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How Nate Grahek Built A 7-Figure Business In Just 2 Years

3/26/2018

Gravy is a proud sponsor of the 7-figure CEO Podcast. This is a podcast dedicated to helping entrepreneurs break through the million dollar barrier facing them in their business. This podcast moves past the ‘theory’ of business and focuses on practical strategies that you can implement right away.

At Gravy, we exist to help entrepreneurs and CEO’s solve the problem of failed payments and credit card declines in their business. We know that this one problem alone costs small businesses billions of dollars nationwide each year, and we want to help. We are passionate about entrepreneurship, and we want to help as many businesses leaders as we possibly can build healthy, thriving businesses that will continue to serve people, solve challenging problems, and provide jobs for years and years to come.

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Today's Guest:

In this episode of The 7-Figure CEO Podcast, Casey sits down with Nate Grahek, CEO and founder of Sticky Albums. Hear how Nate took his hobby and turned it into a profitable business, crossing the 7-figure mark in just two years. Nate talks about the decisions that were most critical to his success, and his biggest wins and failures along the way.

Nate was working in Corporate America and running a small photography business on the side, when he had a ‘lightbulb’ moment. In order to market his business to potential customers Nate created an app that could showcase his work on the go using only his phone. It wasn’t long before Nate’s app drew the attention of other photographers, and in 2012 Sticky Albums was officially in business designing and selling software for photographers worldwide.

Critical Decisions

Find the right business partner, by leveraging your network and finding someone who aligns with your core values.

Time Management

Marketing and getting the word out is worth your time especially early on.
Trying to do support and marketing by yourself does not work. Hiring someone to support customers will allow you to focus on what only you can do.
Don’t be the bottleneck for your top performers.

Hiring

Let employees audition during the hiring process. Hire contractors and treat their project like an audition.
Keep your expectations in check. One hire is not going to solve all of your problems.

Process

Listen to the customers who are actually using your product or service well. That group will give you insight into how best to improve your product and business.
Customers who don’t value their time, won’t value your time.
Recording calls with customers became a productivity hack, and helped to create content for marketing.

Finances

Compounding churn is a problem for software businesses. You can’t fix churn when people are leaving, it’s too late by then.
The way you fix churn is to assist your customer’s during their implementation of your product/service.

Personal Growth

Try to learn from people who have done what you are trying to do, and who have been where you want to be.

Links
www.stickyalbums.com
www.allgravy.io
www.caseygraham.com

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The 7-Figure CEO Podcast: Learn The Keys To Great Networking With Special Guest Stu McLaren

3/19/2018

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Keys To Great Networking

Today's Guest:

In this episode of The 7-Figure CEO Podcast, Casey sits down with Stu McLaren, CEO and founder of Tribe. Stu has taken his talents of leadership and created his business to help people grow their online communities. Listen in to what Stu has to say about giving up your time, promoting your products, knowing your audience, and hiring the best employees.

Stu McLaren helps experts transform their knowledge and influence into recurring revenue by launching, growing, and scaling 7 and 8-figure membership sites.
Stu started a software company in 2004 called WishList Member. In just a few short years this software would become the world’s most popular membership platform for WordPress powering 60,000 online communities and membership sites. Stu sold his interests in WishList Member in 2014 to focus solely on coaching and helping entrepreneurs create, and grow their own lifestyle business.

Stu credits his success to years of cultivating meaningful relationships. Learn Stu’s approach to networking, why it was so impactful on his business, and how it could change the way you approach business networking as well.

Leveraging Yourself

Build on top of the relationships you have built over the years.
Become known for something specific
showcase your expertise
be consistent
Consistently volunteer your time for free to get your foot in the door.
- This will help you build relationships, become known, and showcase your expertise.
Do not ask people about their problems, identify their problems and help find a solution.

Know Your Audience

Know your audience better than they know themselves
Identify their external and internal problems or challenges.
- External: What are they searching for and seeking solutions for.
- Internal: What thoughts are keeping them up at night?
To identify these problems look at what your audience is commenting or asking on social media, blog posts, podcasts etc.
- Once you have identified the issue talk about it.

Hiring

Do not hire the cheapest talent. Instead, hire someone who will help your business grow.
Hire the A level workers, not the B level workers.
- An A level employee will do what they are told and try to find their own solutions before asking others for help.
- A B level employee wants to find the easiest way out, so instead of finding their own solutions they immediately ask for other’s opinions.
Make the hiring process an audition not an interview.
- Before hiring a new employee, give them a small task to do so you get an idea of what type of worker they are.

Product Launch

Be intentional about creating a ton of anticipation early on for your product.
- Build up to specific date of which they can buy and then hit them with something big.
Promote your product because you know it is something that is going to benefit the people you are selling to.
A good idea is to have four major promotions a year that you go all in on each quarter and then a few smaller promotions throughout the year.

Learning

When you are learning you want to take that knowledge or wisdom and then apply it to your business.
You want to try and learn in the fastest and most leveraged way possible.
Stu hires someone whose job it is to learn from courses and then create an in depth two to four page summary about the course.
- This allows you to focus on your business without wasting time.
- This also allows the time you spend reading the course summary to be leveraged towards fitting it into your business.
The best way to learn is to build relationships, spend time with other entrepreneurs, and ask questions.

Links:
http://www.stu.me
http://tribeworkshop.com
https://www.allgravy.io

Thanks For Listening!

We’d love to hear your thoughts:

Leave a note in the comment section below
Share this episode on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter

To help this podcast:

Leave a review on iTunes.
Subscribe on iTunes.

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The Forgotten Sales Funnel That Can Add Big Money To Your Bottom Line

3/15/2018

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Sales Funnels.

We love them, we use them, we constantly optimize them, we can’t imagine business without them. Sales funnels drive our businesses, yet there is a forgotten sales funnel that goes largely unrecognized, and it is killing revenue in subscription-based businesses everywhere.

Did you know that you have a huge sales opportunity that sits at the back of your business? If you own a SaaS company, an information company, or any company that sells subscriptions, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table. Your churn rate will tell you just how much money that really is.

Your churn number is the amount of customers that opt out of your service or product each month. There can be a number of reasons for your customer to take their payment offline, but the majority of payment failures occur because of unintentional cancellations. This happens when a credit card declines. There are over a 100 ways for a credit card to decline. It could be because of insufficient funds, or an expired card, but regardless of the reason this presents a big, big problem for your business. Check out this study done by our friends at Recurly to see where your churn stacks up. The graph below is a quick look at the study Recurly did on Industry churn rates.

10-12% of all credit card transactions fail. Which means your business could be losing 10-12% of your topline revenue each year. If you knew that you could boost your sales by 10%, you would do it without question, right?! Well, that is the kind of opportunity that exists within the forgotten sales funnel.

Most businesses look at churn as a collections company would. They send short, harsh, and sometimes even threatening emails. But that is the wrong approach. You need to treat your churned customers like a marketing & sales opportunity. Here’s why. When your customer realizes that their payment has failed, this payment failure forces them to rethink their purchase, and they have to convince themselves that your product/service is worth their money. If they don’t recognize the value your business is giving them than the payment failure can become an intentional and irreversible cancellation.

So here is how to market the forgotten sales funnel. Here are 4 things you can do to give this part of your subscription-based business the attention it needs.

Communicate The Value Of Your Product/Service: When your customer’s payment fails, your communication to them should remind them of why they bought your product to begin with. Recycle the marketing that you use on the front end, to make sure you get their payment back on-line. What problem are you helping them solve? Why do they need your product or service? Remind them that you are the answer to their problem.
Send Personalized Communication: Automation is great. It helps us do a lot of things, but when it comes to communicating with churned customers, and recovering failed payments it is not the best option. Remember that your churned customer is now rethinking their decision to buy your product/service. The failed payment has forced them to reconsider the value of the subscription you offer. Do you really want to leave that delicate situation to an automated email? You shouldn’t. Personalized communication will help you to open a dialogue with your churned customer who will be far more likely to respond to personalized communication than any automated communication you could send.
Don’t Be Pushy: Failed payments are frustrating. It can choke cash-flow, and be a real inconvenience. But your goal should be to keep this as only an inconvenience and not a permanently lost customer. The latter is worse by far, and can sink your profits. Be empathetic and remember to treat this as a new sales opportunity, instead of having a ‘collections’ mindset.
Make It Easy To Get Back Online: You would never make it difficult or confusing for a lead to become a customer on the front-end of your business. The same principle applies to the back-end of your business as well. Keep it simple for them to renew, or update their credit card. Provide links, accurate payment information, and do as much of the work for them as you possibly can. This will dramatically increase your chances of saving the payment and keeping the customer you worked so hard to acquire.

Changing your mindset and embracing your failed payments as a marketing and sales opportunity will pay off big-time for your business. Learn to see your customer churn as new sales funnel and you will begin to add significant revenue back to your bottom line.

If you would like to learn more about this strategy, or if you think this strategy would be beneficial for your business, we’d love to talk with you about implementation. Book a free strategy call below, and let’s connect!

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How Nate Grahek Built A 7-Figure Business In Just 2 Years

The 7-Figure CEO Podcast: Learn The Keys To Great Networking With Special Guest Stu McLaren

The Forgotten Sales Funnel That Can Add Big Money To Your Bottom Line

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