[Podcast] Earning Trust: Driving Revenue as a Serve-First Business (Miles Beckler)

This week’s guest on The Lead Generation podcast is Miles Beckler. He just recently crossed the 200,000 subscriber mark on his eponymous YouTube channel where he shares strategies, tactics, and resources for online marketing success. Separately, he and his wife Melanie have a 12-year track record in the meditation and spirituality niche.

In this episode, he and I discuss his journey from Discount Tire mounter to entrepreneur, the importance of delivering value at every turn, and how to combine email and affiliate marketing into a lucrative business.

Key Takeaways

• Get in the trenches with the people you lead. You’re never too big to get your hands dirty with the people who look up to you.
• Turn tough lessons into a shortcut to second-round success. Repeat the journey towards a successful outcome, but avoid the mistakes you encountered the first time around.
• Authenticity should always supersede the use of AI tools. As artificial intelligence permeates the marketplace, those who lead with authentic connections with their audiences will win.
• Build an email list, no matter what. Your success on any social media platform (YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) can disappear in an instant so make sure you’re sending social followers and subscribers to your email list.
• Teach about your recommended tools as an affiliate. By partnering with essential tools in your space, and using affiliate links in the process, you can be in service to your audience while generating a lucrative income on top of your own product and service sales.
• Create your lead magnets after seeing success with top-of-funnel content. Watch what people resonate with, then spend time creating lead magnets that those viewers will want to opt in for.
• Shorten your autoresponder series. If you are an active “in the moment” storyteller, transition new leads from a lead nurture series to frequent broadcasts after their first week.

Resources Mentioned

• Miles Beckler on YouTube
• Ultimate Guide to Your Customer Avatar (Video)
• Who Not How, Dan Sullivan
• Zig Ziglar
• The Secret
• Leadpages

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Transcript

Who is Miles Beckler?

Bob Sparkins: Miles, it's so great to have you join us for this episode of the Lead Generation. Thanks for being here.

Miles Beckler: Bob. I'm happy to be here, man. Thanks for your patience. Getting this dialed in took us a few tries and few months to get this to come onto our schedules.

Bob: Yeah, indeed. I mean, I see your Facebook ads and other stuff of yours over and over again and keeps reminding me, "Got to get Miles on the show." You do some really great stuff with your Leadpages account. You do great stuff in the world of marketing in a very ethical way. I really appreciate that, so I'm excited to have you on. Tell me and the rest of the listeners, what's one way that you transform the lives of the people that you work with?

Miles: Wow, love the question, man, great way to start. I represent two brands. My wife and I co-founded a website in the meditation and spirituality niche. That was in 2009. In 2016, I started teaching everything that I know and learned on that journey for free on YouTube. I teach how-to marketing stuff freely available on YouTube. On the Miles Beckler side of things, I help people take control over their time through creating little automated systems that generate cash flow. That's what we do, Leadpages, email marketing, affiliate marketing, sales funnels, those kinds of things.

My heart is in the first brand with my wife, and we have an intention to help a million people per month meditate. We believe that we can help change the world for the better, and we can help change humanity and mass consciousness for the better by helping a million people a month to just quiet their mind, to have some tools to help them reset. So when the mom comes back from the busy crazy day, she can reset and she can be fully present with her kids and she can really be there with her family instead of being caught up in her head. I live a little bit in both worlds.

Bob: I think it's great that you converge those pathways because it is a noisy world in the online marketing space, and I think there are some folks that are coming to the awareness that awareness is really something important for this. I mean, I think we even hear Gary V talk about awareness often in his channels. I'm married to an executive coach, so I hear about it all the time. I can really appreciate the journey that you and your wife have been on.

Leadership Lesson Learned Busting Tires

Let's go back before you even met your wife. I really loved, as I researched, that you got your first job at Discount Tire talking to people about what goes on their car. Tell us about a lesson you might have learned that you still carry forward today having been able to work in... Actually, we're a customer of Discount Tire, we're big fans-

Miles: I love it.

Bob: Tell us what else you might have learned in the hard work there.

Miles: God, I learned the lesson of hard work, man. There actually is one specific lesson, that was my high school job busting tires. I had a manager, so I worked in the back of the shop. I was one of the guys covered in brake dust. We had a line of cars, people waiting to get their cars worked on. They wanted to get out of there as fast as we could. And then there's the other half of the business, the guys who were upfront, the salesman, and some of them we called them Counter Queens because they never seemed to leave the counter. We would make jokes that they're leaning on the counter making sure it doesn't float away.

I had one manager, his name's John Matero. He's not with us anymore. He just passed away recently, suddenly died recently, which is sad and a little scary. He ran the place. He was the top dog in our shop. And when we were the busiest, he came out back, he put on his gloves, and he worked his ass off with us. We, young kids, 18, 17-year-old guys, thought we were hot stuff, and he could run circles around us. Not only did he keep the books straight, not only did he grow that into one of the best stores in our area, but he still, when it came time, he put on his gloves, he got dirty with us. That's leadership. That's what real leadership is, right? It's not standing on the sidelines barking orders. It's being the first one to run out of the trenches and to run through that zone. I feel like you can even feel it. You can hear it in my voice, it really drove me to... I got a little team and I do a lot of work and I teach marketing now, I've got 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, but I'm not just like, "In my eight-week $2,000 course you can learn how... " I'm in the trenches with my people every day. I'm creating new YouTube videos every day. I'm creating new ads. I'm actually doing the work, I'm sending my emails.

And it's that they can watch my videos and learn how to do all of the tactics, but they can also watch my actions and they can see it in action how it works. I think that's created a really powerful experience for my students that's helped them have breakthroughs.

Too many people in our world just make it seem like, "Oh, passive income, there's an easy button, and I'll teach you what it is for 1,997 plus my $10,000 coaching program." No, no, those are the counter queens in my opinion. I call them the greedy gurus. Instead, I like to show people that we're showing up every day for our audience. We're creating value for our audience. It takes time, it takes work. If we do it strategically, we can automate so many aspects of it, but we really are that heartbeat or that lighthouse and that beacon of light for our audiences, and everyone needs to do that in their own niches for their audiences.

Bob: Yeah, that's really well said. I love this idea that it does take some time, take some patience. But I think that the work that you do and many of the others that we have on this podcast are able to do is provide a little bit of a shortcut, try to help people eliminate some mistakes that they could otherwise have to make on their own.

Roadblocks en Route to the First Dollar Online

Let's go back to when you and Melanie started your ask-angels.com site way back in the day. What were some of those initial hiccups that you had to learn from that you hope others can maybe avoid?

Miles: It is worthy of noting that I had a pre-story to that story. I made my first dollar online in 2003 as an affiliate marketer. I was essentially spamming MySpace. So I was direct linking to affiliate programs. It was working until MySpace got bought out by Fox News Corp, and then they turned off my links, and I went overnight from three grand a month to zero. Had I been building an email list, I would not have gone to zero with my income. The new customers would have slowed, but I could have continued to follow up with that audience that I grew. I go back to that first lesson because my wife and I when we started, we knew we had to grow a list as quickly as we possibly could.

One of the biggest challenges we faced in '09 when we started, we started in one of the worst economies of my personal life, and we were flat broke. We had to move back in with my parents, couldn't even afford rent. And so, we started without education. We started learning everything through trial and error the hard way. And we did everything with content marketing, essentially just if you publish enough useful content and you learn how to optimize that content for the platform you're publishing through, eventually, it's kind of magical, you do actually start to grow an audience. And then once they're on your page or on your videos, get them onto an email list.

I think out of that challenge of being broke and being totally bootstrapped, yes, it took us a little longer to figure it out, but that longer journey hardened the skills. I mean, it just got me to where keyword research, SEO, driving these little nuanced things that other people have to think about, I've just done it so many times over, because we built that brand by publishing 1,000 blog posts in about four years. That website has reached, I think, 40 million people, give or take, over its lifetime. Then, so when it was in 2016 and it was time for me to build the YouTube channel, I was just, "Well, I know what to do. I just have to go do 500 videos as fast as I possibly can." I did 120 videos in 120 days, and my success on YouTube was drastically faster.

The first time I did it with my wife, I hadn't actually experienced it. I read about it. People like Ken Evoy from the old Site Build It days, and Alan Gardine, like the old old-school affiliate marketing guys always said, "Just keep publishing content, and the traffic will show up." So the first time we're doing it and we're like nine posts in, we're like, "Oh, this is really going to work, right? Everybody's saying it's going to work." But man, the second time when I had already gone through that process once and seen it and been like, "Dude, we should have just published way faster the first time." But we doubted it and hitting it with a full head of steam with no doubt, with the confidence that it was going to work and to watch it work yet again just... it really reinforced that it wasn't... Although we feel like we caught lightning in a bottle, it wasn't that the niche was magic. It wasn't that we found something unique that no one else knew about. It was literally the process worked because we worked the process long enough.

Leading with Authenticity on Video

Bob: I imagine because you are on video so much there's a bit of authenticity that I think people are really hungry for. Can you speak to that because I think that's something that anybody can bring to the table if they're willing to take that chance.

Miles: And it is quite the vulnerable experience. My first videos were awkward. I was awkward. Boy, there's nothing like gaining competence in a medium such as this than just flexing the muscle over and over and over again. I think today, in 2023, it's actually more important now than ever to step up and to reveal your true self. Authenticity is a word that's commonly thrown around in our space. I just think that AI is coming. There are unscrupulous marketers who will go take my videos and they will actually pull my closed captions and they'll run it through an AI tool, and voila, they have a blog post that they're now able to publish on a topic. These shady black hat tactics as the GPT-3, GPT-4 AI continue to proliferate, they're going to get stronger and stronger.

Some could argue that, "Oh, well, deep-fake videos are coming." The truth is that from 2023 on, people are going to want to make sure they're relating with other true people. Nobody wants to hear about somebody who only shares their win. Nobody wants to learn from the guru on the hill. People want to know that they're on a path, on that long march with someone who's on that path doing the work on that long march. And this is what I think that can become a competitive advantage for people who embrace it and break through or push through the awkward phase to get to competence. And then once you get on the other side of competence, it becomes fun. Now I'm animated, I enjoy being on video. But boy, the first time that that red light was on and I was committed to it, it was just, "Hi, I'm Miles, and I feel really awkward right now."

Bob: I think people do get a little bit of stage fright, but if you can just be in the service of people, that turns out really well. That's really beautiful to think of it that way. I think we're always grappling at Leadpages with the role that artificial intelligence is going to play. We're on that side of authenticity is going to rule. Even if you can use it a little bit here and there, making those personal connections is really a big deal.

Helping People > Making a Buck

Bob: I get the sense that, for you, the mindset of helping people is paramount versus trying to make a buck. Can you talk a little bit about why you think that's still what's going to fuel your growth but also the growth of the members of Lead Generation listening today?

Miles: Yeah, it actually stems from the law of attraction for me. I got really captivated with the original Secret that came out, the first version that they only sold about 1,000 copies of with Esther Hicks in it. That concept of the law of attraction kind of got hijacked by people who made it seem like you can get something for nothing, just sit and think. There's an old sales trainer, his name's Zig Ziglar, and I think he summed it up better than anyone in the new age space. He simply states that you can have anything in this world that you want if you help enough other people get what they want. Therefore, if I dedicate myself to helping other people get what they want, I should be able to have everything in this world that I want.

When you mix that philosophy with the magic and the leverage that we have from our cell phones... My first videos were just on my cell phone. I just put my cell phone on a tripod, and voila. YouTube has, I don't know, 2 billion monthly active users who are logged in. Facebook's probably got 3 billion monthly active users who are logged in. So we have the ability to get this leverage on our side to get media and content that we create out in front of all these people who are staring at their screens, they're on one of five apps, and that's enough people.

Therefore, I have the tools, I have free tools, and this technology that we all have in our pockets, so I've got the technology and the mechanism, and now it's just about my willingness to show up and actually help those people get what they want. Most people attempt to gate the help like, "Oh, well, if they subscribe, then I'll help them." "Well, if they pay me $2,000, then I'll help them."

But the people on the other side of that transaction, the potential customers or the potential leads, are sitting there be like, "I don't really trust you, buddy. I've been burned by some greedy gurus. I've tried things. I just don't trust you yet." And how do you break through that lack of trust, it's a really remarkable idea.

We prove that we can help people by helping them. Jay Abraham calls this a strategy of preeminence. We preeminently show up and help and deliver results first, and then we build little pathways. By the way, if you want more or if you want the next steps or if you want my personal help, if you want to join an eight-week coaching program where I'm going to take a group on this journey to work on your business, in your business with you, the people who are ready, able, and willing to say yes to those kinds of offers are the people who've already experienced the value that you can bring into their lives.

I don't know, there is a truth in our universe, is it reciprocation when we go out and help people just want to give back? Sometimes it manifests in fun ways where I'll get random comments of, "Hey Miles, I'm about to sign up for Leadpages. Can I get your affiliate link, please? You've given so much value to me in all these other videos that I know they have an affiliate program and I want to sign up through your link to make sure you get that value back."

I didn't even create a product for my brand for five years of making YouTube videos, and I had made 150, $200,000 per year each year just letting people know that if you want the result, here's how to do it. And by the way, you need that tool. And they were very willing to sign up through that tool because they saw clearly that it was going to give them the result that they truly wanted.

The Importance of an Email List

Bob: There's two pathways I'd like to explore with what you just said. One of them is around the idea of building up a list of people that you can communicate to, not just through the video, through the YouTube channel, but through email. And the other is what you just mentioned, generating revenue by recommendations, by affiliate marketing. Which way would you like to go first, because I could go either way, but I think something on the top of your head probably would steer us one way or the other?

Miles: Yeah, the first one, man, the danger of being 100% all in on YouTube, the perilous danger of building your empire on rented land. YouTube has decided, whether it's right or wrong or good or bad in our era, YouTube is censoring people more frequently and more often in the last three years than they ever have before. They've shown their true colors. Twitter has as well. If you get into the Twitter files, they're all public these days, that is a weird sketchy rabbit hole.

Now, I don't play in the realms of that would make me feel worried, but I had that first experience on MySpace where an algorithm change just removed me and removed my links. I've had so many friends in the affiliate marketing space who their traffic from one Google algorithm change drops by 90%. And when that happens, guess what happened to their cash flow? It also dropped by 90%. So what is the one mechanism that we can leverage? How do we take back that control, and how do we actually create an asset that we own, that can't be taken away from us? It's our email list. It literally truly is the one and only asset.

Now, is there value in the Miles Beckler brand? Is my brand an asset? Absolutely. You can go on a keyword research tool and you can see that people do search Miles Beckler, sales funnels, Miles Beckler SEO, Miles Beckler keyword. So I have delivered enough value that there is a population of people who, when they want to go learn keyword research, they attach my name to that search query. So there's value in the brand there, but that's very passive. I'm literally sitting there hoping they search for that, which means I don't control it, which means I don't have that control over my financial future and my future well-being.

So when I get people onto an email list and then I continue to help them, I don't just pitch, pitch, pitch, I actually help them more because these are my most ambitious people who've raised their hand and said, "I'm committed. I want to do whatever it takes," and then I help them to that next level, now I'm building this asset that I can leverage. And how do you leverage the asset? Well, ultimately, I like to build out multiple streams of income.

This is my attempt at a clean segue to part two of your question, which is where affiliate marketing comes in. I think Dan Kennedy says that one is the most dangerous number in business. If you got one product, it's very risky because things might disappear. So how do we create stability in our income to go from side hustle, making a couple of grand, making side money, to building a real business that allows me to pay off mortgages, pay off student loans, to fill up investment accounts, to pay for insurance?

These things that I'm going to do forever, a 30-year mortgage, I'm committed to paying that with my business income, and that's through creating diversity in my offerings. The way I look at it is when someone joins my email list, they're committing to the journey. When someone finds my YouTube video, they're interested in a topic. Now, whether they're interested in that topic because they have something they have to do for their boss or their boss asked them to go learn what is SEO and how does that work? I want you to come and bring a report to me, that person's not necessarily committed to the journey.

I'm happy that my content's out there to teach them and to help them understand how a sales funnel can grow their business or whatever that video is they find. But when they realize that, yes, the sales funnel can grow the business, and yes, the email list is the one thing I need to grow and I'm ready, let's do this, then they get on my email list. At this point, they've committed to the journey.

If you just think logically about the journey, "Well, what does someone need?" Well, you need an email marketing software. So I have partners in that world who I recommend, and I have ones that I don't recommend, and I have deep dive tutorials that show them exactly how to set it up the right way step by step by step. I then email my people, "By the way, if you haven't got your email set up, here's the step-by-step tutorial that shows you exactly how to set it up in 15 minutes. It's super easy. Let's make this easy and move forward."

And then once their email list is set up, what do they need? Well, you need a landing page builder. So now we're in the Leadpages at this point. I show them how to get that built up and tied in, and then what's the next step and what's the next step and what's the next step.

And each of these steps is helping that individual take another step on the journey that they're committed to, which is building their business in this world. Every step doesn't have an offer attached to it, but many of them do. Because once you get Leadpages going, "Well, I'm not going to sell you something, I'm like, "Now I got to get you using it. We got to get traffic to it." Okay, well, here's how you get the traffic, and here's a good headline and here's a template for an opt-in page. So it alternates. I think Gary Vaynerchuk has a really great phrase here, which is the jab, jab, jab (right) hook concept of let's give them value, give him value, give them value, make an offer, give them value, give them value, give them value, make an offer.

And affiliate, it's like teach them, teach them, teach them, now, here's the tool that you need to get that next step to get to that next level. Let me teach you how to do the keyword research tool. Okay, now you need to start a WordPress blog, so let me show you how to get hosting and a theme going. Okay, now that those are going, let me teach you how to optimize your posts and how to write a SEO-optimized post. And on and on that journey goes to help someone go from, "I'd love to build a business online as a creator, as a blog, or as a writer," to having a blog with dozens of posts that's getting traffic. Well, now you need a pop-up. Well, Leadpages does that. Let's get you over to Leadpages now. And as their journey continues, there's just more and more softwares, tools, trainings, things I can partner with to help them all the way down their journey to get to the ultimate destination that they want in their life.

That ties into the Zig Ziglar quote. If I help enough people do that, I can have anything I want in my life. Luckily, it's quite simple actually, but it can be a lot of money. It's pretty lucrative.

Extra Affiliate Revenue Streams as a Service Provider or Coach

Bob: A lot of people listening are not in the make money online space by teaching people to make money online. I know you and Melanie have done really wonderful things in the meditation and spirituality space, so let's do any parallels that you can have there.

So somebody who is an executive coach or somebody who is in a serving industry that's not about online marketing per se, what kind of ways can they incorporate affiliate marketing following the same step? I just want to make sure there's a clear bridge of the analysis, so that people can move forward with it.

Miles: I like this concept of... We call it joint venture agreements in the industry. A joint venture agreement is essentially becoming an affiliate for someone. What it allows us to do is to turn potential competitors into collaborators and into partners. It really comes down to doing market research and understanding who is selling what and what's working in your niche.

In the real estate world, right, there are people who have courses about how to farm different neighborhoods in order to get more listings. And then there's people who have courses on how to sign up for buyers. And then there's courses on how to flip real estate, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, a real estate professional who wants to help new people in the world of real estate to build great businesses in their real estate niche, that's what they do, that's the niche they've chosen, the audience they're committed to serving, they don't have to go create all of the bits and pieces on that journey. They can go find the people who are ethical, trustworthy, honest. They can go research, review. They can buy and test the different individual courses to find that handful, those two or three things, and like, "These are the ones you can trust. I'll teach you all the bits and pieces you need to know to get your license, to get your first client. And then when you're ready to build a brokerage, here's the pathway to that."

I don't have to go create those courses. I don't have to write the sales letters for those courses. I don't have to do customer support. I don't have to deal with learning management systems. All I do is find someone who has created a wonderful trustworthy product and I can partner with them.

And then there's also software. In many areas, software is always an open... Like accountants, there's accounting software that's needed and they have affiliate programs. And even in real estate, there are marketing software tools, there's direct mailing tools. So I could give someone a PDF template they could use that they could mail to farm a neighborhood, and then I could send them to my affiliate link to that mailing automated system. And if they actually send my template to that neighborhood, I'm going to get a kickback from the print house that I was an affiliate for, and theoretically, the person who mailed out all those mailings is going to get a sale or a new lead or a new listing. They're going to love me because my template worked and I helped them get that in five minutes. They're making money. The print company absolutely loves me because I brought them a new customer. In theory, I can automate that entire process.

So that whole transaction, everything happened while I was sleeping or while I was out traveling. And in every niche there are these things. It just takes really digging into, "Okay, who is my target audience member? What outcomes are they truly interested in?"

Nobody wants a template. They don't want that postcard template to farm the neighborhood. They don't want to farm a neighborhood. They don't want to send out mailers. What they want is lots of listings. Perfect, so let's help them get on that journey to get the listings. And oftentimes I map it out, just step one, step two, step three, step four, what does that journey look like for my customer avatar.

I've got a free customer avatar training sequence that's on YouTube, it's freely available, and it helps you really think about your target audience. Where are they in their life? What are the challenges that they're facing? And then how do you help that person get to where they want to go? Create a multi-step path to get them there.

I don't care if it's accountants or caring for your horse or training your dog, it works in every single niche when we just think about that entire customer journey. Instead of trying to create all of the pieces of the puzzle, we become the personal shopper. We become the researcher for them to find the trustworthy tools, trainings, pieces of the puzzle. And then we just lay out that path for them. And then all we do is automate that via email, have a nice landing page that converts 60, 70% of people, and then you just go fill that landing page with targeted traffic, whether it's organic posting on social, blogging, YouTube, ads, it's irrelevant from there. And then the system can work for you. And then you can ask them questions once they're at the end, "What did you miss? What else do you want? What can I teach you now? What would you like to learn?"

When you have people who trust you, they will tell you, "Miles, this has all been great, but can you help me with this?" And it's like, "Well, geez, yeah. I hadn't thought about that. Give me a few days." And then do I create that? Do I go find someone who's already created it? Isn't there a book called Who Not How? Who's already created that system, that thing that they need, instead of me going and creating it, and then I just connect people with what they want to get the results that they truly desire. It's magic, scale can happen. I mean, thousands of people can go on these journeys completely automated once it's all built and tested and optimized.

Bob: There's a ton of gold in what you just said. Just to echo two things, one of the things I had to learn as a course creator before I was with Leadpages and affiliate marketer was I didn't have to be responsible for solving all the problems that people were coming to me for. I could find the person or company or software that did that. So I think you hit that really well.

And the second thing is, if you're doing this as a journey in a relationship with people, it's not just like... I know a lot of people will do a Google ad to an affiliate link and they never see the actual person that has made that purchase, which is fine. That's a business model, maybe that's what you like to do. But I think the value in what you do, Miles, and what I really appreciate is that if you do think of this as a relationship and a journey that you're getting them not just step one and step two, but step 10, but along the way, whether it's you or an affiliate product you're recommending or a product that you're not affiliated with, but you're still recommending, it's all about that trust building and in the process serving people, getting them what they need, which is awesome.

Miles: It's a lifetime value.

Bob: So my next question to you... The lifetime value, exactly. True lifetime value, not just money in the bank.

Moving Subscribers To Your Email List

Bob: So my next question is, you use YouTube a lot, you also have done advertising in various channels, you do social media obviously, talk to us a little bit about how you're getting them from those rented properties onto your email list. What are some of the methods and strategies that you're using yourself, that you're teaching about that gets people to not just be aware of you but to actually join your email list and want to open up your messages? What are some of those tactics you're doing?

Miles: I really enjoy the data. That's a weird thing to say, isn't it? We're such geeks. When we use organic marketing, whether it's social or YouTube or blogging, we get access to all this data. Our job is, "Okay, I'm going to go put up hundreds of videos." And out of that, well, 80/20 rule happens." So 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. But we can actually apply the 80/20 rule to the 80/20 rule, which means that 4% of what we do generates about 64% of our results. Okay, 20% of 20%, and then 80% of 80%. So once you have a data set, meaning I've published enough pieces of content, I can start to see what the YouTube algorithm thinks I'm relevant to. Whether I care or not to be that guy, I'm an affiliate marketing guy on YouTube, but the truth is I'm a sales funnel email marketing geek, whether it's affiliate marketing or not.

But now that I see that YouTube is leaning me in that direction, this means that just about any piece of content I put on about affiliate marketing in my example here is going to get more traction in the YouTube algorithm.

So I spent time creating free content to see what the algorithm and my audience both prove to be interested in, and then I go create an opt-in, whether it's a lead magnet. In affiliate marketing, for example, I did a one-hour and 15 minute video that is a fire hose of information of everything I've learned from making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate.

Put it live on YouTube for free. It just crushed it. So I was like, "Okay, cool. How about I turn this into a crash course? I'm going to take those same 11 steps that I covered in that video, and I'm just going to write it out and link to some of my other sub videos." Bingo, that became an opt-in report.

"Now let me just tack that onto this video that's already trending in the algorithm." Surprise, surprise, a lot of people clicked on the description, clicked on the comment, and they entered my world.

Then I made new videos where I reviewed successful affiliate websites. And then once I'm in the video and I'm about to start, "Okay, on website number two... But real quick, if you haven't been through my affiliate marketing crash course, you can go get it for free at milesbeckler.com/free. But let's go look at number two." And it's these really, really gentle like, "Oh, by the way, if you haven't got that free thing that's amazing, go over there and grab it, links in the description. Well, let's get back to the information that you're actually here to get." And then I just blow them away with how much information I give them on that video.

And then, well, affiliate marketing for beginners, what are the three mistakes beginners make as affiliate marketers? So I'm starting to make all these other affiliate marketing-related videos where I have these, I would call it, passive call to action back to my main course that's based on something that I saw trend. So I didn't waste a bunch of time creating a lead magnet and a follow-up sequence hoping that it would work. I built all of that out on something that I had already data proving that that was what was going to work.

And then I decided, "Well, if that worked, how about a cheat sheet? Do people want this long drawn-out course or would they like the cheat sheet?" And then I took the exact video and I uploaded to Vimeo, and now I'm currently testing free video reveals, the affiliate marketing secret... or the affiliate marketing crash course. I'm giving away after an opt-in the same video that's live on YouTube, but I'm using Facebook Ads because people on Facebook haven't seen that YouTube video.

So I'm just now reorganizing and repurposing as many of the bits and pieces. I'm remixing and recrafting what I already did that's proven to work. I'm just continuing to leverage what already worked in as many different ways as possible, meaning as many new entrance points as possible. And then, how can I slice and dice that lead magnet to actually turn that one idea into three or four lead magnets? So now I'm starting to get data on, well, do they like the cheat sheet or do they like the full course or do they like the free video? That helps me make better decisions in the future because I'm known for Facebook Ads, so now I can do the same idea on Facebook Ads. Do they want a crash course? Should I do a Facebook Ad cheat sheet? Should I do a Facebook Ads one through 10 course?

Well, now I'll have empirical data. And every time I go through that cycle, I become a little bit more effective with my time and a little bit more effective with my time, and I'm doing more of the 4%. I'm doing more of those things that have proven to work over and over and over, meaning I can work less and get better results over time.

Bob: Very cool. Have you found in that process that you wound up deciding to eliminate something that you thought was a big winner or something that you really enjoyed but you realized that it just wasn't getting the traction for your audience?

Miles: Yeah, the mindset stuff, to be honest. Again, my wife and my brand, we're in the meditation space. Boy, nobody in my YouTube sphere, nobody in that world cares much about mindset. They think they need the tactics, and there's a huge life lesson in this. Who was it that said this? It was like, "People need to eat broccoli, but they want to eat chocolate. So we have to figure out how to offer them chocolate-covered broccoli." So we can promise them what they want... So the dog doesn't want to eat the medicine, but the dog will eat the cheese, so I got to figure a way to get my medicine in the cheese.

I would love to create a lot more mindset content. I would love to help people rearrange the way they see themselves and the way they see their world because I do believe that the conversations we're having with ourselves in our head reflect our outer world, that's how we create our outer world. But that stuff just doesn't trend. It just doesn't work. I've tested abundance meditations for my audience. It got 18% conversion rate. My affiliate crash course opt-in page does 65% conversion rates. That is a huge statistical significance on how much more they want.

So now what I do inside of my little course of what they want is I'm like, "Oh, here's a mindset module." And I teach that Zig Ziglar quote because I can't really teach people the law of attraction stuff directly, so "Oh, well, Zig Ziglar, he is an old sales trainer, and if you help enough people get what they... " It's the same thing to me, and that way of saying it, more people get it, and I can actually help people move forward.

But another way I do it is I have a video that's the one and only make money online method that actually works. All it is it's teaching the Zig Ziglar thing. "Here's the method. Help enough people get what they want and you can have what... " It's the same thing, but since I packaged it under this title of the Make Money Online Method That Works because people are, "How do I make $100 a day on Pinterest? How do you make $100 a day on Instagram?" These are the videos that trend in the algorithm. I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to go down that passive income. I'm not willing to go there.

So how do I find a way to deliver the truth that they need but package it in a way that it's something they think they want so I get the medicine in the cheese or I get the chocolate-covered broccoli.

Converting via Email Autoresponders vs. Broadcasts

Bob: Awesome. So we're coming to the end of our session, I could talk with you about this stuff for a long time and I think we'd have a blast. I have two questions for you. So one is, as people have joined your email list, you got them to say yes to whatever that free offer happened to be, what kind of content are you delivering over their first 30 days or 90 days via autoresponder that you've set up as an automated system versus how often are you sending off the top of your head broadcast messages-

Miles: Broadcast.

Bob: ... that are more time-sensitive? Because I think a lot of people struggle with this whole e-newsletter or e-zine, whatever you want to call it these days, versus auto-responder clusters or campaigns that are running on autopilot.

Miles: Yeah, great question. I want to start by saying that there is absolutely no right way to do this. I have friends in New Zealand, it's in the horseback riding niche, wonderfully successful business, seven figure per year business. I believe he has automated two years of follow up. So somebody subscribes, and they're literally automated over 100 emails. I think they do one a week or two a week for two years.

On my side of things, I'm actually testing as short of automated sequences as humanly possible. Not that I don't have some longer ones, some of my legacy stuff, but the newer ones I put together, this most recent funnel that I built, has two follow-up messages, and then they get my broadcast tag, which puts them on my broadcast list, which is the email list that I go to. I really like telling stories. I really like bringing people into relevant journeys here and now. We're recording this on January 3rd. I don't want too many of my people to be in the middle of some drawn-out follow-up sequence when now is the time to set the intentions to commit to making 2023 your best year ever.

So I actually try to shorten the follow-up sequence as short as I possibly can to get them on my broadcast list. And right now I email, I would say, about three times a week on average, is about what I email. I like to tell a lot of stories. I try to bring people on the journey. I travel a bunch. I've got a camper van, I'm camping a bunch, and I'm taking things I learn in and see and experience, and I turn them into marketing lessons, which all of the greats do this, right? Matt Furey does this, Ben Settle does this, Andre Chaperon does this. And once you realize that everything that happens in life around you could be turned into a relevant email that can link to something somewhere somehow, it really becomes freeing.

I find that to be easier because I'm going to be sending those broadcast emails anyways, there's no end to that system, so why am I going to spend a bunch of time building out this 32 email complex sequence that may or may not work and they're really difficult to optimize? You got to got to go through and pull all this data and analyze it. Nah, I can just get them all onto one list. I don't segment much at all. There's all the gurus, "Oh, you got to segment your list, and this segment will get those... " No, I put everybody on one and I go click and I email and I just take them on the journey.

I know we're going for a while, and I appreciate your patience and I'm grateful for everyone who's still with us. It's worth noting that my email list is like a wagon train in the old Oregon Trail days, it's like a wagon town.

I'm Denver back in the old days, or whatever it was. And some people show up and they stick around for two or three weeks. They get what they need and then they move on and they unsubscribe and they're onto the next thing. That's great, that's fine. I'm okay with that. Other people show up and they stick around for a very, very long time. Some people show up and they're out the next day. They're like, "Oh, nope, I'm in the wrong spot. I'm out that next day."

And it's all fine. It's all great. I don't look into it. I don't follow how many people unsubscribed here, or what are my data there? I'm just trying to continually, authentically create how can I help my audience today? This is the number one dominant thought I have, my wife too, "What can I create for my audience today? How can I help them get what they want today?" When you ask really good questions, and I spend a lot of time in nature hiking, I meditate every day, we get ideas. It was like, "Well, I could teach them that. Or I could share the interview I did on Leadpages with my audience today and tell a story around that." Bingo. And the path just continues to appear.

Just like when I started my YouTube channel, I knew in my first video that was really awkward, I was like, "This will be interesting to see where this goes in three to five years." I knew I was going to publish hundreds of videos. I knew it wasn't like, "Oh, I'm going to try this and dabble to see if it worked." And that commitment to the long journey has just got me constantly take one step, look around, "How can I be helpful," take that next step. "Okay, cool, now we're here, how can I be helpful?" Take that next step. And then while doing that, how can I grow this group of people on this journey with me and then making it a journey for them as best I can?

Bob: That's really cool. I get the sense that with your sense of spirituality you expect that the right people are showing up at the right time and you're letting that drive you, right? It seems like that's working out for you.

Miles: Totally. It really is. When we just keep bringing our truth out in the world, the law of resonance takes over. Some people love my stuff and other people are like, "He talks way too fast." Some people see my videos and they're like, "No, no, this guy's not for me." Perfect, there's someone for them, which is a wonderful realization for all the niche marketers out there because there's room at the top.

If you look into a marketplace, real estate, golf, tennis, you're going to look around and be like, "God dang, everyone is already doing it." Yeah, true, but not you. Your unique voice, your unique experiences you bring in the world, that uniqueness that is you, your divine spirit has something unique that those other people can't do, and you're going to resonate with some segment of the audience and other people will resonate with others.

The truth in every market is people are buying from everybody. People are paying attention to me, they're looking at Michael Cheney's stuff. They're buying from Russell Brunson. They're buying from the people I say, "Don't buy from." They're buying from everybody. I'm just a voice in the crowd, so how do I just stay focused on being signal? There's a lot of noise. If I can just be a signal and really help them implement and really help them get what they want, I become their most trusted advisor.

And when I'm there, I've actually won. Whether I've promoted something or made money with or from them at that point, it's irrelevant when they're like, "Dude, this Miles guy, I can really trust him, and what he teaches me actually works," I've won. From there, it's just a matter of time for when do I actually experience the cash flow in my world.

Words to Drive You Through

Bob: That's perfect. Last question for you, Miles. As you've already shared the Zig Ziglar quote, I will not allow you to use that one, but as you run into roadblocks or have opportunities come your way, do you have any other quote or mantra that you'd like to turn to get you to the other side of it?

Miles: I mean, it's just how can I be of service? I think we're all made in the image and the likeness of the Creator. I'm not actually a traditionally religious person, but I believe we're all creators. I believe we all came here to create things that can help other people. I think if more people embraced this concept of, "I can help others," and if everybody focused their lives on helping others, our country, our world would be an amazing place because everyone would be out there helping each other. So that dominant thought is, "How can I help my audience today? How can I be of service today? How can I help others?"

We live in a magical time where with a cell phone you can reach billions of people. All we got to do is look around, man. People are hurting people. People need help.

There's a million-to-one fitness gurus out there, and there's a lot of overweight people. It ain't working. We need more creators helping more people. And if more people just thought that dominant thought of, "How can I help? Who can I help? How can I be of service to this group today?" our world would just transform overnight.

That's an amazing potential, I think, if we just re-shifted that a little bit. It's really lucrative.

I mean, you know, you talk to a lot of people, the numbers we play with, like seven-figure businesses and eight-figure businesses. Hanging out with some guy, eight figures, he's making $833,000 a month on average, and he's just a normal, goofy dude. It's just that he has found something that helps people, and he's applying leverage through cellphone videos and YouTube ads, and Leadpages and landing pages. Like holy moly.

So not only is it fun, rewarding, and makes the world a better place, but when you get it done, it can create prosperity in abundance. Why not go after that as our dominant place of being?

Learn More from Miles

Bob: Very good. Miles, thank you so much for joining me today on the Lead Generation. Where can people go next to take the next step on their journey with you?

Miles: Yeah, so I'm blessed with a unique name. I'm the only Miles Beckler in the world, so you can just Google me. I've got blog posts, I've got YouTube. You can subscribe to YouTube. I'm on Twitter, just bantering if you want to banter. But just, yeah, I don't know, find me where you want. If you want the email list, it's at milesbeckler.com. I appreciate you, appreciate your time. I love what you guys are doing. I've been a Leadpages customer for years and years and years. We've brought in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of leads through your pages, so I just want everybody to know that I am absolutely a user daily of Leadpages.

Bob: Awesome. Thanks again, Miles. It was great to talk with you, and I can't wait to see what the rest of the year looks for you.

Miles: Cheers, Bob.

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