Posts Tagged → chris payne

The DEPOT Method

Chris Payne introduced the DEPOT Method at the KISS 2 Event held at Gatwick recently and I subsequently had a consultation with Chris which proved very enlightening.

Firstly let me tell you what the DEPOT Method is. It relates directly to product creation.

When you are planning the creation of a product you must ensure that it meets these criteria:

  • Desperate Problem – your product needs to solve a desperate problem – a problem that needs solving urgently.  To do that, you need to understand what pain people in your niche are suffering.
  • Exactly – your product needs to be exactly what they are looking for.  As soon as they see it, they say ‘that’s exactly what I want’.
  • Proof galore – show that people similar to your prospect are getting amazing results with your product
  • Offer is irresistible – when they see your offer, they will think ‘I thought it would cost more than that.’ Show them how they can get the solution within minutes and remove the risk of buying by offering a guarantee
  • Time is short – introduce urgency into their decision through scarcity e.g. the price is going up tomorrow/there are only 3 left in stock/ if you buy today you will get an extra bonus.

Chris Payne reviewed my product portfolio and said to me ‘your products are what your customers need but they are not what they want!‘

He said, ‘They won’t sell well because they do not address a desperate problem.’

Initially this came as an enormous shock to me.  I have invested a lot of time and effort into creating my products because I believe that they are what everyone needs to create and grow an online business.

Upon considered reflection, I actually agree with him that they are not what people really WANT!  Most people want the ‘easy button’ – a fast and easy way to make money online.  That’s what most marketers are marketing but when you have purchased as many products as I have (see last post) then you realise that this is a big lie.  There is no ‘easy’ way to build a business – it takes work and building your business around a proven model.

We actually need to build a list, create valuable products for your list, build a sales funnel with higher  value products and then generate traffic (preferably by recruiting affiliates) – this is a solid way to build a sustainable online business.

So my strategy now is to build smaller front-end products that conform exactly to the DEPOT Method i.e. sell them what they WANT (on the basis of one problem/one solution) and then educate my customers into investing in my other products or coaching to build the kind of business they really NEED – one that is built on solid principles and foundations.

I Think I’m An Information Addict – Are You?

I think I’m an information addict – are you?

This week I filled out a questionnaire about my business – one of the questions was something like ‘what internet marketing products have you bought?’

My first reaction was that there are so many, where to I start with a question like that?  Here’s a quick peak at my hard disc:

PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiIHNyYz0iaHR0cDovL3JlbmVnYWRlLmV2c3VpdGUuY29tL3BsYXllci9TVTB0VUhKdlpIVmpkSE11YlhBMC8/Y29udGFpbmVyPWV2cC1XRk8wMU5TNEJTIj48L3NjcmlwdD48ZGl2IGlkPSJldnAtV0ZPMDFOUzRCUyIgZGF0YS1yb2xlPSJldnAtdmlkZW8iIGRhdGEtZXZwLWlkPSJTVTB0VUhKdlpIVmpkSE11YlhBMCI+PC9kaXY+

As you can see, I have either purchased or acquired a huge number of internet marketing products over a period of just under 5 years.  Have a pretty good understanding of all aspects of the internet marketing niche.

The problem is that when I view the full extent of these purchases I realise that I am an addict for information about online business and internet marketing and there are plenty of other people who have similar stories to tell.  This is what makes it a great niche to be in if you are an information marketer – buyers do not just buy one product, but multiple products, such is the breadth and extent of the skills and topics you need to master.

If I was starting out again, I would recommend that a beginner finds a good mentor.  Selection of a mentor should be carried out very carefully because I have also made one or two bad choices in that regard too!

Expensive as a coach or mentor may seem, it will not be as expensive in terms of abortive products or wasted time as trying to go it alone, I can assure you of that having made this mistake myself.

Whilst internet marketing can seem very complicated, at the heart of the internet marketing model it is very simple.

Alexa Rank 9182 3.5.11You need to be able to drive targeted to an offer.  Now I started out trying to master SEO and had some success with my blog at http;//businessrenegade.co.uk by getting it into the top 1% of websites in the world for traffic according to Alexa.com.  But I was not really converting that traffic to sales.

So you also need to master the art of converting traffic to sales through list building and copy-writing and making offers that are irresistible.  You also need to master the art of email marketing because following up with the people on your list is a vital part of creating a relationship of trust with your prospects and customers.

As part of this process, you also need to start making your own products so that you have something to offer or create a service based on any skills that you have.  This is not difficult to do when you understand a simple process for doing so – I set all this out in my products such as Product Creation Renegade and Membership Millionaires Bootcamp.

Here is an image of some of my products or forthcoming products:

My-products

This Sunday I am having a consultation with Chris Payne, who is a highly successful product creator and consultant.  He sold $3m dollars of one of his products and at one stage was sending out over 1m direct mail letters a year for his various products in the personal development niche.

Chris calculated that he has spent over $320,000 on his own education, so perhaps he’s an even bigger information junkie than I am!
Chris has a number of interesting ideas on product creation and after this Sunday, I will know more.  

For example, he creates his products based on the DEPOT framework:

  • find a Desperate problem
  •  give them Exactly what they are looking for
  • provide Proof galore
  • make an Offer that is irresistible
  • Time is short i.e. introduce some scarcity into the offer

I also like his ideas about generating products quickly – he produces a minimum viable product and then only if that is successful in the marketplace does he build out the product idea.

Anyway, I am hoping that we can produce a new product in collaboration together – hopefully, I will know more about this after Sunday. The meeting of two information addicts should be an interesting experience.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – My Story

‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ is a book written by Joseph Campbell.

The first time that I heard about this book was from Chris Payne at the KISS 2 seminar last weekend 19th/20th October 2013.

Apparently, both the storyline of Star Wars and also The Lion King are built around the framework that was outlined in ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’.

Chris Payne told us that this was an excellent story framework to use when selling yourself as a coach or consultant (or indeed in any setting) as our life stories almost always follow the pattern set out in the book.

The basic framework is as follows (taken from the notes of his talk):

  • The hero is stuck in a wasteland
  • He/she receives a call to adventure
  • Initially he/she refuses the call
  • Then accepts the call
  • Meets a mentor
  • Crosses the threshold into a whole new world
  • Encounters adventures
  • Things get worse
  • The hero then triumphs and transforms
  • The hero returns home and shares what she/he has learned i.e. brings back the elixir

This story framework does indeed mirror my own experience with internet marketing.

I wanted to get online as a business consultant but didn’t have the necessary computer skills.  I was in the wasteland!

I initially started with internet marketing by going to a local college to learn how to create a website with Dreamweaver.  All the students were at different levels of skills and the whole experience was a nightmare.  But I had received the ‘call to adventure’ – I was desperate to express myself online.

However, the experience at the local college put me off – I was no longer confident that I could do it.  I ‘refused the call’

To promote my business consultancy, I was part of a local BNI Group to network with local businesses.  One of these businesses was a network marketer called Avril who signed me up to the Telecoms Plus network marketing opportunity.

It only took a short while trying to generate leads offline before I realised that I needed to generate leads online or risk losing all of my friends and family.

In 2009, my sister then introduced me to Ann Sieg and her partner, Mike Klingler, who were teaching internet marketing skills online to network marketers.

It was in this comprehensive training, for which I was paying $33 per month, that I was introduced to WordPress.  My love of internet marketing took off from that point – I accept the call as a result of meeting my first mentor.

Of course, the subsequent 3/4 years have been a real adventure, because I quickly transitioned from wanting to generate leads for my network marketing opportunity to providing internet marketing services to offline businesses.

This part of my journey is documented on http://businessrenegade.co.uk (- incidentally, at one time Alexa listed this site as being in the top 1% in the world as far as traffic is concerned which proves that I also know a little bit about SEO.)

Rather than focusing on one business niche and one service, of course, I made the mistake of trying to be all things to all men and learn a lot of different skills.  This led me into thinking that I don’t want to mess around with local businesses.

I discovered that most local businesses have been badly treated by so called web design experts who have charged them a lot of money and given them a website that doesn’t perform.  As a result they are rightly suspicious of anyone offering internet services – the motto is ‘one bitten, twice shy’.

I am constantly shocked how web designers and SEO companies are ripping off small businesses and leveraging the business owners ignorance of the internet. (99% of business websites receive hardly any traffic and are therefore almost totally ineffective in my opinion.)

Converting offline businesses to customers ethically requires that you have the patience to educate them about what it really takes to succeed online or alternatively take their money and give them something that you know won’t work (which is what most people do!)

I therefore decided that I would prefer to create information products that teach what I have learnt about internet marketing in an ethical way.

So as you can see, for a while things got worse as I explored many blind avenues and I have been through many adventures and created many websites in the process of getting to where I am today.

In May this year, I hooked up with Marc Milburn as my coach and started implementing the strategy he outlined.  In a very real sense this was the point at which your ‘hero with a thousand faces’ – me 🙂 – triumphs and transforms.  Since that time I have been highly productive by creating this new blog and numerous products that I can now promote.

I now have a solid business plan and strategy that I know will work and I am loving doing what I do.

[features_box_grey width=”75%” + border=”2px”]My products have been created to share what I have learned on my journey so far.  For example:

I have several other products planned such as:

  • Email-ATM that covers email marketing
  • Easy Web Page Graphics that covers how to create stunning images and graphics because websites are a very visual medium and graphics are very important
  • Outsourcing Renegade that will cover the opportunities for outsourcing to scale your business
  • Business Creation Mastery which will be my high-end coaching programme bringing everything together

In addition to these products, I want to cover various traffic strategies.   For example, I am helping a friend of mine to put together a traffic product about solo ads called Solo Ads Assassin.  As a quid pro quo, he is selling my products on the back-end of his funnel.

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If you are not convinced about the value of telling stories in your business, then read this article to see evidence of how stories can add huge value to any brand, product or service – in one experiment, stories added 2,706% to the value of the products concerned!  In the circumstances where YOU are the brand (as in the case of people like consultants and coaches), then it is critically important that you tell your own story.

As you can see from my own story, in a very real sense I am bringing back the elixir for others to  partake of and my story definitely follows the framework set out in ‘the hero with a thousand faces’.

If you have a similar story, I would love to hear it – alternatively, you may still be ‘in the wasteland’.  Let me know below where you think you are on your business or life journey!