Ajit Nawalkha Interview (Co-Founder At Evercoach) – How To Start A Six Figure Business (Part 1)
I’m interviewing Ajit Nawalkha, who’s the co-founder of Mind Valley India, and Ever Coach. Ajit has specialized in marketing (he has teams of people, running marketing in his company).
I have a member who doesn’t know how to start, they are just starting up marketing, and they want to get into making money online, and become good at marketing, and travelling, and sales. They have no idea where to start: they don’t have a product yet, they don’t have a list yet, they don’t have an audience yet, and they don’t know how to get any of those things.
Every time Ajit starts a new company, he always starts off by opening up a simple landing page, for any idea he wants to pursue in the future. The first step to starting a new business, is to understand the market, and how small or narrow you can go, and understand a little bit about the market, so you can create a business from there, and then go further into it.
Ajit started a new coaching business nine month ago, where he addresses coaches, and teaches them how to get better. Instead of jumping straight into the business, he looked at if they had any existing leverage already: he looked at whether there was a place where he could get existing coaches already, who would show up and be interested.
If he saw the interest, the second part was to throw up a landing page, run a couple of Facebook ads, and see if people would be interested. It’s a very easy target, if you know what you’re going to address. For example, if you were starting a coaching business today, you would throw up a landing page, using click farm, unbound, or whichever software you prefer. It costs like ninety dollars, or you might be able to get a free trial. Set up a landing page, with a simple headline saying: ‘how to xyx’ (whatever the xyz is). For Ajit it was ‘how to be a six figure coach’ because he was addressing coaches, and makeing them into better ones.
He used a simple headline, and a call to action ‘sign up for your free training, free audio, free video, free report.’ A couple of bullet points explaining what they’re going to get, and why they should sign up for it. He would then see if people sign up for it, He would run basic ads, and simple targeting to get this information.
Have a look on Facebook to see who’s addressing this problem as well (use Facebook search). Find these people, and run an add counter to one of theirs for about two hundred dollars, and you will see how much it costs per click. On Facebook, anything that ranges between one to four dollars, depending on the complexity of the market, and you’re good to go,if you’re selling really high priced items to a select audience, or a select market.
You’ll probably end up spending four or five bucks for a lead. If you’re serving a very broad audience like personal growth, or fitness, something like that it will probably be a dollar a lead. Then if there’s the market for it (people are signing up, because they need this product), what he would then do, is go create it.
Now you know that your product will work: people will sign up, and you can create a list. The next step is to create that product, and then see if people will buy your one time offer: it’s where you’d sign up, and you’d be given a discounted price. For example, if you’re doing a coaching product, and it costs five hundred dollars. You can say ‘if you sign up here, as soon as you do, you get a thirty percent discount.’ Then they’ll get the product for about three hundred and fifty dollars, and people can take immediate action.
Then Ajit will liquidate his offer, and run advertising more aggressively. His products success will be determined as a win, if you can buy more media, if you can get more leads, and if you can get more people to engage with you. If you can’t make enough to market, you’ll probably build a business good enough to pay the bills, but it will never become big business.
There are three simple steps: first try a landing page, see how many people sign up, 2nd run a Facebook ad, and step three see if it’s actually broad enough, which means you can actually create a large amount of advertising. Look at your competitors in your market, and see how big their scope is, and use that to determine if there’s room for you, to grow and expand your business, and reach in the market.
Ajit likes to work on businesses, that at least have the potential for ten million dollars, so he knows that even if he creates half, and half asses it, at least he know it’ll still work and he can do a few million dollars.
How expensive your product is, really affects the potential in terms of how much money you can make. If you’re doing a product for five hundred dollars, usually your sales work anywhere between one to ten percent, and off this you’ll be able to run enough traffic through it to create a six figure business.
If your product is ten thousand dollars, you’re probably looking at a one percent hit rate of your entire list, which is much smaller. Sales will be at such a negligible rate, that you will pretty much have to pick up the phone to make sales, but you only need to make ten sales, and it’s a six figure business. You won’t get a lot of leads, but you can just pick up the phone and make the calls.
Think about it like this, if you have a ten thousand dollar product, which looks very difficult from a starting out perspective, to create that product, especially if you are in the services industry, all you have to do is close ten people, which is less than one sale every month. So if you generate a thousand interested leads, you only have to close 0.1 percent, to create a six figure business.
These numbers can vary of course, depending on if you have a one hundred dollar product, where, if you can hit sales figures of six to ten percent from your list, or 30 percent on Facebook when they click on your add, you’ll probably be able to create a very successful business.
Six figure businesses look very complicated, but Ajit has found it’s really easy to create one in a small market, where you don’t have too much to think about, because today in the world of 2015, you’re able to create a landing page fast, a sales page fast. You don’t even have to create the product.
I know so many people that I track on a daily basis, that I coach, and mentor. I know so many people that I work with, who’ve created a six figure business in just about eight months, because they just went out and made the decision, because it’s all about the decision you make, to create a six figure business, and the permission that you give yourself. Try not to let people tell you that you can’t do it.
The reason why there are not more six figure businesses in the market, is because they aren’t trying to be different to anyone else. They look exactly like the other guy, so you don’t build any trust or love with the audience.
Just stepping into a micro market, instead of stepping into a broad market, and then instead of speaking to everybody, speak to those specific people. Through these little differentiations you create in the market place, a six figure business is that easy.
A ten thousand service is not that hard, if you are in the services space, or any kind of business space, because if you’re selling this product, and it’s going to make someone one hundred thousand dollars, then people aren’t going to have a problem investing ten thousand with you.
To create this product, it could be as simple as putting up a website, or running some basic Facebook traffic. Thinking that you can’t reach a six figure business, is a block inside your head, in Ajit’s experience, because of the place people are coming from.
If you look at the whole world, a six figure business, is actually easier these days. Human beings have evolved, we don’t live as much in the fight, or flight stage, as we used to live in. The world used to have a scarcity mind set, but the new generation, and even the existing generation, if you look at what we have, we don’t have to fight for food. He’s found that people are now fighting more, over not being happy, and boredom. That’s why snapchat is a hit, or Facebook is a big hit.
People are looking for more things that allow them, to move forward, with a passion and purpose, and being able to contribute (being able to grow is a lot more important to people).
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the highest needs, the self-actualization needs have become more important, than the need of getting the basic money, because you can create that wealth really really fast. The moment you shift your mind, and not really worry about the money, and worry about the other things, because that’s how you can most effectively communicate to your audience (that’s what they really need).
Look at the world, look at your clients right now, and you will see that they are more bored, than they are starving. They’ve actually got no problem with starving, because you can get a Mc Donald’s meal for about five dollars. Nobody is starving, in fact they are eating too much.
Ajit’s advice is to try to work from that place, and don’t try to be everybody, and just remove that barrier of six figures is a lot, because it’s not, not in today’s world.
I actually have a client right now, and he’s already created a product, he hasn’t tested it yet, but he has his site up, the product is ready. He’s based it off market research I would assume, reading forums, and stuff like that. He says: “now I need to find affiliates, I must find affiliates on click bank.”
Ajit’s view, is that this is the worst idea ever, because to go find affiliates without testing the product at all, no affiliates are going to sign up, as there’s no guarantee they will get paid. They need to see that they are going to get paid, they need to know the commissions they are going to get paid, because you thinking what you have works, is not proof for anyone else.
Unless, in Ajit’s experience, you know all the affiliates already: they are your friends, and buddies, then you’re going to be able to get a deal. But if you’re going out first time in to the market, trying to get people to promote your offer, no one’s going to do it. That’s the first thing Ajit would completely avoid, as well as trying to get affiliates on click bank, because they are purely business minded, and opportunity seekers, so they come and go, and they don’t really know what they’re doing a lot of the time.
He would rather not focus on that, but if he is going to go with affiliates, he would find the top affiliates, and work with them first, prove your ABC to them, and if one of them comes on board, you will have a hit.
First, Ajit prefers to focus on Facebook, or any other kind of advertising, such as simple blogging, or podcasting. You could be putting videos up on YouTube. Do anything where you can first validate your offer, and then you can go to an affiliate with your good commission pay out (it’s about six or seven dollars at least, that you’ll need to create).
In Ajit’s experience, don’t work with affiliates unless you know them, and there your friends. If they’re not your friends, don’t bother. Just go create some value first in the world, it’s easy these days.
My guy from the daily business hustle hasn’t coached yet, and he wants to teach people how to overcome social anxiety (he’s cured it for himself). For Ajit, he’d never do a product launch with this, or coach someone, because he’s never proven the concept, he’s only proven it to himself.
Ajit would rather go in with a good product, so eventually his product will become his marketing, and that’s how it should be. Ajit would go in, and coach a couple of people, see what’s missing in his product, find out if it’s a complete product, and If it is, he will go ahead and launch it. The most important thing for Ajit, is actually make sure his product is good. In the long long run, that’s what’s going to win.
Otherwise, in Ajit’s experience they won’t buy from you again, or they’ll want a refund, because it doesn’t work anymore, and it’s all over.
Mind valley, and all the other brands Ajit’s involved with, all of their websites have hundreds and thousands of people on their email list. Each of the lists are managed by an individual. There can be a list, of anywhere between one hundred thousand to a million people, but there are layers of complexity, in the sense of the lasting of the list can only be managed by one person.
His company does have an over encompassing content, and email strategy so all the activities are synced to that, which means that if there is an interview, or a video that gets created, usually they’ll try to create it, to be as relevant to most audiences, if not all.
The interview will be content based, and will be going out to everybody. They try to create content, and value, which can be used across all their different channels, but if that’s not the case, they have individual content strategy. Rather than just sending emails, or offers which is the tactic most people employ.
Ajit likes to contribute to people, who may not be ready to take action. He will mix and match, but mostly match with one individual per list, sometimes one individual from two or three lists, because it’s really not that complicated, once you’ve got the strategy. You’ve just got to write the emails once you have it figured out, and that’s the copy writer’s job, and then you just send it out.
Eventually, as his business has grown, and any business for that matter, you become more and more specialized, because it’s more important than generalization. Almost everyone in his business is specialized to one topic. Copy writers are very specialized, to write critical atonements to lists his company would be addressing.
There are specialized people who know how to manage mailing candidates, and lists as per the schedule. The overall scheme of things is established by a group of individuals who come up with the marketing strategies, who come up with a list of things to do. The marketers will come up with the pre-defined content, who understand the scheme of things, but after that it almost becomes like following a check list (If everyone starts experimenting, it becomes chaos).
