Virginia Purnell:
Welcome to EntrepreneurConundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online.
Hi Everyone.
Today I'm talking with James Hurst about how he incorporates marketing automation in his business. James is a veteran online marketer starting on eBay in late 2000. He is the creator of multiple softwares including ClickFunnels Follow Up Pro, which is a ClickFunnels Affiliate software as well as a creator of Email Slurper 3000, he has created five online courses including make Power Wheels Faster and Build an AWS IOT button slack bot step by step. He is a ClickFunnels dream car winner and a respected affiliate for multiple other softwares. He and his wife Amanda, reside with their four boys in Springfield, Utah.
Welcome James.
James Hurst:
Hey, thank you so much for having me.
Virginia Purnell:
Thanks for being here today.
So tell us a little bit about yourself.
James Hurst:
Okay, so yeah, like the intro kind of said, I've been doing this for quite a while ever since. I've been selling things since on eBay. And then I got into, I've worked for an agency doing pay-per-click, been doing SEO, I had a local business, so I kind of always had some business going on in some computer aspect of it. You know, website, lead gen and since you can tell even already, I'm like a little bit all over the place. I've kind of settled in a little bit as an affiliate marketer, which is good because that means I can, you know, if I think something's really cool and interesting, I can go check it out, review it, you know, make a blog or make a video post about it and then I can go to the next thing and, and review that.
And so I'm kind of realizing that yeah, I don't just have one, one particular niche, but I kind of just, I kind of enjoy, enjoy soaking, soaking up a little bit of everything, if that makes sense.
Virginia Purnell:
So, whatever catches your fancy the moment, right?
James Hurst:
Yeah.
Virginia Purnell:
What inspired you to become an affiliate marketer?
James Hurst:
Affiliate marketer? Well, one of the big, one of the bigger products that I promote is ClickFunnels. And just this idea of making a sale once and then getting paid for it multiple times on the backend. So a big shift you'll see in the industry is everyone wants to sell a subscription. Seems like whether it's Netflix or ClickFunnels or Active Campaign, most or even Adobe, the Adobe softwares, they're wanting to sell a subscription so they can have a recurring residual income model so they can probably forecast better and everything.
And so I figured, Hey, if I'm going to, if I'm going to sell something, why not sell something that people will use, you know, month in and month out. And then if I truly put in enough work and build up a big enough base, then it really is something that I could, I could take, you know, two weeks a month off from work, quote unquote work and, and still have that revenue coming in. That seemed like a very, that's seemed like a very powerful model. Something worth investing. Your limited amount of time into it is doing the work once and getting paid for it over and over again. I think whether that principle, I find itself, you know, in software, if I'm, if I'm creating a software, I work hard once, make a software, sell it over and over again. If I make a YouTube video that's really valuable, it sits there on YouTube and unlike Facebook where you know, the video's gone a couple of days. No, it's down in your feed on YouTube. It will grow, you know, in three years. It's just growing in, in, in views and it's essentially working for you. So this idea of doing work once, getting paid for it for the rest of your life, or at least for a good two, two to five years is something that I've always, always kind of have front and center when I'm working.
Virginia Purnell:
Well, what's nice about what you're doing, like with affiliate offers versus trying to sell someone a subscription is you did all the work at the front where now it's up to that company to keep those clients there. So you don't have to try to keep them there all the time.
James Hurst:
Exactly. And there's pros and cons to that too, which means that, you know, some of that's out of my hands. Like if that company doesn't support people very well, you know, or it's too complicated or the support, the support process is too, you know, then it's out of your hands. Whereas you know, if it is my own product and I've actually, one of the things you introduced was Email Sluper 3000 I'm just in the process of changing that from a one time fee to a small monthly fee. So I'm actually getting my feet wet myself as a product owner for Email Slurper 3000 of what's that like to have my own subscription, my own subscription based product. And it's exciting to think about, you know, and this one's only $7 a month. And so I just kind of dream about, you know, even just a thousand people.
Like what if I had a thousand people paying $7 a month, then I could count on that. I could basically count on $7,000 a month, you know? And I would probably have some, you know, I would probably know about how much I'm growing at the time. And that's really, it's a really powerful model to be able to predict your, your monthly revenues, right? To have some sort of consistency there, whether it's on an affiliate residual model or whether it's software as a subscription for yourself. And I'm just doing that with ClickFunnels and Stripe. So I just set up, set up a recurring product in Stripe and I tie that back to ClickFunnels. And that's how I'm, that's how I'm doing that.
Virginia Purnell:
Utilize the platform that's paying you.
James Hurst:
No, and that's, yeah, typically, typically I don't....it's not a hard and fast rule that I have to be using the product, but it's typically a natural, a natural thing to promote the things that I recommend, you know, as a, as someone that puts my own name on the line for what the things that I recommend I, I'd have a hard time, you know, pushing things that I don't really believe in,
Virginia Purnell:
Which says a lot too. Because then if other people know that you recommend a product, then they're more likely to trust you too, right?
James Hurst:
Yep. Yep. And now the tricky thing, like, I don't know if you've heard of Kajabi or not. I have, yes. Yeah. So I have Kajabi as an end user. I've purchased many courses that have, so I know what Kajabi is like as an end user. Unfortunately, to promote it as an affiliate, you actually have to purchase, you have to, you have to be a paying member of Kajabi. And so that, that is it. That is an obstacle is that there's some programs that you have to be a paying member, and have to be able to promote them. And that's actually, in a way, it's a good, it's a good thing and a bad thing because it means that it means that the, the, the amount of competition that you're competing with, with other affiliates is going to be much less because you have to be a paying member to do it.
So the trick is if I wanted to be, you know, if I'm paying for ClickFunnels, which does membership sites, and then why would I want to go and pay extra just to be using Kajabi so I can promote Kajabi or do or do a compare and contrast. So at a minimum I would not be afraid to start up a free trial of these softwares. You can, I mean within 14 days or a month you can do a good comparison review, that kind of thing. And actually have a, make an, an opinion about, you know, about the two different softwares. But if you wanted to go all in, it's tempting because I think Kajabi is great too. It's tempting to want to just say, well, I've got to figure out how a way to be, you know, to break even on my Kajabi subscription.
Maybe throw, maybe throw a course up in there. And so that's, that's tough. There's another program too that I'm like that it's like, I don't use it, but I want to know about it and promote it. So I bought like sheep, like a lifetime version of it. So I could have access, make tutorials, do you know, do comparisons, and be knowledgeable about the subject. But yeah, it's a lot. It's, it's a lot. Definitely pros and cons to whether you have to pay or not to be able to promote, to be a paying member, not to promote something.
Virginia Purnell:
Yes. And like you said, like it, put something on Kajabi and then hope to get your investment back out of it. Right?
James Hurst:
Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause I'm pretty well ingrained. I have, I've got quite a bit of stuff in ClickFunnels so it would be, it would be a ton of work to get everything of mine out of there and I'm okay. You know, I'm kind of, my role out there is kind of to be the guy that does know, Hey, what's better, good job, your ClickFunnels for this purpose, what, you know, go high level versus ClickFunnels. And so as an affiliate, you know, I don't have, I mean I, I've done well as a ClickFunnels affiliate, but to try to, even though there's, we have bias for the things that we promote, I think the best way is to be an affiliate for both products. Do a review and, and be an affiliate for both. Let's say this is my honest opinion of this one. For these people. Here's my honest opinion of this. These ones for those people, I don't care which one you think is better for you. This is, here's my thing and here's, and either one or they're both my affiliate link. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Virginia Purnell:
So what do you look for when you go to promote an affiliate as an affiliate for a company?
James Hurst:
So I look for, I look for some excitement around something, right? I, you know, if I hear one person talking about it, that's one thing. If I hear it again and again and again, right? I see, I look, I'm joining the Facebook group. I can see kind of the trajectory of how it's growing and I kind of listen to it on the Facebook group. Are people complaining? Are people asking questions? What's, you know, people are there to support kind of. You just kind of get a vibe for the product and then like Kajabi, like for example, what's my experience like as an end user and just seeing, just basically keeping an ear to the wall on products that people seem to love. Right. And, and it seemed to be growing. I mean if it's not, it's nothing. There's no, I don't know, other than just intuition of, of just keeping your eye, keeping my ear to the wall on and what people are talking about, yeah. For what else I'd like to promote.
Virginia Purnell:
How do you stand out from all the other competition on the products that have a lot of affiliates promoting them?
James Hurst:
No, it is kind of crowded at the same time. A lot of people fizzle out too. Man. I, it has been a grind. Like, luckily I love, luckily I enjoy the grind. Otherwise I wouldn't like it, I'm just like, ah, this is not where the thing you do want to throw in the towel sometimes. But yeah, like I've been trying to grow like my YouTube channel and it's just like, it's literally, it's like one subscriber and then two days go by and then another subscriber and it's just, it's like pushing, like pushing the, you know, a rock up a Hill, but in the hopes that someday that thing will start rolling back down and, and gain that momentum. But how do you stand out? So yeah, even just showing up consistently, right. Will will separate you. Like that was really going to be consistent at first.
And I had a thing that said, okay, you've got to publish at least one thing a week. Right. Whether it's a YouTube video, a blog or something. I tend to like video. Personally. I'm doing a lot of teaching, I'm opening up softwares, looking at, I'm teaching, that kind of thing. But yeah, I kind of had to commit to myself to show up at least once a week. And if you're really, you know, if you're really going to go all in, you've got to show up. You got to show up daily, right? If you're at the forefront of what you're doing, you should be having cool stuff that you're doing or thinking about or coming up with and sharing that with your audience. And there's also this idea of like when you're first getting started, like you may not be, you may not feel like you're the expert, but like pick that thing you want to be the expert in and start going deep on something.
Like I just picked up a tool, I kind of literally picked up a product like a week or like a week and a half ago and I dove in, figured things out and then I made a, I made a tutorial on it. And I'm like on the first page of YouTube for this thing, I even feel like it's some of the best training out there. Like, it doesn't take that much. There's always going to be people that are like behind where you are and ahead of you. And so just don't worry about that, but just help anyone. Just whatever's on, I don't know, whatever's on your mind, you'd be surprised how quickly you can become like, you know, this little mini expert on a certain, on a certain topic.
Virginia Purnell:
I like how you said not to worry about the people in front of you because there's going to be people behind you that are just where you were not long ago. Right,
James Hurst:
Exactly. And in this case, like this specific case, like I'm on, I'm like a week, I'm like a week ahead of these people. Like I just, you know, but the fact that I took the time and that's actually a really cool place. It's easy to, Oh my goodness. Someone was just doing a tutorial on the most simple thing and people were raving about, you know, like, Oh my gosh, this is, you know, I was just like, you kidding me? Like I can't, like I almost would've never bothered. Like it seems so simple that why would I bother to make a, you know what I mean? But people need to just completely like step-by-step to talk to me like I'm a third grader or a fifth grader type thing and it's so it's, it's good to kind of make that. So I debated sometimes whether to make tutorials like as I'm learning it because then it's like, so let's say like an unboxing, like let's say I'm going to unbox this thing and figure it out right here, live in front of you so you can like kind of seen any like how hard is this thing to figure out?
But instead, instead I think it's better to unbox the thing, get it all set up or take it for a drive and then like not too far out, but like just like a week or two out, then go back and make that video of the review about it. Because once you get a year or two out from the product, you forget what it's like to not know what, you know what I mean? You're, you're, you have a bias, you kind of forget what it's like to not know how to use something. So try to try to make that tutorial, you know, when it's still fresh on your mind when you are confused, you know, much better be able to relate to people when they're just getting started with something. So, yeah.
Virginia Purnell:
A little bit ago you had mentioned that one of your goals is to grow your YouTube channel. Do you have any other goals or how that you're hoping to achieve in the next year or two?
James Hurst:
Yeah, so I actually, I have a day job. I'm a computer programmer by day in AWS and it's good, it's a good, safe, secure, you know, job. I've been there five years, great people have been happy there, generous, you know, health benefits and generous paid vacation. Right. And so the, you know, the, a big dream would be to be able to have that stability in, in online marketing space to be able to, you know, typically make that big leap. Right. And I always debate whether I could or should. And then something like, you know, the Coronavirus happens and be like, Oh my gosh, I'm grateful to have so stability. You know, when things are crazy and you know, and, and so in the meantime, you know, I'm paying off, you know, paying off my car that paying off some debt, you know, trying to strengthen my position, my cash position, like with, with cash reserves and savings.
And so, yeah, so the you know, a big goal would be to, you know, to go a hundred percent online, but at the same time like I don't want to, I dunno, there's, it's, I kind of in the mix of aye, I don't want to just just work from home and like have a bunch of like clients necessarily and like have 10 bosses instead of one and S but you know, I've been spoiled a little bit in having passive and cause I know what, I know what it's like to have passive income coming in and so in, in some ways the constraint to say, no, James, you have to figure this out with your little, with your, you can't, you can't have having extra time be a crutch, right? You need to think about these things in a way. Like you can, like, yeah, you know, you can't rely on making 40 hours of YouTube content a week to feel, I don't know.
I'm trying to find that balance if I don't want to trade my time for money, right. I don't want to trade my time for money. But at a certain, there's a certain amount of that that you have to do to convert it into, you know, an asset. But I, I'm very, yeah, very cautious on, on how I, on how I think about things. So like I can make 40 different YouTube videos or I could make one awesome YouTube ad, right? That hopefully is for converting people for selling and then pushing that out to, you know, on a, as a YouTube ad. And so I'm very, I'm very cognizant of that. So I'm, I think I'm trying in a way that's like, I'm trying to figure out how to do scale things with having some of that security of the job. You know, cause I, there's, as an entrepreneur, you're, you're spending money on things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It's, it can be kind of brutal.
Yeah, exactly. And advertising has been, I know the average advertising, like figuring out either a Google ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads, like you know, I, I, I've had some success I've had success and failure with, with ads and so I know that, you know, you gotta get eyes, you gotta get eyeballs on your, on your offers and different things, whether it's affiliate offer or your own offers. But this space, there's a, there's a, it's an extremely long learning curve, which I enjoy. I just recently, like I don't like, I haven't done well with Facebook ads, but I was just like, at the minimum, if someone comes to my site, let's say I have like five or 10 people coming today for whatever reason, visiting my Facebook profile or YouTube, let's say just have five or 10 people a day, no big deal. I at least like James to retarget those people.
Those should be like, that should be cheap. That should be cheap ads. And so, and also even before you run normal traffic to your offers, you would want to have the retargeting piece set up anyways. So I'm having like this breakthrough of like at least setting up your pixel and setting up a retargeting ad. And then when that's there, then you can go to the next step, which is try to maybe send some cold traffic or any of your warm traffic that does come. At least you're going to be able to stay in front of them. I don't, I kind of have this other idea, which is I don't have the budget to be in front of everybody all the time, but I should try to be in front of, I should try to be in front of a few people wherever they go. Once they've come into my world, I should hold on to them. And you know, with Instagram and Facebook and Facebook marketplace and how people are interconnected, if they, you know, with the retargeting, they could come in from Google and I could retarget them on Facebook. Right? Yeah. So I think that's a powerful principle, which is at least retarget your traffic,
Virginia Purnell:
Which is good to think about too, because a lot of people say it's between like 7 - 12 times of them seeing you before they'll actually buy something from you.
James Hurst:
Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, like I said, you know, I don't have thousands of people coming to my stuff, but for the five or 10 people that are, I should, I should feel like I'm everywhere now. And with today's modern, you know, advertising platforms, that's, that's very possible. There's still, but yeah, I mean there's still lots to learn. I was just happy because the other day I saw an advertisement of myself, you know, I saw on my own feed my own ad. I was like, yes, I retargeted myself.
Virginia Purnell:
You're doing a good job. Right?
James Hurst:
So, but yeah, there's so much, there's so much, there's so much overwhelm. There's so many shiny objects. And I actually, I know everyone says avoid them. I kinda like them. And yeah, from Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and making video tutorials and podcasts and blogs and YouTube channels and Facebook groups. And this cool tool in that cold tool. I mean they're, they're all great, but golly, use up a lot of time if you don't, aren't strategic with it all. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You like to share that we haven't talked about yet today? Well, you know, I would love to just, I'd love to just make people aware of a few of the things that you know, I have made. So you talked about CF Follow Up Pro. Basically if you're a ClickFunnels affiliate you get a, you get a commission's report and in the commissions report there's the name, the email, the product that they purchased and it looks like an Excel spreadsheet and it pretty much is a spreadsheet.
Right? Well, the stuff that I came up with was I took, if you're familiar with Zapier, I took those, the spreadsheet and I put it into, into Google sheets and from Google sheets I put that into a Zapier, which puts it into Active Campaign, which is my email tool. And those are, this is what it does. Let's say you sign up through my link for ClickFunnels for a free trial that would end up in the report, your email, your name, the fact that you're trialing, and today's date. I take all that information, I put it into Active Campaign, and 30 minutes later I've got an email out to you saying, Hey, welcome to click. Congratulations on your free trial, right? And then I drip out. Then two days later I say, Hey, it's been a couple of days. Just want to check in with you.
Have you, have you made your first funnel yet? Are you stuck on anything? How can I help? Right? And then four or five days later, Hey, here's a free training. A couple of days later, this is in 14 days, Hey, show me your funnel that you've made. Here's a free training. Here's a share funnel. Just a few little things, keeping in touch. And what's really cool is I built up these automations that one of the, one of them, what it does on day 15 the email, the email automation, it asks the question, it says, Hey, does this person, does it still say that they're trialing or have they converted over to a paid subscription? Okay. Because if they pay, then there'll be another row in the spreadsheet that says your name and it says, you're on the startup plan and you paid, and I made $38 and 80 cents.
Okay. So the automation, it looks at that and it says, Oh no, I don't see another record in here for her. That came through a, it's the last thing I saw was that there was a, that it was trialing, so that flips a switch that branches and it says, Oh, Hey, it looks like you didn't continue your trial with ClickFunnels or whatever with ClickFunnels. Hey, you know what? Something wrong? You need to make your trial longer. Do you need, you know, what did you get stuck on something? It's that. It's that feedback. And some people will, some people will never hear back from right. Other people will reply and say, Oh gosh, I was so busy. You know, they got sick, whatever. I'd love to. If I get this extended or you know, I couldn't get my domain set up. It was just a pain, you know?
And so you get that feedback of why are people falling through the cracks? Same thing for a refund. If my little automations, they listen, quote unquote listening for a refund, boom, that kicks off an automation emails. Hey, it looks like you refunded. Let's like he refunded your last month. Did you know you can downgrade, you don't have to cancel. You can, you can downgrade to the smaller plan. You know, maybe they don't know. You're just trying. And so to have those emails going out perfectly that right time, like it's very, very powerful. And that's a, that's a tool I built. The other one, which is really, really cool too. There's a few competitors out there, but the other one's called Email Slurper for 3000. And do you have a, you have a Facebook group yourself?
Virginia Purnell:
Not quite yet.
James Hurst:
Not quite yet. So Facebook groups are really powerful. It's a great way to kind of congregate, you know, your audience, right? Whether it's your podcast listeners or people that are buying your tools or that want to get your trainings, things like that. And so a lot of people have Facebook groups and you get three questions as an admin to kind of filter out the spam of the internet. And you could say like, why do you want to join? How did you hear about us? Do you, you know, do you agree to follow the group rules of no spamming, no, no, this or that. What we did was marketers, we took those three admin questions and we said, well, we're going to use one of them to say, Hey do you would like this free training, a lead magnets, enter your email address, okay, enter your email address. And then another question could be, imagine this.
Imagine, imagine the question is, do you have ClickFunnels? And they put yes or no as the answer. So now you're getting some market research about you, about your audience. And then you have another third question you could say, you know, what's your biggest, what's your biggest concern when it comes to getting visibility right out on the internet? What's, what's your biggest question about YouTube? So now you're getting ideas about content you can create. Well, where are people getting stuck? They're coming to you as the expert. Where are people getting stuck? What kind of content could you make? Let's say 50 people come in and they all have these top five questions. You can directly speak to them. Okay, so what my tool Email Slurper 3000 does is it takes, most importantly, it takes that email address, it puts it into a Google sheet, which it gets picked up by Zapier.
I put that into my Active Campaign. And then I email people, Hey, welcome to this group that you just joined. Okay? And so I have a group that people are literally finding it every single day without me doing anything like just the way it's named, the amount of buzz around it. And people come and join every single day. He emails her, they put their email in email, super picks them up, and I started and I started dripping them 10 emails. This one I'm doing, it just has a little Amazon affiliate link that says a related thing, right? So you're just, you email out related products and services and so I just say, Oh, this is cool. You're welcome. This group, here's a link for this thing the next day. Oh, you should know about this. Oh and here's the link if you want to get it.
I just every single day for like seven days anyways, so Email Slurper it. If you hit, if you didn't have Email Sluper, you'd have to copy that email address out of there. You have to copy it out of there manually. If you hit, approve, if you, if you hit approve its just gone. Facebook does not save the answers to those questions anywhere. That's a, that's a big painful moment when someone learns that for the first time that you, you know, if, if you didn't copy those emails, they're gone. So Email Slurper grabs them out of there and puts them into your tool. Here's a really cool thing to do, which I came up with is remember how I asked like you have ClickFunnels, yes or no? Yes I can take, I can take the answer to that question and map that to a custom field in my auto responder and then I can have an automation. What I'm, when I'm dripping them out, I can have an automation say, how did they answer that question if they, if they said no to the ClickFunnels, do they have ClickFunnels? Yes or no? Then I can send them other emails say, Hey, let me tell you about ClickFunnels and here's my, here's my link, right, to get them on a free trial of ClickFunnels.
Does that make sense? It does and it makes me really excited. Well good. It's actually, I mean it's actually really cool cause I mean I just love, I love automation. Like you know, just little things like, and it's so simple. Do you have ClickFunnels, yes or no, and then the auto responder says, what do they say to the answer to that question? They say, yes. Okay, well don't bother telling them more about ClickFunnels. Did they say no? Then tell them this, you know, and then your third question, you could also branch them another, you know another way. The key with that question is it has to be something you can't say, what's your favorite color? Red, right. It can't be a free response. It has to be something that I can like, you know, get ahold of and and ask does it stay yes or no, like past to be something specific
Virginia Purnell:
And then information that you can utilize down the road. Right?
James Hurst:
Yeah, exactly. And I mean it's great. It's great. Let's, let's say this, they say no to ClickFunnels. I may be, I may be happy to, I may be happy to just do it with email automations. Like, okay, here's a trial ClickFunnels. You should try this, try that. Or if it's important enough or high value enough, you could then say, you could even send yourself an email and said someone just joined your group and they said they're very interested in your nine 97 plan. Then you notify them to get on the phone with this or get over on the Facebook messenger. So depending on the value of that thing, you know you might want to escalate your personal involvement. So those are good tips too.
Virginia Purnell:
I'm glad we talked today, so it was awesome. How can people find out more about you or find you online?
James Hurst:
So I'm pretty active on Facebook. Facebook.com/OJHurst, I think is my profile. I have a website, JamesHurst.com and find me there. So either of those two places. I have a Facebook group kind of geared around affiliate marketing and ClickFunnels, that kind of thing. I also have one on live streaming, the live streaming practice with James Hurst. There's just a few of us in there and we just practice that up and try to get better at the live stream, which I think is something everyone should, you know, should get better at and take advantage of. I think live, I think live video is a huge kind of untapped opportunity.
Virginia Purnell:
I really appreciate you being on here, James.
James Hurst:
Well, thanks so much. Nice visiting.
Virginia Purnell:
Have a great day.
James Hurst:
See ya.
Virginia Purnell:
Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode.
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