John Ainsworth is one of the world’s leading experts in building automated funnels. Barry Shore, the Ambassador for JOY, discusses with John secrets of success for anyone having an online course business. John is certified by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Digital Marketers. He heads up a multinational team of experts in various fields: funnel building, social media advertising, copywriting, analytics, marketing. Barry and John get into specifics of increasing revenue for online courses by more than 100% with simple techniques. Definitely a must share episode for any eCommerce owner.

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Increasing Revenue For Your Online Course Business With John Ainsworth

You are tuned in for one reason only. It’s the best reason in the whole world because you care the most in the entire world about you. When you’re the best you, you make the world a better place. You build more bridges of harmony. You create more joy, happiness, peace, and love in the world, and you become better off financially, healthily, and in your happiness in life.

As you know, in this show, we talk about the three fundamentals of life. Now, you should know you’re being joined by approximately 348,613 people around the world who have consciously tuned in because they know the initial. We talk about the three fundamentals of life, the benefits to you, and the transformation that is offered by our wonderful guests. You are going to enjoy John a whole lot. It’s going to bring about a benefit for you in your life and in your business. If you’re in business, it will certainly do that. If you’re in life, it will certainly do that. Get ready to be transformed.

Here we have the three fundamentals of life. Number one, life. Your life has a purpose. You lead a purpose-driven life. Number two, you go mad. MAD stands for Make A Difference. When you lead a purpose-driven life, you make a difference, now we unlock the power and the secrets of everyday words in terms.

Simple example. Now, people all over the world, thank you for joining us and reading. If you ask anybody, “What is WWW stand for?” Variably they tell you it’s the internet. Factually speaking, they’re correct, but in our world, the world of the positive, purposeful, powerful unpleasant, WWW stands for, What a Wonderful World, and What a is a word.

Whenever you hear the opening bars of that song, What a Wonderful World, which was made famous by Louis Armstrong, and goes around the world and touches not tens of millions or hundreds of millions, but billions of people around the planet are touched by that song. When you hear the opening part, what do we do? You smile. You can’t help it. Smile is one of the greatest acronyms you could ever utilize, internalize, and leverage in your life because SMILE stands for Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday.

I spoke to a large group, no mask, real human beings again, over 5,200 people in the audience. I’m telling the story about Barry Shore and seeing miracles in life every day. People are raising their hands and say, “Barry Shore, I haven’t seen any miracles.” I asked them, “Are you here? Can you hear? Can you stand still?” “I can.” “Can you walk? I can barely do that.” You have water to drink. You have a place to sleep. You have family, food, and friends. Every single one of those is a miracle.

What is simple proof? Simplest proof. A million people didn’t get out of bed this morning. Do you know why? They died. By definition, if you’re reading this, you didn’t. If we have an obligation to live exuberantly, be the best you possible and bring you to the table and you make the world a better place. I want to make mention, though, the story of Barry Shore. You might find of interest those of you. Thank God you’re here. About 340,000 people every week, but you’re always inviting friends and now we’re going to have another 20,000 to 30,000 people by the time we bring on our wonderful guest, John.

A very short story. Imagine standing up in the morning, Hale and Hearty, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and that night being in the hospital, totally, completely paralyzed. Not an automobile accident, and not a spinal injury, a rare disease to go with my body, which I had never heard of the day before and rendered me what’s called a quadriplegic.

Nothing in my body moved. My neck down is completely paralyzed. I’m 144 days in the hospital and two years in a hospital bed in my own home. I couldn’t turn it over by myself. Four years in a wheelchair. I have had braces on both my legs from my hips to my ankles for years. Thank God now, I’m vertical ambulatory with the help of a seven-foot walking wand, but I still can’t walk up the stairs and a curb by myself. I have helped twelve hours a day, seven days a week, but you hear my voice positive, purposeful, powerful, pleasant, all because of that one word, SMILE, Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday.

My eight-year-old niece comes over to me and says, “Uncle Barry, can we spell smile? SMIEL.” I thought about it. Smile. It sounded the same. I ask her, “How come?” She says, “Because it would stand for Seeing Miracles In Everyday Life.” Under the mouth of babes. What was she doing? She’s creating the world she wants to live in.

CREATE is a fabulous word that stands for Causing, Rethinking, Enabling All To Excel. Rethinking, thinking your thoughts are in your control. It’s called neuro-linguistic programming, but you decide what you speak about what you do. The six most important words you could ever internalize, utilize and leverage in your life are choice. Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. Choose your words.

I want to warn everybody. Your humble host does use a lot of four-letter words. I have been using a four-letter FU word. I do because of the shock valence fund. The four-letter words that we use and we live in a world of positive, purposeful, powerful, pleasant are love, life, hope, grow, free, gift, pray, play, and swim.

The four-letter FU word is FUNN. People raised their hands, “Barry Shore, Fun is only spelled with three letters.” Not in a world where the positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant fun is spelled FUNN. After the show, you see your family and friends point your finger, a twinkle in your eyes, a smile on your face, remember what it stands for, and tell everybody, “FU, everybody.” They’ll say, “What are you talking about?” You said, “That Barry Shore wants to teach the world to FU.”

It opens up a conversation. You can talk about what you learned in the transformative show. Everything you want to know about our guest, and there are lots to know. All you have to do is go to BarryShore.com, and everything about John will be there. Lean in and let the information transform you as he talks about how you grow your business and grow you at the same time.

Before we bring on John, I want to urge everybody to do the following. I want you to use the two most powerful words in the English language three times a day from now and for the rest of your life. I know hundreds of thousands around the world are already doing this and making a difference for themselves, their family, their friends, and all living beings.

These two words are, thank you. THANK stands for To Harmonize And Network Kindness. Dalai Lama has a quote saying, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” Imagine you go into a coffee shop. You order your fancy latte. You sit down, and they bring it to you, say, “Thank you.” You go to the coffee shop. You order a fancy latte. A few minutes go by. Nobody brings it to you. You go to the counter, and they say, “I’m sorry. We forgot. We’re busy. We’ll bring it to you. Go down and sit down. A couple of minutes go and still say, “Thank you.”

You’re walking out of the coffee shop. It’s raining outside, and somebody holds the door open for you. You say, “Thank you.” You’re walking out of the coffee shop. It’s raining, and somebody slams the door on you. You say, “Thank you.” You’re late for an appointment. You’re stuck in traffic. Somebody cuts you off. You say, “Thank you.”

You got up in the middle of the night. You stub your toe, and it hurts. You say, “Thank you.” KIND is a great word. It stands for Keep Inspiring Noble Deeds. As nobody, I want to share with you at the moment that inspires noble deeds, the wonderful John Ainsworth. Please say hello to 354,820 people around the world.

Everybody, how are you doing? It is nice to be here. Thank you very much, Barry.

That’s called low-key British humor because that’s who John is. He’s sitting in London, and he is British. We’re going to do some wonderful things. John’s primary focus in life is enabling entrepreneurs to grow their businesses 2 or 5 times. He’s the CEO of a wonderful company called Data Driven Marketing, which we’ll be talking about in the course of the transformative episode that we’re doing here. What was the last time somebody said FU to you when you left?

I don’t remember anybody ever saying FU.

Let’s jump right in and talk about what it is that Data Driven Marketing does. Obviously, through the name, we could figure it out, but those are words. What does it mean to be data-driven, and how does that help anybody in business?

A lot of people, when they’re working on their marketing or business, they have a skillset. They have a thing that they can do. How come they got into business in the first place? They’re excellent at something. It’s almost never looking at the data in their business. That’s almost never the thing that it is. Within businesses, there is all this data that tells us, “This is the thing that worked amazingly. This is the thing that worked way less well.”

If you look at the 80/20 rule and most people have heard of the 80/20 rule, you get 80% results from 20% of the input. The thing is, everybody knows that hypothetically that’s true but nobody believes it. They don’t at a deep level because if you believe it, that means that you believe that there are certain things that you’re doing, like most of the stuff you’re doing, that’s a complete waste of time, or you shouldn’t be doing it. It should be something else yet nobody acts as if that’s true. If people believe that, they would look for, “What are those things? What is the stuff that is incredibly effective and has an amazing result? What are the things that are having very little effect at all?” They would spend the time looking at it.

There are two parts. One, people don’t truly believe that it’s true, which it is. It is true, but they don’t believe it. Secondly, people are uncomfortable with data, and they don’t know how to look at it. They don’t know how to get into that data in order to find those things out. What we do is look at the data. We analyze and find where are these leverage points. What are the things that work amazingly well? They should be doing way more of it. What’s all the rest of the stuff that you could do that you’re mediocre at, you can stop doing, or you can outsource, what have you.

Let me unpack because you said some beautiful pieces here. You talked about the Pareto rule, the equation, 80/20. If people were aware of that, it’s like, “Look at this. I get 80% of my business from these 20 customers.” John can come along and say, “Barry, why are you not focusing on those 20 customers and trying to make 21, 22, 23, 24? What are you doing right that we can transform?” That’s one thing.

The other thing is you say about the bridge. If you could bridge that between the 80/20 rule and make it more user-friendly for your company and do it with data, that would be great. The one that I liked the most is that people are uncomfortable. It’s wonderful because, in my best-selling book, tens of thousands of people around the world use it, they don’t just buy it. 1 of the 11 strategies is to get uncomfortable.

If you want to be successful in life, in any aspect, in your business, in your family, and in your health, you need to move from the comfort zone because comfort is where dreams go to die. This is what you said. You need to shift out of that comfort zone, not a huge amount, but a shift and that will make a different perspective of your horizon.

Guess what will happen? You’ll be able to use the information which will transform your business. Let’s go deep into something that you reveled in, which is data. What is it that you can do? How can you help people, business owners, and even people not in business per se but increase revenue per sale? That sounds like a very big breakthrough.

We specifically work with online course creators, but these principles apply whether you’re in eCommerce, running a SaaS business, running a services business, or a local business. The idea of increasing revenue per sale is that there is a percentage of the people who were buying from you who are willing to spend a bunch more money, and they are doing. They would be delighted to. It’s not that you could talk them into it. It’s that they want to, but you’re making it hard for them at the moment.

If you go to buy a new BMW, they will have the option for you to have fancier paint, nicer wheels, and a better stereo in there. There are all these different things that you can have as they’re called upsells, which is other extra things you can spend your money on. Some people who go to buy that car don’t want that. They want the basic run-of-the-mill version. Some people are like, “I want the best stereo, fancy wheels, new paint, and what have you.” Those people are able to spend more money on the car. Companies make it easy for them.

Most people in business don’t do this. They make it hard for people to spend more money. They don’t give that option or make that available. There are two simple ways in the online business space that you can do this. They’re called order bumps and upsells. These apply whether you’re in the eCommerce business or if you’re in online courses and even apply for some other kinds as well.

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An order bump is where somebody is on your website. They are buying your course or your product. On the checkout page, you have another option for some of the buy some things. It’s a tick box and a couple of lines of texts saying, “You could also get this other product that goes with this.” All they have to do is tick the box. If they tick it, it adds it to their cart.

Let’s say, for example, you’re on my course world, and you’re selling a course for $99. The order bump might be a workbook that goes with it for another $37, or it might be a Q&A with a bunch of people who’ve gone through that and what was found to be the biggest sticking point for them. It could be another course that goes with it, or whatever you’ve got already that goes with that, and that’s normal.

Somewhere between 30% and 60% of people will buy that from you. It’s incredible. The conversion rates are two lines of text you’ve got describing this. Because it’s at that magic point in the checkout process or in the sales process, 30% to 60% of people will buy that, and it will increase your revenue on average by about 20%. It’s phenomenal, and almost nobody does it.

I love what you say that two lines of text and anybody are thinking of saying, “How does it apply to me?” If you ever bought something on a site, I discovered, it’s called Amazon. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Let’s be blunt. You’re talking about the biggest in the world. That’s what they do. People also recommend it. People also are buying for $10 more, and I’ll get it.

You’re right. It’s there. It’s the process of making it easy. I love how you introduced this. This is important for everybody to read. John took us on the ride of purchasing a car because the auto industry is well-known as being one of the places where it was upon rubber meets the road in the sense that people are trained how to “upsell,” but not so much that, “How I can give more benefit to my car buyer? My car buyer is buying X. I know they want the stereo, this button, or that button because they’re going to be in the car for the next 2 to 3 years.”

Imagine that 2 or 3 years, wouldn’t you like to get full-around sound woofers and tweeters. They paint the picture of benefit. It’s harder to do on a website when you’re checking out, but you gave us one. You said, “Genius, people, you’re making it hard.” John’s role in life is to make it easy. The conversion is big. It’s not 2%. It’s double digits, 20% or maybe more. That’s one. That’s the auto bump, as you call it. What’s the other one?

The other one is an upsell. I mentioned this when I was talking about the car industry. It’s what’s the more expensive thing that you’re going to sell somebody. The order bump is an extra thing that goes with it. The upsell is a more expensive thing. Let’s say someone is buying a course about dog training, and the dog training course is covering how to stop your puppy from misbehaving. That’s the basic course. It was $99.

The upsell could be why not buy our bundle of all of our courses for training your puppy, which is $300, or it could be the next course that they could get. Once your puppy stops misbehaving, you’re going to want to teach it to be house trained, to sit, or whatever the next step is in your courses. You have that. If it’s an eCommerce business, the next step is going to be probably some more of what they’ve got or some additional larger scale thing that they could give.

If you go onto Amazon, they don’t have it set up in quite this way. If you go on to an eCommerce business like Manta Sleep, they sell sleep masks. You go, and you buy your sleep mask. On the confirmation page, you’ve got the option of buying the fancier version of it. They’ve got larger eye covers that aren’t going to hit your eyebrows when you’re sleeping at night. It’s the nicer, better version of it. If you’re selling a membership, your original order might be one month’s worth. The upsell might be 3 months, 12 months, or something like that. It’s selling the next logical step that somebody can get.

Crucially, the difference technically in how this has been done is on the confirmation page. Someone’s put that, and they’ve gone to the checkout page. They put their credit card details. They have clicked submit and the orders through. That’s happened. You don’t have to worry that they’re going to go back or anything. That’s all done.

The confirmation page is now offering them this extra thing. You offer them a special deal if they buy it. You offer them 30% or 40% off in the course world. If it’s eCommerce, maybe it’s only 15% or 20% because of your margins, but you have this extra page where you offer that next thing. This is generally the same price or more expensive than what you’ve offered. About 10% to 20% of people will buy this, which means that it will generally increase your revenue by about another 15% to 20% forever in your business. The product that you’re selling will increase it forever.

I’ve had people go through this. I had a guy who was selling courses about home recording studios. He’s a sound engineer. He’s teaching musicians how to record at home. He went through and did this for all of his products. He did order bumps and upsells for all of his products in three days. He increases his revenue by 40% forever. He has made 40% more revenue every month since then because he did this.

I always tell people, “These are the ones to start with.” You do it. You make more money within days, and you go, “Maybe this John character knows what he’s talking about. Maybe I should do some of these other things that take a little more time-consuming to do.” You’ll be willing to do that because you know that this stuff is true.

You took the words out of my mouth. Maybe this John character knows what he’s talking about. I can attest that he does. John Ainsworth is the real deal. I want to do something off course but go a little deeper into something. Let’s use these two terms and this entire process and apply it not to business per se, but to human interactions, like relationships, let’s say.

I’m making this up as we’re talking right now. I presume there’s something called an auto bump and an upsell in a relationship between two people if you want men, women, partners, and whatever, to begin to bring more benefit to the other party for your own benefit. In other words, I am self-served by making you happier. Let’s use that as a fundamental. I’m putting you on the spot, but I love it. I want you to see an auto bump and an upsell when it comes to relationships?

It’s something extra that the other person might want that you have to make easy for them to get. Maybe you’re going out on a date with somebody, and you’re trying to figure out if they want a kiss. This is your upsell. It’s the next logical step. This is the thing that you could do. How do you do that in a way that makes it nice and easy for them without them being uncomfortable?

You don’t want to be salesy and sleazy. You don’t want to go in for it, but you might do a little flirting first, check out their response, and you move in. It could be if you’re going out with somebody for quite a while, maybe it’s something smaller. Maybe it’s going on holiday together. That’d be great, and you can have a fabulous time.

If you’re doing this in one-to-one stuff, this stuff is beautifully smooth and simple. When you’re doing online, it’s a little lesser because you don’t have that individual contact. You could talk to somebody and say, “What is your favorite place in the world? Where would you love to go? Where in Europe would you love to go? What would be something that you’ve always wanted to see?” They tell you, “I would be desperate to go to Iceland. I’ve always thought it looked amazing. I want us to go see the glaciers. I want to see the Northern lights.” They say, “I want to go to Norway and see the fjords.”

You could say, “How about we go there together sometime?” There you go. Now you want to go on holiday with them. You find out some more about them. You get this opportunity, and you can take them to go do something fabulous. In one-to-one stuff, it’s about paying attention, listening, thinking about what this other person wants, and offering to do that with them. I would say that would probably be the closest correlation.

I’m happy you touched on the L-word, and we’re not talking about love, even though love is involved. The L-word is listen. It’s the same whether you’re online or in a human relationship. What you’re trying to do is listen to the other party and try to find out what it is that animates or enables them to be closer to you. In business, we’ll call it more commerce, and in a relationship, it’s more intimacy, but it’s all based on the word listen, Let’s be blunt. Most people in the world, I’d say 92.7% of all human beings, find it easier to talk than to listen.

We’d sometimes talk because we were afraid to have the word called silent. If you look at the word listen, you’re saying the same letters. It spells the word silent. People don’t like when things are silent. It allows you to do something that’s deep, which is listen. In the case of online, it’s those two lines of texts. In the case of an automobile salesperson, it’s, “You’ve got this amazing automobile. Would it be great to have something?” You have to know your client.

Some come in and are crying, “This is hard to even afford a $400 a month.” You might not but if you listen, you say, “This is great. I’m loving it.” You’re listening and you’re offering them the opportunity. I think that’s what you’re talking about. Whether it’s on a human relationship, one-to-one, one-to-few, family setting, or online courses is where your expertise is. It’s still data-driven. The data this guy is using the ears and the emotion to be able to use that information. Is that fair to say?

When I say data, I mean the numbers. If you ask people what do they like? If you look at what is it that your customers are enjoying? We’ll do surveys of customers and prospects. We’ll go through Facebook groups or forums. We’ll look at every single customer service reply that we’ve ever had. We’ll look at what products is it that people who bought this, what else do they buy? We’re trying to help people.

People have got problems in their lives. We are there to solve their problems. Therefore, we have to listen to them to know what are their problems. What are they suffering? How could we help? How can we make them better? The point of this is not, how can we do something that makes us more money? Help me be salesy. How can we ramp something down in people’s throats? It’s how can we help our audience?

If we do that, we’ll make more money. We can’t do it if we don’t find out what they need, and we can’t find out what they need if we’re not looking at the data, not listening to them doing interviews, paying attention, or going through all the things that they’re telling us. If they do tell us, “I’ve got this other problem,” we don’t offer to solve it for them. It’s weird.

We’ve had clients who have got loads of courses and they do surveys to their audience to find out what their customers want. People will tell them that what they want is something that they already sell, but the customer didn’t know it existed because they’re not using that information to go and have it as upsells or tell them about it through an email promotion or something like that. What we’re trying to do here is use the data, understand their audience, and offer them things that are useful in a nice, friendly, helpful way that enables those people to solve their problems and makes us more money.

Let’s unpack a few of the things you said. I’m going to make mention, as I said many times on this show, and every time I do interviews, the word business is spelled BUSINESS. Notice that the U comes before the I, meaning what can I do to help you? I’m here to serve. I’m here to help. Funny, when I found out by studying this new firm, they told you about Amazon.

The Founder of the Driving Force writes extensively about this as his mission. Not to sell more books, CDs and everything else that in the world. What can I do to serve? What can I do to help? People flocked, and he had more money than you could count in several lifetimes. That’s the genius of being of service.

Somebody like Richard Branson or Elon Musk, the electric car existed before the internal combustion engine. It preceded the internal combustion. Elon Musk didn’t invent the electric car. He repurposed what he said, “That’s a much better idea. I like this.” He builds it, and now he’s the richest being on the planet by saying, “How can I help? People have a problem.”

In this case, it was multiple without the environment and this and that. It’s cool, but he was there. He did it. Just so everybody is clear on this, information is readily available anywhere on the web, but the transformation is not. That’s what John brings to us. Put on your seatbelts, everybody, because we have wonderful sponsors that love us. We’re going to come right back after this. There’ll be more John Ainsworth, and we’re going to go deeper into Data Driven Marketing. We will be right back after this brief, wonderful message.

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We have good in abundance in our cup. Run is over with good in the two legs of being named John Ainsworth. He’s the CEO and Founder of Data Driven Marketing. We are talking about how it is that you can serve better, solve problems and, by the same token, earn and make a lot of money because you’re there to be of benefit.

John does it by not just looking at data, meaning numbers, but what is it that you do? What problems that you solve? Let’s talk about something that is the heart of every business, especially online courses. That is email subscribers. How is it, John, that you, as an expert in this field, teach people and show people how you can increase your revenue and email subscribers in a manner that works?

You’ve increased the amount of revenue you were making per sale. The next thing to do is make more sales to your existing email list. Most online businesses have got an email list, and they know that you’re supposed to have a list. They’ve heard the expression, the money is on the list, and they know that it’s important, but they don’t like to email them very often.

This is the same across every online business. Almost everybody I talk to sends a promotion out three times a year. That’d be Black Friday. It might be New Year. They might do July 4th. It is something like that. Every time they do it, if you look at the chart of how much money they make, there’s a big spike. They make a big spike around Black Friday, New Year, and July 4th.

If you look at that, you say to them, “That’s interesting. Do people like those courses that they buy all year?” “They love the course. They make great feedback about it.” “When you send a promotion, you sell more courses, and do they help people?” “People get great results from it.” You send that promotion, you get a lot more sales, you make more money, people get those problems solved, and they’re delighted about it. Why don’t you send more of those promotions? People think the same thing.

They say that they want to be spammy, salesy, aggressive, and send too many emails and have all of their email lists unsubscribe. This is based on the assumption that when you send email promotions, you have to do it in a spammy, salesy, aggressive way. You look at the promotions that they’re sending, and you can understand why because people don’t know how to send good email promotions. When they do it, all they’re doing is selling.

All they’re doing in the current emails are saying, “Here’s what’s great about my course. You should go buy my course. Here’s the price of the course. There is a discount if you subscribe to the course.” Here’s what you can do if you send those emails in a beautiful, helpful, friendly way. Let’s say you’ve got six courses that you sell. One email promotion is talking about one course. You send out for a week useful content about that topic.

Let’s say it is about English pronunciations. You’re teaching English as a foreign language, and you want to teach people how to pronounce stuff. You send a week’s content about this certain type of pronunciation. Maybe it’s English versus American pronunciation. That’s what your course is about. You have useful content around that topic. That gets all the people who are interested in that specific topic to be paying attention to emails now, to feel good about you, and to feel like you know what you’re talking about.

In the next week, you transition into slightly more promotional emails. Instead of having content, now you’re mentioning that you’ve got a discount on that course. You’ve got that course. It’s available. It was $150, but it’s 30% off this week. In those first three emails on that week, most of the content there is still about being useful and helpful to the person. The course being on sale is almost like a side note. It’s mentioning that. What you’re saying is things like, “Here’s the problem that you’re facing.” You’re helping people to understand the problem better so they can understand the world better.

The next email is talking about, “Here’s what effect that’s going to have.” Maybe the effect, in that case, is you’re going to be less likely to get that job, people are less likely to understand you, or you’re going to have some confusion when you’re having that conversation. You’re using this word instead of that word, or you’re saying it in this way, instead of that way.

Solution one is your next email. That’s where you’re giving some useful tips and things that you can do. Let’s say you’re selling a course about the home recording studios that I mentioned earlier. Maybe here’s something practical that you do when you’re setting up your software. Here’s something you can do to solve that problem.

All of those three emails, problem, agitation solution, all focused around helping the person understand the world or solve the problem, but within that email, you mentioned, “The course is on sale this week, where you can get the full solution. You can get this completely solved. You know exactly what to do.” You then transition into a few that are more simple promotions but done in a helpful and friendly way. You aimed at the people who were interested from all those previous emails who want to buy but aren’t quite sure.

You’re going to talk about testimonials. You do want to talk about the benefits. You’re going to have useful little snippets from the course, frequently asked questions, this thing, and saying, “This course is on sale. The discount ends in 48 hours, 6 hours, or 3 hours.” You send all those emails over two weeks, and most of it is useful content. You’re transitioning into, and also, you can buy this.

What you’ll find is every time you do one of those promotions, people love getting them. They’re helpful and they want the content. All the people who don’t buy are more enamored of you because you’ve helped them out more, and a higher proportion of people are going to buy. You can do this, and you should do this every two weeks. A week of useful content, a week of more promotion, or we could use the content week for more promotion.

What happens is sales go through the roof because instead of getting that spike every four months, you’re now getting that spike every two weeks. It’s great content. People are happy to be on your email list, and they like it. The people who buy your courses are delighted because now they’ve got the problem solved. The entire thing is phenomenal, but you have to do it well and right. People don’t realize that it’s possible. They don’t know that they can do it in a way that their subscribers will enjoy.

Let’s ask a simple question, but first, I want to unpack a couple of things that you mentioned. When you talk about people recognizing that their email list is vital, important, and necessary, that’s intellectually good. For most of the people you deal with online courses, do they have an email list of 2,000 to 5,000? Is it mostly 5,000 to 10,000 or is it mostly 10,000 to 50,000?

We have a whole big range, but the people who were working with these clients. They have to have at least 3,000 people on their email list for us to serve them as an actual client because they need to have enough leverage. They need to be able to make enough extra money that is going to pay for our fees. We don’t want someone to hire us and not make more money than they’re spending. It would be ridiculous. We don’t let people who are not more than that work with us.

Most people who are in our audience who we talk with are somewhere in that range somewhere from 2,000 to 10,000. The biggest email list of any of our clients is 300,000. If you’ve got 2,000 people on your email list, this is a thing you should be doing. If you’re only getting going, maybe it is worth it. Maybe it’s not. I’m not quite sure you can. You can think about that. If you’ve got 2,000 people on your email list already, this is a 100% important strategy. It’s something that you should be focusing on and doing every month.

I want to emphasize. Notice how insistent John was in those sentences. This is something you must do. If you have 2,000 people, there’s something you must be doing. Here’s the question to you, John Ainsworth. It sounds very nice composing these emails and giving data, and getting what we call a give, give, invite. It’s a process, but that takes a lot of work. That means I have to think. Are you telling people that you have to work?

Most people in the course creation space, what they do is they have the three parts of their business and they work on two of them. One of them is creating content and building an audience. That might be creating YouTube videos, running a podcast, or it might be doing blog posts that are going to drive search engine traffic. They’re happy. They love it. They keep doing that and building their audience. That’s one of the legs.

The second one is you have to make great courses, and they love doing that. They make these courses. They improved the courses and they made them fantastic. The third leg is you have to get the audience to buy the courses. You have to have a funnel. If you have to have email marketing, you have to have a funnel, and they don’t want to do that.

What I am saying is you have to do all three of them. At that moment, most people in this space are content creators first and foremost. That’s how they got into this. That’s their skillset. That is how they got going. They need to do this thing as well. If you’re getting started, it’s your side gig. You got a full-time job, and you’re doing this on the side. You’re starting to build up an audience.

Maybe you don’t have to do this at the moment. Maybe you keep going as your sidekick and build up your audience. Once you get to the point where this is what you want to make money from and be able to serve these people full time, at that stage, yes, you need to be doing this. It needs to be a serious proportion of your work and needs to a proportion of your time to interact.

The three pieces are knowing that you have an audience and attracting them. Number two is content creation, which is as you said, “Everybody likes that. That’s like being on stage without having to be on stage. You can be yourself.” The third is understanding that if you truly understand that your business is to serve, you want to interact with people. You need to create what in the world today is called the funnel.

The funnel is imagined as what it is. I also call it a “cornucopia” or horn of plenty. You got 100 people at the top, and they’re filtering down. You may have twenty people that purchased right away. Those 80 people now want to hear from you. They love to hear from you. They love what you do. If you keep nurturing and nursing them with the purpose of serving, not selling. Selling is a natural process. “I want what you have. Look at that tip you gave me. That’s great.”

When you have that relationship, all these three things in harmony, you’ll be fine. If you do two, you know what happens to a two-legged stool, you fall over, and you’re not making money. You need to integrate all these three things that John has told us. The genius of what I believe that you’re saying here is true.

John has things that are available for free because he’s a great course content creator. If you use some of these free tools, you will say, “I want more of this. What does it cost?” You’ll gladly pay it because it works. What we proved before this works, not in a business relationship, because every relationship is a human relationship. This works equally as well. When you’re sending out emails to family and friends, you want to be giving and sharing stories and information. There’s no course you’re trying to sell, but the course might be called you.

You want to be creating more bonds and not boundaries. When you do that, everything good happens. What we’re talking about here all sounds like it’s focused around business because it is. To me, the highest calling in life is selling. Sales is a wonderful thing. You said before, “People think sales, smarmy, and pushy.” They don’t go together.

Sale is high art. When you recognize that your art is a service, you want to be selling more because the more people you sell to, you create more benefits for you, which allows you to serve more people. That company I told you about is called Amazon, they touch a lot of people every day. The numbers are so staggering that everybody laughs when I say the Amazon name. If you looked back several years ago, it was still a business and growing, but it’s not like it is now, which touches everybody on the planet.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a human being nowadays who has not heard of or maybe even used Amazon. To put it in context, if you take all the people in the world who are professed Christians, it is about 1.5 billion. Take all the people professed Muslims, it is about 1.5 billion. That’s 3-plus billion people, but there were 7.68 billion people on the planet, and not even half the planet is either Christian or Muslim. It means almost 4 billion don’t have anything to do with the God of Christians or Muslims, but everybody touches the God called Amazon because he solved the problem for people.

How do I press a button and get something that I want immediately? That’s a big wow. That’s what John does. I’m pushing John because A) I trust him, B) I like him, and I know that what he does works. I care about you, my audience, because you’re here to become the best you possible. That’s why you tune in. Fans, you might like Barry Shore, a great guy. I know I am. John is a nice fellow, funny, British accent, but you care about you.

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You want to be happier, healthier, and wealthier. Once you recognize that, you want to do whatever it is in your best interest so you can be a greater service to people. I’m happy, but I’m sorry to tell you, John, that our time has come almost to a close. I’m going to ask you three quick questions, and we’ll finish up for a bit. Are you ready?

Yes.

The first question is, will you come back again?

I’d love to. I’d be delighted.

Number two, I’m going to give you a hug in front of the 356,293 people. Let me tell you what HUG stands for. Heartfelt Unlimited Giving. John, the third question, you have 80 seconds only to answer this. What is your most fervent desire?

What I love in the world is trying to understand more fundamentally how the world works and experience the joy of the world more deeply. I feel like the world is a beautiful place, but most of the beauty is hard to see until you pay attention to it. If you don’t pay attention, what you see is the suffering, the difficulties, or the hardships, but if you pay attention, you see the beauty, the wonder, and the joy. My most fervent desire is to become as good as I can be at being able to see that and helping other people to see that as well.

He said it all, joy and smile. Journey of you sees miracles in life every day. Our blessing is for everybody. Thank you for a little bit of tuning into the show. Have you less stress, be happy, and become the best you possible. Use the three fundamentals of life. Remember life. Your life has a purpose. Number two, go MAD, Make A Difference. Number three, unpack and unlock the secrets and the power of everyday words.

They’re like WWW, What A Wonderful World. SMILE, See Miracles In Life Everyday. My eight-year-old niece says, “Seeing Miracles In Everyday Life.” Cause create the world you want to live in. Causing rethinking and enabling all to excel. Use the four-letter words. Remember positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant. Four letter words like love, life, hope, free, grow, gift, play, pray, swim until the world FUNN.

If you see your family and friends afterward, invite them to the show and use the two most powerful words in the English language three times a day, every single day, consciously and conscientious for now and the rest of your life, and you will make a difference for yourself. You’ll be happier, healthier, and wealthier for your family, your friends, and all living beings. Our blessing from John and Barry is to go forth, live exuberantly, and spread the seeds of joy, happiness, peace, and love. Go MAD, Make A Difference.

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On the insider tips for the Joy of Living, we have a tip for you that is going to touch your heart and hopefully your mind, your patriotism, and your pocketbook because you want to be giving to The American Legion. We want to be talking about what happens with the importance of supporting service members and how you can get involved.

We are deeply honored to have with us the Deputy Director for Media Relations. His name is John Raughter. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1983 and served as a public affairs photojournalist for the Fourth Marine Aircraft Wing Headquarters in New Orleans. He has written more than 1,000 articles and has interviewed former presidents, vice presidents, and people of note.

The American Legion is one of the most important institutions in the American landscape. We want to make sure that more people know about it worldwide. That’s why we were honored to have you here. Thank you, John, for being here. Let’s jump right in and tell us about what it means to honor our pact and what the Honor Our PACT Act is, and where it stands.

The Honor Our PACT Act is the most comprehensive veterans’ health legislation. It’s huge. It would cover up to about 3.5 million veterans who were exposed to burn pits and all kinds of toxicants as a result of their military service like atomic cleanup, where they did the atomic testing. You may have read about the water situation at camp was due for decades, where it was contaminated, and families were drinking out of it. A lot of people don’t realize that when they think of the dangers of military service, they think of bullets and bombs. A lot of contaminants out there, as we’ve seen with Agent Orange and all the years it took for those veterans to get the assistance that they earned.

Where are we now in terms of the legislation? Is it about to be passed? Is it minutes away, hours away, or as they used to say in Washington, “Yes, it’s coming?”

I wish it was minutes away. It might be days or weeks. The House has passed it. That was a significant victory for the American Legion when the House of Representatives said yes to this. It is in the Senate. We think in 2022, especially on Memorial Day, it would be appropriate. We’d love to see the president sign something like that. As we know, Beau Biden died of brain cancer. He was a veteran of the Middle East. These burn pits were everywhere, and all kinds of ways were thrown in there. People were breathing it. You couldn’t avoid it.

I’m amazed that if the house passed it, it wouldn’t pass the Senate by something like 96 to 4 or 100 to 0 because we’re talking about the men and women of our country who have dedicated their lives to protecting us. As you said eloquently, it’s not only about bullets and bombs. That’s a rare instance. It’s about the effects of everyday, ongoing situations that, unfortunately, we caused ourselves, and now we’re reaping the whirlwind.

Let’s move on to something about Memorial Day. I like to call it Poppy Day because I come from Boston, Massachusetts, where at least when I was growing up, it was a very patriotic city and dedicated to everybody getting a puppy. People were selling them on the streets and giving them away. It was a time of coming together. Talk to us more about what’s happening on Memorial Day these days and what it can do to help make sure that the Honor Our PACT Act does get passed.

The readers could help too by calling their senators and asking them to vote for this. On Memorial Day, we know a lot of people enjoy the beaches and the barbecues. We’re not saying you shouldn’t do that. Some of our fallen heroes enjoyed these activities as well, like picnics and family time. That’s important, but we also think it’s important to pause and remember what the day is all about. It’s about honoring our fallen and remembering more than a million men and women who have died for this country in the military service since the revolutionary war.

They have given us the life that we have and preserved our freedom. That’s what Memorial Day, first and foremost, is about. You can honor veterans by visiting a veteran’s cemetery, maybe putting some flowers and flags at the graves of veterans, visiting veterans in a VA hospital, or attending a commemoration or remembrance ceremony in your community or your American Legion posts. These things are important and a great message to send young people.

On that note, the best message for young people is the ability to recognize that the remarkable freedoms that we enjoy here in the United States come at a cost. Things don’t just happen. People gave their all, gave their lives, gave their limbs of their families, and even if you are not able, hopefully, most of you will be able to recognize the value of the veterans and the American Legion.

If you can’t go to a cemetery, make sure that you do as wonderful as John is recommended. Pause 1 or 2 minutes, and ask everybody at your barbecue, at the beach, or wherever you are. Let’s pause and say thank you in our minds and our hearts, even verbally to Americans that gave their all. John, it is such a pleasure to have you. Who can join the American Legion? What are some of the things that Legionnaires do?

We serve communities nationwide. We have more than 12,000 American Legion posts. There are twice as many American Legion posters on all Walmarts. We’re everywhere. We even have some overseas. In a time of trouble, after a natural disaster, oftentimes, the emergency shelter is going to be that American Legion post.

We teach young people about the value of flag etiquette. We advocate for congress in a strong VA health system. We get things done for veterans, the military, and their families, and anyone who has served one day of honorable military service, including those in the military, since December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, is eligible for membership in the American Legion. If you’re not a veteran, you might join the Sons of the American Legion or the American Legion Auxiliary, which is for male and female spouses of legion eligible veterans. We have a great tradition where family organization, and there’s a place in the American Legion for about everybody.

Let’s say that again. There’s a place in the American Legion for about everybody. We urge everybody who is reading. We have a worldwide audience. You don’t have to live in the United States of America to support the American Legion. I’m saying this off the cuff, and John can correct me if he wants to, but you can send money. You can speak well about American veterans and read up on the history of what it means that Americans went to serve their country and battle the evil in the world. We continue to do that. That is the key.

As John says, “We need to make sure that the Honor Our PACT Act is passed.” It’s past due. That legionnaire, American veterans should be suffering under any circumstances and certainly from things that are contaminants in water and the Earth, etc. Let’s take a look. What can our readers do to get more information? I know we can go to www.Legion.org. Is there something else that we can do, John, as a group, reading and participating? What would you say, 1 or 2 things that could make a difference for veterans and for legions?

Contacting senators and asking them to support the PACT Act would make an enormous difference and not just for legions and the lives of veterans everywhere. That’s a great way to start. Thanking military veterans for their service. One great way is if you’re an employer, hire a veteran. It’s a win-win. You’re going to get a good employee. They’re going to be disciplined, oftentimes in great physical shape, but you’re going to get someone who’s patriotic and knows how to work hard and get the job done.

Is there anything better if you’re an employer or an employee? Working hard and getting the job done because we’re talking about people who are disciplined, who are trained, and who care. John, I am honored that you’re here with us. You live in the heartland in Indianapolis with your wife, son, and daughter. What happens on Veteran’s Day around where you live?

Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, we have American Legion posts everywhere, having ceremonies there for one at the Indiana War Memorial that’s occurring right before Veterans Day weekend. We’ll have the American Legion presence there. There’s also a little race that we have in Indianapolis on that weekend, including an American Legion race car driven by Tony Kanaan, Race Car One, which will be the American Legion Car.

If you want to raise awareness, be the one to let veterans know that they have friends out there. We want everyone to be the one to make a difference to veterans who many of them are around twenty a day are taking their own lives. That’s an actual crisis. We need to get a handle on veteran suicide and do everything we can to prevent that.

I don’t want to dwell on that now, but I do want to make people aware as you did eloquently that the pressures of not being in the service and the things that people have experienced are causing our veterans to commit suicide at a terrible rate. We want to end on a high note here, and that is, it’s Poppy Day coming up. It is Memorial Day.

Contact your senators. This is a bill that must be passed and signed because we, as a nation, owe it to people who’ve given their all. All we’re talking about is helping out and making sure we clean up the environment. The people can live safely. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about extending $40 billion to people. I’m talking about cleaning up our own country and making it fit for our veterans.

Go to www.Legion.org. Contact your senators and say, “Please vote for the Honor Our PACT Act. Please make it happen soon.” John Raughter can say, “Barry Shore, I’m proud that we go on the show together.” It is great to be an American. There’s nothing better than honoring the American Legion. Get involved in any way and every way you can.

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John, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you. We appreciate everything that the American Legion does. We honor you for your service and the continuing greatness of the United States of America as being the beacon of freedom in this world. Is there anything you’d like to add at the end here on our insider tips now?

Barry, it’s been an honor speaking to you and to your readers. I encourage anybody reading to visit Legion.org. Let’s all promise to serve veterans as well as they served us.

Speak about them with joy and happiness and bring to them the honor that we know that they deserve and we want to shower upon them. John, thank you so much for being here. Best wishes to you and your family and all the wonderful veterans coming up on Memorial Day. Contact your senators, Honor Our PACT Act, and we’ll get to get this done and allow the wonderful President Biden to sign it into the office and get the applause that he deserves because he knows the pain.

You too, Barry. Thank you.

 

Important Links

• John Ainsworth
• HonestPets.co
• The American Legion
• John Raughter – LinkedIn
• Amazon
• Honor Our PACT Act
• Https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JohnAinsworth/
• Sons of the American Legion
• American Legion Auxiliary

About John Ainsworth

John has been building automated funnels for over 10 years and he is a little bit obsessed with them. He’s certified by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Digital Marketer. He’s helped online course businesses increase their revenue by 25-300%.