Episode #60 – Rob Hanly on How to Become a Marketing Consultant Using a Simple 3-Step Formula

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 John:Hey everybody it’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy and it’s time for Episode 60: of The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast, where you will discover how to make more money with email marketing and really just all things marketing.  

How to make better marketing, so you can make better sales, and you get better results in your business, so you can go and live a great lifestyle, whether it’s  your kids or you go careening around the world or relaxing on the beach, in a hammock and drinking a coconut.  

Now, I may live in Thailand, but there’s no beach in Chaing Mai, I’m not really do much of that hammock sitting, I do drink a lot of coconuts, I’m not doing much of that hammock stuff on the beach, unfortunately. 

That will be in a couple of weeks and we’ll head down to the beach for a bit of a break, anyway today, I’ll be talking to Rob Hanly about how to get started with consulting. This is an interesting topic, okay, because this has been kind of my background, this is Rob’s background, as well. 

Rob was on the Podcast last week, and if you don’t know, he was also the reverend … he was the reverend on a podcast, I think it was Episode 20 to 30ish, I can’t remember exactly what the number was, but he was on there as well and now he coming out. He is a consultant, quite a high paid consultant too. He’s got some great strategies to share on this. 

But, why this is interesting is that, I get a lot of emails from people who are listening to this show and they want to be consultants or they’re in the process of becoming one or they’ve quit their jobs and they are a consultant but they’re not getting very good results yet.

They want to know how to get clients, they want to know how to make it work so they can find a hammock on a beach and drink coconuts, or just live in New York or London or Sidney or just have a kick ass life. 

That’s what we’re going to talk about today. It’s really how to do … like Rob’s story and my story, how we’re similar but very different and how getting started with consulting and really kicking ass, isn’t that complicated. You don’t need a huge amount of stuff to get it done. 

You don’t need to be an expert; you don’t need tons of training or anything. You really just need the right mind set, the right set of beliefs and a couple of new, couple tricks of the trade and that’s really it, okay. There’s not a magic way to do it, very simple and we’re going to talk about it, step by step process today! 

To get us started, the best episode of the Email Marketing podcast go to themcmethod.com/-6-0, that’s themcmethod.com/60. 

Now, todays, McMasters Insider of the week is, “I find, I spend so much time researching my copywriting tasks, it’s probably my biggest bottleneck.” This came from one of the members of McMasters, which is a paid community, which I’ll tell you a bit about in a second. 

Talk about this Insider though, and basically what he is saying, he spends so much time researching his prospects, probably going into Amazon reviews, maybe speaking to them on the phone. interviewing them, looking at surveys, doing the forms, basically so much time trying to figure out who he is trying to write copy for, that’s where he spends most of his time, is his biggest bottle neck. 

Here’s why this is an Insider, because he’s saying it like it’s a bad thing, but this is the way it should be. It’s the research, right, that creates the empathy which is really what creates great copy. Great copy doesn’t come from writing all the time; also you need to be able to write. 

If you have to come up with a great sales letter, that great sales letter is not going to be great because you spent 90% of your time writing it, but it’s going to be great because you spent over 50% of your time, researching it, okay. 

Now I remember there’s a quote from Rammit Sethi, in one of Derrick Halpern’s podcasts, I think it was, he said, “He spent 50% to 60% of his time on his research.” He’s doing this and this guy’s got a multi-million dollar business. He sells a lot of information products; he has a blog, a whole bunch of stuff. 

He’s at, iwillteachyoutoberich.com; he’s a guy worth following for email marketing, as well as, all the other marketing stuff but he swears by this researching stuff. The insider that I want you to understand is that, great copy comes from in-depth research. 

Go grab a coffee, go to a coffee shop, spend two, three, four hours each day for a few days, maybe longer, however long you feel you need and you really want to overload your brain with as much information as you can about who the prospect is, what they care about, what their dreams are, what their goals and you want to actually get to the point where you feel overloaded with information, okay.

Then start to map out maybe, like a graphs or sales letter outlet, start to brain storm some ideas how you can connect to this prospect, who  you now understand, better than they understand himself.  Start to brainstorm, how are you going to connect that with your product that you’re trying to sell. 

You’re really want your brain to feel frustrated so it’s gets that point of overload. We talked about this in the podcast with Stephen Cutler, which is where you overload your brain like this.  This is part of getting into flow and then alright, then you back off. Go and get a massage, take a day or two off, two or three days off, whatever. 

What’s going to happen is your brain your brain is going to be taking over, your subconscious brain is going to be working on in and then a couple of days go back, you don’t even think of …  and you consciously try not to think about it.  

Then you go, come back to work a couple of days later and you sit down and you start writing and you find that nine times out of ten, you know exactly what to write, it’s all going to come out very quickly and especially if you can get rid of that editing voice, that critical part of your brain, that tells you ‘that’s no good.’ Get rid of that, and just write. 

All that research you did, overloading of your brain, that’s really going to drive this fantastic sells letter, okay. That’s the Inside. 

Spend more time researching and less time writing. Now reviews, if you want to leave a review for the show, you’ll help me spread the word, we’ll make another case study out of it, I can get more people on the podcast, anything to make my day. Go to iTunes, search for, the McMethod Email Marketing podcast and leave me a review. Tell me what you think about the show. 

Got one listener question now, how important is continuing an overriding theme or story throughout an S.O.S? S.O.S. stands for Soap Opera Secrets, this refers to Andre Chaperon’s strategy in autoresponder matters, where you write a story in your email sequence, but instead of a story being in one email, the story carries over five, ten how many emails, it never really ends. 

The idea is by telling a story that doesn’t ever end, in a given email. It’s a bit like a TV series where once you watch one or two episodes you have to watch the next one because at the end of every episode, they start to give you a little hint of about what’s coming next week. 

That triggers a part of the brain that is it’s kind of like, well you need to have completion, like it is with dating. You want to resolve something, you want to have completion. This is to do with stories, like TV shows, you have to have completion of that TV show that’s why you keep watching those episodes, the same thing with those emails. 

Something, I’m not a huge fan of this strategy with emails mainly because it’s triggering people to open the emails instead of buy your stuff. If you spend too much time   and getting hooked on the free information and the receiving and not buying, then you end up with a list of people that who really don’t like to buy stuff. Which, it’s not good. 

Suppose you were going to do it, you’re going to try it anyway, you wanted to test it and you’re going to do a Soap Opera Sequence, right, a story over several emails and how important it is it continuing an overriding theme or story?   

I would say it’s not that important. I think you could mix it up, I think it’s good when you can mix it up, you can start telling a story and then say in the next email you’ll hear about,  how Joe is going to save the life of Dave, something like that, whatever. Then in the next email, you just completely drop that. Maybe you come back to Dave in a few emails, come back to that story in a few emails. Is there an overwriting theme, maybe, but maybe not? 

I just read a book by Charles Bukowski, yeah that his’ name, “Post Office”, this guy gets raving reviews from people about his writings, but I read his book. There’s almost no overriding theme, I don’t know what it’s about. It’s a good book, its fun to read and I did want to read it to the end, but it’s not like a normal book. It’s just a story that never really … like it’s interesting, that’s the interesting part, but it never really gets anywhere. There doesn’t seem to be any point to the story, then it just ends and it’s done. 

You can do this with an S.O.S., you can jump around, you can be confusing, all … I think actually the more confusing you can be, to a point, the better; because it’s going to mean that people keep showing up to read because they want to know what the hell is going on, okay. 

That’s it for that question, I hope that helps. Now lets get into this podcast, with Mr. Rob Hanly, about “How to Get Started with Consulting”. 

It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy; I’m here with another podcast with the good old Reverend. Now a couple of weeks ago, would have been last week or maybe the week before that, we talked about the three reasons your marketing strategy will fail, and that was for business owners and consultants and even people just getting started.

There’s some really key reasons why people don’t succeed. They never get thrashing, they never really get off the ground. Today we’re going to mix that up. I got him back on the show because he is actually a very successful consultant and when people usually come to me through our email, they’ve heard me on … they’ve heard this podcast, they’ve heard me on, say on Entrepreneur File, with John Lee Dumas. 

They’ve heard me on one of these tell us your story podcast, where I went to the Philippine’s, I kind of failed a bunch, took up copywriting and started making money, moved to Thailand, and now kind of like this, what seems to a lot of people who have jobs back in an office and all that kind of crap, is that seems like an idea lifestyle. A lot of people are very interested in that. 

What I want to bring up, the Reverend [Inaudible 00:08:13], was to talk about his consulting and actually how to get started, right, because there are people here, maybe it’s you, the listener and you’ve heard about copywriting, you’ve heard about marketing and what you really want to do is, figure out how can you, use what you’ve learn on this podcast.

Use what you’ve learn from something like CopyHour, which is a Copywriting Training Program or other marketing podcast, to kind of escape the cubicle, which is such a cliché phrase these days, but get out of that cubicle, so you can kind of get out there and move to Thailand, move to South America, start doing Skype calls to clients in the U.S. and Australia and U.K. and make money doing that. 

Anyway, we’re going to talk about that in this episode with Rob’s story, John’s story, bunch of stuff but really how to get started with consulting and make money so you can fire your boss and come and live in Thailand and hang out and drink the best coffee in Chaing Mai, I’ll show you where that coffee shop is, it’s really cool. 

Reverend, what’s up man? 

Rob:Just chillin like a villain on the ceiling. 

John:Chillin like a villain on the ceiling. 

Rob:By Bob Dillion. 

John:I hear … I was going to say, you should do an intro, but I’ve got one thing right here. Point number one, is Rob’s story that would be like the best intro, any of us could give. Chillin like a villain, Mr. Villian right here, can you give us the villain story, Rob Hanly’s story? 

Rob:I can, ultimately what I ended up doing was I got involved in consulting a couple of years ago and I previously already done some client work. I was a ADHD mentor originally, ended up working as a graphic designer, working media as a digital producer, had a pretty varied background, worked across a couple of different industries with clients as well as any actually work I was doing myself. 

John:You had a job? 

Rob:I had a job, crazy right. 

John:You worked in an office?

Rob:I worked in an office. 

John:Like there was a coffee machine, bosses, kind like you had to dress up. 

Rob:I once threw a whiteboard marker at my boss and got a promotion. 

John:That’s how you do it, we’re going to do a podcast on that sometime I think. 

Rob:Maintain eye contact, pure alpha status. 

John:You’re a lion. Alright, you had a job, you did all that and then somehow now, you’re in Thailand. 

Rob:Well, yeah look, currently I’m in Thailand. For the record,  I don’t live in Thailand. I’m traveling around for a little bit at the moment, it’s one of the benefits that come from consulting, but to get here was a little hard work, a little sweat and tears, I’m not going to lie. I think that’s something that’s work out quite well. I basically left my job … 

John:It’s hard work? 

Rob:You got to do the work, you got to sweat, you know, you don’t grow a muscle by sitting in the gym, on the floor taking selfies. 

John:What were some of the things that sucked about the journey? 

Rob:You know what; It sucked until I accepted the hard work. It sucked until I accepted that life is easy when you live it the hard way and hard when you live it the easy way. That’s Kekich credo, right? 

John:Right. 

Rob:But it wasn’t until I accepted that, and just committed to grinding, for want of a better term. Stop trying to be perfect, stop trying to be that, ‘Oh, so super and special’,  I just got out there and made shit happen. 

John:Okay. 

Rob:That’s when everything got easier. Up into that stage it was grand, because I had all these ego brain problems going on, oh you’re special, you’re smart, you should be able to do this, why haven’t you’ve done this.

John:I’m looking for the magic trick this is going to unlock the game. 

John:Yeah. 

Rob:There’s no silver bullet, the silver bullet is hard work. 

John:Right.

Rob:Hard work in the right direction. 

John:It’s kind like they talk about the overnight success. Where’s there like five years in the making. 

Rob:Yeah, it’s often times how it works. 

John:Usually when you hear about someone, who’s that is sixteen years old and a millionaire, there’s always a back story. 

Rob:They’re an outlier, and they’re an outlier. 

John:Yeah.

Rob:Everyone who is going to listen to this or the majority of people, who listen to this, probably read the “Four Hour Work Week”.  Forget it, everyone who reads the Four Hour Work Week …

John:What was your Facebook update status one time? 

Rob:It making you look like you worked a four hour work week is a fulltime job. It’s something that Glen [Inaudible 00:11:28] up and run with and a couple of us locals spoke about, you’ve got two groups of people right? 

There’s a four hour work week, which everyone, wants to have. You’ve got first group who read the book, ignored all the shit about doing hard work and then focused on living in Thailand and taking selfies and drinking coconuts and pretending they’re successful. 

Then you got another group of people, who go well, the concept of the Four Hour Work Week is work as much as you need to, but only work on things you enjoy, doing things that you enjoy, and be able to take time off. 

John:The Four Hour Work Week was a result of a split test on a group, like that title was a split test on Google Outlet, that’s the only reason it’s called the Four Hour Work Week. 

Rob:It was originally, at the seminar that they use to give at the University, was Drug Dealing for Final Profit. That was a title, that was slapped back by the publisher and that’s why they did the ad words. 

John:Maybe you could be a drug dealer for fun on profit, but maybe you would be working tens a hour a week or twenty hours a week or forty hours a week. 

Yeah, right, but one thing that I’ve realized is doing this, as soon as you realized that it’s not about the Four Hour Work Week, and that’s the story, that’s the dream and that’s the marketing thing. 

Really what we’re all doing out here, is just business, and business been done for centuries, basically you’re solving someone’s problem and they’re paying you money to solve it because you’re going to save them time or money or effort. 

Rob:You add value. 

John:You’re going to add value, and that’s all we’re doing. This is … I talked to my grandparents back on Christmas Time the other day, they’re kind like, are you getting by, how’s the internet thing going? Are you making a enough to pay the rent, and well there’s nothing new that we’re doing over here, its business. 

All the internet does it just means I can be in Thailand and I can work with Joe Smith in Sidney, who’s got a plumbing business and needs more leads, customers, whatever. 

We can just channel on Skype, instead of doing a phone call or a meeting at our local coffee shop, we just jump on Skype. That’s what the internet does; it enables business at long distances. 

Rob:It’s a tool of efficiency. Tim Gordon wrote on this years ago, if you search Setco, and Make Money Online, we show we can [Inaudible 00:13:19], but that’s what it is, you understand the internet is a tool of efficiency. It’s not a magic bullet, it’s not going to save you from your day job, it’s not going to make life magic that you hit a green button, and you become [Inaudible 00:13:26] and make thousands of dollars on auto pilot. 

John:Yeah. 

Rob:What it is, you have to put in the hard work first, because it’s a new behavior you have to commit to it, right? That’s where my story started. You’ve heard it a million times, but ultimately I started by sitting at the kitchen table, literally, the classic cliché, I’d wake up real early at 5:00 in the morning, kind of thing. 

John:Yeah. 

Rob:Get a yellow legal pad, a note pad, and write a question at the top, “How can I add “X” dollars in value to people and receive “X” dollars in return, and “Y” dollars in return, today?” I would write a list of twenty-five or thirty things and I would grind, grind and grind and get it all out there. Develop the behavior.

John:Yeah. 

Rob:Then it was about [Inaudible 00:14:00] and use to reach out to people and add value to them first. Showed the, “Hey, here’s how you can improve your site. This is how you can make your site faster. How you can make more money from it. How you can get more leads to yoga studio, your personal training studio, whatever, and hey, I’ve got this other thing but you should call me if you want to find out what it is,” and then I get people on the phone. 

I would talk to them about their problems, and my background was web designer, I had worked in digital production and media, I’m not going to lie, I had an advantage, I have done this before. 

I could just take it and turn it into a sale, do a proposal and make them some money. That’s was it, that’s how got started was the kitchen table and being prepared to do and people talk about sixteen hour days, but really I’m talking like sixteen hour days, man. Food was made while working, eating while working. That’s it. 

John:I would like to say that consulting does have to be hard, it’s really you figure out a problem that you can solve and then you figure out ways you can solve it, really. Whether it’s autoresponder or marketing funnels, or any sort of consultant, marketing consultant or not, it’s really simple like it’s just people have problems that have a need solving. 

You’re just going to be that guy, the challenge that most people have is, well how do you get started, how do you find these people. It started with you; it’s just kind like well, its start think first, start getting your brain on the right track. Which what problems [crosstalk 00:15:10]. 

Rob:How can you add value? 

John:The next thing is to establish trust with someone who has a problem that you might be able to add value to. 

Rob:Yelp. 

John:Then once you got trust establish and you’ve got a relationship and you can have coffee at Skype or whatever it is, sooner or later there is going to be an opportunity for some sort of exchange or transaction. It’s going to be like, you pay me $1,000 and I will do “X”, 

Rob:I’ll deliver on this. You’ll save time, you’ll make money. Talk about value, not technical stuff.

John:Yeah. 

Rob:Here’s a very important thing, right, you and I are talking about a really straight forward methodology, right. The reason I don’t about you, it took me so long to get real traction, was I didn’t have a methodology that matched me.

John:Right.

Rob:That was something I had to develop and get use to and in the same way, so did you. You had to develop your own methodology for what you were doing when you first started. 

John:That’s a funny thing here, second to that then. I was in the Philippines and well, did you just set out to be the Autoresponder Guy, and the answer was no, completely not. I’ve been to the Philippines I tried a few ideas I got myself band from AD Words, and a couple of different things like that. 

Things weren’t going well, funny thing, I had less than $500 in my bank account, things were getting pretty tight, I was thinking maybe, I was going to have to go home. Buy a ticket on my credit card and I only had a one way ticket to come there. I thought I was going to have to buy a ticket and go home and get a job. 

It did work out anyway, I started doing copywriting, that wasn’t even … I didn’t even start learning copywriting to become a consultant, that was never the intention. I just wanted to learn copy. One, I was fascinated with it, and two, I had a website which was sort of selling … I was selling this EBook, just not very many of them, it was it made like a $1,000. in three months. Not really a big deal with the EBook. 

That’s what made me get into copywriting and I think it was around June in 2012 the first invoice, I sent was to Dan Andrews because he was in …

Rob:TropicalMBA.com. 

John:That’s right, he was in Porta Bel Air in the Phillipines at the time, for bit of a like a TropicalMBA classes, like  one of these seminar conference things, and he saw me  kind of writing down sales by hand on my little legal pad, it wasn’t yellow. 

We go through this, he saw, he’s like what are doing, I told him I’m copywriting. Then that lead to Autoresponder. I can’t remember why, or how we got onto email, he just said, he would love to have a good email sequence on his site. I’d never done it before; I never had done it for any client. I kind of had a rough idea based on what I’d done for myself and I’d been to Andre Chaperon’s course, Autoresponder’s Madness. 

Rob:Yeah. 

John:I did the Autoresponders, he paid me $200 via Paypal, I spent two full days and work on it all day. Did the same thing the day after and gave him ten emails for $200 dollars and then he was really happy with it and I think it was a week later, at the end of the seminar, he asked around and gave him [Inaudible 00:17:35], would you pay for this. 

Would you pay for this Autoresponder, and a whole bunch of people were like yeah and then he was like, how much would you pay? Some people were like $500, one guy even said like $1500. I said, “There is no way.” I was surprised enough when Dan said, he would pay, $200 just for emails. 

Then it, just grew from there, I fell into this Autoresponder thing and the same kind of thing, I was kind of in the Philippines and I was surrounded by guys like Dan Andrews, who were business owners, who had websites, who had problems. That was an advantage, but that was something anyone can create, go to seminars, conferences, all that. 

Rob:Connect with people, who have problems. 

John:Right.

Rob:Everybody.

John:People hear that you have a skill, like copywriting, whatever it happens to be like website design, or logo design, they going to be like,  I’ve been looking for a guy to do that, because most business owners have so many things that they want to do, but they haven’t got around to it, because they’re busy and they’re lazy too. When they hear that you can do something, especially if you’re just getting started, they’ll give you a shot. 

Rob:Yeah. 

John:That’s really how you get started isn’t it, you build from there, then you kind of need a bit of different skill set to grow that, but that’s where it starts. 

Rob:Yeah, one thing I really want to address right now, when we spoke about hard work and luck and  all this things involved; but ultimately, if somebody wants to become a consultant right, there’s a couple of prerequisites;

One, you have a skill set which will solve somebodies problem. If you don’t have that skill set, you can’t be a consultant. You might be a sales guy, and you can sell somebody else’s services and white label them, but you can’t …

John:That’s still a skill set. 

Roby:That’s a skill set, that’s true, but you’re not the consultant, so to speak. You’re just a sales guy, but you got a skill right, maybe you get really good at copywriting, get really good at funnels like John is, maybe you get good at SEO’s, whatever it is. You come in, and you managed to get good at a specific skill that solves a specific problem. 

Then you find people, who have that problem, and then you emailed them, and add value, and you call them and add value, or you meet them and add value. Then you segway, “Hey look I’ve got some other cool stuff, you might be interested in. let’s talk about it.” 

That’s it, that’s the silver bullet, get a skill, see the problem that it solves, and reach out to people who have those problems, add value, and make money. That’s it. I think it kind of brings up a point as well, is the difference between you and I, and our approaches. 

I’ve known John what, for two years.

John:Yeah, around two years. 

Rob:Yeah. We got along pretty well from the start and the longer we spent together, the more different we realized we are in certain aspects, in particular our approached. 

John:Same, same, but different. 

Rob:Very same, same, but different and the way we kind of discuss this is, John is essentially the hammer. Right, like you want something to happen. You want someone to go hulk mode and beat through the wall, that’s John, John will just beat down every brick in the damn wall, where I on the other hand, would like to take a couple of minutes and try to find out which of the three bricks are the weakest and just focus my energy on those. 

For me that came my I got ADHD, my background was ADHD mentoring, it was really about understanding about focus and teaching other people to do the same stuff. I would be a hypocrite, if I didn’t. 

You on the other hand love the hulk strategy. 

John:I just love that quote man, it was from Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break stuff. I like move fast and break shit. It just sounds better, it’s more aggressive. 

It something I want to just want to qualify here, it’s not just go out and just break stuff. You don’t just go out beat this hammer, and beat the crap out this all. There’s still an element of this, try to identify the three bricks, whereas, you might get a small chisel and a hammer, and chip away like a bit of a sculptor. 

You do a very neat job, very precise job on those bricks. I would rather find those, I guess, I still would want to identify what my outcome is, which is identify a couple of those bricks, then get a freakin rocket launcher and fire that rocket launcher, at those three bricks. 

I still know the outcome, I just want to hit that thing as hard as I can and I’m going to make a few mistakes, stuff is going to break. I’m going to do the wrong thing from time to time. 

I know if I just keep executing, on that strategy, and I’ve noticed that’s generally what works with my personality as well, is that my skill is usually forgetting about what can go wrong, and just moving forward in spite of kind of the questions. 

Rob:That’s it. Yeah, like that move fast and break stuff, is such a good response, in terms of, if you’re scared of doing something right, like definitely going to be a stage in my life, where that’s how I operated, because I was being held by this fear of failure, where god what if I say the wrong thing, what if I swear on the podcast, what if I insult someone and then you just have to go, you know what I’m going to move fast, I’m going to break something’s, I’m going to except that there is collateral damage. 

What I found the longer I did it for, was my personality after I kind of conquered that fear sort of things,  I was more attracted to being specific, being choosey, and being very much about, alright, so you have these customers, let me have a look at these customers. 

Who’s most popular gender, what’s the most profitable marital status, what’s the most profitable occupation, what’s the most profitable common identifier, across all these groups. 

When we send the sales campaign, I said to John before, I feel like when you send out a sales campaign you get a 5% overrate, that 95% wasted email. I much rather meet the right market, at the right time, with the right message and offer them a really good product at their offering, right off the bat. As oppose to rocket launching. I think because for me, that works well for my personality. 

Because I get this shit when I add myself to an email list and it’s almost like, yeah man, let me send you some really cool by the way, if you hit reply, I’m not going to respond, because I’m a dick. 

If you got an autoresponder, if you got an email list, you need to accept that you’re giving me you’re email I’m letting you into my Inbox. If you ignore me when I reply, you’re out of here and I ain’t going to spend a dollar on you. 

John:That’s stuff, … that’s where the difference is, it’s good to talk about this, because some people are going to think, it’s like one’s better than the other,  I use to think that’s the case.  That the way I was doing it, it was better than everyone else did it. Now I’m like no, it’s not, it just what works for me right now, at this point and time. But in this case, of this email, you might want to analyses the psychographics was the words, you used. 

Rob:Yeah, Psychographics and Social Graphics. 

John:I would be… it’s important that I get it, and I know why you do it, and why people do that stuff. But to me it’s, to get too analytical, to go too deep on that stuff, bores me to tears. I’d rather be like, what’s the goal here? What’s the minimum I can do, to get the maximum result, and then just fire away? 

Rather than spend too much time analyzing and thinking about it, I’m really trying to perfect that approach, just ready, fire, aim. That’s total me.  That’s not that’s better, you’re strategy would be more like a ready, aim, fire. 

Rob:I would like to know more of a strategist overview of the landscape, before I choose where to fire. 

John:Right. 

Rob:That’s it. I guess I’m like ready aim and fire, don’t get me wrong, a lot of people perceive this as being really a polar opposite kind of thing, you really have to move fast and break a lot of stuff. 

It’s like, hey look at me, I’m going to break a lot of stuff, and I’m going to call 16,000 people a day in cold calls or I’m going to call one person, and nobody else and I’m going to wait until I pick that perfect one person. 

Reality is, John and I have both found what works well for us. We’ve found, where our natural skill set lies and our natural mood [Inaudible 00:23:54], and we’ve accepted what our ways are. 

Like for me, I like to build up a little bit more dialog before I take action, so I can go into it with total boldness. Whereas John will go with the boldness from the get go. That doesn’t work for me and that’s fine. Just shows we have different approaches, to how we approach. 

John:It’s almost like; there is a little bit two sides of the same coin, like if we’re playing a video game you know how you have points for agility, points for wisdom, and magic and all that kind of crap. 

In this case you might have there’s two attributes here, which you have move fast and break shit. Then the other attribute might be prepare, or aim something like that. 

Rob:Preps something really good example man, because I use really struggle with preparing and that’s probably why I really double down on it, it’s my biggest weakness. Once I plugged that hole, because I use to always wing it, I still wing it. 

But when I double down on my preparation, that’s where I see huge returns. That’s when I moved from doing cheap websites and cheap jobs, to charging minimum low five figures. 

John:Right. 

Rob:Because I was able to sit here and talk to some guy and say, “Hey man, that’s really cool, you might say I’ve ready research your company, you, your people, your company, people you work with, past  results, seen the capital you’ve had, the institutional capital you’ve had, all your existing product offerings.” 

When I sit there, it sounds like I’m going off the guild, because I am, but I’ve got all that extra prep, in the back of my head and that gave me more confidence in sitting down and talking to people about where they’re at, and the problems they’ve got. 

John:There’s an element here where you’re absolutely correct and you need both, it’s kind like you need to be out preparing to identify what needs to  happen and then have some background information, but when it’s time to act, you need to come down, this is always mine, come down like an atomic bomb. 

Rob:Yes, you got to do it, you just got to commit. 

John:Yeah, kind of get called out, if all your doing is going out there an breaking stuff,  you’re not going to get anywhere, just piss people off, and you’re just going to make a mess, but if all you do is prepare, you’re never actually going to do anything. You’re just going to just prepare, prepare, prepare and never get the results. You’re going to be the talker. 

Rob:I think this is a really a good point, as where you’re a hammer, I’m a scalpel, ultimately both of these things are calls of action. We go a different psychological path essentially, to reach the same outcome. 

Similar enough outcome, maybe the way that we get there is a little different, but the outcome is within the percentile difference, If you’re sitting at home and you’re listening to the podcast, whether if you’re on the train or on the way to work or whether you at home, or your business, or you wanting to become a consultant. 

The first thing to understand, as we discussed, that there is a basic pathway and you’re way of traveling that pathway, and reaching that outcome might be different, but that’s find.  As long as you travel the pathway, as long as you take action, get up and do shit take action, provide value, and solve problems. 

John:It’s kind like, a lot of people look for this map, and people look at internet marketing products and make money online and all this stuff, as though there’s one right way, there’s one right path. There is not. 

There’s about a billion roads, pulling an infinite amount of roads, to get to where ever you want to get. There’s all those roads, that you’ve already walked. There’s ones, no one else has ever walked, and no one else even knows those other roads exist. It’s kind like a cool day, when you realized that you don’t have to follow only roads that are already out there, you can actually go out there. 

This is when you get the best results. When you start, like have a rough idea about where you want to go, and how you are going to get there, but at the end of the day, you’re going to blaze your own trail. That doesn’t mean doing something wildly different; it just means that, realizing that you don’t have to do the same thing everyone else does. 

You can, kind of figure out what works for you, in the context of what your ultimately outcome is. 

Rob:It’s like riding motorbikes. John and I would catch up, we would ride motor bikes together, something we enjoy doing. 

John:Sunday, we’re going Sunday, right. 

Rob:Yeah, I’m going to go on Sunday. What you would find is if you ever ride with John and I, what you would find is, we’ll both reach the same destination, we’ll both travel the same road, but we’ll take variations on that road.

John might take the right lane; I might take the left lane. Maybe John will speed up, maybe I won’t. Whatever it is, we’ll both end up at the same outcome, at roughly the same time and yet there will always be a bit of  similar path taken, but we’ll still do things in our own style and accepting that there is a lot of room to breathe, you don’t have to be anally perfect. 

That kind of brings to like, what I reckon is one of the most important things to understand. We spoke about this on the last podcast that we did together, which was about where your focus is.  About what is the strategic outcome that you want and what are the steps you need to take to get there? More importantly what are the things that are relevant? 

The course that I have, is to help people who want to become a consultant. 

John:Okay. 

Rob:Take action steps, to become consultant over the course of thirty six days. All right, we talk about everything from, who are the target markets that you can help. Here’s where to find them. The methodology that I talk about, which is using Google and he’s had to approach them, and he’s had to write emails, he’s had to get them on the phone, his had to talk to them on the phone, had to get a proposal to them, he’s had to close the sale and he’s had to deliver the work, and he’s had to keep the cash coming in, right. 

It’s been really successful for the people who just go, alright this is the methodology and I’m going to follow this, I’m going to put my spin on it, I’m going to take the steps and this is like following the road, but choosing your own lane. 

One of the things I’m a big proponent for, everyone doing this course, still ask me is, do I need a website, do I need a Facebook page, do I need a Twitter account, do I need a Pinterest account, do I need a LinkedIn page, the answer is no, no, no, no, and no. You don’t need this stuff, right.

John:But you need to be a hammer or a scalpel. 

Rob:You do, you do. 

John:You need to do something; you need like to start swinging. 

Rob:You need to start swinging, [Crosstalk 00:28:40]

John:A baseball bat, you got to swing. 

Rob:Pick your weapon, but what you then do, is you swing. Don’t worry about, “Oh, do I got like 16,000 samurai swords,” you go alright, pick one, and I’m just going to use this sword and hack away at it. 

It’s bit of a metaphor, but ultimately, here’s a case, if you are like wanting to become a consultant, or you’ve got dreams of it or if you’re just starting and you’re finding that you spend an hour a day, two hours a day, three hours a day,  doing something like Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest, and you’re not getting  in front of people who have your problem and adding value to them, and then offering to solve your problem for money, your focus is off. 

Just a cold hard fact, if you are not doing anything that is not getting you in front of people, who will need your services, you’re wasting your time. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to do it twelve hours a day. But I guarantee you, if you do that for four hours a day, you’ll see huge gains. Mixing yourself with those people right. 

John:I like this … with the McIntyre Method and McMasters, I talk about … you got this whole way Thomas Day marketing, you got … this [Inaudible 00:29:31] big canyon, there’s a crazy wild river and Northern Canadian wilderness, there’s this river rapids running through the bottom of the valley, and this canyon just goes might be a hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet, meters, just a really, really big cliff. 

Rob:A really deep canyon. 

John:Then, on the one side on the top of that canyon, you got a stick figure, because I draw in stick figure, when I draw. 

Rob:Their beautiful stick figures. 

John:They are, I like beautiful stick figures. You got like a stick figure going on the left, of this canyon on the top, and he’s your prospect, right. He’s Joe Smith, in this case, for consulting, he’s got some sort of business, whatever your target prospect is. 

Rob:He runs a plumbing company. 

John:He runs a plumbing company. 

Rob:Joe Smiths plumbing [Inaudible 00:30:05]. 

John:On the right side of that canyon, you’ve got the product, which is going to be a website or  order or a sales funnel, anything. 

Rob:I think it’s similar, but it’s an outcome.      

John:An outcome.

Rob:An outcome. 

John:He wants more leads, okay. 

Rob:Let’s do that.

John:Then what the marketing needs to do, is whether your using an autoresponder or cold calling, or banner ads or classified ads in your newspaper, or walking into like sales calls, walking in to business, whatever that is, the marketing strategy basing it upon that bridge, from one side of that canyon to the other. 

Your prospect is, Joe Smith, is  going to be able to walk across that bridge in beautiful stick figure fashion, do you see the walking stick figure? 

Rob:Beautiful. 

John:He walks across and then he walks into … he is going to be fine, he picks up this outcome, which is more leads, more sales, whatever it happens to be and you’ve connected him. Your marketing is connecting your prospect  with your product, bamb. 

That’s a simple thing. All they got to do is identify who is that prospect, what are they are selling them, what outcome they are selling 

Rob:What outcome does the prospect desire?

John:Then everything after that, all the hammer swing, the scalpel swing, whatever it happens to be, is all about connecting the prospect with the product. That’s it, everything else can be thrown out. Doesn’t wear like a Facebook page, how much effect is that really going to have on connecting your prospect with your profit? 

Not much. If you add a Facebook advertising campaign to your page, and your page to a phone number on there, and a call to action. That’s a little bit different. That’s pretty optimized. 

Rob:This is a really important point actually, again you cracking out the good point today, John.

John:Cracking them out. 

Roby:You’re cracking them out

John:Cracker Jack.

Rob:For those people, who listen to Johns Podcast, want to be a copywriter, right. Here is a caveat, right. You will pick a skill set, you need to understand that your skill set cannot solve every problem, if somebody needs more leads, then maybe a SEO will help. 

At the same time, if somebody needs more leads and they are private high in the referral boutique and SEO is probably not what they’re after. I’m saying, that  if you only have one skill set and one knowledge and you don’t have a network at all, you’re going to start approaching every problem, in the same way. 

When we were talking about the canyon, the person on one side, the bridge, and like the outcome they want, it’s really important to understand what the prospects outcome is and if you cannot solve it with your skill set, don’t try to force your skill set in. 

Don’t try to convince him of something, just go ahead call him and say, “Sorry I don’t think I can help you.” Then go back a focus on the people who want the outcome that you can offer, under your perimeters, of your skill set. Don’t try and … I get emails all the time from people who are copywriters and say I just want to be a copywriter.

No, no, no, you want to be someone who solves problems, by using the medium of text. You solve problems, it’s not about you being a copywriter, and it’s about solving the problems of your prospect. 

John:Right. 

Rob:If copy is the best way to do that, use copy. Copy is invariable by the way,  is a phenomenal  skill set  to have because it teaches you to think more persuasively, more influentially, it helps you  communicate with much greater clarity, but if you think everything is about solving something with better copywriting you are wrong.

Sometimes its literal a case of going, ‘Hey, you got a business, you got a great range of prospects, who connected to a current client base, had to go to a referral system.’ 

Here’s how we can use copy to solve that. Not, let me do some copywriting for you because I want to make you lots of money. That’s probably the difference is [Crosstalk 00:32:54]…

John:It’s not about a copy; it’s never about the product. 

Rob:It’s never about the tool. 

John:An example of this, a recent one, that I obviously we’ve  been doing email, sort of writing emails [Inaudible 00:33:04] getting them out and writing them as well and I guess a recent realization is, I’m a little bit embarrassed to say, is that people don’t really want email, they obviously don’t want emails.

Emails are like a commodity, like you’re buying a pack of soap. What they really want is a clean body and in this case; in the case of emails, they want more sales.

What a better product would be, not just emails, because emails don’t do that much, what someone wants is a full service where they get a squeeze page, an email sales, like a email sequence, a sales page, tracking so they know where all the sales are coming from, and ideally split testing, if they had a enough traffic for it. 

That’s a much, much better, much better, and much higher price solution as well. 

Rob:Something that you can really stand out with, as well. 

John:Yeah, but it’s all the same stuff.   I don’t need to learn anything new to do that, it’s just kind of packaging it and adding a few tweets, like adding the tracking in and it becomes a whole new thing. 

Rob:It does. Let’s take this alright, let’s talk about, legitimately getting started with consulting, we’ve spoken about how, I started out after leaving my job, I ground on my kitchen table if you will, writing notes by hand, making calls, sending emails, and developed  the methodology that worked for me and that’s what I knew. You talked about having fills, you were there, you connected with Dan Andrews from Tropical MBA, got into enough orders upon entry, and both of us gained traction in our own ways and now we have sort of an approach that we follow, right.

For example you have your leads generation methodologies, my very much referral base, and introduction base, we charge different price points. We service different markets. 

What’s really important, I guess is, if someone is listening to this, is how do they get started in consulting. Now we mentioned your first full figured client and if that’s something you’re interested in, we’ll come back in a second. 

But ultimately, here’s what I would say, like if I was sitting across from you right now, and you said to me Rob, how do I become a consultant, how do I get started with it. 

I would really hash these points. 

One, have a skill set that solves problems. 

Two, figure out who has those problems and knows that they have those problems. 

John:Okay. 

Rob:Get in front of them. 

John:Yes. 

Rob:Figure out wherever they are, and then get in front of them. Maybe that is going to be by sending cold emails, cold phone calls. I understand, in some markets like the Danish market, it’s illegal to send a cold email, you cannot do it. Maybe you have to go meet them. Maybe you have to organize an event, where you get them altogether in front of you, free presentations, whatever it is. Get in front of those people. 

Then commit to taking action every single day. You know the problem that they need solved. You know the outcome that they desire, you know the way to bridge the gap and you talked about that [Inaudible 00:35:04].

John:Yeah. 

Rob:Then you do it every day. I tell you become a consultant, this is the magic bullet, just do something every single day. 

John:I like that. 

Rob:Would that be your advice? 

John:Absolutely, absolutely,  for one thing I know a lot of people like is and I’ve noticed with the McIntyre method and people are wondering right now, you mentioned your course a second ago, it’s like a thirty … thirty-five day thing. 

Rob:Thirty-six. 

John:There’s an auto responder to get an email every day, to do this right? 

Rob:I don’t call it an auto responder, mainly because what it is, this is a huge journey, this idea of becoming a consultant … what is a consultant? Now I know when I first started, I typed into to Google to find consultant. 

John:Yeah. 

Rob:Figuring out all these elements. Ultimately as a consultant, your job is to improve the client’s condition, right? Instead of it being a thirty-six day autoresponder, it gives you a daily action task, for thirty-six days. 

John:Okay. 

Rob:I tell you, ‘Hey, John, today this is what you’re doing.’ 

John:So, you can build momentum there. 

Rob:Build momentum. 

John:By the end of the thirty-six days, what will I have, if I did it? 

Rob:If you follow the instructions, right, and if you go all the way through the course and by the way throughout the course, I tell people email me, that’s the main reason I …

John:You reply to emails. 

Rob:I reply to every email and this is the main reason I’m bumping up the prices, because quite frankly, I can’t reply to all the emails without losing part of my day now. It’s a case of, if you speak with me, right, I’ll help you out, I have a couple of clients who are going through, that I’ve coached as well. 

It’s a case is if you follow it, you will get results. The average report return on investment is over 7,000%. 

John:You mentioned one guy, I can’t remember what his name was, who went through the course and I was blown away, I was like man that is so cool, he went through and he just applied everything and then he made … he picked up like a whole bunch of clients, like 10 grand, something like that? 

Rob:Plenty yeah. There were a couple of different markets. This is the other side of this consulting thing, it’s the same principal at a base level, in the last three weeks, I’m spoken to a guy who works at New York, he is one of my favorite, favorite clients man, this guy is amazing. 

I’m not going to give you his name, not because of his privacy, but he’s a normal individual, if he’s hearing it, he knows who he is, I love chatting with him, his [Inaudible 00:36:47]. 

More importantly he took this to a market and I remember the first time I got an email off him, during the course was after less than a week or just over a week, it’s like sorry man, I just got to stop taking the course for a bit, because I’m already getting more clients, awesome. 

Then I had another guy go through it, who was in a completely different market and again I speak to him quit regularly and he went into a very different direction and he was a bit shaky at first, but he stuck with it, he followed the process. He didn’t try and make it magical. That’s where most people come off, and he got some results. 

This is the client that things happen over and over again. These guys who kind of follow that process, look we just laid that process out man, like it’s your recipe …

John:Like you’re baking a cake, if you use a recipe and follow it, you get a cake. 

Rob:Yeah. You’ll get 80% similar results and this is the thing, we’ve already told you exactly what you need to do, on this podcast if you want to become a consultant. 

You can take this podcast, you could transcribe it by hand and you can become a consultant. Your first work for your client is about teaching you what to do alone. I mean there is some cool stuff, there is some tablets and proposals and all that stuff but it’s about saying, “Hey like you know, you’re interesting if you want to become a consultant, you realize it’s a big journey and realistically you want some accountability and a bit of hand holding. You want a step by step system to follow that’s work for other people.”

John:Yeah. 

Rob:That’s where that comes in. It’s not so much like, hey go do this stuff and now you’re on your own, it’s like, at the end of thirty-six days even if you  haven’t acquired a first four figured client, you’ll have sales tool, you’ll have proposals, things that are based on behavioral phycology  and behavioral economics.

I don’t know if you remember it, the article I wrote for your [stressor 00:38:05] site, was on a book called “Predictably Irrational”, by Dan Ariely.  Phenomenal book, and I took the concepts from that book for behavioral economics and used that to create proposals, then my closing rate just went through the roof, when I first got started. I copied that, okay. 

Then one of the guys took that, and made that his own, and he’s made tens of thousands of dollars off the back of it. It’s pretty cool man. 

John:That is pretty cool. 

Rob: If you want to become a consultant listen to this episode again, follow the steps. 

John:But if they want to get this, the name of his course is called “Your First Four Figured Client “, obviously what you people get is .. 

Rob:Your, First Four Figure Client, First Four Figure Client, its bit of a tongue twister, your First Four Figure Client. 

John:Because you want to say is anyway, where can I go check this out if I want to. Should I make a redirect link on my …

Rob:Yeah, we’re going to have a special link [Inaudible 00:38:49]

John:Themcmethod.com/four. That’s easy. 

Rob:The number 4. 

John:Yeah the number 4. Themcmethod.com/4, and that will go to 

Rob:A special back end, so that’s actually something this really worth noting, right. Like I mentioned before, 

John:Because you closed it right? 

Rob:I did, I put it on a waiting list because of the volume of people coming through and at the moment there is a waiting list, so I can handle as people come through, I can answer them without sacrificing my own consulting work, in my own business’s, I can still give them the attention they need. 

Pretend it’s like a backend door, honestly if a heap of people who listen to this podcast, I know you got a list of downloads, I will send it off,  because I want to make sure that … no like legitimately this sounds like false quessing and all that crap. The reality it’s not in my best interest to give people a subpar experience. 

It’s not in my best interest to say, hey, thanks for the money; see you later, because I want you to be really successful. If you’re listening to this, you want to become a consultant. Cool, come check it out man. Come look at what we got, I’ll break it down for you, if you got questions, I’ll answer them, because it’s in my best interest to help you make a lot more money, because ultimately I have other trainers that I work with other consultants on, to help them add reoccurring clients to their business and get that reoccurring revenue coming through that retainer tops off. 

I want to make you money, if I didn’t give you a really good experience and help you get through there; you’re never going to get to that stage. I would shoot myself in the foot. That’s the other reason why this is not a $1600 course like other ones. 

This is right off here, this is the cost,  it’s less than $200 bucks, you can get started, and the average point of return for investment is over 7,000% , if this works for you also, make a 1,000, you say hey, I’ll give you a refund. 

John:Easy, pesy, Japanese. 

Rob:That’s a bit different. 

John:We’ll add the link to that. You can go to, themcmethod.com/4 that’s a number four or you can go to themcmethod.com find this podcast post and there will be a link in that podcast post to that link, which will take you to the backdoor the special secret door an entry to your First Four Figure Client, Rob thanks for coming on the show again. 

Rob:You’re welcome. If you guys have any questions right, throw me a tweet @robhanly.

John:Rob Hanly. 

Rob:Yeah, no “e” in Hanly, that’s like the thing I got to underscore, no “E” in Hanly, but if you got a question on the [Inaudible 00:40:38], you wanted to know if this is going to be right for you, if you think that your situation is different, sure, shoot me a tweet, we can have a [Inaudible 00:40:42] or something. 

John:You also have a website, robhanly.com. 

Rob:I do, I do have a website. 

John:You do an occasional post on … some interesting stuff actually, not always consulting or marketing it’s often. 

Rob:Very rarely. 

John:Just cool stuff, I’ll just let them go check that out, just cool stuff, we’ll just say that. 

Rob:Cool, then well I’ll tell you right now, seeing that, a post which I think that every entrepreneur should read, because it deals with that podcast … I’m sorry that roller coaster, that up and own process of being an entrepreneur that reality of it, it kind of  breaks it down, gives you a framework to follow how to deal with it. 

John:That’s good, it will be a great place to start.

Rob:It will help you deal with the emotional side. 

John:Yeah, cool man, well we will wrap it up here, will get to go to the gym, go grind some iron, go pump some iron, that’s the word and yeah, I mean 

Rob:It’s like Bob, Bob the guy who had the son pumping iron. 

John:Pumping iron on youtube, maybe we can get a link to that on the show as well, there’s a youtube video this guy pumping iron that our friend always recommends. If you’re going to go to the gym, you want to listen to this song, it’s going to get you pumped up

Rob:Two bongs, and it’s recommended 

John:Two bongs, go check that out. Alright we’re wrapping up here, we’re rambling here, so 

Rob:Thank you very much for listening to us talk about consulting remember in this show we’ve given you the path, right. Now there is variations of the path, you’ll find your own. 

John:It’s up to you to walk the path. 

Rob:No one can walk it for you. 

John:I need for you right now, so any way let’s wrap it up here, thanks for coming on man.