Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Does $300 million seem like a lot to you? Well, it almost seems like for Neil, a team, it is just another day at the office. That's because Neil's job is to make companies rich. His consulting agency helps brands across all industries develop winning marketing strategies, implement subscription models and launch digital products.

Natalie Palmer [00:00:18]:

We actually get payments up front. We get that. We use that as funding to actually develop products. Because sometimes you may be solving a problem that is really painful to a specific customer. And if you know you have their trust, you have an audience, whatever it may be, you have that momentum already and you have this product, this idea that you know would solve this specific problem for them. People would be willing to pay for that upfront, right?

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:43]:

Imagine that with one client, Neil was able to help them generate $9 million in revenue in just three days with online course sales. How did he do it? Stay tuned to find out. Welcome to the Creator's Adventure where where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it. Many have asked me what software I use to record such high quality video for this podcast. I use Riverside. And what's great about Riverside is it records the local camera feed from you and your guests around the world, which means crisp 4K video without having to worry about blurriness due to Internet hiccups.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:25]:

Riverside is also a great editor, fitting with my philosophy of making it easy for yourself to create because there is nothing that your guests or you have to download. We also use Riverside's AI magic clips to find interesting moments for our episode intros. And I'm happy to announce that Riverside is sponsoring this episode. And if you sign up at Creators Riverside FM, CreatorsAdventure and and use code Creators Adventure, you'll get 15% off. You can find the link in the episode description as well. Now back to the show. Hey everyone. We're here today with Neil Atim.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:58]:

He is the co founder of Multiplier, a marketing agency that specializes in helping companies achieve substantial revenue growth. They've generated over 300 million in revenue for renowned brands like Mindvalley, Catcher Group, Jordan Peterson, coaching.com and many others. With 10 plus years of marketing experience encompassing product launches, marketing strategies, subscription models and digital products, Neil is well versed in a range of industries. Neil, welcome to the show.

Natalie Palmer [00:02:28]:

Thank you Brian. Thank you for having me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:32]:

So my first question for you is what would you say is the biggest thing either that you did or you are doing that has Helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy.

Natalie Palmer [00:02:43]:

The thing. It's hard to pinpoint just one thing, but I can think of a few things. You know, I think from a marketing perspective, which is what we're going to be focusing on today, it's really about adding value and understanding what do people actually want, what is the value that they want, what is the problem that you're going to solve for them, you know, and if you start from, from there as a macro view and you actually zoom into the other things, I think it's a good place to start. Right. So if I had to sum it up into one thing, is that the value, you start from there, then you go into everything else because you can go into the niches, into the type of funnels, into the campaigns, all of these things, right. Which do make up the whole ecosystem. But it comes down to one thing, which is the value that your product, your service, your platform, whatever it may be, actually brings. So start from there.

Natalie Palmer [00:03:39]:

Solve a problem or you know, it depends on the niche or the actual customer that you're serving, but it may be solving a problem, it may be something else. Maybe it's a luxury product where, you know, it gives a person status or some type of membership or access, you know, depending on what the scenario is. Right? Completely depends on that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:02]:

Yeah. Yeah, that's great advice because just hearing that, I'm thinking about a number of creators where they're so focused on the product and I can picture exactly like these creators who they're thinking, I'm going to make this and it's going to do this and they have all these ideas in their mind, but then they haven't taken a step back and realized, well, what is the value? What's the pain that they're providing a solution for, for their customer? And it's not that they haven't described it clearly in their marketing, it's that they maybe aren't even connected to it. They just don't even know. And they have this idea of something they want to create, but they haven't thought of what is the problem they're actually trying to solve.

Natalie Palmer [00:04:43]:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's the first place to start, right. I would say before you even sell anything, you want to know what is the value you're bringing here? What is the problem you're solving? And for example, like I have cases where I have done launches and stuff like before a product is ready, right. And we call it the pre product strategy where we actually get payments up front, we get that we use that as funding to actually develop products. Because sometimes you may be solving a problem that is really painful to a specific customer. And if, you know, you have their trust, you have an audience, whatever it may be, you have that momentum already and, and you have this product, this idea that you know would solve this specific problem for them. People would be willing to pay for that upfront. Right.

Natalie Palmer [00:05:28]:

Whether you're giving them an incentive or it really is that painful that yes, I would fund this. So this guy actually go out and create this or this, this company actually goes, goes out and creates this, you know, so yeah, if you start there, it's a perfect place. And with this, with this approach as well, like you can actually go ahead and create products and then try to sell it. But that's never what we recommend. It's always start with the problem. Like I said, pitch it, you know, say I'm working on this, it's completely fine. Because if you're actually genuinely adding value and helping someone, you don't need to sell off the bat and create the perfect product. You can iterate.

Natalie Palmer [00:06:09]:

And this is things we do, you know, like as we're building stuff out, like let's say it's an online program, sometimes we build it week on week. We start off with the live and then iterate, get feedback, feedback from there. You take all that feedback and then you can build a perfect product after that. Right. So sometimes you can build as you go and use all the feedback along. You don't even need to sell it sometimes because when you think about it, like in the long run, things like online courses, communities, these things sell on Evergreen. Right. Which means it makes money perpetually.

Natalie Palmer [00:06:40]:

So it's not something you need to keep reinvesting on. So it's okay if you get an initial group of people in and you test it out, take all the feedback, you know, perfect that thing, get the best testimonials and you know, like from the stone age, like the thing that, that works best is like word of mouth. Right. So if someone is raving about your product or service or course or whatever you may provide, then it sells itself. So yes, I endorse marketing and ads and funnels and everything. That's what I do. But nothing works better than word of mouth. Right.

Natalie Palmer [00:07:15]:

So if you can build that in from the very beginning, then you are onto something.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:20]:

Yeah. And you want to be able to get your product to the point that you can make it good enough that it'll spread with word of mouth. And to do that, you need to get that early feedback, you need to get something going. And I think the key that you mentioned is momentum. And there are a lot of people that will spend this time creating something and are working on it, but they're going a little bit slow and they could go faster. And once you have those customers, whether they're pre purchasing or even if you're going to let them in for free, now you've got people asking for something, they've got a problem, they need you to help fix it, they have something that they have questions about. And now you have momentum because there's this pressure from those potential customers saying, I need help with this. And now you suddenly have all these things to do and instead of guessing what to do, you actually know the path because your customers and potential customers are telling you it.

Natalie Palmer [00:08:12]:

Exactly 100%. So I'll tell you this, most people, they know enough, they're smart enough, they're, you know, they have enough certifications and training and experience and case studies and testimonials and everything already, right? That's done. But the thing that sometimes hold them back is actually execution. So if you use a method like this, it holds you accountable that way. You have to, you have no other choice but to go ahead and create this product, create this service, co build it with them. Because sometimes we're stuck in this trap of, oh, I just need to do one more thing. I need one more certification. I need, you know, always needing one more thing, one more thing, one more thing.

Natalie Palmer [00:08:51]:

And I'll tell you, I'm very experienced in the personal growth space, right? I'm the former head of subscriptions at mindvalley, so I know how these people think, you know, and I'm one of them. I'm always learning and reading and want to do this new course or book or something, you know, and it's always the thing that prevents me from execution. So having that accountability directly from them, nothing beats action, right? And it's snowball effect. So it's. If you actually put something out, say from the very beginning, what you're building, people would jump onto that. As I said, you stick to the first principle, which is the value that you're putting out there. And then, yeah, it just takes care of itself because people like to be involved, they like to build stuff. When they invest their time and stuff, you know, the outcome for them is much more enjoyable.

Natalie Palmer [00:09:36]:

You know, it's like, it's like, I don't know, this may be a weird analogy, but it's like you bake a cake and if you actually put in the work and you eat that cake, it's going to be like amazing cake, you know, but if you just go to the bakery, you pick up a cake, it's just a cake, you know, so it's the same with anything. If we put effort and energy into it, it becomes even much more desirable or enjoyable, you know?

Bryan McAnulty [00:09:58]:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. So before 2020, you were working in the corporate world for about eight years and then you quit to start your own business, become a digital nomad. Was there a pivotal moment at all that made you take that leap?

Natalie Palmer [00:10:17]:

So the thing is, even before I jumped into corporate, I did have an agency before which I sold, right. So I'm from the Caribbean, I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. And when I was around 17, 18, I had an agency, was doing web design ads on Facebook, all of these things. But it's not scalable. It's a very small island, 1.3 million people. So nothing was really moving there, you know, to the extent that I'm at right now. And I had a oil and gas job. I worked in oil and gas for five years and then I decided to leave.

Natalie Palmer [00:10:50]:

And it's very hard to leave. But I did land the role in Mindvalley and started there. And after spending a couple years, I treated it as a mentorship because I got to work closely with the CEO, that's Vishen Lakhiani, who's brilliant, you know, he's a genius at what he does and taking in everything. I knew I knew I wanted to exit and I didn't have a solid plan. It was during COVID I just decided to resign and I actually resigned to write a book. And this book is, is on personal growth. It's nothing to do with marketing, but it's just something I wanted to do, you know, it was a book that I would go back 10 years, give to my younger self. So it's called get yout Shit Together, the Guide for Young Adults.

Natalie Palmer [00:11:28]:

You know, so it's nothing to do with marketing, but at the same time, of course I needed to support myself, you know, so quitting your job during COVID it was like unheard of. Everyone, you know, wanted to know if I was crazy, but I just had that inner trust, you know, everything that I knew I would be able to make something out of it, you know. And then I just started doing consulting. I of course built a name in this space and then, yeah, just companies started coming and you know, just doing the one hour consulting or you know, something on retainer. Or fractional cmo, you know, these kind of things, you know, but of course it's not scalable, so naturally it just somehow turned into the agency model and yeah, just expanded from there, you know, so I really expanded from the personal growth space, the online courses space and stuff. And now we do platforms and stuff like, you know, starting with creators with just 100k Instagram followers, let's say, who doesn't have a product, who's never sold anything to companies doing 50 million a year now, you know, so it's a really broad spectrum and it's against the grain. You know, they always say go for the niche and stuff, but to me, it's like there's so much learning when you can actually see what happens in different industries, you know, different niches and everything, and apply those learnings across. Because at the end of the day, it comes down to understanding how human beings think, what motivates them, what problems you're solving for them, you know, how can you make their lives better? So the learnings is applied across the board and frankly, I get bored just doing one thing.

Natalie Palmer [00:12:55]:

So, you know, I like the diversity, you know, but yeah, it's been, it's been a journey, but now the thing is, the way I view it is like I get to do the thing I like the most, which is see numbers go up and my clients are happy, I'm happy and I enjoy this. You know, it doesn't even feel like work a lot of the time. It's like a hobby. And yeah, just keeping an open mind out there to what comes, you know, because again, like I said, everything comes down to learning. You know, I think that's the best approach to product building, selling, marketing, whatever it may be. Even just life, you know, just. Just be open to it, you know, because you can learn even the littlest nugget from the most random place and apply that, you know, to somewhere else and it can be like a huge lever for business, for life, anything.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:43]:

Yeah, Yeah, I love that. I mean, maybe it's obvious as a founder of a course platform, but I feel like I would not be where I'm at today if I didn't have a similar approach of like, the things that I learned in different industries and different things allowed me to build what Kite's platform is today. And I can't see it happening any other way. I think the experience in those different things is really, really important. And everyone tells you, like, focus, you gotta focus on one thing, but I think especially in the beginning, it's kind of Important that you don't if you haven't learned enough or haven't figured that thing out yet. And like, now I'm really focused on Height's platform. But yeah, if I didn't have a web design agency, if I didn't build web applications, if we didn't build other applications and services that involved having a bunch of other businesses on the platform, all of those things combined led me to be able to build what I built today. And at the very least, it would have been very different and very slow in comparison to get to this point.

Natalie Palmer [00:14:51]:

100% agree. Because even for me, like, my background was in marketing, I studied computer science, I did web design, I did graphic design, you know, all of these things, but somehow it just melted together and, you know, led me to this, you know, so at the base of it, it was like that thirst for knowledge, you know, just. Just being a curious person wanting to learn anything and everything, you know, And I think that is what translates to a good marketer, you know, a good entrepreneur. You need to be open to everything and learn from everywhere, so then you can channel it. But yeah, it took me eight plus years to actually, you know, find something that I actually, I'm certain, yes, this is what I want to do. And this is the only thing, you know. So, yeah, like, sometimes it's a bit rushed.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:40]:

That's the other thing. Because it's not only learning about all those things, but when you gain more experience in these different areas, then you can better find out what you really want to do. And I think you can't. You don't get to have that experience until you've learned and done things for a bit yourself.

Natalie Palmer [00:15:55]:

Exactly. And I don't know who did this quote, but there's this quote, something about you need to substitute experience with knowledge at the same time, you know, so there's always the notion that you can read so many books and do many courses, but nothing beats experience. But at the same time, there's the other side to it, you know, because you can have all this experience and stuff, but you need to know how to piece it together at the same time. So everything that I've done, I know how I piece it together to form some kind of weird puzzle logic. So you know, that I can actually apply and make it applicable and practical. So it's like piecing things together, piecing your experience, your knowledge, and whatever you're learning. So it applies to your ecosystem on whatever you're building or doing at the same time.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:40]:

Yeah, so you've got A really impressive client list. And how did you attract some of those big names initially? Was it using your background at Mindvalley and telling people what you did there or something else?

Natalie Palmer [00:16:56]:

Yeah, so one of the first things I mentioned, right, it's worth of mouth is the most powerful. So the funny thing is as a marketing agency, we do zero marketing. All people just coming to us, spreading word off mountain stuff. And then it comes down to, as I said again, delivering the best product or service possible. From there, people just naturally will be coming to you, right? So if you deliver the best product or service, it's like, think about it this way. If you work with a business, a creator, whoever it may be, they usually know each other, right? For me as an entrepreneur, I know other entrepreneurs and when someone says, oh, I need someone for this or this, immediately I know who to recommend because I enjoy working with this person. They deliver results, whatever it may be, right? So it's the single best way. Now for me, I had that, that background of years of experience.

Natalie Palmer [00:17:50]:

I launched MindValley's subscription product, 0 to 20 million in one year. Now it's $100 million product. It's the only product they sell, cut down from 36 products. So that already was enough to cement my authority, right? So authority is another thing. Authority can be you being a book author or for me, I did that, did a launch and grew a product. For some people it can be speaking on a TED stage. For others it can be, you know, getting really good testimonials or case studies on things they've done. You know, so having that authority element is one of the most important things because whatever you're selling, there's, there's the element of using this is great.

Natalie Palmer [00:18:34]:

But when you can get someone else to say this is great, then it sells for itself. Right? Because human beings listen to other human beings. Now the way to do that, it's scale. What they do these days is of course like influencer marketing and stuff because it is probably the way you can replicate personal recommendations on a large scale. But of course it comes down to, to as I mentioned, just delivering the best product or service possible. And then it spreads from there. It may be slow initially. I mean, I can't say, oh, we had like an extreme of clients and we couldn't handle it and stuff.

Natalie Palmer [00:19:12]:

You know, it's, it's the slowest way, but it's, it's a very secure way. It's, it's like you don't even need to sell, you know, because they come to you for a specific product or service or to solve a problem. So it's not like you going out and saying, hey, work with me, you know, is that they coming to you, which is the best place to be in as well.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:32]:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I want to get into what you did more with Mindvalley, because I think there's probably creators watching or listening where maybe they've got a goal to earn 10k a month or something like that, but they probably weren't thinking, like, I'm gonna get from 0 to 20 million in a year. Like, that's, that's insane. So, yeah, if you could maybe like distill what you think was one fundamental thing that made crazy growth like that possible, what would that be?

Natalie Palmer [00:20:04]:

One thing. It's a little hard to pinpoint one single thing, but I'll give you the strategy on why. Because I said there was 36 products and it cut down to one, right? So Mindvalley is a very large company, right? Nine figures, probably hitting 10. Now, I don't have insider information, so this is just public knowledge. But the thing is, at the time, they wanted to get investment, right? And to get investment, you need to have some predictability in your revenue streams and everything. Now, selling online courses, it's amazing, it's beautiful, right? But when you want to scale a business and take it huge, it becomes a bit blurred because you don't have that predictability. So with transactional revenue, it's like, transactional revenue is like, I pay, I get. Right? That's it.

Natalie Palmer [00:20:53]:

Then we wanted to transition to subscription revenue. Subscription revenue is reoccurring, right? So it's more predictable. Of course, you have things like churn and stuff. Like let's say 100 people sign up. You know, out of that, 70 people may actually renew, but at least you'll get some numbers after some time, right? But with subscription revenue, it's much more predictable, and you can actually lower your price tag and retain customers for a long time. Of course, you have to deal with consistent value with a subscription, but it becomes more predictable and the value of a business goes up. Now, one thing to note is that we started off slow, right? The first year was 20 million and cutting down from 36 products. So selling 36 online courses, you can do that.

Natalie Palmer [00:21:39]:

Each has a funnel, each needs a specific webinar because that was a model we're using at the time. And then we decided, okay, what if we sell one thing which is a subscription, and we put everything into there, we load the ticket and then year on year they would actually repeat, right? So there was monthly, there was yearly, there was different pricing tests. Like I can go on for days on this, right? On how many things. And then testing we do insane, we did insane amount of testing. Like think about it this way, like you have 36 funnels and each funnel has a test that runs for about a week to two weeks, right? So if you multiply that by 52 times, which is one year, like you get something like almost, I don't know, 1800-2000 tests happening per year. So you can imagine the state at which the funnel has gotten to, right? So by this time we have sales pages that convert hide in anything industry wide, but we don't share it publicly because you know, we keep it to ourselves. But the main thing is making that transition from just transactional to subscription. Right? Now what this does is it boosts your predictability so you know what kind of cash flow to expect.

Natalie Palmer [00:22:47]:

You can improve iterate from there, try to retain as much customers, reduce your churn rate, all of this and at the same time you have people actually engage and consuming. Because when you buy something one off, yeah, you can set and forget it, you know, you get access to a course, whatever, but when you have a subscription, you know, you're more incentivized because you know the thing is going to renew and all of that, there's that added pressure, but then there's other elements built into it as well, like community and all of this, right? So if it's not just you, it's other people doing this thing and it's engaging, you're going to stick with it. So just thinking now on a bigger scale, of course it was with the goal at that time to take the company to a billion dollar company, which I, I'm sure is still the goal of that, of that company, right? But coming down to a smaller creator level. For example, we've worked with this creator, 100k Instagram followers, right? And his goal was just to launch a course. But we said, you know, like why just launch a course? Things are small, make a hundred grand. We did 100 grand in one week without the product. Like, like I mentioned earlier, we did the pre product strategy, right? We just had a wait list, said what the product was going to be, they signed up because people really need this, they want this right? Now the thing that we're doing now is beyond what we set out to do initially because it's just thinking bigger, right? Instead of thinking oh I can achieve this in 10 years, ask yourself like how Can I do it in one year? You know, and, and why not aim for that? Because you probably can. You know, there's that realistic sounding goal which is like, yeah, in 10 years I can do a million.

Natalie Palmer [00:24:26]:

Trust me, it can be done in a really compressed time frame. So it's about thinking exponentially instead of linear, you know, and again, nothing beats execution. So once you start doing things, you test, you iterate, it just naturally follows, you know. So for, with this creator now, what we're building out is an entire institute where he trains and certifies people. And then now this is poised to be this year seven figure business, you know, and we launched just a couple months ago with the, with the idea without the product ready, you know, so it's just wrapping your, your mind around that concept of like, like, why can't it be exponential and not linear? You know, this is how everything goes. Because that is what the average person accepts. You know, I, I would accept this, this level of growth because that is comfortable. That is what, you know, I can tell someone and they'll be like, yeah, that, that sounds reasonable, you know, but you have to go with the unreasonable if you want to build something big, you know, like always say like, why not, why not me? Why not this amount of revenue? Why not take it to a million, 10 million, 20 million, 100 million, like what happened there? Right? So it is all possible.

Natalie Palmer [00:25:30]:

It's just a lot of this stuff is how you view it, your mental game, you know.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:38]:

Yeah, I think there's, I think my team thinks this sometimes maybe about me as well, but I think anyone who's an employee has heard something like this from a founder or a boss that they have. Suddenly they say, well, we have to do all this much more. And you wonder why are they just pushing you to do more? But they're realizing and they're thinking that, okay, well what we're doing now, like that's going to keep us with what we're at now. But if we want to get to like 100x what this is, then there's something that we have to do a lot more of in order to, to get a bigger result and bigger outcome. And I think that it's really good to, to try to think about this like you're saying, because the one downside that I feel, I guess kind of bad about for some creators is they don't realize that it is this curve of growth, it's not linear. And if you keep at it long enough, you'll eventually get to this point of success. That's bigger than you ever imagined. But number one, people often quit too fast and they don't reach that point to be able to see that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:47]:

And sometimes it's also because they. They take too long to be able to get themselves to that point where they could make that, just compress that. That whole same curve by thinking of, well, what if we just did this and did more of X or whatever to make that same thing happen faster.

Natalie Palmer [00:27:04]:

Yeah, so it's this perfectionist type of attitude as well. Right. Like, as you mentioned, they kind of take. Take their time and go slow because they want everything to be perfect. But if you have a loyal customer base, if you're solving actual problems and, you know, adding value out there, they won't mind if things break, you know, now and then for the sake of progress, you know, for you to deliver something even better or solve a different problem for them. So sometimes getting that 90% is good enough, you know, if it's something, if that 10% is really gonna hold you back and hold back the growth of the company or the product or the service that you need to put out there. Like, for example, when we were building, when we build now, it still happens. Like, things break.

Natalie Palmer [00:27:53]:

You know, we don't have everything perfected. You know, email sequences, we have people reaching out. But, you know, it's human beings at the end of the day, like, AI isn't running everything just yet, so people are understanding, you know, so it doesn't always take that level of perfecting things to actually make something successful, you know, because if you have that human contact with people, they would understand in the neighborhood of progress, sometimes things break. And. And that is completely fine. You know. Now, as you were saying, from an entrepreneur's perspective, like, for us, we just want to move really fast. Right.

Natalie Palmer [00:28:30]:

And for the team, they may be thinking, oh, wait, no, this needs to be done, this needs to be done. But sometimes, you know, it comes down to prioritization as well. Like, some things may not be 100% necessary and maybe holding things back, you know, so it's just finding those. Those things. So it's like kind of Pareto principle in everything, in how you deliver your product, where you build your product, what needs to go to market, all of these things, you know, so it's finding that sweet spot.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:00]:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I was actually commenting to some other software developer earlier today that they were saying, like, oh, quality is so important. You can't have bugs because you want to have a quality product. That's how you become successful. And I said, well, first of all, like, for my background, I am the product guy. I'm not really the marketer and so I am the perfectionist. I want it all to be perfect.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:21]:

But it's okay to have those bugs and have those mistakes like you're saying, because as long as you're going to go and fix them, then that's the way that you're able to get things out there, get feedback, get this iteration going so you can get the product to that point that it is so incredible and amazing. And if you wait and try to make everything perfect and have the quality product, then maybe you never get it in front of people and then that's the path to just, it just goes and dies because you never get anything happening with it.

Natalie Palmer [00:29:51]:

Exactly. And I have worked with companies like this, right? They're building the software, this platform, all of these things and then it's, it's just going ongoing, months and months, building the perfect thing. And you know, like, all they need to do is just bring something to the market, get actual human beings in there using this thing because it's good enough, you know, already it's going to add value, it's going to impress people, they're going to love it, they're going to enjoy using it. And from there you iterate. But obsessing over this, having this perfect thing, I think that is what stops most people from actually making significant progress, you know, so you don't need to, to be perfect. As I said, it's a human being behind anything at the end of the day, for now. So having, having that understanding and then having your customer base or, you know, audience, whatever it may be, understand that as well and be human about it, it's okay, it's okay to show. I think that makes it even better because then they would love to give feedback and you know, iterate with you if you position it in such a way.

Natalie Palmer [00:30:55]:

So it's, there's no way you can lose this way, you know, as long as you're open and honest and transparent about it. Don't hide things and say, oh, this is the most perfect product. And then, you know, things are broken. You say, hey, we're releasing version one. This is the first version of my course. This is the demo version of my course. I'm just creating this, this product or service or whatever it may be, you know, and just be, be clear about it. And then if they want to be a tester or they want to get in at 50% or the usual price to, to co build this with you, you know, like we have one platform that we recommended that to right now and they're building a platform on parenting, you know, and right now they have Build With Us membership and they're getting people in, but that's what they need.

Natalie Palmer [00:31:43]:

They need members, they need interaction on their community, all of this and they need as much feedback as possible. So this way they're actually leveraging that. People are happy to get access and happy to give feedback. So you know, it's, it's, it's just a win win in that way. And, and then they're completely open and transparent about everything and how they're building and stuff, you know, and as I said before, people are happy when they have to actually co build something because they feel like, wow, I invested my time and effort and energy into this and I think I love seeing this product into the world because I kind of build this too, you know.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:14]:

Exactly. Yeah. People worry that if somebody contacts them about a problem or a bug or whatever, that it's a bad thing. But as long as you go and fix that for them, now you've just created this experience for that customer that they're going to be the one that goes and tells all their friends about you because they just had this great experience. You're like, wow, I'm trying to work on this thing. And then whatever company I contacted them and now they fixed it for me and now they've got a connection with you. Whereas actually if you waited X number of years to perfect your thing, it was just perfect from the start. Then that customer never contacted you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:46]:

They thought, okay, everything's fine. So you can actually create a better experience for them in a way if something goes wrong and then they interact with you about it.

Natalie Palmer [00:32:55]:

Yeah, exactly, 100%. And then at the end of the day you may have just started a relationship there with that customer in terms of like, oh, they can become a lifetime customer after this interaction. Because then you go back to them saying, hey Jenny, thank you so much for sharing this feedback. We actually implemented a fix and you can test it out now. Let us know if it's working fine. You know, like even these, these small interactions, if you're a big company, let's say you have a hundred thousand customer base, just that one interaction, you know, it means something to them because then they know, wow, it's human beings behind there and they actually care, you know. And of course if it's a smaller creator or someone with a smaller audience base, customer base, of course it's going to be really much more potent because you have direct connection with this person and you can, you know, develop this even more, get more feedback from them if they're. And the thing is, when things are broken, sometimes some people just accept it.

Natalie Palmer [00:33:55]:

Right. But the really dedicated ones are the ones who write. And, you know, the people that leave reviews tend to be on both sides of the spectrum. You know, either they hate it or they love it. And sometimes you'll get the ones in between. But these are people that are passionate, whether it's love or hate or, you know, sometimes you get the neutral, but from there, you know, you can develop that into something more.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:16]:

Yeah, yeah. If it helps for anyone listening. Like, what we do is anytime there's a bug, we write down in a list all of the people on that bug ticket of, like, who actually reported that. So when we fix it, we can go contact every single person and say, hey, we fixed it. And we start that conversation back with them. So if you solve it or improve it, go and tell them that you fixed it. And even if they seemed really angry before now, hopefully they're happy. And then go after that and ask them to leave your review because just like you said, those are the ones who are going to go and do that.

Natalie Palmer [00:34:49]:

Exactly, exactly. So it's relationship building. It may not be the most scalable thing, but it's human and it works, it helps. So don't shy away from that. I would say it's the best feedback directly with the person that you're selling to. Like, you can't get better feedback than that, you know?

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:08]:

Yeah, yeah. I want to go back also to what we were talking about with mindvalley. So in their case, like, they're a massive company and you consolidated all these products into the subscription, would you suggest for, like, the individual creator to also have a subscription product, or does it really depend?

Natalie Palmer [00:35:29]:

It completely depends. Like, every offer, every niche is different. You know, it depends on what you're selling. Let's say you have something that takes customers on a journey, like from a beginner level to an advanced level. Right. Whatever niche it may be in. Like, let's say you teach how to play the violin, for example. Now, what you can have there is a product suite of like, five, five courses, let's say that takes you from beginner to advanced.

Natalie Palmer [00:35:59]:

Right. It would make sense to package something like that into a subscription. So that way, you know, they're gonna take, I don't know, maybe one, two years to actually get to that pro level. So it makes sense to actually put Into a subscription. You build out the community in there, have some add ons, you get their interaction, their feedback, see what else you can build from there, right? Rather than just saying, hey, this is beginners violin, this is intermediate and this is professional, right? So that way, like, like I said, they may sign up for beginners, but they may not continue. They are not part of a community, you know, they're not locked in. They don't, they already know I paid for this. So it's there can sit on the shelf.

Natalie Palmer [00:36:40]:

It's like books you, that you buy, you know, so with the subscription, it's, it's something that is always in your mind because you know you're spending money for this. You, you tend to be more likely to use it, right? When you, you have a subscription for Spotify or Netflix or whatever it may be, you use something you use all the time, right? So subscription mentality usually goes along with that, right? You, you tend to be a little more active on it because you know it's something that's going to renew. So that is one case. Now if you sell random stuff, which there are people that do this, it may not make sense because things aren't tied together, right? However, even if it's not something so specific, like as I mentioned in that example, it may be the case where products are related and you can actually design a user journey from, for them, right? So let's say you want to teach someone how to code, right? So you can have a subscription product that helps you learn to code, but then it teaches you how to leverage that to become a freelancer, for example, you know, so you can, you can tie things together. So it takes the coding element into account. It takes learning to start a business, learning to sell, doing your marketing and ads. And so it ties together because it takes them on a journey. So then the subscription makes sense.

Natalie Palmer [00:38:01]:

So they start off learning to code. Then they learn to actually promote their cell phone on platforms like whatever it may be online. And then they learn to sell and pitch. They learn to do ads and actually generate leads and build a funnel. So something like that would make sense. Although it's not strictly coding, it ties together, right? So it makes complete sense. Now as I said, it's case by case. Sometimes this model can work and sometimes it may not because you have customers who may come in for something specific.

Natalie Palmer [00:38:34]:

So one thing I didn't mention, and this is part of the secret sauce, we did have 36 products, right? And one offer. However, 36 plus there's more. We still have well, they still have those 36 plus funnels, although the main difference now is that it sells one product. So if, if there was a product on health and fitness and there was a product on Mindset and there's a product on business, instead of selling those individual products, now it just sells the main subscription. Right? So with that, now you have that flywheel effect. Whereas someone may come in for their health and fitness, but then they see business and they want to go into that because it's part of the subscription. You actually expand them, you know, expand their interests and their desires and that, that actually helps your company in the long term as well. So you can further develop products because there is no end to personal growth and learning and everything.

Natalie Palmer [00:39:33]:

But like I said in the beginning, action beats everything. But you have to keep learning at the same time. But you can't let it work, stop you from actually being practical and taking execution seriously, you know. Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty [00:39:46]:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad to hear all that too because we just did something similar with our own courses and communities that we had these different products, but some of them were not really related. And so for us it was hard to figure out, okay, well, what are we going to pitch? Because if you're just a course creator and you've got this specific result you want to teach people, like, okay, sell them that course. But we have these different things and it's too hard to say like, okay, buy this course or buy that course. So we consolidated it into just this membership plan that you just buy the one thing, you get all of it. And I think it's going to be a lot easier for us to then promote it to potential customers. But I want to talk about one more different thing with you, is that you also worked with Jordan Peterson on the Black Friday campaign for his signature self authoring program and you helped him generate 9 million in just three days. Can you tell us more about that project and like maybe what marketing strategies you implemented there?

Natalie Palmer [00:40:44]:

Yeah, so to be completely transparent, like he has huge authority, he has a list, you know, everything. So the split was somewhere 50, 50. Right. Cold and warm. So it did leverage like a lot of his owned assets, you know, his email list, his Instagram channel, YouTube channels, all these things, Facebook, etc. So everything he owned. However, there was no campaign ever done by the internal team at that time at this level, you know, so one thing that works really well is a dedicated launch campaign specific to seasonality. A launch, whatever it may be, right at this time it was Black Friday.

Natalie Palmer [00:41:32]:

Right. Which is a Time where, where everyone spends. It's a spending season, essentially, it's like Christmas. So everyone on Black Friday, they spend. So they're already in a spending mood, you know, so just giving them the right reason to spend. So crafting your campaign around that. And of course, within this niche of online courses, personal growth, all of this, you just need to kind of tie it to that so you can go out there and spend on, I don't know, clothes and shoes or whatever the average consumer would buy, or you can spend it on something that would actually make your life better. It's an investment into yourself, you know, so that was part of the messaging.

Natalie Palmer [00:42:10]:

Now in terms of the breakdown, it's like how you actually go about communicating. This is important, right? You can't make people feel bad at the same time, but you need to show them like, oh, what's in it for them, right? So it comes down to the value. So you don't actually sell self authoring, you sell the outcome of self authoring, you know, so whether it's knowing yourself better, getting that clarity and that vision in your life, if you're stuck in your career, you, you know, you know what you actually want to do after going through this in depth exercise, you know, so it's always the outcomes that you want to speak about. You never really speak about the product itself. You can get into the, the mechanics and all of this, but you don't say, buy this program because it's great. Right? Now with, with the campaign, you always hit all channels, of course, because, you know, you need several points of contact usually to actually get a conversion, right? No one really buys off the first view of your ad or whatever. And it depends as well as the ticket size on the ticket size. So if your product is less than, let's say 300 bucks, less than 100 bucks, you usually don't need a funnel.

Natalie Palmer [00:43:19]:

If it's a good product and it actually solves a specific problem, then people would actually, you know, opt in more easily if you have that credibility and everything, you know. So for this one specifically, we didn't even have a funnel was direct sales. And you need to give people a reason to buy. So Black Friday one, there's a, there's a campaign. So you get it as that at a discounted rate, right? So if you get something at a discounted rate, of course it won't last forever. So you have a limited time frame to buy. So there's that scarcity element, right, because people can just say, oh, this thing is on sale. But you have no end date, then they're gonna just put it in their bookmarks and forget about it.

Natalie Palmer [00:43:57]:

Right. So you need to have that time sensitive side to it. So if it's not a funnel and it's direct sales and yeah, you just hit every channel. So know email lists, direct on socials, if you have SMS contacts you want to make, make sure people are aware of it, you know. And the way you do that is very important as well. You don't want to be annoying. So the way we do content marketing is, is not just selling, it's always adding value to them. It's like sending an email or doing a post that would be valuable to them.

Natalie Palmer [00:44:29]:

They would read it with word to word from beginning to end, you know, and even if they don't purchase at the end of it, like you're creating a brand for the future that would last 10 years from now, you know, 20 years from however long. So it must be implanting that seed in their mind that okay, whenever this person posts or shares or send an email, it's value that I'm getting so they're happy to open it. It's not just oh, buy this is 50% off. Never ever, ever do we do that, you know, so you have to be very strategic about it. Like even in the ads, some of our ads we saw roas of like I don't X and stuff, you know, like spending 1k on a specific ad and getting like 14k back. It was insane, you know. But of course it won't last forever because our campaign was just a few days, you know, but we maxed out on it and got as much revenue as we could in that time frame. And of course you have to be ethical when you do these things.

Natalie Palmer [00:45:28]:

If you're, see if you said your promo is three days long or five days or seven days, whatever it may be, you have to make sure close at the end or else you're going to lose trust, you know, your brand is going to tank in the perception and that trust from your customers. So that is very important. But yeah, the main thing is the campaign and how you position it because the course is always available, the program is always there, it's on Evergreen, you know, and they are aware of this. But why do they buy? They need a reason to buy. You need to give them that reason. So whether it's an incentive, a specific offer, like some bonus, like there's so many things you can go into, right? Like you can create a reason, any reason to do a promotion, you know, but it's the way you do it, you know, so it comes down to that. So the actual mechanics of how you do a launch, and it's a little hybrid as well. Like, some of you may be familiar with PLF Seek formula, which is the product launch formula from Jeff Walker.

Natalie Palmer [00:46:31]:

It's like OG Internet marketing. But a lot of everything that happens today with product launches has been built on that, you know, even including our strategy. But it's gone and evolved a little bit beyond that. Maybe way, way beyond that, you know.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:46]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's excellent advice. And yeah, the reason is really important. Like, you can have a new. A new feature. Something. Something new that you're offering. Like, that can be a reason. And if.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:00]:

If you don't have, like, any other reason, then that's when you go to like, okay, a discount. And Black Friday again is like the perfect time for that because everyone's expecting a discount. Everyone knows that it's for a limited time. So it's. It's really natural to. To offer something at that time.

Natalie Palmer [00:47:19]:

Yeah, exactly. And it can be anything, you know, like, let's say you're at the office and you guys get a dog at the office. You can say, hey, we got a new dog. This is exactly. This is, you know, this is Sparky on your dog. And that's it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:34]:

Yeah, yeah, you can have, you can have any reason. It can be really simple like that, and, and completely in some ways unrelated and. Yeah, but then if you tie it into a story and say, oh, by the way, like, like, if you want to have this kind of thing too, then we've got a product here. Yeah, I think that's great. Really excellent advice. Really appreciate it. Neil, I've got one more question for you, and that is on the show, I'd like to have every guest ask a question to our audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about, something you want to get everybody thinking about, what would that be?

Natalie Palmer [00:48:14]:

Okay, so one thing I always ask all my clients is if you had to 100x your current goal, what would it take you to get there? Right. No, I'll give you some pointers to help you think on it. Like a little framework. So we always focus on marketing levers, Right. And there's a million things to look at out there. You know, like, there's so many metrics, your value per attendee. If you do webinars, your value per lead, your cpm. Like million million metrics out there.

Natalie Palmer [00:48:53]:

Right. But we look at two things Your customer acquisition costs and your customer lifetime value. One is how much does it cost you to acquire a customer? And the second one is how much would a customer spend with you throughout your entire relationship together? Right? So with those two things, that is like the golden 1%, we call it. You use that as your base. And then you think, okay, how do I 100x this business? So then you think, okay, I need to reduce my customer acquisition cost. I need to increase my customer lifetime value. So, you know, along. Along these lines, you may be thinking like, oh, how do I make 10k a month? You know, but how can you make 100k per month? How can you make 1 million per month? You know, and it may take you not selling a 300 bucks course, but selling something for 10k, you know, one single product.

Natalie Palmer [00:49:47]:

And this is something we do now. Like, initially, one of our clients wanted to sell a 299 product, and now we have him selling a 20k product. You know, a 10k and 20k product. So that initially he was like, whoa, you can do that? But yes, you can, you know, so. So think along these lines. That's a little example for you there on what is possible. But yeah, how do you 100x and work backward from there? Right? It always starts with the North Star metric. And then you work backwards.

Natalie Palmer [00:50:16]:

So don't think linear. Think exponential always, because everyone is thinking linear. For you to make that difference, you always need to be exponential.

Bryan McAnulty [00:50:26]:

Awesome. Love it. Okay, well, Neil, before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Natalie Palmer [00:50:34]:

You can Find me on LinkedIn, my name Neil Atim, or Instagram Neelatim. Like, it's all the same everywhere. Our multiplier website is Multiplier Agency. And yeah, you can just contact me anywhere there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:50:49]:

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Natalie Palmer [00:50:51]:

All right, thank you, Brian.

Bryan McAnulty [00:50:53]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at Creator climb. Com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out The Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9aM US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure. Com. Until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.