Stu McLaren: Launch standpoint, how's things changed over the time? What are you excited about as far as marketing goes? So that's the, the direction we'll go and then I, I just follow my curiosity, you know, it's a conversation. So.
Guest: Awesome.
Stu McLaren: Yep.
Guest: Okay.
Stu McLaren: We good?
Guest: Yes. Dude, I think I might need to extend your bike a little bit more because when you're facing Ricardo, it's a little bit.
Stu McLaren: Oh, I see. Yep. As long as it doesn't fall.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Some sandbags. It doesn't impact your weight at all, does it?
Guest: Are you going to do with the Dean also?
Stu McLaren: What's that?
Guest: Are you going to do the podcast?
Stu McLaren: Yeah. So when we wrap up then Kyle and I are going to Dean's place and so we'll do an interview with him. And yeah, it was interesting. He. He asked me to help him with his membership and so I did like a, like a one hour blitz consulting with his whole team and they've got. It's pretty bonkers. They've got 37,000 members. They're growing at 500 members a day.
Guest: 500 members a day?
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: They are doing.
Stu McLaren: Huh.
Guest: What exactly they are doing to get five.
Stu McLaren: They have an evergreen funnel that's crushing and.
Guest: But evergreen with the VSL or webinar
Stu McLaren: or with a,
Guest: With a challenge.
Stu McLaren: With a challenge, yep.
Guest: Three or four, five days.
Stu McLaren: Three.
Guest: Three. Yep.
Stu McLaren: And yeah, his goal is to get to 100,000 members by the end of the year. And anyway, they're doing great on the. They're amazing on the front end, but they got all kinds of gaps on the back end and so their retention is good. It's not great, but I mean, I, as soon as I got in, I could see like all kinds of holes and so I went through. I had five things for them and I went through them all. And at the end of it he's like, he's like, stu, I'm really good at getting people in. He's like, but just in hearing you talk, I'm realizing I'm not good at keeping people. And you are really good at keeping people. He's like, how do we work together more? And I was like, I don't know. I said, let me give it some thought so we'll see what plays out.
Guest: That is, that is super cool. That would be a big, big step.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, well, they, they have had somebody in my impact mastermind and then this year they didn't renew. And Dean, he said in the build or in the conversations leading up to when I did the day with him, he's like, and I just found out that, you know, Dawson isn't in the Mastermind anymore. He's like, that's got to change. He's like, we gotta get him back in there. I don't know why that happened. So it's interesting. Like, there's different decision makers on their team. You know, how big is his team?
Guest: I don't.
Stu McLaren: I don't know the size, but they
Guest: are suing the mastermind.com or. Yep.
Stu McLaren: KBB, they don't sell that anymore. But, yeah, their big thing is like, this AI. Yeah, the AI stuff.
Guest: Yeah. I feel like every landing page, if. If we don't put AI.
Stu McLaren: It's not relevant anymore. It's not relevant.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: All right.
Guest: You good to go? Yep. Okay, cool.
Stu McLaren: One thing, Ricardo, your water bottle is. You can put it on the floor.
Guest: Oh, sorry. You don't have cups. You don't have cups.
Stu McLaren: Do you want a cup?
Guest: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's better in terms of the visual. Like a mug. Yeah, like a mug. Yeah. But instead of going like this, you know, the water bottle. We're not Game of Thrones. Because I'm still. Now that I'm starting to get the jet lag out. Oh, dude, I'm back.
Stu McLaren: I'm zonked, man. I. I could have gone to bed two hours earlier last night.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: So, yeah, Kyle's like, what time did you even get home last night?
Guest: I'm like, I know.
Stu McLaren: I was like a wild man. I was out till, like, I was saying goodbye to everybody and then I started to feel cold.
Guest: I felt the same thing. I went to bed. I was like, ah, my head is knocking. Okay. All right, let's go.
Stu McLaren: Ready?
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Let me restart these.
Guest: Just because there's a limit on them. So you don't need us to clap? No, nothing. No, you're good. I mean, if you want to. All right, you guys ready to go? Okay.
Stu McLaren: Mr. Ricardo, welcome.
Guest: Thank you very much for having me.
Stu McLaren: So you've been dominating in Portugal. You have built an incredible business and also built a business supporting, you know, thousands of other entrepreneurs in Portugal. It's amazing. So I want to talk today about how you've done that, where you're getting your traffic from. What are you offering? How are you selling it? I want to unpack it all. You good?
Guest: Yeah, let's go.
Stu McLaren: Okay, so let's first talk about and give people a sense of what it is that you're offering.
Guest: Okay. So basically, we have. The core of the company is education and software. So, yeah, for education, we help. Wannabes influencers and entrepreneurs that go like half a million and then PR goes to 5 million.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: So that's our main target.
Stu McLaren: So your people are people that are trying to get to half a million and then that's one avatar and the second avatar is people trying to get above a million.
Guest: Yeah. Okay, five million.
Stu McLaren: So what are you offering them to help them in that process?
Guest: So basically, the people that are starting, we offer a membership called Ki Start. Launch your business. And the goal is just, you know, push them, push them up to 25k. Because 25k in Portugal is like the, the point where they think like, getting out of the job, quitting the job and starting the business.
Stu McLaren: I see.
Guest: And so that's like the, the sweet spot.
Stu McLaren: Okay, gotcha.
Guest: And then we have the. Another membership, which is kdf. And basically the idea is to get to six figures.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: In profit. Six figures in profit.
Stu McLaren: So that's really for somebody who's. They're off to the races, but now they really want to start growing it.
Guest: Yeah. And the main focus, like sales and marketing. That's it. Nothing else. Then we have the mentorship, which is a KI academy, which we want people to go above a million and that we help in the eight areas of the business, you know, like operations, marketing, sales, strategy, legal, finance, all those areas. So can help them to grow.
Stu McLaren: What I love about this though, is it's easy for people to see where they fit.
Guest: Yeah. So thanks to you, because that was a great conversation in Kenya. It made me think like, oh, shit, I have this course, I have this. And I was like wondering, okay, let's make it simple. Yeah. Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Well, it is though, because now, like when somebody comes into your world, you just ask a couple questions to gauge kind of where they're at, and then as soon as you receive the answers, you know where to guide them.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: And see, a lot of times, like people will have a bunch of different products, but, you know, there's a whole bunch of different starting points for people.
Guest: Sometimes we just start to make offers and offers and all of a sudden suddenly we have like gazillions products. Yeah. We don't know what exactly we are doing. And so. And sometimes we are very quick starters, but then the team has to do the rest.
Stu McLaren: Right, right. They're playing like, oh, they're cleaning up the mess.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Well, it was reminded to me I had a client years ago who, you know, flew for a VIP day, brought their whole team in and they had a ton of different products. And the very first question I asked Them. I said, okay, I want you to picture me. I am your perfect, ideal customer. I said, what do you want me to buy first? And they're all, they're all looking at each other and they're like, I. I don't know. I'm like, that's a problem. Right. Like right there. And then if, if your customers don't know where to go or what their first step or what their next step should be, then they're going to be confused. And. And so I, I love how you've, you know, that's super clean.
Guest: Yeah. And it's funny because most of I just had like a session before we. I came here and because I'm doing some sales sessions so I can figure out exactly what is the script, what are the words and all that. Yeah.
Stu McLaren: So you're talking to a potential customers
Guest: and then another session with one of our mentees. We do like a checkpoint in the middle. Yeah. So we have a year in the middle. We do a checkpoint. And usually I like to do the checkpoint. We have like 100 people, but, you know. Yeah, I like to do that. It's. It gives me the, the sense, the touch.
Stu McLaren: You got a finger on the.
Guest: The pulse. Yeah. And so. So I asked her. Okay, so I did the same thing. So I'm, you know, I'm a customers. What exactly do you say? What's your promise?
Stu McLaren: What.
Guest: Makes me curious to know more about it. Yeah, she was like, yeah, we delivered this. She went immediate to. To the how to the. Yeah, what exactly this stuff. Yeah, yeah. Instead of giving, like, what's the promise? Yeah, so it's.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, it's. It's easy to get lost in the details and all the bits and pieces, but lose sight of the thing that really matters, which is like, how's my life going to be better? Like, if I buy your thing, how is my life going to be better?
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Okay, so you've got these three different levels, and then how do you market these products and services?
Guest: Good question. So, like yourself, I did a lot of launches over the years. A lot of launches.
Stu McLaren: What does that look like for people? Just give them a sense of what, What a typical launch would look like.
Guest: Well, a typical launch would you mean like the, The. The pieces that.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, like what, how would you.
Guest: So basically there are a couple phases. The first phase, like the briefing and the planning. The second phase, I call the three Pl. Pre. Pre. Pre launch, which is like basically a buzz time.
Stu McLaren: Yeah. You're creating anticipation, but they know.
Guest: They don't know exactly what is Coming. So we can raise some, some pains. We can raise some, you know, raising the conscious, like Jean Schwartz.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: Then we have the pre, Pre launch, which basically is the invitation for the event. And that's curious because right now there is a launch going on in the cinema, which is the Michael Jackson movie.
Stu McLaren: Oh.
Guest: And I'm watching the. The anticipation build up, which is pretty insane.
Stu McLaren: Well, and you see it in movies. Like, movies do this phenomenally well. We just watched a trailer like before we even got started, and we're like, we got to go see this movie. And it's like it's just creating that anticipation.
Guest: Yeah. And it's. And so during that time, we, we just invite people to opt in to our event. Then we have the, the, the pre launch, which basically is in the. If you look like to the fundamentals would be like three PLCs, three pieces of content.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: Which basically for me, it's raising the confidence in us. For me, it's like about confidence.
Stu McLaren: So in that content, you want to raise the confidence of the audience that are going through it.
Guest: Yeah. Because what happens to me for a long time is people went through several launches before buying. The average was two.
Stu McLaren: Oh, wow.
Guest: Yeah, the average was two. So they would go one and by the end they would not buy. Then we have a second one like two months later. And so. Yeah. So we have that period of three pieces and then open card, close card during between five to seven days. Yeah. And then we might do a downsell and then debrief.
Stu McLaren: Got it.
Guest: Basically, this is it. And usually for us at least would take like 45 days.
Stu McLaren: Wow. Each launch is about 45 days, whole process. Okay, so how many launches would you do in a year?
Guest: Between five to six.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: My, my. Yeah, I think there were like three years that we did five and six.
Stu McLaren: Wow. That's. Yeah, that's crazy. Okay.
Guest: It was crazy. It was every two months.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: Every two months. Of course, we were, you know, using the same funnel, change a couple ads, you know, reuse some ads, recycle. But it was working, you know.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: I felt like, let's go.
Stu McLaren: Yeah. So this was the primary way in which you were marketing your business.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: And so then how are you getting traffic to these launches?
Guest: So I, I was going, I use a lot ads in meta, Google, Pinterest, because I really like to go omnichannel. The way we usually do is we have two main traffic source, which is basically meta, with Instagram and Facebook and the whole ecosystem, and then YouTube. But we use the pixels at every platform. Like LinkedIn, like Pinterest, like TikTok. Because we test TikTok, and for us, the leads were not so good. Maybe it was us, but that was the experience. But in terms of remarketing, we do it everywhere. Display ads, all of that. So we have three main sources. YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. But then we put the rest working. When people go through one of these or go to the landing page, they're going to be remarketing everywhere.
Stu McLaren: I see.
Guest: And so that was a strategy that we started, and it works really, really well.
Stu McLaren: And so these launches are.
Guest: But okay, there was a difference. The ads were completely out of the box.
Stu McLaren: How so?
Guest: Like, for example, I would use, you know, that movie, Everybody Sunday?
Stu McLaren: Okay. Yeah.
Guest: No, any. Any given Sunday.
Stu McLaren: Any given Sunday.
Guest: Any given Sunday. So there is that clip which is very famous, that is talking the. With the. With the.
Stu McLaren: With the team.
Guest: With the team, yeah. So I did that.
Stu McLaren: Oh, you reenacted it.
Guest: Yeah. But the script for, you know, for the master class that I was giving and like that speech, that speech of the wolf when he's talking to the.
Stu McLaren: Oh, the wolf on Wall Street.
Guest: Yeah, yeah. So I did that also. I bought, you know, wig and everything. So I. I do sometimes a kind of, you know, which is good because it prints in the. In the people's mind. Yeah. But there is a. Which I'm conscious. There is a. Also a not so good side.
Stu McLaren: What's that?
Guest: Which people might. Some of the people don't take me serious. There is a. Because I have like 30% of my shoes didn't like me in the beginning.
Stu McLaren: Oh, interesting.
Guest: Yeah, it's very interesting. 30% is not like one or two.
Stu McLaren: That's a lot.
Guest: 30% they didn't like me, but then they. They got.
Stu McLaren: You think it's just from the ads?
Guest: We never know. Yeah. Yeah, but because they were seeing, like, things totally different. Who's this guy? Who's this crazy guy? Yeah, so he looks like a monk.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, yeah. But. But what I did hear you say is that when the ads are out of the box, they get a lot better results.
Guest: And they know.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, they remember.
Guest: Yeah, they remember. They go like, I have seen this guy.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: So they go from, this is. This guy is crazy again again. Maybe I should look something. Maybe I will opt in. Okay, let's opt in then.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: It's more or less. Okay, I'll come again. And then maybe I should buy. Okay, I bought. Okay. Now I have to work with him. So they go through different phases.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: And we Already already know that they go through that.
Stu McLaren: So yeah, so you're doing these launches are they. They're live. Right. So basically you have a start, you have an end and then you move on to the next one. Is that how you still currently do it?
Guest: No, we completely switch.
Stu McLaren: Okay, so talk to me about that.
Guest: Yeah, because we found that, okay, the launches were amazing, but it was just one strategy and we have like, I don't know, 17. I think it's the least that we have because we have mainly like three big groups, the one to one, one too many and partnerships. And so we were just using one too many. And inside one to many, we were using basically launches and webinars for downsells. That's it. So there are so many strategies that we were not combining. So I thought to myself, okay, and also we start to figure out there are a lot of people doing launches. The launches were going down. Of course we have to innovate, we have to do all the things. But at the same time it's like 45 days inside my calendar. I cannot do anything. I love launching. But 45 days, time six or time five. Yeah, it's a lot of space. And, and, and again, it doesn't give us space to do other stuff or to do other offers. Although we start to do segmentation last, last January 2025. And so we are segmenting more and more our list which allows us to make different offers, different offers at the same time. Okay, so what we did was In January of 2025 we did a launch already thinking about Evergreen, the launch, because I saw someone in Atlas, Russell Brunson's mastermind, his name is Bill Vaughn and he was doing a Evergreen launch for bookkeepers every week. And I was like, what?
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: Every week. And he was doing that and he was getting between 10,000 to 15,000 leads.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: Every week. And I went through his funnel and it was really simple, not very highly complicated. Although in terms of the tech part is, it was not so simple. The tech part was not so simple. But the funnel was, you know, one funnel, one product, one avatar. Basically that's it. So I looked at that and I start to see what, how can I do the same thing? So by March, by March, we had a funnel, Evergreen Funnel, using that launch because it took us like a month and a half to figure out everything because Bill didn't have WhatsApp or SMS. And we are using that especially in Europe.
Stu McLaren: Right. Because Europe is like, it's way more
Guest: popular if you don't use WhatsApp. You are out.
Stu McLaren: Wow. Yeah. So it's a primary marketing communication channel.
Guest: It is. It.
Stu McLaren: Isn't there a limit on the number of people in a WhatsApp group?
Guest: Yeah, but there is a community and the community can put more groups, so.
Stu McLaren: Oh, I see.
Guest: And the other thing that was not so good that now they. I think they fix it was your number gets exposed. So there are some people that gets into those groups so they can take the numbers out and then they contact for their stuff.
Stu McLaren: Oh, I see.
Guest: There is some scams over there.
Stu McLaren: So people were poaching people that were in your group, as an example. And, you know.
Guest: Yeah, especially in Brazil. That's very common. Wild west, huh?
Stu McLaren: So you shift to this evergreen model. Explain what that looks like now. So instead of, you know, all this buildup to the launch, people sign up for the launch, they get value. Then you have an open cart. That was the old model.
Guest: So basically. Yeah, exactly. So now when we had the weekly. Because now we have monthly. Because we try, we start to test a couple things. So what allows us in terms of weekly is we can test, you know, we can choose one thing and test it another thing and test it and that's awesome. I would go live sometimes just to fix a couple things.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: Of course, you have to be aware about, you know, the clothing.
Stu McLaren: So these are live. Yeah, These are live training sessions.
Guest: Yes, yes. But because it's evergreen, you gotta look the same. Yeah, exactly.
Stu McLaren: So good news is, like, you know, that's. That's easier. Easier for you. I mean, dude, you look the same all the time anyway. Dude, I swear, you haven't aged in, like, you know, the 15 years that I've known you. But that's a whole side note. Okay, so you're going in, you're recording. Sometimes you'll do it live, sometimes it'll be the recording.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: You're testing one thing each time.
Guest: Exactly.
Stu McLaren: What kinds of things would you be testing?
Guest: For example, the offer would be a video. A video for them.
Stu McLaren: Interesting.
Guest: Although it's all video.
Stu McLaren: So you wouldn't deliver the offer live?
Guest: No, no. Then I start to do half video and half myself.
Stu McLaren: So how would that work?
Guest: That was the best one.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: Because basically the. The intro. Intro video for the offer.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: It allows us to put, you know, social proof. It allows us to make some animations that, you know, keep the people on it. And so. So it worked really well. And then I would go live and, you know, talk about the price. What can I do? You know, the objections and all that. Although in that video, we try as much as possible to kill the objects before.
Stu McLaren: So I'm just trying to understand the video. When you're making the offer, there's part one and part two. Video is part one.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: You're talking about the offer itself. Do you talk. Share the price in that? No. No. Okay, so you don't share the price, but you're sharing.
Guest: I want to use the video more times.
Stu McLaren: Okay, I see.
Guest: Because I want to, I want to test some pricing also.
Stu McLaren: Okay, got it. So you're using the video to essentially, you know, talk about the product, frame the product. It's all scripted, then it transitions to you live.
Guest: Yes.
Stu McLaren: And then that's when you're introducing the price.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: Yeah. And so that, that worked really well. That worked really well. And then I did the same thing in webinars. I use also the video.
Stu McLaren: Interesting.
Guest: Yeah, it works really, really well.
Stu McLaren: Why do you think it works so well?
Guest: That's a good question. Well, first, I think there is a pre frame because I, I pre framed that part as, as a learning. Learning moment. No, because for us is easier because we are teaching marketing and sales and so it's very easy to say, okay, I'm going to do an offer. See how we do that? Yeah. So don't get away. So that is easy to pre frame. The second thing is, I think the social proof that we put in the middle and we try to build us like a documentary as much as possible. And so people get, you know, they get involved, they get engaged to that. Although there is a thing that we do which is we don't allow the chat to be public. The chat is only for the host and we have someone live there always to, to reply to people.
Stu McLaren: I want to unpack that.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Before I do, though, I think the other big benefit of what you're doing is it prevents you from rambling.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: I mean, I know for me, because
Guest: you see, you see someone, you know, saying something, you go like, it's super
Stu McLaren: easy to get like derailed or start rambling or whatever. And that's the worst time to do it when you're making an offer.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: But this, it allows you to keep the offer tight and on point and you're hitting and hitting.
Guest: But I did a shift also on that because before we had Zoom meeting and then we shift for Zoom Webinar.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: And Zoom meeting, you are, you know, you see people, you say the name of someone or. Yeah, you get distracted. You get a little bit distracted. Once I put in Zoom Webinar.
Stu McLaren: No Problems.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: So does it feel like I'm wondering about the experience for the user? How do you transition to the video? Come out of the video? Do you say that it's a video?
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: So, like, how do you.
Guest: I said. And I tried to play, you know, like, okay, here's Ricardo. And video comes because we. We use. I don't want to go very technical, but we use vmix, which is a software for playing. So it's very easy to make those kind of transitions.
Stu McLaren: I see. And.
Guest: And by the end of the video, I'll say, okay, let's go again for Ricardo. So I made like, kind of the.
Stu McLaren: She's talking about yourself in. Now let me introduce you to our next speaker. The most amazing, handsome, super talented.
Guest: So I didn't have like that, you know, like, you know, news. The news. What do you call the. The person.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, the broadcaster.
Guest: Yeah, yeah. No, the person that the journalist is.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: It's like a people. Right. And I, I did that with that. And then I said, okay, let's go outside that there is the journalist. Blah, blah. I'm there in the middle. Yeah, that is cool.
Stu McLaren: That's.
Guest: So we play with that also a little bit humor. So it's quite easy.
Stu McLaren: So now it's a webinar, like an evergreen webinar.
Guest: It's still a launch.
Stu McLaren: Okay, so still following the same piece of content.
Guest: Yeah. Five days.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: Five days. Which I had. I have a couple of learnings first, because we. We. We migrate from live to. To the evergreen almost directly. But I have, you know, lives of three hours, which is not right now. It's a long time. It's a long time.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: So that is one thing. Switching for 90 minutes to 100 minutes. Okay. The second thing is we had a six. Six live on Sunday. So we start on Monday. We go to Friday, and we had another live on Sunday night.
Stu McLaren: Oh, wow.
Guest: But Sunday night was to introduce our tool. AI Tool.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: Which they get as a bonus. So it was a kind of like, you know, 50 minutes, 45 minutes, but, you know, less is more and being more focused. So now we are switching for three days instead of five.
Stu McLaren: So you've condensed it from five down to three.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: I would imagine that's easier for you to help to maintain momentum.
Guest: Totally. Yeah. Because we were doing weekly, but then we find out that the. The Portuguese market is not big.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: So they were getting always the same ads, although we were trying, you know, to do exclusions in the Facebook ads. But, you know, it's not perfect. Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Okay. So now you've moved to this evergreen model. How's that? What kind of an impact has that had for you and your business?
Guest: So first, more time, more time to do other stuff. We don't have to worry about that, although we have to look to the, to the ads and you know, to the traffic. But it's easier and we can see immediately how many people are seeing because we have a software also for that, what they are seeing. What am I saying? So it becomes easier to, to, to analyze and see what we have to change.
Stu McLaren: And I imagine too like it makes the whole process easier because there's a lot less pressure.
Guest: Oh yeah.
Stu McLaren: And, and also a lot less pressure, but also a lot more opportunities to iterate, change and tweak. I know even for myself, like I love launches, love launches. But my one frustration is like the learnings from one launch you can't really use for another year if you're doing one a year, which is what we were doing. And a lot of things can happen and change in that time. So even the things that you learn here may be completely irrelevant a year from now. And so it was frustrating from that standpoint because you couldn't, you couldn't innovate or it was hard to innovate and be able to know, you know, if those changes are making a difference.
Guest: But at the same time is the show up rates were getting lower. Right. Although we were trying everything like WhatsApp, SMS.
Stu McLaren: You mean live launches or.
Guest: Yeah, even for. That's the funny part because once we get, you know, this kind of evergreen. The show up rate went up. What? Yeah, I don't know why. I have some my theories, but I don't know exactly why. So because we, we start to do AI calls.
Stu McLaren: Oh, interesting.
Guest: That's a big difference.
Stu McLaren: Okay, what is that? Talk to us.
Guest: So basically we use a tool that we developed to call people the, the morning of day one.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: To remain to remind them that it's gonna happen.
Stu McLaren: So you're saying in addition to like sms reminders and WhatsApp. And WhatsApp.
Guest: An email.
Stu McLaren: And email, you're sending them a voice broadcast. Now what does the AI bit have to do with it? It's an AI tool.
Guest: Yeah, it's a AI tool and basically it's a phone call. They receive the phone call and it's someone say, hey it's. This is Pedro, virtual assistant from Kiai. And I just want to tell you that, that we are super happy for you. Are you, are you good?
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: Person replied yes. Okay, so you know 8:30, we're gonna start. Blah, blah. That's it.
Stu McLaren: Wow, interesting.
Guest: But the funny part is the AI does like in 20 minutes.
Stu McLaren: Wow. And how. What's the tool called?
Guest: Vapi v a p I AI it's a developer tool for voice.
Stu McLaren: Vapi. Wow, that's interesting. So that's helped increase your show up rates.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: What else are you doing to increase your conversions during these launches that you've. What.
Guest: So the conversion is something interesting because the live. The people that are live. We usually get a very good conversion. Like 10%, 12 sometimes. And I think it is related also with the. Also our retention rate is really good because we usually. And this was something that I test with a student and then I was like, huh, we should do this. Which basically is we give like 12 steps and then we. I think we reduced to eight. We give eight steps every day. There is like two steps or three. Depends on the content.
Stu McLaren: So of things to do during a launch.
Guest: Not things to do like the, like the eight pillars of whatever, you know.
Stu McLaren: I see.
Guest: And so they have to. And we all say 1 of 81 of 8. So it's like the movie that we want to. It's bad, but we want to see until the end.
Stu McLaren: It's an open loop.
Guest: Exactly. Always, always open loop. So. And at the same time we give a workbook with a password. The password is eight digits and we give two digits like every 30 minutes.
Stu McLaren: I see.
Guest: So they have to keep up with that and they're going to ask, oh, what's the password? What's the password? So yeah, there are a couple of things that we do for retention. But then the conversion, I think it's. In my opinion it's a sum up of everything that we are doing from the beginning, from the start. And, and especially they have to feel like it's for them, it's really real for them. Although in the end in a very good launch, we sold like I don't know, 3% of the. Of the list.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: But 3% or 2% or 1.5, which is more or less the conversions, it's still very low because we have. If. Imagine that we have 100 people and only two people bought. So what happens to the 98? That's what I'm starting to. To focus these last two years.
Stu McLaren: What do you. What are you doing to serve that 98?
Guest: So we have a webinars but at the same time we have a sales team calling.
Stu McLaren: Oh wow. So they're following up with the people
Guest: that didn't buy yeah, everyone. Everyone following everyone. So the launch becomes also a source for the sales team. So the setters can do appointments and then we can convert. Because what we found sometimes, and that's interesting, we just. On Friday, I closed someone that went to this challenge by the end of the challenge was like, ah, maybe it's not for me. And he bought 12K, a product of 12K. And the product we offered during the launch is A. Almost $2,000. So he didn't want that, but he wanted something. But because of the sales team follow up, then he bought something 12K.
Stu McLaren: That's a great testament to the importance of that follow up.
Guest: Yeah, yeah, it's really, really important.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: Of course we do something that I have not seen a lot of people doing, which is a lot of segmentation. So when people opt in, we segment them. We know what they are selling, what's their range of terms of revenue and what is their biggest challenge. So the person that is calling is using that. That information.
Stu McLaren: Got it?
Guest: Yeah. Hmm.
Stu McLaren: You mentioned using a sales team. What advice would you give people when it comes to developing that sales team, Getting comfortable with that sales team if it's not something that they've ever done before?
Guest: That's interesting question because I have a sales team before getting into digital and when I got into digital world, I'm like, I can do webinars, I can do launches, I don't need the sales team. Get out. So I reduce the sales team, like one, one person. That's it. But then I realized over the years it was a big mistake. It was a big mistake because people that were online, they were not used to have a sales team. So they didn't know that reality.
Stu McLaren: Right.
Guest: And I was like, oh, I could have saved and earned so much money.
Stu McLaren: Because you found it to be effective.
Guest: Yeah, it was always effective, always interesting. Of course it's costly. We have to find the right people. And that is the main. The main thing for people is like finding the right people.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: And there is a process for that also. And basically it's a funnel. It's a funnel. Like. And you should have like two, at least two types of people in the sales team. I would say three. The setter, which is a person that has to be very empathic, likes to talk and you know, our goal or his goal is to get into an appointment. That's it. And qualifying. That's it. The closer closes and then the farmer. Just keep them happy. And. And also the ascension. So basically those three profiles are really important. The way we do it for the setter, we, you know, we send an email to our list. We get a bunch of people that want to be a setter and work with us. We do a webinar for them. We present the offer. If they say, yeah, I wanna. We do breakout rooms. Yeah, we put like four or five people off our teams. They're gonna read the script and they gonna, you know, say the script. We select the best ones and then they will have two hours doing the, the script and the calling and we select the best ones. So it's basically. It's a funnel.
Stu McLaren: Interesting, interesting. So for somebody who is like wanting to take it to the next level, you're. Where would they begin when it comes to the sales team?
Guest: To the sales team, yeah. And do they have that or they are completely zero.
Stu McLaren: Completely new to sales team.
Guest: Yeah. So what I would do first is the, the person going through the, the process of selling 101. Because if someone that is. Was like, like me was doing webinars and launches, suddenly we have to. Okay, if we have to have a sales team, we have two ways, right? We can hire a company to build the sales team or can do by ourselves or some irate. But I think it's important for the person to go through the sales process and think, okay, what are the words that I'm going to say? What are the things that the objects and what do I react? Because it's a different game. The one on one. It's a different game.
Stu McLaren: It was interesting. I had a friend of mine who started building a sales team and she's been involved in the sales conversations and she's like, I hate it. She's like, I absolutely hate it. She's like, but I know how necessary this is because I'm learning, you know, what to say, what not to say, what matters, what doesn't matter, the objections that come up. She said, there's so many learnings that have come through that process that we will influence, you know, the future. She's like, but once I got it down, she's like, I'm out of there.
Guest: But let me tell. I hate it also. In the beginning. Yeah. But I start to ask myself, how can I make it more fun? And so the way I do it is like thinking about human behavior. So what I'm doing right now is studying human behavior.
Stu McLaren: So you look at it more like this is an opportunity to study and learn.
Guest: Exactly.
Stu McLaren: Yeah. Yeah.
Guest: It's like, okay, if I see this, how the person react, does the eye goes like this, you know, because we See those kind of things, you know.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: And, and right now we are start doing bets inside the company like okay, is this going to close or not? It's going to go. And we are becoming very, very accurate.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: You know, with the people that are going to buy. So and the other thing is we start to find offers that can fit right into the, those avatars. Like for us for example, when we do the selling process 101 basically is to sell our mentorship which is between 7k and 10k.
Stu McLaren: Yep.
Guest: But we found out that to sell this to a cold traffic, even if it went through one of our launches. But it's hard, it's hard to sell. And you cannot forget in Portugal the minimum salary right now is around a thousand euros a month. A month.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: So to sell something of 10k is 10 times. Yeah. Of the salary.
Stu McLaren: It's almost a year's salary.
Guest: Yeah, exactly. So it's something that they have to, to think through. But I'm lost, I'm lost. What was going to say? Okay, so. Objection. Anyway, it will come. Whatever. It will come.
Stu McLaren: Well, we were, we were talking about the sales process and we were talking about how.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Like that you didn't enjoy doing the sales calls initially.
Guest: Exactly. So basically when I'm, when I'm doing that I'm looking to the behavior. Oh by the way, the offers. That's what I was going to say. So we found out that the 7 or the 7 to 10k it's still a good price for both because it's one year. We have a lot of things that we give but they had a pain that they have to solve like immediately before they get into a one year program. Something like, okay, how can I, how can you solve me this like in the next 30 to 90 days?
Stu McLaren: Right.
Guest: So we start to, to see that there was some, some gaps there, that if we offer something that can solve real pain that they are very conscious then getting to the membership, it's like no brainer.
Stu McLaren: So get them a quick win.
Guest: Yes. And the quick win has to be a really good win. So we found out like for example, lead gen is something. Sales process is another thing. And of course for those 90 days to, to be very effective we have to do something done for you. So we put some done for you
Stu McLaren: to help speed up the process.
Guest: Yeah, totally, totally. But we have a company in our ecosystem which is a digital agency and you know, we put that also. And at the same time by the end they're going to start working with the digital agency. So there is like some benefits. Yeah, yeah.
Stu McLaren: As we look to wind down here, I want to get your perspective on where you see marketing going. A lot's changing. So you talked about a transition that you've made from, you know, a certain style of marketing to another style. How is marketing evolving in your mind?
Guest: That's a great question. So one of the things that I'm seeing more and more is like marketing and sales are really, really very tight,
Stu McLaren: Getting tighter and tighter.
Guest: Yeah. The gap is because before it was like, oh, I'm. I'm the person that gets the attention and someone's convert. Right. But then with, especially with the digital or people doing like webinars and launches, the. The sales guy almost like disappear. Right. But now they came and now they are like two teams. So sometimes they are four fighting. Right. Oh, you are not good giving a good leads or. No, you are not closing. Well, so there's this gap, but. But it's reducing more and more and more. So I think marketing and sales are, are becoming, are, you know, merging. Merging a lot. But on the other hand, seeing AI going so deep, I think, I think we're gonna. Going to have marting Very, very, very customized.
Stu McLaren: Well, I was gonna say, do you think we'll. We'll be in existence, you know, the way we will.
Guest: We were talking before the, the conversation. This conversation, and I. I have no idea. I have really no idea.
Stu McLaren: So from a marketing perspective though, you're saying you see it just being like hyper personalized.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: What does that look like in your mind?
Guest: Customize. And of course, for that, and the experience has to be really, really good.
Stu McLaren: So what does that look like for you?
Guest: So right now. Okay, let me return like five years ago or maybe six. Six years ago in Brazil. Okay. So every time you go to, to a store, you get into the store and usually what happens?
Stu McLaren: Somebody asks, you know, do I need help?
Guest: Exactly. What's usually the answer?
Stu McLaren: I'm good.
Guest: I'm good. No, thank you very much. So that's like 99% of the times. Yeah. So why do you ask that?
Stu McLaren: Right.
Guest: Why the person inside the store asks the same question, gets the same answer. Doesn't make sense.
Stu McLaren: It's habit.
Guest: Yeah, yeah, it's habit. Nobody looks to that. So more or less like 6 years ago. I mean, I don't know the name of the, of the store. So I guess into the store and someone is walking to me and I'm like, okay, here you go. And he asked, do you want juice or coffee? Oh, I'm like, oh, that's a breaking pattern.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: So, like. Oh, I don't know. I'm just, you know, I'm just looking. No, it's okay. I'm just asking if you want to, you know, juice or coffee. Now you can, you know, watch with the juice and coffee that. And he was playing with that. I'm like, okay, orange juice if you have. Okay. So he gives the orange juice and he goes and he starts to talk. You know, it's Brazil. So you're coming here and you. You are from Portugal, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. You know, so fast forward. I got out of the store with €300. Spend it, you know.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: Four or five. Four or five shirts.
Stu McLaren: Expensive orange juice, buddy.
Guest: So what I mean by this is the experience was totally different.
Stu McLaren: Interesting.
Guest: So. And we have a common friend that talks a lot about that. So not only the experience of delivering.
Stu McLaren: Shout out to Jason, by the way.
Guest: Exactly. Jason Friedman. Not only the. The experience when we are delivering after they buy, but the experience of buying, you know, all of that. I think we have to be more. More mindful.
Stu McLaren: You know, one of the things that we're seeing in our business too, on that is that used to be sales and fulfillment were two different things.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: And once the salesperson has made the sale, they hand it off to the, you know, success, customer success. And they're like two separate people. What. One of the changes we've made in our company is that the person that is closing the sale is also the person that, you know, handles fulfillment. And so that transition is way more seamless. So now, like, the customer has one point of contact, they feel comfortable, there's a relationship there. And it's been really interesting to see the evolution of that and you know what that means. And I'll tell you straight up, that never used to be possible because
Guest: of
Stu McLaren: the time commitment and time demand. But one of the things that we've been doing is just using AI in so many different areas of the business that it frees up time. And then the question becomes, okay, when the time is freed up, what do you do with it? And so for us, it's just like pour into the relationships, you know, and if. If somebody who's closing the sale, if they got time on their hands, continue to pour into the relationship, you know, because now sales and retention are tied together. Like they're two. Two of the same things when they're disconnected. What we found was that, like, there was no. The relationship is developed initially with sales, and then it's like handoff and now that the customer never talks to the salesperson ever again, they got to start and form a new relationship with retention. And it's like you're hitting the reset, but now it's just like that relationship carries through.
Guest: And the other thing that's interesting, but the other thing that we, we've been seeing is we used to sell a lot community. Right. And people love the community when they feel, you know, feel good. But there are some people that don't like community.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, the introverts.
Guest: Exactly. Or, or they want to do the stuff. They want to get the results and they don't want to.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: And we, we have a lot of those people especially like higher level.
Stu McLaren: So how does that impact things for you?
Guest: Well, our mentorship is, is done in a different way because we have a, we have a core of the mentorship which is one on one. So sessions one on one, then we have small groups of one to five people.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: And then we have the big groups, which is usually the in person events.
Stu McLaren: Okay.
Guest: So it's splitted where they feel well, they, they will be there. So there is no much big impact. So if he says, no, I don't want to go. All right. No, perfect. You have the one on one.
Stu McLaren: Yeah.
Guest: I want diversity. All right, perfect. Go to the in person events.
Stu McLaren: I see what you're saying. So the, the benefit of the different components is no matter what, what they prefer.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: There's an avenue for them to be
Guest: able to get it. Yeah. And by the way, that increased our retention to 70%.
Stu McLaren: Wow.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: What did. Offering the different deliverables.
Guest: Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Interesting.
Guest: Because most of the, the mentorship or coaching programs is like group, all group or small groups or pods. And we, we start to see, okay, there is some, some mentorship which is individual small groups and big groups which are the best. All of them.
Stu McLaren: Interesting.
Guest: They, all of them, they're pros and cons. So. Yeah. So we just blended.
Stu McLaren: Interesting. I want to thank you for coming. I want to thank you for all the incredible work that you have done in Portugal. I had the privilege of coming to you and your event in Portugal and just being able to interact with the amazing people there and seeing the impact that you have had. It's incredible. And I love that ripple effect. What was that? It's all good. Okay. I just love that ripple effect that you've had.
Guest: You good.
Stu McLaren: Okay. I just love the ripple effect that you've had. So kudos to you for leading. Kudos to you for trailblazing. As we look to wind down, what Final advice would you give for people as it comes to marketing their business?
Guest: Funnel advice.
Stu McLaren: Funnel advice.
Guest: Ah, that's interesting because I was going to say don't think only about funnels, think about the ecosystem. It's like I didn't, I didn't mention, but we have the software business and we are launching a thing called MyMetrics AI and it's a part of the ecosystem. So my advice is try to look like 50,000 foot first to see where you are. Because if you want to just go tactical, which sometimes is really important, but try to see where it fits. Where it fits. What is the why? Why are you doing that? What's the goal? But if you want to go tactical, I would say keep it simple because sometimes we overcomplicate it. Keep it simple and try to see where the avatar is in terms of context, which one he prefers. Email, WhatsApp, SMS, smoke signs, whatever. But it's really important to keep it
Stu McLaren: simple, you know, and it's interesting that a common thing that I've heard from you in this is that, yes, the future is changing. Yes, we got to adapt. But realize, like, there's an opportunity to personalize the offers, there's opportunity to personalize the marketing, there's an opportunity to personalize the experience. And the more personalized it becomes, the higher the conversions, the better retention. So, yeah, it's a big takeaway for me in our conversation. I appreciate you for that. Where can people go to connect with you?
Guest: So, or Samurai RT in Instagram or YouTube or LinkedIn or Facebook, whatever, it's the same. And of course, I wanna, I wanna thank you also because over the years I've learned so much about, you know, memberships and recovering and all that. But special a couple years ago, when you talk about, you know, earning in a way that you can use, you can give like 90 and leave out of the 10%. Yeah, that was, you know, that was a mindset shift. And at the same time, going to Kenya and having that experience. Yeah, it opened my mind again to like, okay, let's, let's go big. Let's go rich.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, yeah, it's good to make money.
Guest: Yeah, it's good to make money. It's not like a bad thing. No, let's go rich.
Stu McLaren: More money we make, the more good we can do.
Guest: It's like amazing.
Stu McLaren: So, yeah, I appreciate that, man. Thank you. Well, it's been awesome. And we'll hook up all your info below in the description so people can go and connect. But I appreciate you, man.
Guest: Thank you. Man, Cheers, dude.
Stu McLaren: That was awesome.
Guest: Cool. Yeah.
Stu McLaren: Thank you so much. I know Marla was pinging me. She's like, dad, you haven't answered me. I'm like, I. I'm working. Yeah.
Guest: Sounds so loud, eh? Like, I don't know what's up? I didn't say anything.
Stu McLaren: Oh, really?
Guest: It's funny. The kids, they. They don't have a sense of what we are doing.
Stu McLaren: No, no, they don't. And they. Even. Our kids are so much older than yours, they still don't. Like, you know, as an example, Marla is like, why do you have to go? Like, can't you just stay home? And I'm like, buddy. I'm like, this is. This is what I. You know, part of what I do. You know, I gotta. I'm going to meet people. I'm doing the interviews. And. Yeah. I just think that, you know, there. It's still.
Guest: Because, like, sometimes I'm doing an offer. Yeah. Like, the sales, doing an offer. They show up. I'm like, okay. Do you have kids? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So I try to transition to something that they, you know, get rapport.
Stu McLaren: Yeah. I think the kid. I think you're doing the right thing there. Like, whenever the kids have interrupted, I've never pretended that they're not there. I just, like, weave it right in. And it's just part of life and it makes you more human and all the things. But.
Guest: And it covers also
Stu McLaren: one of my favorite videos of Kyle's little son Levi.
Guest: He,
Stu McLaren: Kyle's fiance, had been away for quite a while, and she came home for Christmas. And so Kyle, you know, is interacting with his son Levi. And then he's like, oh, there was a knock on the door. He's like, oh, who's that? And Levi's like, I don't know. And he says, who is it? He's like, I don't know. He goes to the door and in comes his fiance and he's like, yes, yes. It was like, so priceless. He showed me the video. I'm like, dude, you gotta post that, man. Amazing.
Guest: And then, yeah, I did post it. It got like 40, 000 views or something. Yeah. Yeah, it was really cute.
Stu McLaren: Yeah, it was awesome.
Guest: Did you. Did you listen to someone? I think it was Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is like, he's the real deal.
Stu McLaren: Oh, yeah. But he's also insane, man. Like, I.
Guest: He's insane, of course, to do what he does, insane. But it was something that was interesting. So they did a soccer game in London.
Stu McLaren: Oh, I think I know where?