Consultant Podcast Links and Resources

How to Grow a Specialty | Day 1 interview with Rick Mulready

How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.

Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.

The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.

Joe Sanok: Well, welcome to Session 22. You know, 22 is definitely my lucky number. I’m born on December 22 and you know, when I was 22, I think I just graduated college. I graduated a little bit early and boy, that year was just insane. It was so cool.

Let’s see. I graduated in December of 2000 for my undergrad. I did a double major in Psychology and Comparative Religion and in 2001, oh my gosh. I did just so many cool things. I surprised my grandma with a trip to Paris and we went there for four days like we went to the airport and she didn’t even know where we were going and what else did I do that year?

I went to Nepal for three weeks and Thailand, hiked through the Annapurna region up to Gokyo Ri and went to Haiti that year with my mom. She did a lot of work in a medical community down in Haiti that helped serve underserved people and helped start a micro-financed project down there, went to New Orleans for a year or not a year, a month and worked at a place called Project Lazarus which was for people in the last stages of AIDS and I think that was the year—no I went to Ireland the year before. I mean, that was just like I would save up money and go travel. What a fun year, 22 was.

So, Session 22, here we are, happy Monday morning. I hope you’re doing great. As you can hear, my voice has been a little bit raspy. I’m getting over a cold and so I might be coughing a little bit like I was last week during Pete Sanok’s week. Man, if you didn’t listen to Pete’s week last week, go back and listen to that because so many just great consulting just tips and discoveries and I mean, he was awesome, and he’s my brother.

So, hey, before we get in too far and get into this interview with Rick Mulready, I want to just tell you about this week’s resource. So, this week’s resource is LegalZoom. So, LegalZoom is a just amazing streamlined way to get legal paperwork done. I think back to when my wife was filing for her business. She has a home-based pediatric occupational therapy business called Sprout Therapeutic Services and when she was filing Sprout, I just really kind of learned a little bit more about LegalZoom and I was like, “Oh, you should check it out.” So, she’s just kind of clicking around and then she says, “Can I have the credit card?” And I was like, “I thought you were just like clicking around.” This is like five or ten minutes into like her “Looking into LegalZoom” and she filed her LLC in like 15 minutes. LegalZoom actually caught that in Michigan for professionals that are licensed, you have to be a PLLC, which was great that like we had that kind of legal oversight. They aren’t lawyers, they’re not a law firm but they play one on TV. No, they are super awesome.

So, if you go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com, our resources and sponsors section, you’ll see a link right there that’s going to be the hub for all of our sponsors, for all of our resources, all of that.

I want to tell you about this guy, Rick Mulready. It’s kind of funny because just this morning, I was listening to Pat Flynn’s Ask Pat Show and he asked like everybody—people are calling every day and they’ll say, “Hey. Here’s my question about online business” and Pat will answer it. Somebody had a question about paid traffic through Facebook and you know, I was kind of thinking through as I’m driving like, “Okay. I’m going to be recording Rick’s like kind of intros and stuff” and Pat’s like, “Oh, you definitely want to check out Rick Mulready. That guy is just amazing about Facebook marketing strategies.” If you go to rickmulready.com you can read way more about him, but he is definitely an expert, a guru, a guy that just knows how to do websites and he also has two podcasts. He has the Art of Paid Traffic and Inside Social Media podcasts.

The Art of Paid Traffic is a podcast that just reveals the best paid traffic tips, tactics and strategies for generating leads and sales just to kind of put your business on auto pilot. On the Inside Social Media podcast, he brings kind of inside media from heads of social media, people like Red Bull, Ford, Virgin, Gary Vaynerchuk, people like that he just really kind of learns from and learns from what they’re doing and this guy just knows what he’s talking about.

So, this week is going to be an exciting week. Rick is just kind of gives you so much value. Today, we’re going to be talking all about growing a specialty. Tomorrow’s going to be how to grow a specific audience and then Wednesday, is how to grown an income and Thursday, we just kind of—it’s a wild card day. I ask them whatever I feel like asking them. So, looking forward to hearing what you think about it and yeah, let us know on the blog on becomeaconsultanttoday.com, what you’re thinking and we’d love to connect.

So, without any further ado, I give you Rick Mulready.

All right. Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast. We’re here with Rick Mulready. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Rick.

Rick Mulready: Absolutely, Joseph. I am really glad to be here.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m really impressed with just all the stuff you’re doing especially around teaching people, around paid traffic in Facebook and we’ll get into all that so we’re be talking to Rick all week long but today, we’re diving into how to grow a specialty.

Why don’t we just start with Rick, how did you land on this specialty of paid traffic, of Facebook traffic, all that?

How Rick landed on this specialty of  paid traffic on Facebook

Rick Mulready: That question actually takes me back a long time. It’s kind of an obscure story. So, basically, I’ll keep it kind of short. Basically, I started out in the hockey world after college where I interned for the Washington Capitals hockey team, my senior year in college. And then, a year after I graduated, I ended up and worked for the team. I was in their scouting department for almost five years and then my last year there was there, the team was actually bought by Ted Leonsis, who was one of the very, very early people at AOL and I’d sort of kind of beat my way through as far as I’ve been there with the team a long time and I was sort of looking for something else at that point and when Ted bought the team, I got to know him and I got to know his team at AOL.

I was really interested in the internet world and so I actually ended up going from the Capitals over to AOL and I started off in their advertising operations group, which is at that time was just a very basic group and this was the group that actually got all the advertising that the ad sales team was selling out there. This was the team that was actually getting the ads off on AOL at that time.

I started off there and then within two years, I was running the whole team with one other guy. I spent five years at AOL back in what I’d like to call the Wild West days of the internet, back in 2000.

That was sort of my start in the online ad space. Fast forward till today, I had the time at AOL, I’d spent time at Yahoo, I spent time at Funny or Die, I spent time with a company called Vibrant Media. In 2010 I really became interested in Facebook advertising, simply because the—not only that small businesses were having on Facebook not only to build a community on Facebook and be able to communicate with this you know, really targeted group of people but also to run advertising to them because you could get so targeted there on Facebook.

Coming from that online ads space background, I naturally gravitated towards the advertising side of Facebook and that was in 2010 and I’ve been doing that ever since. I left the corporate world at the end of 2012 to focus full-time on my paid traffic and specifically Facebook ads business. I’ve been in this space a long time and I love it. It’s what I know, and I’ve dealt with pretty much every form of paid traffic or online ads I should say that you can think of, everything from search to contextual to video to you know, banner centered, banner advertising to brand entertainment to Facebook ads and it’s been a great journey. I really feel like it’s just starting right now.

Joe Sanok: That’s awesome. Actually, tomorrow, at the time of this recording is the last day of my full-time job and then I’m going into private practice.

Rick Mulready: Is it really?

Joe Sanok: And consulting full time.

Rick Mulready: Congrats, man. That’s awesome.

Joe Sanok: Thanks. Yeah, it’s been like a 2-year journey of just like kind of growing the income and then it just, every day I’d show up, I’m like losing money by coming here.

Rick Mulready: That’s awesome.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, yeah so on the brink of a total life change.

Rick Mulready: I’d be anxious to hear what your thoughts are when you wake up on Friday morning.

Joe Sanok: Yeah.

Rick Mulready: The day that you don’t have to go to the job.  

Joe Sanok: Well, you know, I’m headed out to a conference in Florida for that like whole next week so I’ll be sitting pool side so it’s a good way to kick it off.

Rick Mulready: Let it go. Nice. I love it. Awesome.

Look at your skill set and grow a specialty out of that

Joe Sanok: So, Rick for people that are just like kind of brainstorming at becoming a consultant and they’re like, “I don’t even know what specialty to go into. Any advice around like looking at their own skill set and then how do you grow a specialty out of that?

Rick Mulready: Yeah. I’ve heard this conversation a lot. I mean, a lot are over the past several years but it seems like a lot recently. The reason that I’m in paid traffic is because that was my background. Like that’s what—I didn’t go necessarily invent something new and it wasn’t something like necessarily following your passions sort of thing although for me though, it is. That is my passion and it’s not—I feel like paid traffic has this such a sort of a “smart me” kind of connotation to it and that’s you know, one of the goals of the podcast is to sort of do away with that and show people how to use paid traffic in a smart way without having to spend a lot of money to do it and how you can automate things to grow your business, but you know, I am passionate about it and so I’m very fortunate in that sense. For people who aren’t really sure what to do or you know, they think that they would like to create some additional freedom in their life and pursuing one of these things is that, I mean, you can’t mention just like what are some of those things that you are good at that you are able to help you, all right, that you were able to help people out with?

You know, what do people come to you for, what kind of questions do people ask you about to help them with? You know, I think that that’s really important to look at because those are the types of things that you can add value to other people and you know, sort of a mindset thing that comes up for people when they start thinking about the types of things that you know, people ask them about or where they might be able to help other people is that well, I know a different—like how I am different than everybody else or you know, my angle isn’t is probably different than such and such person who’s been talking about this. Well, I mean, you’re different just because it’s you. You know, you are different in your personality, in your delivery, how you teach something, how you help other people, your individuality. That’s something that somebody said to me right off the bat because of course, there’s tons of people out there who do Facebook ads for example or teach Facebook ads but you know, my individuality and my personality and the type of or the way that I teach them is my own thing. You know what I mean? So, that separates me right there from other people who are teaching it.

I’d encourage anybody who’s listening who’s not really sure you know, what they want to get into, look at what are those questions that people ask them? Why do people come to them regardless of what it’s for? I mean, it could be for anything. It could be like, I don’t know. Planting flowers in the backyard or something, I don’t know.

Joe Sanok: Great.

Rick Mulready: I mean, if you’re good at something like that, that is the opportunity to teach other people how to do something similar and you can do it in your own unique individual way.  

Joe Sanok: That’s awesome. I just finished at the end of 2014, Sally Hogshead’s book, How the World Sees You and that assessment in branding and marketing and then also the psychology of it like being a counselor like I just love that and so I love that idea of like more of you coming out in your business.

So, Rick, the question I’m going to end with each day is just, what someone could do today to start to grow a specialty?

What you can do today to grow a specialty

Rick Mulready: I think it kind piggybacks off what I was just talking about and that is, really think about it. Just get out, get a piece of paper or Evernote or a Google doc or whatever it might be and just start brainstorming some of those things that you can be you know, a resource for other people for. How are you like, list up the things that you might be able to help somebody with and you know, the other thing, too, is once you do have an idea, put the offer out there to somebody. You know, if you’re just starting from scratch, start helping them for free. You know, offer to help them for free. Get those testimonials in there before you start charging and that is going to help you immensely when you start doing free work for people, really diving into it, really changing people’s lives through what you’re doing and getting those testimonials in return.

So, just really, just if you’re just starting out and don’t really have an idea just get out a piece of paper or like again, Evernote, notebook or Google Doc or whatever and just start brainstorming some things that you might be able to do to help other people and if you do already have an idea, you know, identify a couple of people that you might be able to help for free and offer them your services for free.

Joe Sanok: Awesome. Rick Mulready is going with us all week and tomorrow we’re going to dive into how to build an audience, which is definitely an area that Rick has a few thoughts on. So, we’ll talk to you tomorrow, Rick.

Rick Mulready: Sounds good. I look forward to it.

Joe Sanok: I really love what Rick says at the end there that just think about what people are already coming to talk to you about. So, often I’ll get emails either through Practice of the Practice or Become a Consultant Today from people that just say, “You know, like I’m helping all my friends and I don’t know how to like convert them into becoming people that pay me.”

You know what? Your friends probably are giving you a different gift rather than pay. They’re giving you the gift of what’s your specialty? They’re giving you that of, “here’s the things people care about asking you for” and you know, I found that the hardest people to land in regards to consulting are people in my own hometown because it’s that whole like, “Well, that’s just Joe.” Or “I’ve known Joe since childhood” or “He’s the local guy. I’d rather go to someone from somewhere else.”

I think that the gift that your friends give you and the people that are your kind of close colleagues are that they help you determine what your specialty is. And boy, Rick just did a great job of summarizing that at the end there.

Thanks so much for listening in today. We’re going to be back at you bright and early tomorrow morning. We’re going to try to go live every work day morning at 6:30 a.m. Eastern Standard time just so that man, if you have a morning commute and you want to hear just a little bit of inspiration in the morning on how to become a consultant and you know, maybe you’re ready to leave that full-time job and to start kind of moving towards your own gig, you can get some ideas and you know, maybe mentally brainstorm while you’re stuck in traffic and have a notepad next to you.

You know, that would be fun to hear or you know, maybe take a picture of that and post that on Instagram if you’re parked, not while you’re driving.

So, yeah. Also, don’t forget that the resource today is LegalZoom. You can go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com and you can just learn more about it. Click through. That’ll redirect you through our affiliate link. That’s one way that we help support the website and make sure that this can keep going and pay Mike for doing this editing. Thanks, Mike.

And thanks for letting us into your ears and into your brain. We’ll be back. Catch you tomorrow.

To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.

How to Grow an Audience | Day 2 interview with Rick Mulready

How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.

Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.

The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.

Joe Sanok: Happy Tuesday! I hope you’re doing awesome this morning, and if you’re not listening to this on a Tuesday, way to like catch up and go back and listen through. All week, we are talking with Rick Mulready, who is just the guru of paid traffic, and teaching us about how do you effectively use things like Facebook or LinkedIn or other ways to build an audience, and today, that’s all that we’re talking with Rick about.

This week, our resource of the week is LegalZoom. I’ve used LegalZoom with my wife filing her legal paperwork. I have a PLLC. Having an LLC is a really smart way to just protect yourself so that if you get sued if something happens that your own personal assets are protected. And of course, talk to an attorney in your own State just to make sure that kind of everything’s in line, but it’s a great way if you know that you need to file something just like basic paperwork, copyrights, trademarks, those sorts of things. LegalZoom is a very cost-effective way to do that. So go over to becomeaconsultanttoday.com and go to our resources and sponsors section and you will see that link right there. Thanks so much for doing that.

So today, we’ve got Rick Mulready. Yesterday, he talked to us all about how to grow a specialty, and today, it’s all about how to grow an audience. So without any further ado, I give you Mr. Rick Mulready.

Rick Mulready, welcome back to the show!

Rick Mulready: Thanks, man! I’m glad to be here. I love doing this sort of daily thing during the week.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, yeah, it’s awesome, and yesterday, we talked all about building a specialty, so many great value. I don’t want to say value bombs because so many people say value bombs, and I want to like not say that, but just so much value that you brought yesterday.

So today, we’re talking about growing an audience, and this is like with your podcast, the art of paid traffic, and just your website, you’re just doing so much around this, and so I feel like we could do like a three-week series on this topic alone. So I’m going to let you kind of drill into the most important things because I know we only have a little bit of time with you today.

Rick talks about growing an audience

Rick Mulready: Sure. I would say the two biggest things for me are the podcast and also Facebook ads. I’ll start off with the podcast. My business really changed when I launched my first podcast, which is called “Inside Social Media”. It’s still available out there, but I am now focusing on the Art of Paid Traffic, which launched in early January here of 2015. But I noticed that things really took off, and the community really started to build when I launched Inside Social Media. That sort of “put me on the map”, and people started reaching out, and that just really accelerated things from a community-building standpoint.

Joe Sanok: I 100% agree, like when I launched my Practice of the Practice Podcast, which is aimed at counselors in private practice, and now with the How to Become a Consultant Podcast, it’s like it gives you such a great platform to reach out to people that you never would be able to reach out to also.

Rick Mulready: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and think of it too, like iTunes is — I don’t know what number it is, but one of the top search engines in the entire world, when you have a show on there and on Stitcher, if you’re an Android user, I mean, so many different people, it opens up the opportunity for people to find you, I mean, immensely. So it’s a great opportunity to start building that community.

The opportunity of growing an audience through podcasting

Joe Sanok: I think it was Pat Flynn who was talking about how there’s 500,000,000 active blogs, but there’s only 500,000 podcasts.

Rick Mulready: Yeah, exactly.

Joe Sanok: I don’t know if those numbers are exact right now, but yeah, I mean, there’s just not a ton of people doing podcasting in specific categories, too.

What credibility and authority building can do

Rick Mulready: Yeah. And consider that with every new car that’s coming out now, they have the podcasting platform right in the dashboard there. I mean, the ability to be found for your show is awesome now. So that, combined with running Facebook ads, just the ability to position yourself as an authority, just be seen, I can’t tell you how many people I ran into where they’re like, “Dude, I saw your ads the other day,” because I run ads very consistently. I have people tell me that all the time that they saw my ads, and maybe they’re not doing anything with it, but that’s still adding — that’s still credibility, that’s still authority building when people are seeing me over and over and over. That’s a longer discussion as far as how that could be a bad thing, but from a branding standpoint, that’s certainly really good, and that’s all part of the whole community building.

So if you’re sending people from your Facebook ad back to your website and you’re building your email list, and then you’re able to communicate with those people on your email list. I mean, you’re building a community that way. You can do it very quickly.

Joe Sanok: Well, yeah. Let’s go a little deeper into that. What are some of the like best practices for say Facebook advertising? Things that if you’re going to start and you haven’t done it before, like you have to know these three or five or — what are the things everybody kind of needs to know before they get going and start giving Facebook their money?

Best practices for Facebook advertising

Rick Mulready: Yeah, for sure. So I’d say let’s do top three things. So number one is, have a really clear objective on what you want to do. And that sounds so obvious and kind of like, “Yeah, duh, Rick,” but I can’t tell you how many conversations I have with people who are doing Facebook ads already, and they’re into it, and maybe they’re having some challenges, or they’re looking for some advice of how to improve things. My first question, without a doubt, is going to be, “Why are you doing Facebook ads in the first place? What’s your objective,” and I hear from so many people, they say, “Well, my friends are doing it and they’re seeing good results, and so I figured out I need to be doing it for my business.” That’s a terrible reason.

Joe Sanok: Right.

Rick Mulready: Like I love the fact that you want to be doing that, but at the same time is you really need to have a clear objective. So meaning like, I want to sell this product or service, or I want to fill this webinar, or I want to bring these many people into my business this weekend during a sale, or whatever it might be, is just be really clear of what your objective is.

Joe Sanok: Like “brand awareness” isn’t a good idea to just do Facebook ads.

Rick Mulready: Right. I mean, it could be, it could be, but yes, exactly. Just be really clear of what your objective is.

Joe Sanok: Okay. So after that — go ahead.

Rick Mulready: Number two is that have a strategy for it. So now that you know what your objective is or your goal is, how are you going to achieve that? And what I mean by that is, generally, on Facebook, the best strategy that works with Facebook ads is because it’s very different from Google, for example, where you’re physically searching, somebody’s typing something in, searching for something that they’re interested in, that’s not the case on Facebook. Facebook is more of people there that share with their friends and family and share updates and talk with one another. You have to get their attention as an advertiser, and this sounds like a negative word, but entice them to click on your ad and give them value. So generally, the best thing that works on Facebook is to give them something of value that is really going to help them in exchange for their email address and then build that relationship with those people through email, so there, your email follow-up sequence.

Another good strategy that’s working extremely well right now is to send people from Facebook with your ads to a blog post or some form of content, and then retarget them, and that’s a whole [7:50], but retarget them with a relevant offer of some kind, whether that’s an opt-in or whether that’s a sale of some sort.

So being clear on what your strategy is, are you going to do a webinar? Are you going to do a discount coupon? Are you going to do a discount code? Are you going to have a cheat sheet, a video series, but whatever it might be — so once you do your objective in step one, step two is, what does your strategy look like? What are you going to do to get there? And then the third step, and that is be really clear on who your target audience is. I mean, the beauty of Facebook ads is that you can get so targeted with your ads. There’s over 1.3 billion on Facebook; three quarters of whom are on Facebook every single day. So your target audience is there. It’s just a matter of being really clear on who your target is so that you can target them with your ads.

So that’s it. Those are the top three things.

Joe Sanok: Awesome! And so what’s something that someone could do today to build an audience? Just like any one thing that they could just take action on today?

Take action to build an audience today

Rick Mulready: Brainstorm who your exact target audience is. Again, write down, like I mentioned yesterday, with as far as action items that you could right now. Get out that piece of paper and get out Evernote. Get out Google Drive or whatever it might be and just start brainstorming who your exact target audience is and should be for your business, and then start listing out all the different Facebook fan pages, the people who are in your space or competitors or whoever it might be. That’s going to give you a list from which to work when you eventually start targeting your ads to use as your target audiences. Now, this is in addition to your email list, and again, retargeting your Facebook fans that you can do — but just start brainstorming a list of potential targets.

Joe Sanok: Awesome! Rick Mulready, we’re going to be talking with him more tomorrow about how to grow an income. Thanks a lot for being on the How to Become a Consultant Podcast.

Rick Mulready: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Joe Sanok: I love what Rick said at the end there, where he gave his top three things to do with paid advertising. I just want to like reiterate that, that have a clear objective. I mean, how smart is that? So often, we’re just like, “Oh, you know? I’m going to just do social media for this reason.” And if you don’t have a clear objective, you don’t have a clear outcome you’re looking for, KPI’s as we sometimes talk about Key Performance Indicators, how do you know what success is? How do you know where to spend your money? You’re just kind of throwing it to the wind versus “Here’s the objective I want. I want to get new paying clients that do X, Y, and Z.” And then second, have a strategy, so giving value in exchange for email, whether that’s a webinar or whether that’s — he talked about an automated email sequence. I use AWeber. My affiliate link for that is practiceofthepractice.com/aweber, and there’s one B in AWeber, so A-W-E-B-E-R. They’re just so awesome. It integrates great with PayPal if you ever do a paid membership subscription.

And then third, clear on your target. There are so many people on Facebook that if you’re going to pay for that advertising, make sure that you’re clear on the target.

So Rick Mulready is with us all week long, and tomorrow, we’re going to be talking about how to grow an income. So again, if you’re looking for legal help, LegalZoom is awesome. Just go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com. That’s where we have all of our resources and sponsors and people that we support and have supported us.

So thanks again for letting us into your ears and into your brain. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

To discover more about how to grow a specialty audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.

How to Grow an Income | Day 3 interview with Rick Mulready

How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.

Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.

The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.

Joe Sanok: Well, welcome to Session 24. Oh my gosh! Twenty-four episodes in. This has been so fun to be doing. I just love it, because you know, when you launch a podcast, it gives you a great excuse to talk to people you really wouldn’t have a reason to talk to. I mean, I got to sit down with Rick Mulready, like “The Rick Mulready” for 30 minutes and just pick his brain about whatever I wanted for my podcast. And I’ve learned so much, and you know, whether that’s a podcast or a blog post you’re doing, think about who are those top influencers that you just would love to talk to, you’d love to pick their brain. I mean, it’s just crazy. I got to sit down with Pat Flynn and with John Lee Dumas, Chris Ducker, Pete Sanok, I mean, my brother. He actually called me back. No, I’m just kidding. He lives on the West Coast, as you guys probably learned last week, and so sometimes our time zone differences don’t align with one another. But it’s so good to like talk to him and to have an excuse to talk business, and now, Rick Mulready.

And so when you have a platform, as Michael Hyatt calls it, when you have a hub of just information and that’s your maybe consulting website, you have a great excuse to interview people or to at least try to interview people that normally, you wouldn’t get to pick their brains, and then they get to kind of pitch their product and to soft sell to your audience and it’s just a win across the board, so don’t go slow.

I guess that’s my big piece of advice as we talk more with Rick today. Don’t go slow because honestly, like when I was doing these interviews, like I didn’t know very much about consulting. I was doing consulting in the private practice world, but man, I’m just expanding my own horizons by discovering with you from these people what it is that’s really effective in the field of consulting.

You know, there’s times I fumble, there’s times I say dumb things. I leave it in here so that you hear that I’m just a normal everyday guy, and I want you to feel like, “You know what? I can do this, too. If Joe Sanok, this random guy in Traverse City, Michigan, can do this, then I can do it, too.” So I hope that’s what you get out of this. I hope that you see that if I can do it, if I can get things going, that really, you can, too.

So today, we’re talking with Rick Mulready, and I don’t remember if I talked about the resource of day. The resource today is LegalZoom. I use LegalZoom for my legal stuff. It’s super awesome. Go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com for that resource. Sorry. I don’t remember if I said that or not.

Anyway, so we’re talking with Rick Mulready today. I’m just so excited about it. I forgot to do what I’m supposed to do at the beginning, and that’s to tell you about resources and sponsors.

So Rick’s talking to us all about paid traffic, how to use paid traffic to get new clients today. He talks about conversion and how to actually make the money. It’s one thing to have a specialty. It’s another thing to grow an audience, but if you have that and it doesn’t give you any money, that’s called a hobby. So this is where it turns from a hobby into a profession, into making money, into a business. So Rick’s going to share with us some amazing kind of secrets and discoveries that he’s found to just fast forward your ability to grow as a consultant. So without any further ado, I give you Rick Mulready.

Rick Mulready, welcome back to the program.

Rick Mulready: Thanks for having me. This is fun.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. Yeah. We’re doing rapid fire today. So today is how do you grow an income? So let’s talk about — yesterday, we talked a little bit about kind of having that ideal audience that go to your blog post or go to whatever your main objective is, and if you didn’t listen to that yesterday, go back and listen to that before you listen to Rick right now. But what are some strategies around how to then convert into actual customers, because I think that’s an area that a lot of people don’t know what to do.

Facebook ads and converting to actual customers

Rick Mulready: Yeah, for sure. So we talked about yesterday with the Facebook ads, a strategy as being clear, number one, step number one is being clear in your strategy. Number two — or I should say, being clear on your objective and your goals. Step number two, being clear on what that strategy is, and then number three, that target audience.

So once you are clear on all of those things and you start running some Facebook ads, the idea is — and I mentioned this yesterday, is to get people onto your email list so that you can build a relationship with them, because again, those people who are on Facebook that you’re trying to reach are very different from a Google user, for example. So Google users, you’re physically typing something in, you want to know more about something, whereas on Facebook, people are there with a different mindset. They’re there to share with their friends and family and so forth.

So you need to build a relationship with those people before they’re going to buy from you. So the idea is to get them onto your email list by giving them something of great value so they give you their email address, you develop relationship with them, via email series, and you want to be developing the whole know, like, and trust factor with them to get to start to build a relationship with them. You want to add value to them and make sure that they understand that you are an authority in whatever niche that you’re in, and then you can present that offer. So whether that’s a product or service or whatever it might be, they’ve taken the time and they’ve gone through your emails at that point to get to know you more and then they’re more likely to buy from you, and they become “a warmer lead” as opposed to somebody just off of a Facebook ad who doesn’t even know you, presenting them with an offer at that time. It’s much harder to sell.

Joe Sanok: So are there tools that you really like to use that can help with that process?

Helpful tools you can use

Rick Mulready: Yeah. I’m a huge fan of tools like LeadPages, Short Stack. These are landing page creation tools that allow you to create landing pages really, really quickly. They have templates in there that you can use that are really highly converting that you can design in a matter of minutes. So that stuff. It just makes it such a no-brainer to be able to set this stuff up and then deliver products accordingly. You do need to have an email service provider at some sort, whether it’s MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse. I use Infusionsoft, Ontraport. So you do have to have some sort of email service set-up as well.

And you know what? If you’re just starting out, you don’t have to spend any money with, that MailChimp is free up until I think like I don’t know, 2,000 users or something like that, so that certainly shouldn’t be an obstacle for you, but yeah. I’d say those are two main things. You have to have the ability to deliver email and then also collect those email addresses as well, and that’s where tools like LeadPages or Short Stack come in.

Joe Sanok: Awesome! So then, you get people on the email list, what strategies do you recommend in regards to how to take them from like a warm-ish lead to actually becoming a paying client?

Converting from your email list into getting paying clients

Rick Mulready: Yeah. It’s all in that, you need to let them know who you are and tell your story over that email series. So whether that is within — I would say within the first couple of emails that you’re delivering to them, share your story. Let them know who you are and where you came from and how you became the authority in that space.

We talked about this on our first day together, what differentiates you within that niche, so tell that story, and then also, give them value. Add value to them and help them in any way that you possibly can, and when you provide that value and they also can connect with you and learn more about you, they’re more likely to trust you, they’re more likely to feel connected to you, and so that when you present that offer to them, you get to sell to them, and that’s when they’re more likely to buy from you.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, that’s such good advice, and I think it’s so great that we live in a time when like providing good value and being nice to people, like you can make a living off of that rather than maybe some of the ways of the past that business people were seen. So that’s awesome.

Rick Mulready: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. It’s a great time to live. Maybe one — just like takeaway in regards to what people can do to start to grow an income as a consultant. Like what’s one thing that everybody could start doing today?

Today’s takeaway to grow an income as a consultant

Rick Mulready: I think — and I’m not actually going to answer from a Facebook ads perspective. I’m going to say sort of like what we talked about on the first day together here this week, where find somebody if you’re just starting out. Find somebody that you could help for free, that you can offer your services to for free, and that, in exchange for your help, you’re going to get a testimonial, maybe a referral to somebody else who will start paying you.

So I think that’s an integral first step that can kind of get you moving forward, is to offer your services for free in exchange for that testimonial and maybe some help going forward.

Joe Sanok: I love that idea. I think that that’s going to build some really quick credibility for people.

Rick Mulready: Yeah, for sure.

Joe Sanok: Thank you so much for that. So tomorrow, we’re going to be talking more with Rick and wrapping up the week, so chat with you tomorrow.

Rick Mulready: Sounds good. I’ll look forward to it.

Joe Sanok: I love what Rick said there at the end to just help somebody out for free. It kind of connects with Monday how we talked about when you’re growing a specialty, one of the best gifts your friends can give you is to help you determine what are you really good at? So what are the things that they’re coming to you about, and how could you eventually monetize that? I know that when I first started consulting, there was just a handful of people that they would just ask me questions. I kind of fumbled through the consulting. I’d say, “Oh yeah, you buy my contract for this, for counselors, and then I’ll give you a half-hour of consulting free.” There are so many ways to just start to slowly discover who you are as a consultant, and maybe not even slowly, because that’s the whole thing that we’re talking about, is by learning from these experts you can do it actually quicker.

But when you’re first kind of discovering your specialty, rather than invest a ton of time into here is my exact specialty I’m going to do, it’s a great way to kind of test the market and see what people will eventually pay for if you can get some testimonials from people that you’re doing it for free or super cheap. A great way to get started. Thanks, Rick, for that advice.

Again, the resource of the week is LegalZoom. If you’re filing any legal paper work at all, check them out. Go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com. You’ll see our sponsors and resources section, and there’s a link to LegalZoom right there, and it would be awesome if you use that affiliate link. That’s one way that we help monetize this podcast and website, and it’s also going to help you out a lot. It’s super fast, really quick way to get legal paperwork filed, and sometimes, you may want to also just check with an attorney in your own State, but that’s just going to be a much quicker and cheaper conversation if you already have that legal paperwork filed through LegalZoom.

So thanks a lot for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Tomorrow, we’re doing wild card day with Rick, where I just get to ask him anything that I want. And so looking forward to that, and I will talk at you tomorrow morning.

That sounds so weird. Like talk at you? No. that’s just like condescending, like you’re a part of this community. I’m glad you’re listening. You’re letting me inside of your eardrums and into your brain. Talk at you is just bad, Joe. Bad, Joe.

All right, anyway, enough of that silliness. Talk to you tomorrow.

To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.

How to automate Facebook ads | Day 4 interview with Rick Mulready

How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.

Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.

The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.

Joe Sanok: Welcome to Session 25! How are you doing today? I hope your morning is going great. I just finished my cup of coffee. I say cup as if it was one single cup, but I had a cup of coffee with my four-year-old daughter while she was watching a little bit of Netflix this morning. She jumped into bed and snuggled for like half an hour, which like never happens. She gave me a little kiss on the cheek and said, “I love you daddy.” It was like the best morning ever. Oh my gosh! Like if you have kids, you know how rare it is. It’s amazing how quickly they grow up and how quickly they just want their independence, and it was just one of those very special mornings. And then my second cup of coffee was while I was recording here.

So — man! It’s been a power week with Rick Mulready. Before I get into that, the resource I’ve been talking about this week has been LegalZoom. LegalZoom is, in my opinion, the best way to file your LLC or your PLLC paperwork in your State. It’s super quick. A great cost-effective way to file legal paperwork. The best way to use our affiliate link for that is to go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com. All sorts of other resources there for whatever you’re looking for, and it’s just a great resource.

Also, I don’t think I have said in the past. I’m so sorry about that, but if you’re interested in the show notes, the best way to get that is go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com and just click on the person’s face from the week that you’re interested in. So like if you wanted to go to Pat Flynn’s week, we’ll have the transcript there. We’ll have links that we talked about. We’ll have some of the resources. We’ll try to get everything we talked about through that week all inside of that person’s face. So click on Pat Flynn’s face or John Lee Dumas’ or Chris Ducker or Rick Mulready or Pete Sanok, or whoever in the future it is that you’re interested. That whole week’s show notes will be inside of their face. So you click there and it will redirect you.

So today, we’re just chatting with Rick Mulready. I’m going to help you discover and me discover a little bit more about podcasting, because he has two podcasts and will talk a lot about that today. You’re going to discover some super awesome tips around that. So the last day with Mr. Rick Mulready.

Rick Mulready, welcome back to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast!

Rick Mulready: Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. It’s been a power week. Monday, we talked with you all about growing an audience — oh, no. That was Tuesday. Monday was — like went so fast that it all blends together. So Monday was how to grow a specialty, Tuesday, build an audience. Yesterday, we talked about growing an income, and today, it’s just like what haven’t we covered, because I know that you are a wealth of information, and I’m sure that we could go on a lot of different directions, but tell me a little bit more about The Art of Paid Traffic, your podcast, and then maybe we can springboard off of that a little bit.

Rick’s The Art of Paid Traffic Podcast

Rick Mulready: Yeah, for sure. So the podcast is designed to kind of — it’s more for the person who has developed a little bit of a community, been doing this for a little while now wants to really grow their business and automate things, automate leads and sales in their business, so they’re kind of established, but yet, they don’t really know all the opportunities out there or maybe the intricacies. Maybe they know what the opportunities are, but they don’t necessarily know the tactics and strategies that are really successful with different forms of paid traffic.

So the idea is to kind of share strategies from everything; from Facebook ads to YouTube ads to copyrighting to retargeting to native advertising — I mean, every aspect of paid traffic that you can think of, we cover it in the show, and it’s a combination of interviews. I bring on experts in other fields or other strategies that I’m not necessarily using. I do solo shows, I do Q&A episodes. In addition, I also talk about my journey as I learn other forms of paid traffic for my own business. So Facebook ads are my thing, but I’ve not used YouTube ads yet, for example.

So I’m going to be talking about my experience with using YouTube ads to grow my own business and get more leads and sales from that, and what did I learn, what works, what didn’t work? So it’s a ton of fun. I love, love doing it, and I’m learning so much as I’m doing these interviews myself, and the feedback on it has been great so far.

Joe Sanok: Well, there’s just so much to learn around paid advertising because you don’t want to just like throw money at the wind because it’s really easy to quickly spend money in paid advertising if you don’t have a focus.

Rick Mulready: Yeah, exactly.

Joe Sanok: And so to have a resource like that that could kind of guide you through that, that’s just great. So you said automation. That’s something I keep hearing quite a bit as I interview people. Tell me a little bit of some strategies around automation. I know we talked already about email lists, about kind of automating the advertising. What other forms of automation do you recommend?

Some strategies around automation

Rick Mulready: Well, you know [5:01] to Facebook ads and how to automate your Facebook ads so that you are bringing in at least in sales every single day. And my goal — when I’m teaching people, when I have people in my courses, my goal, especially with my flagship training, is to get people to a point with their Facebook ads so that they can come to the beginning of the month, for example, and they know exactly or they can very, very accurately predict how much revenue they’re going to make that coming month. And they can do that from their Facebook ads because they know, if I’m spending this amount of money on my Facebook ads, this is how much revenue I’m bringing in from my ads every single day.

And so that is a huge form of automation that I look at and I love to teach people how to be able to get more leads and sales on automated basis through Facebook ads. When I think of automation for my business, the other thing that — I love tools like IFTT, If This Then That. That’s a huge help in just kind of playing around with that. That can be a huge wormhole that you —

Joe Sanok: What’s one recipe that you really like in that, because I love that too.

Rick Mulready: Well, I mean, this simple one, what I actually just set it up this weekend. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out. But when I put like a podcasting file, for example, into Dropbox, I want the email to go to my VA immediately and right away, like that’s automated.

Joe Sanok: Oh my gosh! Like I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. That’s awesome.

Rick Mulready: Yes. It sounds so simple, but yeah. I didn’t even do it until this week.

Joe Sanok: Wow!

Rick Mulready: Yeah. So it is something as simple as that and it’s great. The other automation too that really comes into play for me is with Infusionsoft. I mean, the opportunities that exist in a platform like that are amazing, and I just [6:48] I’m on month five now, and my learning curve is still steep. I mean, the power of what you can do as far as automating everything with a platform like that is great.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. Well, Rick Mulready, thank you so much for being on the How to Become a Consultant Podcast. How can people get a hold of you if they want to just learn more about what you’re doing?

Rick Mulready: The best thing to do is jump on the email list, [email protected]. You could hop on the -mail list there and that’s the best way to be kept up on things. Also, check out the Art of Paid Traffic Podcast. So that’s on iTunes, so just put that on the search bar. Stitcher if you’re an Android user. So yeah, a lot of fun. I’d love to have people come over and listen.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, and we’ll link to that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Rick, for being on the show, and have an awesome day.

Rick Mulready: You too, man. Thanks a lot.

Joe Sanok: For me, it was just so good to hear Rick talk about automation and to how do you automate your business, because for me, something I’m always seeking to do, I tend to do one thing at a time and I try to do it really well into completion rather than have a whole bunch of kind of things going on at once. So for example, in 2012, that’s when I launched the blog Practice of the Practice. It was aimed at counselors and private practice. I did that mostly as a blog. When I had time to do it on the side from my full-time job. 2013, I launched the Practice of the Practice Podcast and I launched a few other smaller products. 2014, I amped that up to be doing the podcast every single week. So a huge gain; some traffic and income. You can watch how in early 2014 through my monthly income report, I was making four figures a month between $7,000 and $8,000, and then in early 2014, it was when I had my first five-figure month, and then most months after that have been five-figure months. And so I’m approaching at this time the $20,000 mark. I think June of 2015, I’m pretty sure I’m going to pass the $20,000 in one month mark, and you can kind of track that journey all the way from the very beginning of Practice of the Practice.

And so each step, I try to do one thing really well. So like this podcast, I’ve been recording these interviews. My very first interview was with Pat Flynn, and that was in November of 2014 that I did that interview with him. And so I’ve been gathering content because I wanted to make sure that I had a ton of content and was just roaring to go in that, especially first eight weeks on iTunes to get that new and noteworthy.

So you’ll see that sometimes, just doing one thing at a time really well is kind of the key. Lastly, I would love for you to go to iTunes and do a review on there. It’s a great way to help us get new audience members; new people that want to hear this podcast. If you’re listening now, you have probably committed to growing with me, and I really appreciate that. So thank you so much for doing that, and thank you for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Tomorrow, I’m going to be taking listener questions, and that’s going to come either through our SpeakPipe widget, which you can do right on becomeaconsultanttoday.com. You can leave me a voicemail there, also on the Facebook group, and then sometimes like the emails that I’ll read as well.

And so it’s just an awesome way to just kind of connect with you, hear your voices, and then directly answer the questions that you’re struggling with as you’re growing. So tomorrow, we’re going to have a listener question from Michael, and I just can’t wait to talk with you guys more as you continue to grow.

Thanks a lot. Have a great day and I’ll chat with you tomorrow.

To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.

How to set rates and get more done

How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.

Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.

The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.

Joe Sanok: Well, hello! This is Session 26. I’m so glad that you are here. I hope your week is wrapping up well. Happy Friday! If you’re listening to this one, it goes live. If not, then happy weekend while you’re mowing the lawn, happy day while you’re just kind of hanging out or doing dishes or getting a pedicure, or whatever it is that you do while you listen to this. I hope it’s going awesome.

Well, today, I’m going to have a question that was posted on the private Facebook group, and there’s a link to that Facebook group. If you joined the email list, you’ll get an invite to join that. So you can join that email at becomeaconsultanttoday.com, and we’d love to just connect with you there on Facebook more.

And so Rebecca had asked the question all about, “How do you set rates as a consultant? How do you figure that out?” and I was actually in the car on the way to Mumford & Sons. My wife and I and our nine-month daughter, we’re headed down to that, and it was just one of those moments where I’m like, “You know what? This is just a great question,” and I want to answer it now. So I pulled up my phone and I recorded an answer right there in the car with my baby girl in the background and my wife, and so I actually thought that I would play that audio for you to just show you that you don’t have to be perfect. Like you can just pull out your phone, answer a question from your audience, and then build tremendous value.

And then after that, I’m going to read to you some of the comments the people said afterwards, because I think it’s important to just show how often times just moving quickly and creating good content and not having it be super polished is more important than having things that are polished but take forever to get out.

So that question was, “How do you set rates as a consultant?” and I’m going to play my video I posted to the private Facebook group.

Hey, Rebecca! Great question on how to become a consultant on the Facebook page. It’s me, Joe, from becomeaconsultanttoday.com. I’m here with my wife, Christina, say hi to everybody.

Christina Sanok: Hi!

How to set your rates as a consultant

Joe Sanok: We’re headed down to Mumford & Sons, and I just wanted to answer your question about how to set your rates real quick. So one thing to think of is the value that you bring. And so I’m not sure who you’re specifically consulting with. But — you can hear my daughter at the back. She’s awake at the back. You can see her little feet right there.

Anyway, so imagine I’m consulting with you, and you are doing consulting on how to become a consultant. I would think about, “Okay, how much is Rebecca going to be charging her clients?” So say you’re going to see people at $400 an hour as a consultant, and that’s going to be kind of the target that you do, and so I save you 10 hours of time in researching for every hour we spend together. So 10 hours times $400, that’s quite a bit of money that my hour is worth. Now, I’m not going to charge you $4,000 for that — sorry.

So now, you’re charging for that time that amount, but it at least gives you a benchmark. So I would start there. Also, when you’re looking at — sorry. Also, when you’re looking at sending prices, think about what add-ons you can give to add values. Those can be PDFs. They can be website evaluations. They can be a SWOT analysis, looking at someone’s KPI’s or Key Performance Indicators, to give them some extra value that you could charge for. So then, when you’re setting your price as you want to set how many hours you put in to creating that product and not just $9.95 for that product, but you might have some worksheets that are going to — typically, you sell in your website for $145, and then maybe your SWOT, you sell for $900, and then 10 hours of your time is this much.

So that’s going to give you kind of a package that you make for that person. And then usually, what I’ll do is I’ll say, based on what you’ve told me as to your goals as a person I’m going to be consulting with, it sounds like I would recommend us meeting two times a month, for two months and then once a month after that with a four-month minimum commitment, so that would be a total of six times that we’re meeting.

That would usually be this many dollars. Also, we’ll do the SWOT, I’ve also got this other e-product that I usually sell for this much money, and so that whole package would typically be, let’s just — for the sake of the numbers, would be typically four grand for four months or $4,000 a month. So your investment, let’s have that be $755 a month or $745, or whatever you do. So you give them a discount because you know that once you get that momentum with somebody, it’s not going to take as much time outside of that individual consulting.

So that’s a great start for you, hopefully. If that’s not enough, by all means, send me an email. Feel free to check out becomeaconsultanttoday.com. I have a few articles there as well, and thanks a lot for the question. Have a good one. Bye.

Using and re-using content

So that’s how you do it. That’s also a great way and a demonstration of kind of reusing content. So if you’ve created awesome content, find new ways to use it and share it, because you probably are building an archive of great blog posts that you could turn into a mini E-book or a giveaway or a PDF, or you may have transcriptions of podcasts, or you may have — I mean, there’s just so many ways that you can use content again.

And so this small community of a few hundred people on Facebook got to see this video, but you, the listener, didn’t get to. So I just want to read a couple of the comments because there were some really great comments after this. Kahleen wrote, “Very helpful.” Allison wrote, “Joe, I love that you just whip out the phone and get it done.” Ernesto said, “Wow, that’s really helpful! I love the rawness of this video.” Joe said, “Loved this. My rule of thumb has been to offer 10 times the value. So if I charge $1,000, then I would expect the client or customer to get $10,000 in value.” Dr. Laura put, “Love it. Great information.”

So yeah, some really great comments, and I just want to make sure that you guys take that time to join our Facebook community. We’d love to have you be a part of that. Again, the way to do that, go to becomeaconsultanttoday.com. Sign up for the newsletter, and you will get an invite through that newsletter, or you can just search on Facebook “How to Become a Consultant”, and it should be one of the top groups that shows up.

Thank you so much. It’s Friday. I would love to have you go into iTunes and write a review. That would be phenomenal. It’s going to help us hopefully get into that new and noteworthy section on iTunes so that more people can get exposure to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast.

So next week, we have Andy Crestodina, who is just so smart around websites, around design, around running a business and scaling a business. I mean, this guy knows his stuff. He wrote the book “Content Chemistry”, and he basically figured out how to hack Google before their newest update and continues to figure out how to hack Google, and he’s just like the smartest guy in the world.

Well, I mean, I’ve already interviewed some of the smartest guys in the world, and we’ve got some ladies coming up soon, as well. So sorry, ladies, that we haven’t had a lady on yet, but I’m pretty sure that probably right after Andy, I’m going to have a few weeks of women consultants, because there are some women that are just kicking butt.

So yeah, see you on Monday morning when we’re talking to Andy Crestodina. Have a great weekend, and thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. I will see you in the future. Bye.

To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.