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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW
Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business
Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 1 of 28
Episode #85: Ian Cleary
In this episode, Travis interviews social media specialist and successful entrepreneur Ian Cleary. Ian is
the CEO of Razor Social and his company helps business owners improve their business using social
media. He is also a speaker and through the years has helped entrepreneurs grow their business.
Ian and Travis discussed many valuable tips on the techniques and tools that entrepreneurs use when
promoting their business through social media. According to Ian, social media should only serve to
build connections and relationships with your clients and partners, and not just another advertising tool
to sell your products. Ian also shares his top 5 mistakes that business owners make with social media.
These are just some of the things that entrepreneurs can gain in this episode of the Entrepreneur's
Radio Show.
.
Ian Cleary- Growing your business through social media
Travis: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 85 of the Entrepreneur's Radio
Show, a production of RockstarEntrepreneurNetwork.com, .com. Where each and every episode, I will
deconstruct the path to success for each of our guest so that you can see what they've done to become
successful. Now the reason why I do this is I want you to model what other successful people have
done so that we can help fast track your business to that next level. Although, I want you to notice how
imperfect their journey is each and every time.
Now, today I'm going to introduce you to rock star entrepreneur Ian Cleary. Now, beyond Ian having a
wonderful accent he is brilliant on many levels also, where this interview we're going to go deep on the
topic social media and we'll get you some advice on how to use social media effectively in your
business. Also, be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can for a few reasons. The first reason
is I want to share some inspiration with you because I know it can be a lonely journey as an
entrepreneur. Also, I want to talk to you about something that I'll come back to after the interview which
is the key to building a business that gives you complete financial freedom and the time freedom to
pursue life on your own terms. No matter if it's traveling, helping others, donating your time, no matter
what it is, which I like to define as reaching your true purpose in the short period of time we're here.
Plus, I've got a contest that I want to tell you about where you'll have a chance to win $73,000 in cash
and prizes and a Lamborghini. So again, be sure and hangout with me until the very end if you can.
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Now before we get started I want to remind you that there's two easy ways to take these interviews on
the go. Of course you can listen to them through your laptop but if you want to be on the move, driving,
working out, jogging, or whatever it is you want to do. You can go through iTunes or Stitcher. Now, the
fastest way to subscribe to the show is if you go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, just click on the
iTunes or Stitcher on the menu bar and it will take you directly to the podcast where you can subscribe
to the show there. I found the search bar in iTunes and Stitcher very clunky that they don't exist or
they're hard to use. Also, one other thing that just came to mind, if you take a moment while you're
there to rate and review the show, I would really appreciate it. The more ratings that we have the more
each platform, iTunes and Stitcher, shares our show to new people. This will help us keep the show
free while reaching, and instructing, and inspiring more entrepreneurs just like you how to grow your
business. So if you do that I would really, really appreciate it , and it would mean a lot to me. So, thank
you on that.
One last thing, if you have questions about your business that you'd like answered on the air, then
while you're at rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, just like click on the little microphone button on the
right side of the screen and you've got 3 minutes to tell me who you are, your business, and what
business challenges that you'd like some advice on.
So, now that we got all that stuff out of the way let's get down to business, what do you say? Without
further ado, welcome to the show Ian.
Ian: Thank you very much for having me Travis, great to be on it.
Travis: Man, I'm excited to have you here. We were having a little bit of laugh before we get started.
Hey, I don't know how familiar you are with the way that we go about doing things in the show. What we
like to do is kind of get a little bit of background of who you are and how you found this level of success,
would you mind sharing that story with us?
Ian: Sure, I'd love to Travis, absolutely.
Travis: Cool.
Ian: So, my background is really in technology. I spent many years in technology industry, starting off
managing different technology groups and then moving up the chain, and then end up being share
holder of couple of different companies. And as they went on the companies got acquired, some float
around NASDAQ in the U.S., some of them got acquired, and a couple are quite successful. When that
was happening then I start dabbling in the property business and I started investing in all sorts of
property along the way. So some of the money I've made went back into property. While I was still in
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the IT industry, I ended up running a property company sort of as a sideline but it ended up, it was
generating us good money. And that was selling property in Eastern Europe. Well, what I'm really
interested in and I loved all the entrepreneurship, I was fascinated by entrepreneurship, and all of this is
dabbling and paying itself. The property went up and as I ended up buying property in Eastern Europe,
and then when I come back to Ireland people were saying, "We want to buy property as well, can you
help us?" So it made sense then we ended up making commission on the sales of that. But I suppose
what happened with that business was we're making good money. Whereas, in Eastern Europe part
East Europe, it was quite dodgy in terms of what the property be built and would a developer go out of
business. I was always concerned that I wouldn't be able to give anybody their money back if
something badly went wrong and that never sit nicely with me.
So, we decided to get out of that business and then we had a big property crash in Ireland which I lost a
bit of money a lot of the way there. We did manage to sell a lot of our property but the property crashed
very, very quickly.
Travis: When was that?
Ian: That was around 1997 I'd say, the start of the crash.
Travis: Oh okay.
Ian: So what we did we sold off our property and then I left the IT job because what happened was that
we're acquired by a big company and I just couldn't work for the big company. Just didn't suit me at all.
Travis: Right.
Ian: So I left and then we set-up a consultancy around social media. We just drifted into social media
and then we ended up building a good training business doing social media and digital marketing
training. And then we started building Facebook applications. So we were looking for an application we
could sell internationally. We built Facebook apps, we were selling them here in Ireland. But then when
we looked internationally there was far too many people doing them. The people were doing them
cheaper, better caller rate, and they had significant funding behind them. So we canned our project and
then I was going, "Okay, I want to build a business now in the U.S." that was it. I said, "I'm going to start
getting on a plane, I'm going to the U.S." So we didn't have a brilliant idea, so we looked out all the key
influencers in the social media industry and looked up, well, who was specializing in the different areas,
so there's lots of keys specialize and then strategy, and all different areas of social media, but nobody
was specializing in tools area. All of the technology background and the social media mix, it made
sense but we would start there.
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So we built a blog and then we start travelling the states, start building relationships. We identified all
the key people in the social media industry, start building relationships with all of them, and that was
hugely successful for us. The blog grew massively very, very quickly, and we became known as the
social media tools guys, sort of around the global bases of this stage. And from that then generate good
revenue on the back of that that's growing month on month at the moment.
So, it was a few different twist along the way and I dabbled into all sorts of ventures along the way. And
we made some money and at times we lost the money, and we learned a lot. One of the most important
things that I learned was, one is persevere, that's the ultimate side of perseverance. The other is you
have to be passionate about what you're doing. This morning I was in work about half 5 this morning.
The dealer called now and I'm going to do a call of a webinar later on tonight. So it's going to be very
long day. I love what I do, I'm doing, you know. So, it's really interesting side and so passionate, the
real keeping from it.
Travis: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I've always got my laptop in my lap no matter where I'm at. And
it's not because I have to, it's because I want to, right?
Ian: There's the difference. I've sit in front of the TV, my wife, and she may be watching a soap or
something and I get bored quite easily. So I'm on the laptop, I interact with people, chatting with Twitter.
My brain is going 24 hours a day with ideas because where all this road curve at the moment. And I
love it when you can get inside, learn before you go. Actually, what we're doing is really working,
growing rapidly. I love the traffic on our website, in the last month we've grown 30%, and the last two
months we've grown like 70%.
Travis: Wow.
Ian: So we just keep on pushing and growing, and growing. And as I said to my wife last night. Within
this tooled space within social media is an awful a lot of people around the world that are entrusted in
this space.
Travis: Oh yeah, without a doubt.
Ian: It's not the bleach. Holding that niche, I think it's really important. If we had to pick a niche that
wasn't, you know-- If those other people in our niche, it would have taken us a lot longer to build a
business. So we've stuck out like a sore thumb because we're the ones that are working directly within
this niche.
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Travis: So, what was the timeline on the social media tools when you guys got clarity and really figured
out that you're going to be the social media tools people-- Give me a timeline on that, what was the
year, when was that? A year ago, two years ago, five years ago, what?
Ian: My first trip to the U.S. was June last year, that's when I went to bog world in the U.S. in this
industry. Within 6 months of launching our blog we were voted as one of the top 10 social media blogs
in the world with the competition ruled by social media examiner. So that's where we're going, or
actually we're on to something that's actually really useful and beneficial people and there's a great
business here. Because we looked at Social Media Examiner as one of the key leaders within this
space and be recognized by them within 6 months was amazing for us.
Travis: Oh wow, that's impressive. So let's go back a little bit okay, if you don't mind.
Ian: Sure.
Travis: So, give me a timeline, did I understand correctly, you built a business and took it public? Was
that your business or business that you worked for?
Ian: Well, I was a shareholder in the business.
Travis: Okay. And what business was that?
Ian: The last business that we operate was a CRM tool.
Travis: Oh okay.
Ian: And we were the first ones to go from a desktop-based to a web-based CRM tool. And at that
stage it was quite interesting to-- So we're ahead of everybody else within that area, and we end up
working with a company in Canada. Their company bought us within 6 months. And at that stage it was
just a big corporate business and as an entrepreneur I just didn't fit right. I couldn't get work done.
Travis: Right.
Ian: It was very frustrating.
Travis: Yeah, I've spoke about that before, I built my business into this big corporation at one time and
we took efficiency in the bathroom and drowned it in the bathtub.
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Ian: Very good.
Travis: You know, because the corporate structure and I try not to be negative about too many things.
I'm just never been crazy about the corporate attitude because it's not, in most cases I've been involved
in it rarely is elevating capital like true entrepreneur-ism does. The things that we do elevates capital
and provides jobs and does a lot great things. And in my experience, and it could be due to me and my
lack of skill set, I’ve never had a good experience in a corporate environment. It sounds like you think
along those same terms also.
Ian: Yeah, you're obviously a strong entrepreneur and I think it would be very difficult to find a job that
would suit you as an entrepreneur. Because you're always going to want to be pushing things forward,
doing things quickly, change when you need to change, and the corporate structure that slows
everything down.
Travis: Right.
Ian: There's a whole lack of innovation in corporate world, so--
Travis: Right and it's a great environment to get yourself in trouble or people like you and I at least.
Ian: Oh absolutely.
Travis: Okay. So Ian, what I like about your journey is, and another reason why I wanted to create this
show is I've been in masterminds and I think a lot of people that haven't had the benefit to be in
masterminds and be surrounded by entrepreneurs that think just like them is I believe there's this false
belief that successful entrepreneurs get on this different ride than everybody else. It's like a rocket ride
straight up, and that's not true. It's a very flawed path that is marred with a lot of errors, and trials, and
tribulations of getting there. And what I like about your story is it shows that you're very tenacious and
that you don't give up. And every time you've taken a wrong turn, you've put it in reverse, figured out
what you need to do and get back on track, right?
Ian: A good few years ago I realized I was an entrepreneur and I admitted to myself I was an
entrepreneur and then decided that's it, I'm just going to keep on this path no matter what. And it is like
you say, it's one of the best skills I have is perseverance, that I will just keep going and going. And the
type of business I'm in, when we produce a lot of content and the contents drive a lot of traffic, and then
the traffic generates sales. It's very easy to get up in the morning and go, "Well, I won't produce today."
or "I won't produce tomorrow" but that's not going to grow your business. You have to be persistent and
constantly produce, constantly deliver. Somebody made a comment the other day, I'm speaking at a
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big conference in January in Vegas. And they say, "Congratulations Ian. One of the hardest working
people in social media." To be honest, I do work extremely hard, but I see a vision and I'm trying to go
for this. I'm trying to go for these goals all the time. And so, unlike you Travis where I have the laptop
open constantly. And when I get up in the morning the first thing I want to do is check the email, get into
work as soon as possible, and get working, you know.
Travis: Yeah. One morning I was sitting there with my laptop in my lap and this girl had come over that
was helping my daughter, my wife with something. And it was pretty early in the morning, and she
goes, "Oh, you have to work so early in the morning, I feel sorry for you." And I'm thinking, "No, I want
to be doing this."
Ian: Yeah.
Travis: I'm excited to be doing this. I'm anxious, I was losing sleep. I had an idea last night and I was
anxious to get up this morning and go deeper on that. Is that the same thing with you?
Ian: Absolutely. And this morning was the exact morning when I get up, I want to get in this early as
possible. I have this tool called Focus Booster which is a timer. The time sync for 25 minutes. So I sit
down on my PC, I put on that for 25 minutes, and I work for 25 minutes on the schedule. Then I take a
break for a minute, then I go back and do 25 minutes. And I'll keep going till about 12:30, and then I'll
go at the gym, which is right next door. I'll do a good workout for about 45 minutes. And then when I
come back then I'm fresh and rearing to go as well. So, I think the fitness side to me, I think that's from
an entrepreneurship point of view I think you need to be fit as well. Having that break for me during the
day helps me get stuck back in again and keeps me fresh.
Travis: I do the same thing. I'll even take a podcast with me and listen to it while I'm working out.
Ian: Oh, absolutely. I listen to the podcast on the way into work this morning, and then at the gym at
lunch time as well. So, I think we're two peas of the same pod Travis.
Travis: Yeah. I was actually a terrible student as a child, and I'm really amazed and surprised, I would
have never had guessed that I would be doing the things that I-- I want to skip school because I had to
speak in front of a class. One of the things I do for a living now is speaking.
Ian: Oh wow. We began to speak in circuit someday.
Travis: Yeah, right. I skipped classes because I had to write and that's something that I do a lot of. The
reason why I talk about those things, I think they're worth mentioning is, number 1, I feel like
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entrepreneurship is the single best self-improvement program I have ever entered. It's constantly
making me a better person through writing, through speaking, through talking with great people like
yourself. Has it been the same experience for you?
Ian: I just love it. I just love the people connected you today. And lots of other infuses and speaking
events where you meet so many interesting people. Yeah, I just love it. Actually, just what you
mentioned, you talked about a mastermind, I set up the mastermind group with 500 other entrepreneurs
and I said-- It was 6 of us for 6 months, I session each month, and each month we're going to change a
habit. One habit each month, and that was a real focus to try and get more productive now. But just
interacting with these other people, entrepreneurs, doing the same thing in different parts of the world,
and similar business. I love to connect with them and I love to see everybody making improvements,
and everybody exchanging ideas with their business. I just love that.
Travis: It took me several years to figure this out. I'm into cars, I'm a typical guy so I like cars, I got into
golf and other things. And for years I looked for different places that I felt like I fit, and this was before I
had discovered business masterminds. Now, I own an exotic car so I'd go to an exotic car club, I owned
a hotrod, and so I'd go to a hotrod club. And there were some elements in each of those clubs that I
enjoyed. I played golf and there were some elements there that I enjoyed at the country club, but I
never really 100% fit until I found a business mastermind. And these people weren't even in the same
business as me, but they were in business, so they were dealing taxes, insurance, advertising, all of the
things that come with being an entrepreneur, right?
Ian: Yeah.
Travis: And I felt all of a sudden that I could enter conversations at a deep level with a group of people
I didn't know very well. And all of them completely understood where I was coming from. And so it was
extremely fulfilling to be surrounded by a group of people. Does that match the experience for you as
well?
Ian: It does, and at two levels from the entrepreneurship side. I was speaking at a MaxIt in Vegas in
January which is a big social media blogging conference. And when I go there I just love the
environment because a lot of people there are entrepreneurs. And most people, they're all involved in
the same industry, the social media, content marketing industry. So they understand exactly what we're
all doing and what we're working at. With the entrepreneurship side, meeting all them entrepreneurs at
an event like that I just love it. To me it's not work at all, it's just great fun. And I learned a lot as well,
connect with lots of great people and built lots of great relationships. It's networking but it's just meeting
friends, and connecting with people, and getting to know people, and that's great fun networking. If
you're meeting likeminded people that's the difference.
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Travis: Right. Entrepreneurs are self-- They take control, we have some deeper core beliefs. We
believe in owning our mistakes, owning in our success. We believe in investing our efforts, our time, our
money, all of those things. And when you get around a large number or even a small number of people
that believe so many things on such a deep core level, it turns something on inside of you that for me,
takes me back to Christmas day as a child almost. It's because I'm surrounded with so many people
that get me on so many different levels even though I don't know them very well.
Ian: Yeah, exactly.
Travis: Okay. So take me down the path. You had talked about social media tools, let's go deeper on
that because that can go a variety of different ways. Take me deeper on what social media tools mean
to you and what you guys do specifically.
Ian: Okay. There's the platforms which are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all that, and we're talk about all
the tools surrounding them platforms. So management tools like HootSuite for managing these
channels, or Buffer app for sharing content out through these channels, or analytic tools, or tools for
optimizing the content you're producing in a blog. So that's the space that we operate in and ---So we
say we're the social media tools experts in this area. And everything really is based around a blog. So
we write content on a regular basis related to tools. So there would have been a post that went out
today about HootSuite apps. And what we do is we optimize all that content so we get traffic through
Google. We network with people around the world so that people start linking tools and talking about us
through different websites that's driving lots of traffic into our site, the profile that site was up. Traffic
and audience has gone up all the time. And then how we make money, there's a couple of different
ways. So we'd make money in speaking events but also from the site we charge we charge for our
content. Even though we provide free content we also charge for it. So at the moment for example
we're doing a Facebook analytics tools guide. And we've approached a whole range of vendors in this
space, and we charge them all for inclusion in this guide. And because we're the social media tools
guys they know that when we take this guide and promote it, it'll get distributed all over the place. So
the benefit they get from being in this guide way exceeds the cost we included. So we take that guide
and we charge money for that, and then we charge for sponsorship of the guide as well. So we bring in
a key sponsor in the guide. That's one way we charge for content. We also then have lots of agencies
wondering what are the best tools to use. What are the best ones, and it's no point then spending all
that time. So we provide reports where we charge them, where it would give evaluation of the tools. No,
we do very little on the consultancy side because our business is not really about paper. It's providing a
scale of business using content at that.
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And the other stuff beyond that is I'm finished now for book at the moment, and we're building a training
program which will have a tools type focus, and that'll be the next stage. So we keep on building our
audience then we will be providing more online trainings to that audience.
Travis: So, what I like about your model is the many-to-one aspect. Obviously, the consulting would
have a bottleneck of one-to-one. It's very tough to scale a business whenever you're into one-to-one
model right?
Ian: Exactly, I've got request all the time for an hour of consultancy here or there. I won't do any of it
because I can earn so much more by selling a guide 500 times rather than me selling an hour of my
time. If I'm investing that hour of my business rather than making a couple of hundred bucks, it's just
not worth it.
Travis: Right. So it sounds to me like a lot of your traffic is SEO-type traffic, is that correct?
Ian: 75% comes from Google. Now, people go-- I did all these activity on social media on Facebook,
and Twitter, and LinkedIn, how come that's not generating all the traffic? Everything's all connected. If
people get to know you through Twitter, overtime then when they're searching for something they might
see you in search results in Google, or they might type in your name in Google. So Google, Facebook,
Twitter, it's all connected. One of the best things of the social area is when people here about your
content, then they go off and start writing about the content, then they link back to your content. And
then that's a big thumbs up from a Google point of view if people are linking to you. So, it all helps.
Travis: Well, what you're talking about, a lot of small businesses just never seem to be able to reach
critical mass to where they can produce enough valuable content to really start generating traffic. Isn't
that part of the problem'?
Ian: Yeah, it's a lot of hard work and if I show you the blog the first few months, a lot happens the first
few months. So what happens is you start off your website and Google doesn't like it. Then you start
writing content, Google still doesn't like it, but then you start interacting and building relationships with
the right people in the industry that have websites that have been around for years and are highly
ranked. And then they start linking to you, and then Google is saying, "Okay, you're more important
now,” so your content starts moving up. Initially, I've done a lot of guest posting. So I went to high
profile sites and a huge traffic, and I said, "I'll write an article about tools." And the tools articles are very
popular in general so they look at the tool's articles. So I've done a lot of that guest posting which is a
lot of work to produce content, but it produced the results. So, like social media examiner, I still do
some guest posting, and I have an article there today, and I'm sure it's probably well over a thousand
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shares already, and it'll probably end up 4 or 5,000 shares in social media before the end of the day. So
I still do the old bit of guest posting on some of them sites.
Travis: Nice. So, how many are there over there? Is it just you and your partner creating content, or do
you have this big machine creating content. How do you go about doing that?
Ian: So there's two parts to the business. One is we still have the digital marketing training business
which my wife is starting to run that. And we've a lot of trainers there within that business that look after
that side. From the other side of the business there's four of us involved at the moment and its different
people around the world involved in it. So, I have a girl, say for example Diana, who I'll get lots of
information about new tools. She will take all that information, she will check it to do initial evaluation
and to tell if it's really good, then she'll pass on the content. So, from me, she will take a blog post, she'll
add some images onto it. So it's a relatively small team but we don't actually need a huge team. We
may end growing to 10 or 15 people. But the type of business we're in, we have a very substantial
business with a relatively small number of team. And a lot of that team will be people we'll contract work
out to.
Travis: Right.
Ian: I'm not mad into hiring people full time. I know some people are hungry for delivering good stuff
and are paid by the hour. And there's plenty of work there for them, they're delivering good stuff, they
just keep on working with us forever maybe.
Travis: Yeah, right now you can bring some incredible rock stars onboard to work for you for two hours.
Ian: Yeah.
Travis: Two hours a month. With so many things that are going on in today, it's easier. So I've been an
entrepreneur for 23 years and it's never been easier on some levels to bring incredible levels of people
in and have them do some really impressive work. I had to train myself; I'm used to bringing people on
full time and just having a staff there, right?
Ian: Yeah.
Travis: And the problem with that is overhead, and they get very expensive and staff normally are not
as productive 6 months from when they start.
Ian: Yeah.
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Travis: However, that's not always the case; it depends on how you have your structure set-up. But in
today's environment you can bring in absolute killers at certain things, and have them work a couple of
hours, they're happy. They can produce whatever you need and then move on. And that sounds to me
like a part of the model that you're using to keep your fixed overhead down and still be productive,
right?
Ian: Absolutely. And we're looking for the best people to work with. Like for example, Diana, a girl I
work with, she's based in Germany. And I give her a task, she turns them around really quickly, and
really efficient, and I just love working with her. And as long as she keeps on doing that we're going to
be working for a long time together.
Travis: Right.
Ian: It works so well. One of my best skills is delegation, I always got it, organizing things and
delegating. So having a small team like this, I've been able to delegate tasks, and I just keep on
moving, and moving, and moving quickly all the time. It's really great, I love it at the moment.
Travis: Good for you, that's exactly what you need to do to ramp things up very quickly. Do you use
any paid form of traffic? I've got to admit that I've become very jaded with SEO because it's changed so
much over the last 7, 8 years, that I'm really a fan of paid traffic. Because if you have some great
content then you can bring them onboard with a paid traffic and then it will really start scaling. You can
keep them by quality of your content. So do you do much paid traffic?
Ian: We don't do any at all. When we initially started I suppose we were trying to figure out what was
the exact direction we're going and were we going the right direction, and we were building
relationships. So we took it a little bit slow the first couple of months. But then we started getting
traction, but that was really because we were in this niche within social media. So social media is a very
hot area, and you would think those thousands of blogs around the world, and we're lucky we're in the
niche. And we talk about tools which people love, they get the most shares the content. When you're
speaking at an event, the place is packed because people love tools. And nobody had that space, and
helped us drive traffic quickly. We will go back to paying for traffic because we want to keep on growing
it, so at the moment, no, there's nothing around we're paying for there.
Travis: It's a little further down the line?
Ian: Yeah. We'll do more of that.
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Travis: Okay. So let's shift. We've examined your business model and your journey of how you've
gotten to where you're at today, and how you're monetizing things, and how you're growing. Let's talk
from the angle of fellow entrepreneurs that are listening to the show. Which path do you want to go
down? The 5 mistakes that people normally make with social media, or the top 5 tools? What direction
do you want to go with that?
Ian: Okay, so maybe the mistakes in social media's interesting because I think businesses get this
wrong. I suppose the first biggest mistake is treating social media like another advertising channel.
Travis: It's not?
Ian: It's not for advertising; it's for building relationships, building awareness of you products or
services, building up your network. And if you build it that then that's going to be really beneficial. We
know that networking is really important and really beneficial, but that's your networking now is online
through these channels. So treating it as a sales channel would be one thing. The second mistake is
content. What is this content, what it's about? I hear people saying, "Well, I'm going to set-up a Twitter
account." "Why are you setting it up?" "Well, I'm told I have to tweet." Well, you're going to fail, that's
why you're setting up a Twitter account. It's really looking and going, "How are we going to strategically
great content that's going to bring people along the sales funnel to get through a stage where they're
going to buy my product. So we focus in on the social media tools content, trying to track in PR
professionals and marketing professionals, and some business owners. Get them to subscribe to an
email database, build a relationship with over time, and then sell them products and services. But the
content is not like just random content, the blog for example is specifically aimed at specific keywords
to drive more traffic into the business, and like content today was with HootSuite apps. We're trying to
rank within the top 10 for somebody who's searching for HootSuite apps. So that's a big mistake, they
can competent for the sake of content, it's not. It's strategic about your content. A guy called Joe
Pulizzi is the founder of Content Marketing Institute, and he has a book about content marketing
strategy. It's only released a couple of minutes ago, and it's just fantastic. It's a very simple book, it will
teach all you need to know about the content side.
Travis: Yeah, I interviewed him.
Ian: Oh yeah, he's a great guy actually, you know.
Travis: Okay, so creating content for the sake of content. That's how you called it right? People make
the mistake of creating content for the sake of content, right?
Ian: Yeah.
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Travis: Okay.
Ian: The third issue is going in for the kill immediately. When people are writing on your website,
depending on your business, generally they're not ready to buy. And that's where content comes in
because you attract them into your site then you build them into an email subscriber, and then you build
a relationship over time. But don't force the sale directly on them if they're not ready. So, just be careful
of how you position that. So that's again where content goes back in where it really helps. So if people
are not ready to buy, then they can subscribe to your content and then build a relationship.
Travis: Okay. Right, number 4?
Ian: Number 4, okay. I'm struggling in number 4.
Travis: For those of you that just started listening to show, none of this is planned. So Ian is pulling this
off the top of his head here. You're doing a good job.
Ian: Okay. The fourth issue with social media is hiring an intern and saying, "You're responsible for
social media." And putting them in the corner and getting to do the updates. That's just not how it
works. With social media channels you're building relationships with people that are going to be
beneficial to your business. You're building relationships with people that might turn into customers, or
relationships with people that might refer you to somebody else. So, if you're going to hire somebody
like an intern, bring them in as part of your team and make sure everybody is involved in social media,
which is building relationships, marketing your business, and driving sales. So having everybody
involved. Bring an intern, make sure they're a core part of the team, and you're involved as much as
them.
Travis: Okay. And I'm jotting this down as we go because I'm going to try to be a good student and go
back over this with you to make sure we cover it all, okay?
Ian: Okay, cool. And then. So you want number 5. So the 5th mistake people make with social media,
I'll give you the tools. One, tools are fantastic and I love tools, we write about tools, get your strategy
right first. Don't jump into a whole range of different tools and not figured that as a strategy. If you got a
good strategy in place, tools are going to really help you implement the strategy, and help you become
more efficient, help you in ultimate tasks, you have to have your strategy in place first.
Travis: Okay, alright. So, let's go back. I was going to challenge you and see if you could go to 10 but
that just wouldn't be nice at all. By the way, great job on just coming off the top of your head with the
top 5 things there. So let's go back to number 1. I want to make sure-- I didn't write everything that you
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said down but I jotted some notes. So number 1, social media is not a sales channel. There's a lot of
pay-per-click models, does that mean that you can't acquire customers through social media, or that
the main use for social media channel is establishing a relationship. Can you give me some clarity on
that?
Ian: Yeah, say for example you've got a Facebook page. It's not really about selling product constantly.
There's nothing wrong with everybody so often and saying, "Listen guys, we have a special offer for
Facebook fans only, and this is restricted." And people will buy. Or you launch a new product or
service. You announce of Facebook and people might buy, that's fine. But in general you're not going to
be pumping the sales messenger constantly.
Travis: Right.
Ian: You want to build a relationship built with the trust, and you'll see actually on Facebook Amy
Porterfield talks about this a lot about the money being in the list. It's taking your Facebook fans,
convert them into email subscribers, and you can focus more on sales from that.
Travis: Right. So maybe the 80-20 rule, 80% content and maybe 20% advertising?
Ian: Absolutely.
Travis: Okay, cool. Alright. So number 2, creating content for the sake of content. I think a lot of people
make that mistake. So it needs to be much more strategic and takes people down a path, is that what
you were saying there?
Ian: Absolutely. Buy Joe Pulizzi's book, spend $20, and that'll give you a lot of content marketing
strategy is about. And it's delivered in easy to understand terms, relatively small book. At the end of
that book you go, "Right, I got it. I nearly understand what this content I got to produce. What it's for."
What content I need to produce.
Travis: Yeah, and I've got that book, I need to go ahead and read it. He's a nut about wearing orange
everywhere he goes.
Ian: Yeah. At his conferences, it's all orange.
Travis: Yeah, right. Okay, so number 3, going for the kill immediately. You know what that brings a
thought of for me is if you just met a girl and you liked her, would you kiss her? Well, normally, that
would get your face slapped.
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Ian: I won't try.
Travis: You know, if you would try to kiss a girl that you liked the second you meet her and maybe this
is a terrible example, but it's a good way to illustrate it. Take some time, slow down, build a connection
and a little bit of a relationship before you go in for that kiss. Is that what you're saying here?
Ian: Yeah, it's like in the networking event, when I go to a network event, when I meet somebody. My
focus is how can I help you, how can I help get a person? And I'm asking about them and trying to
establish the relationship. I'm not taking out my business card and saying, "Will you buy my product or
service?"
Travis: Right.
Ian: You know, of course they'll come back and they want to know more about you and as you build the
relationship and trust then they want to do business with you. But just be careful, you're handing out
your business card immediately on these channels.
Travis: Right, yeah, great point. Okay, so number 4, hiring an intern and having them handle the social
media. That's pretty common these days, right?
Ian: Yeah. There's nothing wrong with interns and there's nothing wrong with hiring people in to help,
it's just to make sure it's not like sit in the corner and put up updates because I was told updates are
acquired.
Travis: Okay. So how do they go deeper? Go deeper for me on how this person should be schooled in
a way that they're posting relevant quality stuff and generating real connections.
Ian: So the team needs to be involved in social media. So you work out your strategy and then you
work out to different roles in your team. And then the intern is helping as part of that. There's some
level of involvement in social media for everybody that's involved in the organization.
Travis: Okay, alright. So one person can lead the charge of posting on the page but everybody is
possibly commenting. A lot of times I'm popping on the page and I answer people's questions and
things like that. That's what you're talking about?
Ian: Absolutely. And that's so important. If you weren't doing that, that would be bad. So that's so
important to be doing that sort of thing as well.
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Travis: I get the impression that doesn't happen a lot because I've had a lot of people say, "Wow,
thanks for getting back to me." And I'm like, "Well, why wouldn't I?"
Ian: I know. People love it. Actually, when people subscribe to my email list, it's an automated email but
it's a really nice one. And I'd say, "I really would love if you replied to this email." And I love that people
do reply. Not everybody, but the people that do reply then I get it, then I reply back and I thank them
and everything. And then they come back and say, "Oh my god, I can't believe you replied to me.
Thank you very much." It just helps trying to build a community, and build a community, people need to
like it and need to go, "Travis is a good guy", you know.
Travis: Right.
Ian: And that's important.
Travis: It starts the ball rolling on engagement, right?
Ian: Yes.
Travis: I have in my auto-responder, sure is I say, "Hit reply and tell me, at a level of 1-10, 10 being the
best. How passionate are you about your success?"
Ian: That's a great one, because it gets them thinking immediately and tell how passionate I am. So it's
how you get interesting conversations with that one.
Travis: Yeah. And so I have quite a few people that hit that button and really go into some in-depth
explanation of how serious they are about their success. And again, most people are surprised that I
respond and that I'm reading it. And so, what you're saying definitely resonates with me.
Ian: I have a funny one Travis. When I set up initially I said, "For the first 1,000 subscribers I'm going to
send a personalized message when they subscribed, okay?" Now, I have a template and then I put in
something personal as part of the template. So, it only took me maybe 30 seconds to deliver it. But
when I found is people still didn't believe it was actually me replying. So what I have to do was I put in
the line saying what I was doing at that time. So sometimes I go, "I'm sitting here in my desk having
lunch, it's 1:15 in Dublin. Thanks for responding." And then I have some standard text. And then
somebody will reply and say, "I'm in Germany, it's 2:15, I'm just after dropping my kids for-- Just started
coming out of a meeting--" I get into all sorts of interesting conversations and I just thought, "Well, the
first subscribers to come in, they are the ones I want to make sure that we start off well." And they go,
"Oh, I like this, and I like being involved. And I don't get a personalized message from anybody else
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when they subscribe. So I wanted something different." So, you couldn't keep that up, but even if
you've done it for the first 100 people, people just love it.
Travis: Yeah. I agree with you 1,000%. So, number 5, tools are fantastic but get your strategy down.
So this is a little bit of a rhetorical question but I'll ask it anyways because I think a lot of people believe
this way. Get your strategy down, isn't everyone's strategy the same?
Ian: It shouldn't be.
Travis: Go deeper. Pick a business out and tell me how their strategy should be different.
Ian: Well, I suppose one of the things important is, one, is the niche. If for example you want to develop
a global business. You want to think, what on my company best in the world at that everybody sort of
look at my company and say, "They're the guys for this." If they're the guys for that well then, we need
to own that niche. So your strategy is always going to be focused on that niche, building content for that
niche, building relationships with the key influencers within that niche, attending conferences within that
niche. And that's the niche you want on. There might be other people in the similar industry where they
might be focusing on their areas, or they might be focused on somewhere broad. So really narrowing
back down just helps me so much because I know, I'm not going to go to that conference that's not
related to my business, or I'm not going to write that piece of content. So my strategy and relationship,
what I need to deliver is much easier to decide.
Travis: Okay, that makes sense. That takes me back to something that I jotted down in the very
beginning when you were sharing your journey of how you got to where you're at today. And something
that struck me was the strategic thinking that you used which was you looked for influencers and most
people don't think that way. I think Seth Godin in Purple Cow called those sneezers, right? I don't know
if you read that book.
Ian: I haven't read it, no.
Travis: But it's people that can take your message and pass it on to a large group of other people. And
so, what led you down the path to think strategically to yourself where I need to find out who the
influencers are and speak with them. How did you come to that?
Ian: It's funny, when I started off I was thinking, "Okay, let's try to work out, what content were people
writing and who were the key people?" So I just looked at who was speaking at the industry, who has
the largest followings, who has the largest traffic on the website. And then I just put that list together
and I knew then that these are all the people that I want to connect with and build relationships with. So
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I suppose I understood that in any business environment it's going to back to the relationship. I knew
that me sitting in Ireland sending tweets wasn't going to do it. I live a good bit away so I needed to
establish relationships with these people by meeting them as well. So, just from the list, I actually had a
bit of a hundred people on the list. I mount them on our Twitter stream, I connected them on LinkedIn, I
interact to them with commenting on the blog which works really well. And then I follow them to different
conferences around the world, it was mostly in the U.S. And then over time I just started to get to know
them, become friends with them, and then I became one of them. And I do believe the model that we've
followed, you could easily replicate that on our industries. And like I say, these guys are sneezers. It's
been hugely beneficial because they're the ones sharing out the content and talking about us and they
initially had bigger audiences and stuff.
Travis: Right. A lot of people don't know this but PR companies are paid to say great things about
someone. And so if you were at a party, if you said, "I'm wonderful." Ian said, "Look how wonderful I
am," everyone would think Ian is not a nice a guy, he's arrogant, right? But if some intelligent influential
person at the party said, "Ian is fascinating, he's brilliant" even though maybe they've been paid by the
PR Company. Well, since that person is influential or viewed to be an expert in the industry then people
take it as gospel. And some media is called Earned media, where instead of getting spoken off through
paid forms, you're written about. And so that's a direct comparison of how you can do it, either through
PR or build the relationships like you're talking about. And that ties in directly with the number 5 that
you talked about. You got very strategic with who your audience was, who the influencers were, and
then you found the tools to support your strategy, right?
Ian: Yeah, absolutely. And the relationships is key to the success. Of course I need the blog, I need the
content, I need the niche because they wouldn't have been interested in talking to me. But they seen
that I was working really hard, really focused on pushing at this area, and they recognized that. But like
I said, with the influencers, when I put up a …I said this the other day about me speaking in Vegas,
when it was Marcus Sheridan, who is quite well known, come back and says, "Ian's one of the hardest
workers in social media." A few different people say that, then all of a sudden I'll have this reputation I
was a super hard worker.
Travis: That's right.
Ian: So, it was another one where I spoke on a couple of events and I spoke at one which was TBox to
the travel blogger's event and I didn't know any travel blogger. So I went around and marketed my
events and tried to encourage people to come. And the place was packed. And then when I done the
second event for TBox, I did the exact same thing and the place was packed. Only because I did a bit
of marketing. So then the guys at TBox saying, the same guys run at a MaxIt in Vegas. Now, they're
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saying, "Ian always packs the audience, it's always crammed. You're going to have trouble getting the
seat." So I have a reputation for filling a room.
Travis: Right.
Ian: So, I'm worried now they're going to give me a big room in Vegas. There's lots of people--
Travis: Nobody's going to show up. Yeah, maybe we need to go ahead and get that crash and burn out
of the way just so that you can quit worrying about it right?
Ian: Absolutely, definitely.
Travis: I've got a terrible sense of humor at times; I don't think that's going to happen to you. Yeah, I've
interviewed Marcus Sheridan also and so, I keep doting on these points that you and I are talking about
because I want everybody to understand them on a deep level. When you connect with someone,
influencers like this, Ian and I have a sincere connection, and before today we didn't know each other.
But now Ian could reach out to me tonight and ask me to help him with something and I'll do it.
Ian: And vice versa. Connect with Travis, I like Travis. I talk about influencers but what happened was I
just got to know these people as really, really nice people and then became friends, and we had great
fun. And as friends I try and help them, they try and help me.
Travis: Right.
Ian: That's all there is. Now, maybe I already picked out a list of people and then they're not liking them
and things may not have worked as well. Well, what's being key to me is that get all great and have fun.
But they're serious about what they do and I'm serious what I do as well. So there's the fun element but
there's the hard work.
Travis: Yeah. You've got to come from a place of sincerity for it to work. And when you do connect with
a lot of people there are going to be some people that you don't connect with on a deep level, and that
takes care of itself naturally. You still have a positive experience with that person that maybe you guys
just don't reach out to each other. Everybody's not going to mess with each other, but as a rule of
thumb entrepreneurs do. And so, even though there's a strategic component behind it, there's a
sincere, deep connection there. So, think about who the influencers are in your industry, how you can
add value to what they're doing. How you could help them, and you'll build a lasting relationship, right
Ian?
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Ian: Yeah, absolutely. There's actually 2 people that spring to mind where one person I felt, initially
when I met them I felt them a little bit cold, I didn't build a relationship. But then I got to know them over
time and they're like really, really like the person, as in really great person. So, sometimes your initial
impression you need to give it time.
Travis: Right.
Ian: Another person I've met 3 or 4 times and the connection is just not happening. I'm trying to figure it
out what's missing and I've just struggled to get over that hard launch. Sometimes you won't connect.
Travis: It just won't happen, yeah. I've interviewed some really high-end people and some of them are
such a prima donna that it's hard to get down to the person of who they are. And it's not just people I
interviewed but other very high end people that I've met. And they're so busy worrying about some of
the super visual things that we really never connect on a personal level, and that normally what
prevents me from going deeper with someone. I don't know if that's been the same case for you?
Ian: Yeah, it has been. I love when people are just honest, and open, and say, "I made a mistake, I did
this, this isn't right. This worked for me, Can I help you?" And they mean it, can you help you? Genuine
people because I genuinely love meeting people, I love building relationships. I love helping people, I
feel good if a girl-- Oh my god, I've done something for Travis, it worked out. There was a girl who's
moved to The States recently and she said that she doesn't know anybody there but she use to do a lot
of work for us and trained in business. There's a couple of people I've introduced her to. Today,
actually, she's on an interview with a girl in San Francisco her name is Nancy. I just want to help her,
there's nothing I want in return. Just connecting 2 good people together and hopefully things will
happen, you know.
Travis: Right. I completely agree with you. Let me ask you, your journey, and your trials and errors,
your ups your downs have made you who you are today. Looking back, would you have done anything
differently?
Ian: I would have started into entrepreneurship much earlier. I ended up in technology for too many
years and then things moved on. I got bored with what I was doing there and I just find the outside
world technology, I mean, I'm great at taking an idea and just keeping, putting my head down and keep
on working, working, and working until I deliver in it. And coming up with ideas, and growing the team,
and growing the business, and all that. I love all that. I would have done enough earlier.
Travis: Right.
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Ian: Because entrepreneurship, you're going to make lots of mistakes so you might as well make them
earlier. Get them out of the way and learn lots because it's a big learning experience. And the only way
of doing it is just get stuck in. The thing is, there's no perfect idea, just waiting for that perfect idea, it's
never going to happen. It started.
Travis: Yeah, it gets perfected in the process. It's the process of perfection or refinement. I don't think
perfection exists but the refinement happens in the state of doing.
Ian: Yeah, there's definitely no perfection on my side. I have still plenty of things I can improve on.
Travis: I regularly mess up the things that I want to say, I'm not always completely crystal clear on how
I want to say it. But I don't let that get in the way of me cutting a show, right?
Ian: Absolutely. You sound great to me.
Travis: Well, thank you. I don't even go in and edit you stuff out. I just-- That's it, over and done with.
Hey Ian, are you ready for the lightning round?
Ian: Sure, yeah.
Travis: We're running a little long on time. And I know you've got a lot of things you need to take care
of. Do you have a seatbelt over there, can you buckle yourself in?
Ian: Buckle yourself in-- I didn't lift a hair, so--
Travis: Okay, so hang on there. What book or program made an impact on you related to business that
you'd recommend and why?
Ian: Launch by Mike Stelzner. So Mike Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner and Launch is
about launching an online business based around content. And I follow a lot of principles in his book,
and they just work. It gave away all the magic for how he grew Social Media Examiner.
Travis: Oh cool.
Ian: It's just a really fantastic book.
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Travis: Excellent. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently
discovered, this is going to play right into your hands, if any that you'd recommend to other business
owners and why?
Ian: Okay. So one is Canva which is-- It's about graphic design and creating images. Our problem as
small businesses, for example, we know that you have to create images all the time, images of
Facebook, and images to your website. You don't want to come back to your graphic designer all the
time. What Canva does is it provides the designity where it's template-based, where you can easily
create all these images for your website, or Facebook, whatever, using lots of templates, using drag
and drop. And it's the first tool I've come across where actually, as a non-graphic designer, I can
produce reasonably good, professionally looking images quickly and inexpensively. So Canva is an
Australian company, it's going to be huge, you will be using it, as soon as you see it you'll want to use
it.
Travis: Can you spell that?
Ian: Yeah, it's C a n v a.
Travis: Oh, okay, Canva. Cool, okay.
Ian: Just another one that I think is going to be hugely successful in 2013 is a monitoring tool called
Brand 24. They're in beta at the moment and they're launching early in the New Year, and it's going to
be a quite inexpensive tool, but I find just for monitoring and tracking your name, your brand's name,
your competitor's name. It's just brilliant for doing that. It does it on the error every day, it's doing all the
updates. So I go in today and see has anybody mentioned me anywhere in the internet the last hour.
So it's a fantastic tool as well.
Travis: Hey, spell that one for me also.
Ian: That's Brand 24, and its .net is the website.
Travis: .net, okay. And then, Canva.com?
Ian: Yeah, that's it. They're tools that are really good.
Travis: Excellent, thank you for that. What famous quote would best summarize your belief or attitude
in business?
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Ian: Well, what crosses, really, use it for me is, "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the
courage to lose sight of the shore."
Travis: I like that.
Ian: For me it's really-- you need to step out of your comfort zone. And you can look at this and say,
"This was designed for me", because I'm living in Ireland, I live a long way away from the States. I
decided I'm going to go to the States every couple of months, meet people, build relationship. I knew
nobody and that really worked for me.
Travis: And you bring up an important point, I think a lot of people believe that the more successful
somebody gets, the less they have fears, we all still have fears, we just have to continually ignore them
and keep pushing ourselves. Fear never goes away. So don't let that fear make you shrink or pull back.
Stand up and be brave, and be willing to go against it, right?
Ian: Absolutely, you have to push, you have to be pushing yourself all the time and going into areas
where you're slight uncomfortable. For the speaking side of things I actually do love speaking, but I
always got nervous before I speak because you're going in front of new audience, you'll go, "Will my
content go down well? Will they understand my Irish accent?
Travis: Right.
Ian: Will they like me; will they laugh at my jokes?" There's always that element at going a slight worry,
nervous but I love speaking and I want to speak more, I want to speak at bigger events, and if you said
to me Travis, I want to speak at event, key note, with 5,000 people I'd say, "Absolutely." And of course
I'd be going beforehand, "Oh my god, 5,000 people." But I'll do so much work in advance to makes sure
I'll do my very best. And you get over it, but you do need to punch yourself all the time.
Travis: A lot of times it's easy to confuse adrenalin for fear, because they feel the same don't they?
Ian: Absolutely.
Travis: That little devil wants to take over and starts telling you all the things that could go wrong.
Ian: Absolutely. I remember years ago I mentor a friend of mine, when I met him I was going, oh my
god, the last couple of weeks I was worrying about something, he said, "The problem is not you
worrying about something. It's been dragging on for a couple of weeks. You need to start to go, Okay,
there's a problem, I have to just bear with it and move on. And not spend weeks being unproductive
THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW
Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business
Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 25 of 28
over that problem when you can be focusing on solving it." So to me now, it doesn't bother me near as
much when things go wrong, I go, "Okay, things gone wrong, let's move on now quickly," rather than go
and drag my heels for a couple of weeks. And that's the problem, it's that couple of weeks are just a
complete waste.
Travis: Waste of time.
Ian: You make not of it.
Travis: Yeah, exactly. I know we need to wrap things up. What do you dream of?
Ian: Okay, it's good. Business right now, I do dream of me. I mentioned about speaking and staying in
front of 5,000 people. I do dream of me being very successful on the speaking level because I always
want to be on stage and I can't sing or dance. So speaking is one thing. So, I do dream of just, on a
global basis, that raises sort of becomes the name of globally, it's all business, a big successful
business in this area of social media tools. That's really the whole focus really is doing that.
Travis: Cool, I'm going to help you get there, do you mind?
Ian: Oh absolutely. If I can help you in any way I'd love to as well.
Travis: Alright. How do people connect with you?
Ian: The best, you can razorsocial.com is the website, or connect with me on Twitter @iancleary, i-a-n-
c-l-e-a-r-y that's probably the best place I think.
Travis: Ian, you are the man my friend, I've absolutely enjoyed hanging out with you and you sharing
your pearls of wisdom and your experience, and your business model, and everything. You're brilliant
and a true gentleman.
Ian: Well, thank you very much Travis. I love this, this is just like having a great chat with a friend. It's
really enjoyable, so I'll do it anytime.
End of Interview
THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW
Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business
Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 26 of 28
Travis: Remember that you can find all the links to the books and resources mentioned in the show
notes. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, it's a brand new site that we've been building out
that's completely focused on giving you resources to grow your business. Before I close the show
today, at the beginning of the show I had mentioned something that I wanted to come back to and talk
about on a deeper level, which was the key to building a business that gives you complete financial
freedom and the time freedom to pursue life on your own terms, whether it's travel, helping others,
donating your time, no matter what it is. For me it's a little bit of all those which I define as reaching your
true purpose in life. Now, I've noticed that a large number of people that I've spoke with have not
realized that the level of success and freedom that they're after will not come from the skills that you've
acquired to become excellent in your craft or your line of business. While that's the first step when you
first move in to an industry, you've got to hone your skills and you've got to become extremely,
extremely good at it. But once you're a true expert at what you do you've got to shift gears. What I
mean by that is you have to have a system for positioning your company as an expert. Marketing your
services. You've got to know how to use multiple sources that bring a constant flow of prospects that
are willing to pay top dollar for your services. You've also got to know how to grow a team around you,
proper pricing, proper tracking, even down to producing what it is that makes you special or your
company special on a consistent and reliable basis. Now, this is what the business breakthrough
sweepstakes that we've created is all about. It's a free program where we teach you many of the
formulas that you can apply in your own business. And for the winner of that contest, I will personally do
a swat analysis on your business. Now the swat stands for strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats. So that we can see exactly what's holding you back from reaching your true potential. We'll
look at your pricing, positioning, your offers, your cost per acquisition, and wide range of other key
performance indicators that maybe completely greet to you, although they will determine the level of
success that you will have through your business, which of course we'll educate you on. Now, it's
surprising what an outside team can find that is difficult for you to see when it's your own baby because
you're so closely involved with it on a daily basis. We'll help you create a profitable package that
doubles and triples your profits. We'll build a marketing system for you, we'll create an automated
marketing sequence for you, or several of them, and the list goes on. Remember that building a
profitable business is a series of formulas and I've talked about this several times. As you apply those
formulas to your business your profits become very predictable and starts building long term wealth.
Now this is what moves you into a position to help others which I believe ultimately is part of our
responsibilities as an entrepreneur. This will change your end of the month conversations from did we
make a profit to how much profit did we make this month. That's a very different place to be in. Now if
you haven't reached this level of consistency yet your business and you'd like to learn how it's done,
join our free business breakthrough sweepstakes where we focus on teaching you many of these
formulas in a simple step by step format so that you can customize it to your own business. This is what
I've used to build several tiny, little, local companies to multi-million dollar businesses that I've
THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW
Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business
Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 27 of 28
generated over $70 million with. Also, to add a little fun and excitement to the program, if you join the
sweepstakes and stay engaged, you'll have a chance to win the $73,000 and the cash and prizes
where I will personally mentor you and your business, and my team will implement those tactics that I
just mentioned, plus you'll have a chance to win my personal Lamborghini. Now, for more information
just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and click on the sweepstakes promotion. My quote for
today comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the quote reads, "Nothing great was ever achieved
without enthusiasm." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. I want to commend you for being
brave enough to stand up for what you believe in and follow your dreams when you started your
business. That's a rare quality. I know it can be lonely journey at times, just know that you're not alone
and what you're doing really does matter, no matter what size your business is. To your incredible
success, take care.
THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW
Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business
Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 28 of 28
How We Can Help You
We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called
gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That’s exactly
why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at
a fraction of its normal cost.
Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive
deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever!
We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats within your business.
This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons
are.
As the 'Business Owner' it’s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you’re in the
middle of a daily management.
And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial.
This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-man army, or
an army of 150, the problem is still the same.
Travis Lane Jenkins
Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist
Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show
“Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

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The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 085 Ian Cleary

  • 1. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 1 of 28 Episode #85: Ian Cleary In this episode, Travis interviews social media specialist and successful entrepreneur Ian Cleary. Ian is the CEO of Razor Social and his company helps business owners improve their business using social media. He is also a speaker and through the years has helped entrepreneurs grow their business. Ian and Travis discussed many valuable tips on the techniques and tools that entrepreneurs use when promoting their business through social media. According to Ian, social media should only serve to build connections and relationships with your clients and partners, and not just another advertising tool to sell your products. Ian also shares his top 5 mistakes that business owners make with social media. These are just some of the things that entrepreneurs can gain in this episode of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show. . Ian Cleary- Growing your business through social media Travis: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 85 of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, a production of RockstarEntrepreneurNetwork.com, .com. Where each and every episode, I will deconstruct the path to success for each of our guest so that you can see what they've done to become successful. Now the reason why I do this is I want you to model what other successful people have done so that we can help fast track your business to that next level. Although, I want you to notice how imperfect their journey is each and every time. Now, today I'm going to introduce you to rock star entrepreneur Ian Cleary. Now, beyond Ian having a wonderful accent he is brilliant on many levels also, where this interview we're going to go deep on the topic social media and we'll get you some advice on how to use social media effectively in your business. Also, be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can for a few reasons. The first reason is I want to share some inspiration with you because I know it can be a lonely journey as an entrepreneur. Also, I want to talk to you about something that I'll come back to after the interview which is the key to building a business that gives you complete financial freedom and the time freedom to pursue life on your own terms. No matter if it's traveling, helping others, donating your time, no matter what it is, which I like to define as reaching your true purpose in the short period of time we're here. Plus, I've got a contest that I want to tell you about where you'll have a chance to win $73,000 in cash and prizes and a Lamborghini. So again, be sure and hangout with me until the very end if you can.
  • 2. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 2 of 28 Now before we get started I want to remind you that there's two easy ways to take these interviews on the go. Of course you can listen to them through your laptop but if you want to be on the move, driving, working out, jogging, or whatever it is you want to do. You can go through iTunes or Stitcher. Now, the fastest way to subscribe to the show is if you go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, just click on the iTunes or Stitcher on the menu bar and it will take you directly to the podcast where you can subscribe to the show there. I found the search bar in iTunes and Stitcher very clunky that they don't exist or they're hard to use. Also, one other thing that just came to mind, if you take a moment while you're there to rate and review the show, I would really appreciate it. The more ratings that we have the more each platform, iTunes and Stitcher, shares our show to new people. This will help us keep the show free while reaching, and instructing, and inspiring more entrepreneurs just like you how to grow your business. So if you do that I would really, really appreciate it , and it would mean a lot to me. So, thank you on that. One last thing, if you have questions about your business that you'd like answered on the air, then while you're at rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, just like click on the little microphone button on the right side of the screen and you've got 3 minutes to tell me who you are, your business, and what business challenges that you'd like some advice on. So, now that we got all that stuff out of the way let's get down to business, what do you say? Without further ado, welcome to the show Ian. Ian: Thank you very much for having me Travis, great to be on it. Travis: Man, I'm excited to have you here. We were having a little bit of laugh before we get started. Hey, I don't know how familiar you are with the way that we go about doing things in the show. What we like to do is kind of get a little bit of background of who you are and how you found this level of success, would you mind sharing that story with us? Ian: Sure, I'd love to Travis, absolutely. Travis: Cool. Ian: So, my background is really in technology. I spent many years in technology industry, starting off managing different technology groups and then moving up the chain, and then end up being share holder of couple of different companies. And as they went on the companies got acquired, some float around NASDAQ in the U.S., some of them got acquired, and a couple are quite successful. When that was happening then I start dabbling in the property business and I started investing in all sorts of property along the way. So some of the money I've made went back into property. While I was still in
  • 3. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 3 of 28 the IT industry, I ended up running a property company sort of as a sideline but it ended up, it was generating us good money. And that was selling property in Eastern Europe. Well, what I'm really interested in and I loved all the entrepreneurship, I was fascinated by entrepreneurship, and all of this is dabbling and paying itself. The property went up and as I ended up buying property in Eastern Europe, and then when I come back to Ireland people were saying, "We want to buy property as well, can you help us?" So it made sense then we ended up making commission on the sales of that. But I suppose what happened with that business was we're making good money. Whereas, in Eastern Europe part East Europe, it was quite dodgy in terms of what the property be built and would a developer go out of business. I was always concerned that I wouldn't be able to give anybody their money back if something badly went wrong and that never sit nicely with me. So, we decided to get out of that business and then we had a big property crash in Ireland which I lost a bit of money a lot of the way there. We did manage to sell a lot of our property but the property crashed very, very quickly. Travis: When was that? Ian: That was around 1997 I'd say, the start of the crash. Travis: Oh okay. Ian: So what we did we sold off our property and then I left the IT job because what happened was that we're acquired by a big company and I just couldn't work for the big company. Just didn't suit me at all. Travis: Right. Ian: So I left and then we set-up a consultancy around social media. We just drifted into social media and then we ended up building a good training business doing social media and digital marketing training. And then we started building Facebook applications. So we were looking for an application we could sell internationally. We built Facebook apps, we were selling them here in Ireland. But then when we looked internationally there was far too many people doing them. The people were doing them cheaper, better caller rate, and they had significant funding behind them. So we canned our project and then I was going, "Okay, I want to build a business now in the U.S." that was it. I said, "I'm going to start getting on a plane, I'm going to the U.S." So we didn't have a brilliant idea, so we looked out all the key influencers in the social media industry and looked up, well, who was specializing in the different areas, so there's lots of keys specialize and then strategy, and all different areas of social media, but nobody was specializing in tools area. All of the technology background and the social media mix, it made sense but we would start there.
  • 4. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 4 of 28 So we built a blog and then we start travelling the states, start building relationships. We identified all the key people in the social media industry, start building relationships with all of them, and that was hugely successful for us. The blog grew massively very, very quickly, and we became known as the social media tools guys, sort of around the global bases of this stage. And from that then generate good revenue on the back of that that's growing month on month at the moment. So, it was a few different twist along the way and I dabbled into all sorts of ventures along the way. And we made some money and at times we lost the money, and we learned a lot. One of the most important things that I learned was, one is persevere, that's the ultimate side of perseverance. The other is you have to be passionate about what you're doing. This morning I was in work about half 5 this morning. The dealer called now and I'm going to do a call of a webinar later on tonight. So it's going to be very long day. I love what I do, I'm doing, you know. So, it's really interesting side and so passionate, the real keeping from it. Travis: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I've always got my laptop in my lap no matter where I'm at. And it's not because I have to, it's because I want to, right? Ian: There's the difference. I've sit in front of the TV, my wife, and she may be watching a soap or something and I get bored quite easily. So I'm on the laptop, I interact with people, chatting with Twitter. My brain is going 24 hours a day with ideas because where all this road curve at the moment. And I love it when you can get inside, learn before you go. Actually, what we're doing is really working, growing rapidly. I love the traffic on our website, in the last month we've grown 30%, and the last two months we've grown like 70%. Travis: Wow. Ian: So we just keep on pushing and growing, and growing. And as I said to my wife last night. Within this tooled space within social media is an awful a lot of people around the world that are entrusted in this space. Travis: Oh yeah, without a doubt. Ian: It's not the bleach. Holding that niche, I think it's really important. If we had to pick a niche that wasn't, you know-- If those other people in our niche, it would have taken us a lot longer to build a business. So we've stuck out like a sore thumb because we're the ones that are working directly within this niche.
  • 5. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 5 of 28 Travis: So, what was the timeline on the social media tools when you guys got clarity and really figured out that you're going to be the social media tools people-- Give me a timeline on that, what was the year, when was that? A year ago, two years ago, five years ago, what? Ian: My first trip to the U.S. was June last year, that's when I went to bog world in the U.S. in this industry. Within 6 months of launching our blog we were voted as one of the top 10 social media blogs in the world with the competition ruled by social media examiner. So that's where we're going, or actually we're on to something that's actually really useful and beneficial people and there's a great business here. Because we looked at Social Media Examiner as one of the key leaders within this space and be recognized by them within 6 months was amazing for us. Travis: Oh wow, that's impressive. So let's go back a little bit okay, if you don't mind. Ian: Sure. Travis: So, give me a timeline, did I understand correctly, you built a business and took it public? Was that your business or business that you worked for? Ian: Well, I was a shareholder in the business. Travis: Okay. And what business was that? Ian: The last business that we operate was a CRM tool. Travis: Oh okay. Ian: And we were the first ones to go from a desktop-based to a web-based CRM tool. And at that stage it was quite interesting to-- So we're ahead of everybody else within that area, and we end up working with a company in Canada. Their company bought us within 6 months. And at that stage it was just a big corporate business and as an entrepreneur I just didn't fit right. I couldn't get work done. Travis: Right. Ian: It was very frustrating. Travis: Yeah, I've spoke about that before, I built my business into this big corporation at one time and we took efficiency in the bathroom and drowned it in the bathtub.
  • 6. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 6 of 28 Ian: Very good. Travis: You know, because the corporate structure and I try not to be negative about too many things. I'm just never been crazy about the corporate attitude because it's not, in most cases I've been involved in it rarely is elevating capital like true entrepreneur-ism does. The things that we do elevates capital and provides jobs and does a lot great things. And in my experience, and it could be due to me and my lack of skill set, I’ve never had a good experience in a corporate environment. It sounds like you think along those same terms also. Ian: Yeah, you're obviously a strong entrepreneur and I think it would be very difficult to find a job that would suit you as an entrepreneur. Because you're always going to want to be pushing things forward, doing things quickly, change when you need to change, and the corporate structure that slows everything down. Travis: Right. Ian: There's a whole lack of innovation in corporate world, so-- Travis: Right and it's a great environment to get yourself in trouble or people like you and I at least. Ian: Oh absolutely. Travis: Okay. So Ian, what I like about your journey is, and another reason why I wanted to create this show is I've been in masterminds and I think a lot of people that haven't had the benefit to be in masterminds and be surrounded by entrepreneurs that think just like them is I believe there's this false belief that successful entrepreneurs get on this different ride than everybody else. It's like a rocket ride straight up, and that's not true. It's a very flawed path that is marred with a lot of errors, and trials, and tribulations of getting there. And what I like about your story is it shows that you're very tenacious and that you don't give up. And every time you've taken a wrong turn, you've put it in reverse, figured out what you need to do and get back on track, right? Ian: A good few years ago I realized I was an entrepreneur and I admitted to myself I was an entrepreneur and then decided that's it, I'm just going to keep on this path no matter what. And it is like you say, it's one of the best skills I have is perseverance, that I will just keep going and going. And the type of business I'm in, when we produce a lot of content and the contents drive a lot of traffic, and then the traffic generates sales. It's very easy to get up in the morning and go, "Well, I won't produce today." or "I won't produce tomorrow" but that's not going to grow your business. You have to be persistent and constantly produce, constantly deliver. Somebody made a comment the other day, I'm speaking at a
  • 7. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 7 of 28 big conference in January in Vegas. And they say, "Congratulations Ian. One of the hardest working people in social media." To be honest, I do work extremely hard, but I see a vision and I'm trying to go for this. I'm trying to go for these goals all the time. And so, unlike you Travis where I have the laptop open constantly. And when I get up in the morning the first thing I want to do is check the email, get into work as soon as possible, and get working, you know. Travis: Yeah. One morning I was sitting there with my laptop in my lap and this girl had come over that was helping my daughter, my wife with something. And it was pretty early in the morning, and she goes, "Oh, you have to work so early in the morning, I feel sorry for you." And I'm thinking, "No, I want to be doing this." Ian: Yeah. Travis: I'm excited to be doing this. I'm anxious, I was losing sleep. I had an idea last night and I was anxious to get up this morning and go deeper on that. Is that the same thing with you? Ian: Absolutely. And this morning was the exact morning when I get up, I want to get in this early as possible. I have this tool called Focus Booster which is a timer. The time sync for 25 minutes. So I sit down on my PC, I put on that for 25 minutes, and I work for 25 minutes on the schedule. Then I take a break for a minute, then I go back and do 25 minutes. And I'll keep going till about 12:30, and then I'll go at the gym, which is right next door. I'll do a good workout for about 45 minutes. And then when I come back then I'm fresh and rearing to go as well. So, I think the fitness side to me, I think that's from an entrepreneurship point of view I think you need to be fit as well. Having that break for me during the day helps me get stuck back in again and keeps me fresh. Travis: I do the same thing. I'll even take a podcast with me and listen to it while I'm working out. Ian: Oh, absolutely. I listen to the podcast on the way into work this morning, and then at the gym at lunch time as well. So, I think we're two peas of the same pod Travis. Travis: Yeah. I was actually a terrible student as a child, and I'm really amazed and surprised, I would have never had guessed that I would be doing the things that I-- I want to skip school because I had to speak in front of a class. One of the things I do for a living now is speaking. Ian: Oh wow. We began to speak in circuit someday. Travis: Yeah, right. I skipped classes because I had to write and that's something that I do a lot of. The reason why I talk about those things, I think they're worth mentioning is, number 1, I feel like
  • 8. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 8 of 28 entrepreneurship is the single best self-improvement program I have ever entered. It's constantly making me a better person through writing, through speaking, through talking with great people like yourself. Has it been the same experience for you? Ian: I just love it. I just love the people connected you today. And lots of other infuses and speaking events where you meet so many interesting people. Yeah, I just love it. Actually, just what you mentioned, you talked about a mastermind, I set up the mastermind group with 500 other entrepreneurs and I said-- It was 6 of us for 6 months, I session each month, and each month we're going to change a habit. One habit each month, and that was a real focus to try and get more productive now. But just interacting with these other people, entrepreneurs, doing the same thing in different parts of the world, and similar business. I love to connect with them and I love to see everybody making improvements, and everybody exchanging ideas with their business. I just love that. Travis: It took me several years to figure this out. I'm into cars, I'm a typical guy so I like cars, I got into golf and other things. And for years I looked for different places that I felt like I fit, and this was before I had discovered business masterminds. Now, I own an exotic car so I'd go to an exotic car club, I owned a hotrod, and so I'd go to a hotrod club. And there were some elements in each of those clubs that I enjoyed. I played golf and there were some elements there that I enjoyed at the country club, but I never really 100% fit until I found a business mastermind. And these people weren't even in the same business as me, but they were in business, so they were dealing taxes, insurance, advertising, all of the things that come with being an entrepreneur, right? Ian: Yeah. Travis: And I felt all of a sudden that I could enter conversations at a deep level with a group of people I didn't know very well. And all of them completely understood where I was coming from. And so it was extremely fulfilling to be surrounded by a group of people. Does that match the experience for you as well? Ian: It does, and at two levels from the entrepreneurship side. I was speaking at a MaxIt in Vegas in January which is a big social media blogging conference. And when I go there I just love the environment because a lot of people there are entrepreneurs. And most people, they're all involved in the same industry, the social media, content marketing industry. So they understand exactly what we're all doing and what we're working at. With the entrepreneurship side, meeting all them entrepreneurs at an event like that I just love it. To me it's not work at all, it's just great fun. And I learned a lot as well, connect with lots of great people and built lots of great relationships. It's networking but it's just meeting friends, and connecting with people, and getting to know people, and that's great fun networking. If you're meeting likeminded people that's the difference.
  • 9. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 9 of 28 Travis: Right. Entrepreneurs are self-- They take control, we have some deeper core beliefs. We believe in owning our mistakes, owning in our success. We believe in investing our efforts, our time, our money, all of those things. And when you get around a large number or even a small number of people that believe so many things on such a deep core level, it turns something on inside of you that for me, takes me back to Christmas day as a child almost. It's because I'm surrounded with so many people that get me on so many different levels even though I don't know them very well. Ian: Yeah, exactly. Travis: Okay. So take me down the path. You had talked about social media tools, let's go deeper on that because that can go a variety of different ways. Take me deeper on what social media tools mean to you and what you guys do specifically. Ian: Okay. There's the platforms which are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all that, and we're talk about all the tools surrounding them platforms. So management tools like HootSuite for managing these channels, or Buffer app for sharing content out through these channels, or analytic tools, or tools for optimizing the content you're producing in a blog. So that's the space that we operate in and ---So we say we're the social media tools experts in this area. And everything really is based around a blog. So we write content on a regular basis related to tools. So there would have been a post that went out today about HootSuite apps. And what we do is we optimize all that content so we get traffic through Google. We network with people around the world so that people start linking tools and talking about us through different websites that's driving lots of traffic into our site, the profile that site was up. Traffic and audience has gone up all the time. And then how we make money, there's a couple of different ways. So we'd make money in speaking events but also from the site we charge we charge for our content. Even though we provide free content we also charge for it. So at the moment for example we're doing a Facebook analytics tools guide. And we've approached a whole range of vendors in this space, and we charge them all for inclusion in this guide. And because we're the social media tools guys they know that when we take this guide and promote it, it'll get distributed all over the place. So the benefit they get from being in this guide way exceeds the cost we included. So we take that guide and we charge money for that, and then we charge for sponsorship of the guide as well. So we bring in a key sponsor in the guide. That's one way we charge for content. We also then have lots of agencies wondering what are the best tools to use. What are the best ones, and it's no point then spending all that time. So we provide reports where we charge them, where it would give evaluation of the tools. No, we do very little on the consultancy side because our business is not really about paper. It's providing a scale of business using content at that.
  • 10. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 10 of 28 And the other stuff beyond that is I'm finished now for book at the moment, and we're building a training program which will have a tools type focus, and that'll be the next stage. So we keep on building our audience then we will be providing more online trainings to that audience. Travis: So, what I like about your model is the many-to-one aspect. Obviously, the consulting would have a bottleneck of one-to-one. It's very tough to scale a business whenever you're into one-to-one model right? Ian: Exactly, I've got request all the time for an hour of consultancy here or there. I won't do any of it because I can earn so much more by selling a guide 500 times rather than me selling an hour of my time. If I'm investing that hour of my business rather than making a couple of hundred bucks, it's just not worth it. Travis: Right. So it sounds to me like a lot of your traffic is SEO-type traffic, is that correct? Ian: 75% comes from Google. Now, people go-- I did all these activity on social media on Facebook, and Twitter, and LinkedIn, how come that's not generating all the traffic? Everything's all connected. If people get to know you through Twitter, overtime then when they're searching for something they might see you in search results in Google, or they might type in your name in Google. So Google, Facebook, Twitter, it's all connected. One of the best things of the social area is when people here about your content, then they go off and start writing about the content, then they link back to your content. And then that's a big thumbs up from a Google point of view if people are linking to you. So, it all helps. Travis: Well, what you're talking about, a lot of small businesses just never seem to be able to reach critical mass to where they can produce enough valuable content to really start generating traffic. Isn't that part of the problem'? Ian: Yeah, it's a lot of hard work and if I show you the blog the first few months, a lot happens the first few months. So what happens is you start off your website and Google doesn't like it. Then you start writing content, Google still doesn't like it, but then you start interacting and building relationships with the right people in the industry that have websites that have been around for years and are highly ranked. And then they start linking to you, and then Google is saying, "Okay, you're more important now,” so your content starts moving up. Initially, I've done a lot of guest posting. So I went to high profile sites and a huge traffic, and I said, "I'll write an article about tools." And the tools articles are very popular in general so they look at the tool's articles. So I've done a lot of that guest posting which is a lot of work to produce content, but it produced the results. So, like social media examiner, I still do some guest posting, and I have an article there today, and I'm sure it's probably well over a thousand
  • 11. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 11 of 28 shares already, and it'll probably end up 4 or 5,000 shares in social media before the end of the day. So I still do the old bit of guest posting on some of them sites. Travis: Nice. So, how many are there over there? Is it just you and your partner creating content, or do you have this big machine creating content. How do you go about doing that? Ian: So there's two parts to the business. One is we still have the digital marketing training business which my wife is starting to run that. And we've a lot of trainers there within that business that look after that side. From the other side of the business there's four of us involved at the moment and its different people around the world involved in it. So, I have a girl, say for example Diana, who I'll get lots of information about new tools. She will take all that information, she will check it to do initial evaluation and to tell if it's really good, then she'll pass on the content. So, from me, she will take a blog post, she'll add some images onto it. So it's a relatively small team but we don't actually need a huge team. We may end growing to 10 or 15 people. But the type of business we're in, we have a very substantial business with a relatively small number of team. And a lot of that team will be people we'll contract work out to. Travis: Right. Ian: I'm not mad into hiring people full time. I know some people are hungry for delivering good stuff and are paid by the hour. And there's plenty of work there for them, they're delivering good stuff, they just keep on working with us forever maybe. Travis: Yeah, right now you can bring some incredible rock stars onboard to work for you for two hours. Ian: Yeah. Travis: Two hours a month. With so many things that are going on in today, it's easier. So I've been an entrepreneur for 23 years and it's never been easier on some levels to bring incredible levels of people in and have them do some really impressive work. I had to train myself; I'm used to bringing people on full time and just having a staff there, right? Ian: Yeah. Travis: And the problem with that is overhead, and they get very expensive and staff normally are not as productive 6 months from when they start. Ian: Yeah.
  • 12. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 12 of 28 Travis: However, that's not always the case; it depends on how you have your structure set-up. But in today's environment you can bring in absolute killers at certain things, and have them work a couple of hours, they're happy. They can produce whatever you need and then move on. And that sounds to me like a part of the model that you're using to keep your fixed overhead down and still be productive, right? Ian: Absolutely. And we're looking for the best people to work with. Like for example, Diana, a girl I work with, she's based in Germany. And I give her a task, she turns them around really quickly, and really efficient, and I just love working with her. And as long as she keeps on doing that we're going to be working for a long time together. Travis: Right. Ian: It works so well. One of my best skills is delegation, I always got it, organizing things and delegating. So having a small team like this, I've been able to delegate tasks, and I just keep on moving, and moving, and moving quickly all the time. It's really great, I love it at the moment. Travis: Good for you, that's exactly what you need to do to ramp things up very quickly. Do you use any paid form of traffic? I've got to admit that I've become very jaded with SEO because it's changed so much over the last 7, 8 years, that I'm really a fan of paid traffic. Because if you have some great content then you can bring them onboard with a paid traffic and then it will really start scaling. You can keep them by quality of your content. So do you do much paid traffic? Ian: We don't do any at all. When we initially started I suppose we were trying to figure out what was the exact direction we're going and were we going the right direction, and we were building relationships. So we took it a little bit slow the first couple of months. But then we started getting traction, but that was really because we were in this niche within social media. So social media is a very hot area, and you would think those thousands of blogs around the world, and we're lucky we're in the niche. And we talk about tools which people love, they get the most shares the content. When you're speaking at an event, the place is packed because people love tools. And nobody had that space, and helped us drive traffic quickly. We will go back to paying for traffic because we want to keep on growing it, so at the moment, no, there's nothing around we're paying for there. Travis: It's a little further down the line? Ian: Yeah. We'll do more of that.
  • 13. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 13 of 28 Travis: Okay. So let's shift. We've examined your business model and your journey of how you've gotten to where you're at today, and how you're monetizing things, and how you're growing. Let's talk from the angle of fellow entrepreneurs that are listening to the show. Which path do you want to go down? The 5 mistakes that people normally make with social media, or the top 5 tools? What direction do you want to go with that? Ian: Okay, so maybe the mistakes in social media's interesting because I think businesses get this wrong. I suppose the first biggest mistake is treating social media like another advertising channel. Travis: It's not? Ian: It's not for advertising; it's for building relationships, building awareness of you products or services, building up your network. And if you build it that then that's going to be really beneficial. We know that networking is really important and really beneficial, but that's your networking now is online through these channels. So treating it as a sales channel would be one thing. The second mistake is content. What is this content, what it's about? I hear people saying, "Well, I'm going to set-up a Twitter account." "Why are you setting it up?" "Well, I'm told I have to tweet." Well, you're going to fail, that's why you're setting up a Twitter account. It's really looking and going, "How are we going to strategically great content that's going to bring people along the sales funnel to get through a stage where they're going to buy my product. So we focus in on the social media tools content, trying to track in PR professionals and marketing professionals, and some business owners. Get them to subscribe to an email database, build a relationship with over time, and then sell them products and services. But the content is not like just random content, the blog for example is specifically aimed at specific keywords to drive more traffic into the business, and like content today was with HootSuite apps. We're trying to rank within the top 10 for somebody who's searching for HootSuite apps. So that's a big mistake, they can competent for the sake of content, it's not. It's strategic about your content. A guy called Joe Pulizzi is the founder of Content Marketing Institute, and he has a book about content marketing strategy. It's only released a couple of minutes ago, and it's just fantastic. It's a very simple book, it will teach all you need to know about the content side. Travis: Yeah, I interviewed him. Ian: Oh yeah, he's a great guy actually, you know. Travis: Okay, so creating content for the sake of content. That's how you called it right? People make the mistake of creating content for the sake of content, right? Ian: Yeah.
  • 14. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 14 of 28 Travis: Okay. Ian: The third issue is going in for the kill immediately. When people are writing on your website, depending on your business, generally they're not ready to buy. And that's where content comes in because you attract them into your site then you build them into an email subscriber, and then you build a relationship over time. But don't force the sale directly on them if they're not ready. So, just be careful of how you position that. So that's again where content goes back in where it really helps. So if people are not ready to buy, then they can subscribe to your content and then build a relationship. Travis: Okay. Right, number 4? Ian: Number 4, okay. I'm struggling in number 4. Travis: For those of you that just started listening to show, none of this is planned. So Ian is pulling this off the top of his head here. You're doing a good job. Ian: Okay. The fourth issue with social media is hiring an intern and saying, "You're responsible for social media." And putting them in the corner and getting to do the updates. That's just not how it works. With social media channels you're building relationships with people that are going to be beneficial to your business. You're building relationships with people that might turn into customers, or relationships with people that might refer you to somebody else. So, if you're going to hire somebody like an intern, bring them in as part of your team and make sure everybody is involved in social media, which is building relationships, marketing your business, and driving sales. So having everybody involved. Bring an intern, make sure they're a core part of the team, and you're involved as much as them. Travis: Okay. And I'm jotting this down as we go because I'm going to try to be a good student and go back over this with you to make sure we cover it all, okay? Ian: Okay, cool. And then. So you want number 5. So the 5th mistake people make with social media, I'll give you the tools. One, tools are fantastic and I love tools, we write about tools, get your strategy right first. Don't jump into a whole range of different tools and not figured that as a strategy. If you got a good strategy in place, tools are going to really help you implement the strategy, and help you become more efficient, help you in ultimate tasks, you have to have your strategy in place first. Travis: Okay, alright. So, let's go back. I was going to challenge you and see if you could go to 10 but that just wouldn't be nice at all. By the way, great job on just coming off the top of your head with the top 5 things there. So let's go back to number 1. I want to make sure-- I didn't write everything that you
  • 15. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 15 of 28 said down but I jotted some notes. So number 1, social media is not a sales channel. There's a lot of pay-per-click models, does that mean that you can't acquire customers through social media, or that the main use for social media channel is establishing a relationship. Can you give me some clarity on that? Ian: Yeah, say for example you've got a Facebook page. It's not really about selling product constantly. There's nothing wrong with everybody so often and saying, "Listen guys, we have a special offer for Facebook fans only, and this is restricted." And people will buy. Or you launch a new product or service. You announce of Facebook and people might buy, that's fine. But in general you're not going to be pumping the sales messenger constantly. Travis: Right. Ian: You want to build a relationship built with the trust, and you'll see actually on Facebook Amy Porterfield talks about this a lot about the money being in the list. It's taking your Facebook fans, convert them into email subscribers, and you can focus more on sales from that. Travis: Right. So maybe the 80-20 rule, 80% content and maybe 20% advertising? Ian: Absolutely. Travis: Okay, cool. Alright. So number 2, creating content for the sake of content. I think a lot of people make that mistake. So it needs to be much more strategic and takes people down a path, is that what you were saying there? Ian: Absolutely. Buy Joe Pulizzi's book, spend $20, and that'll give you a lot of content marketing strategy is about. And it's delivered in easy to understand terms, relatively small book. At the end of that book you go, "Right, I got it. I nearly understand what this content I got to produce. What it's for." What content I need to produce. Travis: Yeah, and I've got that book, I need to go ahead and read it. He's a nut about wearing orange everywhere he goes. Ian: Yeah. At his conferences, it's all orange. Travis: Yeah, right. Okay, so number 3, going for the kill immediately. You know what that brings a thought of for me is if you just met a girl and you liked her, would you kiss her? Well, normally, that would get your face slapped.
  • 16. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 16 of 28 Ian: I won't try. Travis: You know, if you would try to kiss a girl that you liked the second you meet her and maybe this is a terrible example, but it's a good way to illustrate it. Take some time, slow down, build a connection and a little bit of a relationship before you go in for that kiss. Is that what you're saying here? Ian: Yeah, it's like in the networking event, when I go to a network event, when I meet somebody. My focus is how can I help you, how can I help get a person? And I'm asking about them and trying to establish the relationship. I'm not taking out my business card and saying, "Will you buy my product or service?" Travis: Right. Ian: You know, of course they'll come back and they want to know more about you and as you build the relationship and trust then they want to do business with you. But just be careful, you're handing out your business card immediately on these channels. Travis: Right, yeah, great point. Okay, so number 4, hiring an intern and having them handle the social media. That's pretty common these days, right? Ian: Yeah. There's nothing wrong with interns and there's nothing wrong with hiring people in to help, it's just to make sure it's not like sit in the corner and put up updates because I was told updates are acquired. Travis: Okay. So how do they go deeper? Go deeper for me on how this person should be schooled in a way that they're posting relevant quality stuff and generating real connections. Ian: So the team needs to be involved in social media. So you work out your strategy and then you work out to different roles in your team. And then the intern is helping as part of that. There's some level of involvement in social media for everybody that's involved in the organization. Travis: Okay, alright. So one person can lead the charge of posting on the page but everybody is possibly commenting. A lot of times I'm popping on the page and I answer people's questions and things like that. That's what you're talking about? Ian: Absolutely. And that's so important. If you weren't doing that, that would be bad. So that's so important to be doing that sort of thing as well.
  • 17. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 17 of 28 Travis: I get the impression that doesn't happen a lot because I've had a lot of people say, "Wow, thanks for getting back to me." And I'm like, "Well, why wouldn't I?" Ian: I know. People love it. Actually, when people subscribe to my email list, it's an automated email but it's a really nice one. And I'd say, "I really would love if you replied to this email." And I love that people do reply. Not everybody, but the people that do reply then I get it, then I reply back and I thank them and everything. And then they come back and say, "Oh my god, I can't believe you replied to me. Thank you very much." It just helps trying to build a community, and build a community, people need to like it and need to go, "Travis is a good guy", you know. Travis: Right. Ian: And that's important. Travis: It starts the ball rolling on engagement, right? Ian: Yes. Travis: I have in my auto-responder, sure is I say, "Hit reply and tell me, at a level of 1-10, 10 being the best. How passionate are you about your success?" Ian: That's a great one, because it gets them thinking immediately and tell how passionate I am. So it's how you get interesting conversations with that one. Travis: Yeah. And so I have quite a few people that hit that button and really go into some in-depth explanation of how serious they are about their success. And again, most people are surprised that I respond and that I'm reading it. And so, what you're saying definitely resonates with me. Ian: I have a funny one Travis. When I set up initially I said, "For the first 1,000 subscribers I'm going to send a personalized message when they subscribed, okay?" Now, I have a template and then I put in something personal as part of the template. So, it only took me maybe 30 seconds to deliver it. But when I found is people still didn't believe it was actually me replying. So what I have to do was I put in the line saying what I was doing at that time. So sometimes I go, "I'm sitting here in my desk having lunch, it's 1:15 in Dublin. Thanks for responding." And then I have some standard text. And then somebody will reply and say, "I'm in Germany, it's 2:15, I'm just after dropping my kids for-- Just started coming out of a meeting--" I get into all sorts of interesting conversations and I just thought, "Well, the first subscribers to come in, they are the ones I want to make sure that we start off well." And they go, "Oh, I like this, and I like being involved. And I don't get a personalized message from anybody else
  • 18. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 18 of 28 when they subscribe. So I wanted something different." So, you couldn't keep that up, but even if you've done it for the first 100 people, people just love it. Travis: Yeah. I agree with you 1,000%. So, number 5, tools are fantastic but get your strategy down. So this is a little bit of a rhetorical question but I'll ask it anyways because I think a lot of people believe this way. Get your strategy down, isn't everyone's strategy the same? Ian: It shouldn't be. Travis: Go deeper. Pick a business out and tell me how their strategy should be different. Ian: Well, I suppose one of the things important is, one, is the niche. If for example you want to develop a global business. You want to think, what on my company best in the world at that everybody sort of look at my company and say, "They're the guys for this." If they're the guys for that well then, we need to own that niche. So your strategy is always going to be focused on that niche, building content for that niche, building relationships with the key influencers within that niche, attending conferences within that niche. And that's the niche you want on. There might be other people in the similar industry where they might be focusing on their areas, or they might be focused on somewhere broad. So really narrowing back down just helps me so much because I know, I'm not going to go to that conference that's not related to my business, or I'm not going to write that piece of content. So my strategy and relationship, what I need to deliver is much easier to decide. Travis: Okay, that makes sense. That takes me back to something that I jotted down in the very beginning when you were sharing your journey of how you got to where you're at today. And something that struck me was the strategic thinking that you used which was you looked for influencers and most people don't think that way. I think Seth Godin in Purple Cow called those sneezers, right? I don't know if you read that book. Ian: I haven't read it, no. Travis: But it's people that can take your message and pass it on to a large group of other people. And so, what led you down the path to think strategically to yourself where I need to find out who the influencers are and speak with them. How did you come to that? Ian: It's funny, when I started off I was thinking, "Okay, let's try to work out, what content were people writing and who were the key people?" So I just looked at who was speaking at the industry, who has the largest followings, who has the largest traffic on the website. And then I just put that list together and I knew then that these are all the people that I want to connect with and build relationships with. So
  • 19. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 19 of 28 I suppose I understood that in any business environment it's going to back to the relationship. I knew that me sitting in Ireland sending tweets wasn't going to do it. I live a good bit away so I needed to establish relationships with these people by meeting them as well. So, just from the list, I actually had a bit of a hundred people on the list. I mount them on our Twitter stream, I connected them on LinkedIn, I interact to them with commenting on the blog which works really well. And then I follow them to different conferences around the world, it was mostly in the U.S. And then over time I just started to get to know them, become friends with them, and then I became one of them. And I do believe the model that we've followed, you could easily replicate that on our industries. And like I say, these guys are sneezers. It's been hugely beneficial because they're the ones sharing out the content and talking about us and they initially had bigger audiences and stuff. Travis: Right. A lot of people don't know this but PR companies are paid to say great things about someone. And so if you were at a party, if you said, "I'm wonderful." Ian said, "Look how wonderful I am," everyone would think Ian is not a nice a guy, he's arrogant, right? But if some intelligent influential person at the party said, "Ian is fascinating, he's brilliant" even though maybe they've been paid by the PR Company. Well, since that person is influential or viewed to be an expert in the industry then people take it as gospel. And some media is called Earned media, where instead of getting spoken off through paid forms, you're written about. And so that's a direct comparison of how you can do it, either through PR or build the relationships like you're talking about. And that ties in directly with the number 5 that you talked about. You got very strategic with who your audience was, who the influencers were, and then you found the tools to support your strategy, right? Ian: Yeah, absolutely. And the relationships is key to the success. Of course I need the blog, I need the content, I need the niche because they wouldn't have been interested in talking to me. But they seen that I was working really hard, really focused on pushing at this area, and they recognized that. But like I said, with the influencers, when I put up a …I said this the other day about me speaking in Vegas, when it was Marcus Sheridan, who is quite well known, come back and says, "Ian's one of the hardest workers in social media." A few different people say that, then all of a sudden I'll have this reputation I was a super hard worker. Travis: That's right. Ian: So, it was another one where I spoke on a couple of events and I spoke at one which was TBox to the travel blogger's event and I didn't know any travel blogger. So I went around and marketed my events and tried to encourage people to come. And the place was packed. And then when I done the second event for TBox, I did the exact same thing and the place was packed. Only because I did a bit of marketing. So then the guys at TBox saying, the same guys run at a MaxIt in Vegas. Now, they're
  • 20. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 20 of 28 saying, "Ian always packs the audience, it's always crammed. You're going to have trouble getting the seat." So I have a reputation for filling a room. Travis: Right. Ian: So, I'm worried now they're going to give me a big room in Vegas. There's lots of people-- Travis: Nobody's going to show up. Yeah, maybe we need to go ahead and get that crash and burn out of the way just so that you can quit worrying about it right? Ian: Absolutely, definitely. Travis: I've got a terrible sense of humor at times; I don't think that's going to happen to you. Yeah, I've interviewed Marcus Sheridan also and so, I keep doting on these points that you and I are talking about because I want everybody to understand them on a deep level. When you connect with someone, influencers like this, Ian and I have a sincere connection, and before today we didn't know each other. But now Ian could reach out to me tonight and ask me to help him with something and I'll do it. Ian: And vice versa. Connect with Travis, I like Travis. I talk about influencers but what happened was I just got to know these people as really, really nice people and then became friends, and we had great fun. And as friends I try and help them, they try and help me. Travis: Right. Ian: That's all there is. Now, maybe I already picked out a list of people and then they're not liking them and things may not have worked as well. Well, what's being key to me is that get all great and have fun. But they're serious about what they do and I'm serious what I do as well. So there's the fun element but there's the hard work. Travis: Yeah. You've got to come from a place of sincerity for it to work. And when you do connect with a lot of people there are going to be some people that you don't connect with on a deep level, and that takes care of itself naturally. You still have a positive experience with that person that maybe you guys just don't reach out to each other. Everybody's not going to mess with each other, but as a rule of thumb entrepreneurs do. And so, even though there's a strategic component behind it, there's a sincere, deep connection there. So, think about who the influencers are in your industry, how you can add value to what they're doing. How you could help them, and you'll build a lasting relationship, right Ian?
  • 21. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 21 of 28 Ian: Yeah, absolutely. There's actually 2 people that spring to mind where one person I felt, initially when I met them I felt them a little bit cold, I didn't build a relationship. But then I got to know them over time and they're like really, really like the person, as in really great person. So, sometimes your initial impression you need to give it time. Travis: Right. Ian: Another person I've met 3 or 4 times and the connection is just not happening. I'm trying to figure it out what's missing and I've just struggled to get over that hard launch. Sometimes you won't connect. Travis: It just won't happen, yeah. I've interviewed some really high-end people and some of them are such a prima donna that it's hard to get down to the person of who they are. And it's not just people I interviewed but other very high end people that I've met. And they're so busy worrying about some of the super visual things that we really never connect on a personal level, and that normally what prevents me from going deeper with someone. I don't know if that's been the same case for you? Ian: Yeah, it has been. I love when people are just honest, and open, and say, "I made a mistake, I did this, this isn't right. This worked for me, Can I help you?" And they mean it, can you help you? Genuine people because I genuinely love meeting people, I love building relationships. I love helping people, I feel good if a girl-- Oh my god, I've done something for Travis, it worked out. There was a girl who's moved to The States recently and she said that she doesn't know anybody there but she use to do a lot of work for us and trained in business. There's a couple of people I've introduced her to. Today, actually, she's on an interview with a girl in San Francisco her name is Nancy. I just want to help her, there's nothing I want in return. Just connecting 2 good people together and hopefully things will happen, you know. Travis: Right. I completely agree with you. Let me ask you, your journey, and your trials and errors, your ups your downs have made you who you are today. Looking back, would you have done anything differently? Ian: I would have started into entrepreneurship much earlier. I ended up in technology for too many years and then things moved on. I got bored with what I was doing there and I just find the outside world technology, I mean, I'm great at taking an idea and just keeping, putting my head down and keep on working, working, and working until I deliver in it. And coming up with ideas, and growing the team, and growing the business, and all that. I love all that. I would have done enough earlier. Travis: Right.
  • 22. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 22 of 28 Ian: Because entrepreneurship, you're going to make lots of mistakes so you might as well make them earlier. Get them out of the way and learn lots because it's a big learning experience. And the only way of doing it is just get stuck in. The thing is, there's no perfect idea, just waiting for that perfect idea, it's never going to happen. It started. Travis: Yeah, it gets perfected in the process. It's the process of perfection or refinement. I don't think perfection exists but the refinement happens in the state of doing. Ian: Yeah, there's definitely no perfection on my side. I have still plenty of things I can improve on. Travis: I regularly mess up the things that I want to say, I'm not always completely crystal clear on how I want to say it. But I don't let that get in the way of me cutting a show, right? Ian: Absolutely. You sound great to me. Travis: Well, thank you. I don't even go in and edit you stuff out. I just-- That's it, over and done with. Hey Ian, are you ready for the lightning round? Ian: Sure, yeah. Travis: We're running a little long on time. And I know you've got a lot of things you need to take care of. Do you have a seatbelt over there, can you buckle yourself in? Ian: Buckle yourself in-- I didn't lift a hair, so-- Travis: Okay, so hang on there. What book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why? Ian: Launch by Mike Stelzner. So Mike Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner and Launch is about launching an online business based around content. And I follow a lot of principles in his book, and they just work. It gave away all the magic for how he grew Social Media Examiner. Travis: Oh cool. Ian: It's just a really fantastic book.
  • 23. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 23 of 28 Travis: Excellent. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, this is going to play right into your hands, if any that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? Ian: Okay. So one is Canva which is-- It's about graphic design and creating images. Our problem as small businesses, for example, we know that you have to create images all the time, images of Facebook, and images to your website. You don't want to come back to your graphic designer all the time. What Canva does is it provides the designity where it's template-based, where you can easily create all these images for your website, or Facebook, whatever, using lots of templates, using drag and drop. And it's the first tool I've come across where actually, as a non-graphic designer, I can produce reasonably good, professionally looking images quickly and inexpensively. So Canva is an Australian company, it's going to be huge, you will be using it, as soon as you see it you'll want to use it. Travis: Can you spell that? Ian: Yeah, it's C a n v a. Travis: Oh, okay, Canva. Cool, okay. Ian: Just another one that I think is going to be hugely successful in 2013 is a monitoring tool called Brand 24. They're in beta at the moment and they're launching early in the New Year, and it's going to be a quite inexpensive tool, but I find just for monitoring and tracking your name, your brand's name, your competitor's name. It's just brilliant for doing that. It does it on the error every day, it's doing all the updates. So I go in today and see has anybody mentioned me anywhere in the internet the last hour. So it's a fantastic tool as well. Travis: Hey, spell that one for me also. Ian: That's Brand 24, and its .net is the website. Travis: .net, okay. And then, Canva.com? Ian: Yeah, that's it. They're tools that are really good. Travis: Excellent, thank you for that. What famous quote would best summarize your belief or attitude in business?
  • 24. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 24 of 28 Ian: Well, what crosses, really, use it for me is, "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." Travis: I like that. Ian: For me it's really-- you need to step out of your comfort zone. And you can look at this and say, "This was designed for me", because I'm living in Ireland, I live a long way away from the States. I decided I'm going to go to the States every couple of months, meet people, build relationship. I knew nobody and that really worked for me. Travis: And you bring up an important point, I think a lot of people believe that the more successful somebody gets, the less they have fears, we all still have fears, we just have to continually ignore them and keep pushing ourselves. Fear never goes away. So don't let that fear make you shrink or pull back. Stand up and be brave, and be willing to go against it, right? Ian: Absolutely, you have to push, you have to be pushing yourself all the time and going into areas where you're slight uncomfortable. For the speaking side of things I actually do love speaking, but I always got nervous before I speak because you're going in front of new audience, you'll go, "Will my content go down well? Will they understand my Irish accent? Travis: Right. Ian: Will they like me; will they laugh at my jokes?" There's always that element at going a slight worry, nervous but I love speaking and I want to speak more, I want to speak at bigger events, and if you said to me Travis, I want to speak at event, key note, with 5,000 people I'd say, "Absolutely." And of course I'd be going beforehand, "Oh my god, 5,000 people." But I'll do so much work in advance to makes sure I'll do my very best. And you get over it, but you do need to punch yourself all the time. Travis: A lot of times it's easy to confuse adrenalin for fear, because they feel the same don't they? Ian: Absolutely. Travis: That little devil wants to take over and starts telling you all the things that could go wrong. Ian: Absolutely. I remember years ago I mentor a friend of mine, when I met him I was going, oh my god, the last couple of weeks I was worrying about something, he said, "The problem is not you worrying about something. It's been dragging on for a couple of weeks. You need to start to go, Okay, there's a problem, I have to just bear with it and move on. And not spend weeks being unproductive
  • 25. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 25 of 28 over that problem when you can be focusing on solving it." So to me now, it doesn't bother me near as much when things go wrong, I go, "Okay, things gone wrong, let's move on now quickly," rather than go and drag my heels for a couple of weeks. And that's the problem, it's that couple of weeks are just a complete waste. Travis: Waste of time. Ian: You make not of it. Travis: Yeah, exactly. I know we need to wrap things up. What do you dream of? Ian: Okay, it's good. Business right now, I do dream of me. I mentioned about speaking and staying in front of 5,000 people. I do dream of me being very successful on the speaking level because I always want to be on stage and I can't sing or dance. So speaking is one thing. So, I do dream of just, on a global basis, that raises sort of becomes the name of globally, it's all business, a big successful business in this area of social media tools. That's really the whole focus really is doing that. Travis: Cool, I'm going to help you get there, do you mind? Ian: Oh absolutely. If I can help you in any way I'd love to as well. Travis: Alright. How do people connect with you? Ian: The best, you can razorsocial.com is the website, or connect with me on Twitter @iancleary, i-a-n- c-l-e-a-r-y that's probably the best place I think. Travis: Ian, you are the man my friend, I've absolutely enjoyed hanging out with you and you sharing your pearls of wisdom and your experience, and your business model, and everything. You're brilliant and a true gentleman. Ian: Well, thank you very much Travis. I love this, this is just like having a great chat with a friend. It's really enjoyable, so I'll do it anytime. End of Interview
  • 26. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 26 of 28 Travis: Remember that you can find all the links to the books and resources mentioned in the show notes. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, it's a brand new site that we've been building out that's completely focused on giving you resources to grow your business. Before I close the show today, at the beginning of the show I had mentioned something that I wanted to come back to and talk about on a deeper level, which was the key to building a business that gives you complete financial freedom and the time freedom to pursue life on your own terms, whether it's travel, helping others, donating your time, no matter what it is. For me it's a little bit of all those which I define as reaching your true purpose in life. Now, I've noticed that a large number of people that I've spoke with have not realized that the level of success and freedom that they're after will not come from the skills that you've acquired to become excellent in your craft or your line of business. While that's the first step when you first move in to an industry, you've got to hone your skills and you've got to become extremely, extremely good at it. But once you're a true expert at what you do you've got to shift gears. What I mean by that is you have to have a system for positioning your company as an expert. Marketing your services. You've got to know how to use multiple sources that bring a constant flow of prospects that are willing to pay top dollar for your services. You've also got to know how to grow a team around you, proper pricing, proper tracking, even down to producing what it is that makes you special or your company special on a consistent and reliable basis. Now, this is what the business breakthrough sweepstakes that we've created is all about. It's a free program where we teach you many of the formulas that you can apply in your own business. And for the winner of that contest, I will personally do a swat analysis on your business. Now the swat stands for strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So that we can see exactly what's holding you back from reaching your true potential. We'll look at your pricing, positioning, your offers, your cost per acquisition, and wide range of other key performance indicators that maybe completely greet to you, although they will determine the level of success that you will have through your business, which of course we'll educate you on. Now, it's surprising what an outside team can find that is difficult for you to see when it's your own baby because you're so closely involved with it on a daily basis. We'll help you create a profitable package that doubles and triples your profits. We'll build a marketing system for you, we'll create an automated marketing sequence for you, or several of them, and the list goes on. Remember that building a profitable business is a series of formulas and I've talked about this several times. As you apply those formulas to your business your profits become very predictable and starts building long term wealth. Now this is what moves you into a position to help others which I believe ultimately is part of our responsibilities as an entrepreneur. This will change your end of the month conversations from did we make a profit to how much profit did we make this month. That's a very different place to be in. Now if you haven't reached this level of consistency yet your business and you'd like to learn how it's done, join our free business breakthrough sweepstakes where we focus on teaching you many of these formulas in a simple step by step format so that you can customize it to your own business. This is what I've used to build several tiny, little, local companies to multi-million dollar businesses that I've
  • 27. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 27 of 28 generated over $70 million with. Also, to add a little fun and excitement to the program, if you join the sweepstakes and stay engaged, you'll have a chance to win the $73,000 and the cash and prizes where I will personally mentor you and your business, and my team will implement those tactics that I just mentioned, plus you'll have a chance to win my personal Lamborghini. Now, for more information just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and click on the sweepstakes promotion. My quote for today comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the quote reads, "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. I want to commend you for being brave enough to stand up for what you believe in and follow your dreams when you started your business. That's a rare quality. I know it can be lonely journey at times, just know that you're not alone and what you're doing really does matter, no matter what size your business is. To your incredible success, take care.
  • 28. THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 28 of 28 How We Can Help You We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That’s exactly why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at a fraction of its normal cost. Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever! We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats within your business. This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons are. As the 'Business Owner' it’s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you’re in the middle of a daily management. And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial. This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-man army, or an army of 150, the problem is still the same. Travis Lane Jenkins Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show “Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"