goal I've been working on everyday, and I'm very happy to go through the process and see it come to fruition.
Final Thoughts
Mariana: So, to wrap up, your traffic is up, your revenue has grown, your email list of subscribers is up too, right? Is there something else that you want to mention about this past month? Is there something important, or something that you think it's worth sharing, that you haven't said before?
Matt: Maybe just that I haven't watched any TV basically since I’ve been back in the States, and it feels really good.
I've been doing a lot, been a lot more productive and just going out, spending time in public, in nature, and doing more things in general. That just feels good because TV kind of just puts your brain into a neutral state.
As far as building the company, that's a positive.
In addition, just a quick observation that I've made: last month I was pumping the gas a little more with our email list because I was unsure if we were going to hit our revenue goal.
Now, I want to step back and not do that again, because like I don't want to burn out our email list. I don't wanna hurt or harm any of the relationships that we have with people.
I want it to be something sustainable that we're going to do months and years into the future.
I feel that, as far as your brand, you have to make a decision about how aggressive or how frequently you want to email your subscribers. That's going to play a role in your unsubscribe rate.
On a related point, I did an experiment with the survey funnel where we actually turned it off, so we weren't segmenting our contacts like we were in the past.
I found that sales have consistently been higher when we send the Matt Hacks videos instead of traditional communications, and I believe it’s because people just connect with video much more. They connect with me, they connect with the brand on a more personal level, and there's just more trust being built I think in part because I'm not reading from a script.
I think that helps a lot, because unlike a lot of other gurus out there who like to read from scripts and get everything super polished, I don't like to do that.
Switching over to the Matt Hacks videos and not having the survey funnel in place has worked out really well, but we're going to switch back and have the best of both worlds.
Ultimately, we're going to go back to segmenting our email list based on what people are interested in, or what part of the funnel is most important to them. Is it the whole thing? Is it the traffic? Is it the leads?
We’ll send them the most relevant tips, but we're going to send it to them in a video format, so we get the best of both worlds in there and upgrade the overall survey funnel.
I think that pretty much wraps it up.
One last thing I also want to add is that making these videos and putting out these reports is pretty stressful. I want to give expert information, so I put pressure on myself to make sure that I'm showing you guys the framework that I'm using and that it's working.
I’d like to be able to say 13 months from now that we've had 20 straight months of nonstop growth, because how awesome is that? But you know what, it may not happen one month, it may not happen next month.
Maybe we'll be even, maybe we'll be down a little bit.
Part of investing in the software, as I mentioned earlier, is that's more of a long-term thing, and that's going to take time away from other optimizations that I could be making on the funnel.
That being said, we're still going to work our funnel system and the framework that I teach.
And I think that we'll be at six figures pretty soon, which is very exciting, a six-figure monthly run rate.
But I also think that it's not worth worrying about. All that you can do is what you can do, so do it.
Don't stress, and that's my advice to myself and to you.
See you guys next month. Take care. Peace.
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