Michael: I’m going to give you a note about my site do you remember how you even found out about it?

Kory: Yeah, I think it was 2005 I was up in Canada I had made a move up there, actually, trying to make kind of a fresh start get my business going and I was struggling with the way I’d been doing things that hadn’t been working for me very well in terms of marketing consulting and I was looking for solutions and I do a lot of copywriting and I think I found your site looking for some copywriting interviews. And I started reading the marketing consultants and kind of following the thread that you have laid out for us and I started listening to the interviews of Richard and it totally caught my attention because I’d been a big Jay Abraham fan for a long time really into his work and what he’s been doing and when I heard how Richard had structured it that’s exactly what I was struggling with was some kind of a structure to implement marketing consultants.

Michael: Have you bought into or gone to any of the Abraham seminars?

Kory: In 2002 I went to his $5000 three day event…

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: In Los Angeles.

Michael: The Mastermind one.

Kory: The Mastermind that’s right.

Michael: Okay, so you went to that $5000 grand. Were you pumped up when you came out of it?

Kory: Oh my gosh I was so pumped up. It was kind of a turning point for me that’s when I decided to kind of move away from what I had been doing which was technology consulting. I was building some large Web sites for some Fortune 500 companies and making pretty good money at it, but I’d known for a couple of years and it’s really very frustrating to try and make things happen with a big company you got layers of beauracracy and the smart things, you know, should happen on a Web site are just buried by everyone’s opinion about how the graphics should look and it was kind of frustrating. My passion has always been small business owners.

Michael: Before you went to Abraham’s seminar your core skill was what, internet building, Web sites, you know, what was your main gig?

Kory: My main gig before I went there – I’ll say my core skill has always been sells. My core skill has always been work with people face-to- face and at the end of those conversations having them happily pay me money and I’d been doing that since I was 17. So that’s really been my core skill all along.

Michael: Commission sales.

Kory: Yep, you bet, where if you don’t get a sell you don’t eat.

Michael: Give me an example of some of the sales jobs you’ve had.

Kory: My first one was selling vacuum cleaners at a high school.

Michael: Was it a Kirby brand?

Kory: It was Rainbow. I got into because my friends were all working. We’re 17, you know, getting jobs my friends were working construction or working at McDonald’s making, at that time I think $3 or $4 bucks an hour, and my friend said “These guys selling vacuum cleaners are making like $200 or $300 or $500 dollars a day” and I was like “You got to be kidding me.” So he took me to a presentation, and of course, the guys presenting were recruiting new salespeople and the brothers [inaudible 5:42] franchise was making, I don’t know, about $200,000 a year selling vacuum cleaners.

Michael: Was it an incredible vacuum cleaner?

Kory: It was a great vacuum cleaner. I mean I totally believed in the product and so I said often I was just terrible, you know, my first presentation I didn’t really know what to do at all but I got lucky and I got a sale, I think, my second time through and suddenly I had made like $300 and I got fired up. So that kind of got me hooked on selling because I realized the better I got the more money I could make.

Michael: How long did you do that for?

Kory: I did that for I’d say eight months.

Michael: What did you do after that?

Kory: I sold artwork door-to-door.

Michael: That stuff made out of China the canvasses.

Kory: This wasn’t actually, this was a guy from Florida who had a pretty good gig going he had some local artist who would do they call Serigraphs which are like screen printed hand pulled pieces and we would take those. He’d come up every summer from Florida to Calgary Alberta where I was and we’d sell them door-to-door and he’d recreate this team of art students and people who are into art to sell them and he paid us $10 bucks an hour to go around door- to-door plus the commission. And so he sat us down and the first day he put on a Bryan Tracy clothing technique tape that was I training basically.

Michael: Yes, how’d that go? Were you making some good money?

Kory: It was okay. It was better than working from someone else better than working for a flat rate. I really hate the idea of knowing what I’m going to make next month it always bugged me and so it was good, it was great training. I really was knocking on doors at 7:00 at night or 6:00 at night, you know, you’re faced with people who are a little upset that you’re showing up but then we’d go out in these buses with teams of four or five of us and then, you know, we’d touch base every half an hour and somebody will say “I just made a sell” and he made like $200 bucks and I’m like “Wow.” So you kind of keep going and you talk your way into some houses and you show people some art and they spend $1000 or $2000 dollars and you go this is pretty impressive, so.

Michael: Yeah, no better training than that door-to-door face-to-face.

Kory: Growing up my mom had a business she raised me by herself, my dad had is own business, my aunt had her own business, I was surrounded by people who were running their own businesses and I think that played a big part. They all struggled and they all failed, ways and they were great people who worked their butts off in their business, you know, the best intentions and I watched that happen and I couldn’t quite figure it out. It was only years later that I really realized it was the marketing piece that was missing for them. They didn’t really know what to do they just kept poking around and my mom would come home all excited about the latest radio ad they were going to run, you know, and looking back on it they spent thousands of thousands but they didn’t do anything for them. So I got into my first small business. I bought sign shop in 1993 and so it was my first business and it was basically a little hole in the wall and this guy had been hand lettering signs for business so we gave him $1500 bucks and he gave us some brushes and some paint cans and said see you later; I think he left town the next day, but my partner and I we were now in business and our business was helping other business owners advertise through their signage and stuff. So I learned kind of trial-by-fire, you know, how to get customers I learned about customers that order a bunch of stuff and they don’t pay and I learned what it takes to get people to respond to signage that there was good signs and bad signs. So I was getting kind of an early training in direct response in some ways, you know, a good sign would pull more than a bad sign and getting customers to spend more on a good design I was again in sales selling my own customers and I was also in marketing and getting into graphic design. I quickly got a computer in there and taught myself how to use computer software for making signs and expanding into graphic design and this was, you know, ’94, ’95 it was a good little business. I had zero cash management skills, you know, I was bouncing checks and totally late with my jobs and saying to too many things, I made every mistake possible.

Michael: Yeah. Who was making all the signs?

Kory: I was making the signs I was doing everything. I did have a partner for six months until I drove her crazy and she left for an easier life.

Michael: Okay, so you grew up family members having business seeing them fail, you’ve had your own business, you probably always had this nagging question well how do you take it to the next level and you came across Tony Robbins interview with Abraham and that probably hit you like a ton of bricks.

Kory: That’s the best way to describe it. There’s literally a bell went off in my head I can almost still hear that bell just listening to Jay describe how he thinks about things and his maximization strategies and the power of leverage and changing a headline and I just had never heard anything like it. And it fit with all the experiences that I’ve had so far and I just remember saying I just want to do that. That was kind of how I got the bug.

Michael: Alright, so when you came home from the seminar you had all these great ideas, where you able to make sense of them and know what to do, how to put it into a system and go out there and get clients or use the marketing and turn it into money?

Kory: What I had was a brain full of big ideas and visions of what I could – I’ve always been kind of a big thinker – and so I thought ah, this was going to be easy I’ll just come back and I’ll do all these things for my customers. Anyway, I licensed this marketing system for quite a bit of money.

Michael: Consulting one.

Kory: Yeah with a consulting program. It’s basically you had these information products you would go out with and you would find small business owners and you would do a consultation and you would sell them a binder full of information for $1100 dollars.

Michael: What did you pay for that thing?

Kory: The license was $17,000 at the time.

Michael: Seventeen grand. Okay.

Kory: Yep and that gave me access to these information products that I would buy for $250 dollars and sell them for $750 to $1200 then I would add consulting services alongside those products.

Michael: How’d that go?

Kory: It was interesting. I had no problem selling it that’s always been fairly straightforward to me and I made my first sell, but in my mind I’m thinking big time, I’m thinking big time Jay Abraham, you know, we’re going to do all these things for your business and we’re going to quadruple your sells and we’re going to make all this stuff happen. And one of my first clients was a promotional products company just a husband and wife team they’d been doing it for 10 years, you know, kind of struggling along. When I met them they were about $250,000 a year in sells.

Michael: Do you remember how you hooked up with them, how did you get them?

Kory: I was cold calling from a Chamber of Commerce. I’d join the Chamber and I was just going through and making cold calls introducing myself I’d say like a consultation.

Michael: Alright, so when you joined the Chamber you had the list of all the other members, right.

Kory: That’s correct.

Michael: Alright, and you were able to contact and so imagine that you were calling them for the first time, how would you pitch it? the Chamber and what I do is help businesses grow and improve their marketing and – boy, this is going back a few years – now what was I saying?

Michael: What would you say today?

Kory: What would I say today? Well, today my approach is pretty of your marketing for your business?” And I get that person and I’d say I just have a single question for you. If I could show you how to increase your sells 15% to 30% without spending anymore money in advertising would that be worth 10 minutes of your time? And that’s straight from what I learned from you guys HMA and just figuring out that first question, because that question if they listen to it and they answer it, it gives you everything you need.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: Like for example, they’re there to say yes or no and most people say yes and the hook is without spending more money in advertising. That’s such a powerful concept.

Michael: When you’re making calls is your job to sell them on everything over the phone or do you have a specific focus to sell them on an appointment. want to get a chance to have a real conversation with the business owners where you can find out what’s happening to them and they can get a sense of who you are, that’s really your first goal is just make that contact and just try to have a sincere conversation about their business and where they’re trying to go.

Michael: So you don’t promise them anything.

Kory: No, I say “What I’ll do is I’ll give you my best advice, you know, I’ll share with you some specific things you can do to grow your business right now, whether you work with me or not, and during that time if it looks like we’re a good fit then we can talk about how we work together.

Michael: Okay, so you met with the couple they were doing about $250,000 grand a year. Did you have a questionnaire process you took them through?

Kory: I did have a questionnaire process which is the foundation at mind of all selling you have to have some kind of questions you’re taking people through. So I would ask them about where are they now, where do they want to go and I have a pretty specific sales process I use in general.

Michael: What happened with them?

Kory: They were looking for ways to grow, they were tired of struggling, you know, being at the same level. This was after 9/11 and so they had taken a pretty big hit the year after that. So they gave me a shot and I sold them a package I think it was $1700 dollars I charged and I gave them a manual full of great information, really great marketing stuff and I offered them like 10 hours of my consulting time and I offered them like 10 hours of my consulting time or something. And my mindset at that time was I can’t sell this stuff unless it’s going to work for them I was really, I guess, attached to that it’s on my shoulders to make sure these guys get results, which is necessarily a bad thing but that’s my mindset. I’m like okay, whatever it takes, and we worked together for three years, basically, on and off. The first few months that got me in there for marketing and this is a part of my lesson in what works in consulting and what doesn’t work, you know, we went in as the promise of marketing but I quickly realized that their systems were all screwed up they couldn’t handle any more customers. And I found out quickly I said “What’s your order process and how many hours a week are you guys working right now?” And they’re, of course, working on 60, 70 hours a week, the husband was the graphic designer and orders were falling through the cracks, customers were unhappy about certain things, and so in order for anything to actually work I spent probably three months just helping them systemize their processes, just helping them go through and setup order processes, we built custom order forms on the computer using some new software at the time. I had this background in technology at that point. I had been building very complex Web sites so I taught myself web programming like 1998 because I saw the opportunity there and so I’d gone through a few years of doing technology stuff. So when it came to marketing the systems are very straightforward, you know, it’s not like it’s a complex deal but they weren’t in place. So I used my technology skills to help them do some flowcharts and figure things out. I ended up spending, you know, like I said just systemizing their business.

Michael: And they were getting a good deal for $1700 they got all the material and they got you just unlimited.

Kory: It was astonishing that I was willing to do that back then. You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s

Michael: You wanted to see some success. but I become good friends with them, I share their dreams, I know what they’ve gotten align as an entrepreneur. And so it was in the past, especially, very hard for me to say “Well, I need some more money for this.” You know, and also I didn’t have clear expectations with them in terms of what I’m going to deliver and that was the theme kind of going through my consulting, you know, I suppose the first five years. It was just look, I’m going to help you grow your business I can do it, Jay Abraham does and I’m going to implement all these systems and you’re going to grow and we’re all going to be real happy.

Michael: And it wasn’t specific. What does that mean? How many hours do you have to work? Were you able to get that client’s end results? were up to $450,000 to $500,000 dollars in sales and growing and really we did hardly any marketing most of the work was just helping them systemize and they had the customers coming and we did a couple of mailings, a postcard mailing. I had a system in place for them but they discovered that some of their customers were large construction companies and one of them were spending $40,000 with them, right, and so I said “Well, why don’t we get more of those customers?” You know we just did some analysis and so much of what’s valuable is the analysis and looking at lifetime value and all these fundamentals are just so critical give you power we discovered, okay so every time you tracked, this is a concrete company that could be worth $40,000 a year. So I said “Well, how much are you willing to spend to get that”, you know, so they had a way they could order caps, you know, embroidered caps for like $3 dollars a piece somewhere really inexpensive they’re good quality caps. I said “Why don’t we just get a logo off the web and send them a sample cap already embroidered with their information? It’s going to cost you $20 bucks or whatever, but let’s say you did a hundred it would be $2000 dollars, and if you get one of those contracting companies it could be worth $30,000, $40,000 a year.”

Michael: Did you all do that?

Kory: We did it once we got a customer and they wouldn’t do it again, they were scared of the growth and they were stuck in their kind of modality.

Michael: So it’s key before you decide to even work with a client you have to get down or are they willing to grow and do they have the ability to grow. my process now always.

Michael: Alright, to bring me up-to-date.

Kory: Okay. I do small clients for several years and I’m finally started getting my act together.

Michael: You had more confidence. value of what I was delivering so I started charging more, but even though I was charging more I wasn’t making any more money.

Michael: Let me ask you, so but that first client $1700 bucks they got you to do whatever it took to help them grow.

Kory: Right.

Michael: How did you change that before you come up to today, you know, with some of the smaller clients? Did you change your pricing structure or was it always pretty much the same?

Kory: Well, the next I did I charged $3000 the [inaudible 17:26] and Landscaping so I was excited about that. It’s amazing how your mindset over how much money is like $3000 seemed like a lot of money back then, I as expanding. They got probably, I don’t know, 20 or 30 hours on my time plus the product. I kind of kept going along trying to get those kinds of deal. I did a couple of talks locally that generated some more clients but I was always undercharging and really more concerned with helping these businesses grow trying to save the business. I think I was emotionally attached to some romantic dream that my mission was to help business owners. structured a talk?

Kory: Through the Chamber I met a lady who was running like a Women’s business organization in this town I was in and so we delivered a work for them and I said “You know, you guys have 300 or 400 members” and I said “Why don’t we invite your members to a marketing talk and I’ll talk about different ways to grow their business and how to avoid making mistakes of advertising?”

Michael: A workshop.

Kory: A workshop. Yeah, it was two hours, they sponsored it.

Kory: They sent a letter to their members.

Michael: Who sent it out her or you?

Kory: I wrote the letter they sent it out their letterhead.

Michael: Who paid for the postage?

Kory: I did.

Michael: Okay, so it went out to 300 or 400 members. Was it a paid workshop?

Kory: Yeah, it was $29 we charged.

Michael: Did you split it with them?

Kory: Yes.

Michael: So 50/50 or what?

Kory: Yeah, 50/50.

Michael: Okay and then workshop, what day was it on?

Kory: It was on a Thursday evening. It was an evening workshop two hours.

Michael: Evening workshop two hours, and what was the big promise in the letter?

Kory: The big promise was how to grow your business without wasting money in advertising.

Michael: Okay, great. And how many people did it go out to?

Kory: I think I had about 300.

Michael: And how many people came?

Kory: Well, we had like 40 people show up.

Michael: Wow, that’s awesome.

Kory: It was, it was an awesome response and that’s due to the closeness of the list and the relationship that had with the sponsor.

Michael: So let’s talk about that. I’ve got consultants who come on weekly or bi-monthly whatever and, you know, some of the first training in our HMA System is hitting the phones cold calling because that’s how the cold calling, if you’re going to be cold calling the only cold calling you should be doing is to setup joint venture alliances.

Michael: If you were to give our consultants any advice how much easier was it to get clients when you had one person endorse a workshop compared to going out there cold prospecting like you use to do door-to-door getting one client to yourself.

Kory: Aw, there’s no comparison. It’s like the difference between swimming in a cold river and walking on the beach into the ocean in Hawaii.

Michael: Where’s the power? Why does it work better that way?

Kory: So the power is you’re leveraging the relationship that these people already have with their customers. It’s Marketing 101 but it’s so true, when you find a person who’s got a relationship with a group of people and they like and trust you and they endorse you to their list the response is probably 50 times what you’re going to get doing a cold mailing. I did some cold mailings I sent out 2000 letters trying to get my own seminar going just a cold list, you know, and I probably had 15 people show up compared 300 letters and getting 30 people in the room who paid it’s just a dramatic difference. So it’s easily 10 times the response and half the effort.

Michael: Okay, now I also asked you was it a paid workshop or a free workshop. Why did you go with the paid workshop compared to a free one?

Kory: I’m trying to remember because my inclination would be to do a free workshop. I wouldn’t charge for this again but we put a price on it I think because the people I was partnering with they kind of room and it was kind of their insistence if we’re going to endorse this we want to charge for it.

Michael: You had cost to put it on.

Kory: Yes, there was cost.

Michael: So mainly that money covered the cost.

Kory: That’s what the money did it covered the cost got people in there.

Michael: Now, did you have an arrangement if her clients came to this workshop and you were able to help them and they and they came on as clients with you were you going to get any of that action?

Kory: Yeah I offered a 10%.

Michael: Did she love it?

Kory: She loved it.

Michael: Now, what if you didn’t offer her anything, do you think that would have happened? Do you think the whole deal would have gone down?

Kory: It probably would have because of my ability to sell.

Michael: In your relationship.

Kory: In my relationship with them and what I would have sold her on is she’s providing value added for her customers; she’s building a relationship with her people by offering them something that would normally cost them a lot more.

Michael: But the money greases the wheel.

Michael: So you said 10% so a consultant listening in or a potential consultant you’re saying 10%, 10% of what?

Kory: Ten percent of whatever that client pays me.

Michael: Yeah, ongoing.

Kory: Ongoing, you bet. It’s so worth it just to get that endorsement that relationship.

Michael: Forty people or so showed up, what was your plan?

Kory: My plan was to do my presentation and offer consultations to people who wanted it in their room, basically, giving everyone a chance to have that 30 minute consultation with me about your business.

Michael: Alright, did you have a PowerPoint?

Kory: I had overhead slides, yeah I did. And I was walking through just fundamentals that you learn from Jay Abraham or Dan Kennedy or anyone else’s, you know, three ways to grow a business. The impact of a headline I had an example that I pulled out of John Capell’s book where he shows the headline comparisons and the increases and then I had everyone [inaudible 22:00] which one pulled better and that’s always been really effective to use that because they all think we know. And then we talked about well this one had a 1400% increase in response, you know, and you drive home the fact that’s 14 times more money for zero expense. And I say “Can you imagine if that was available, if you could reach up and have that money, but you didn’t know it was there because you never tested your headlines and you never measured your responses. And so I use that in my face-to-face selling as well as my presentations it always gets them thinking.

Michael: Can you remember what happened after the two hour workshop?

Kory: Yeah, I had six people take me up on my offer for a consultation and I got four clients.

Michael: So you had six people they loved what you heard…

Kory: Yes.

Michael: …and it all made sense, they probably didn’t have time to do it and they wanted you to help them.

Kory: That’s always the case, Mike, people just want you to do it for them and that’s a topic we could probably talk about more. That’s really the power, actually, in what we’re doing.

Michael: So you set up these appointments and you went in and basically looked at their business a little bit more closely and closed them on consulting services.

Kory: Yep, that’s right.

Michael: Now, at that time what were you packaging and selling then?

Kory: I was trying to get like 10 hours of my time plus the written materials because that’s where the leverage is, that’s where the profit was really is, you know, putting a value of $1200 the written materials.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: You know I think I was trying to get $100 bucks an hour for my time.

Michael: All your clients use all your time or did some just kind of fall by the wayside you didn’t end up having to do all 10 hours?

Kory: I kind of forced everyone to use my time. I was really like we got to make this work let’s do this, you know, I always gave away extra time.

Michael: Were you charging the $1700 hundred?

Kory: I think it was a $3500 hundred dollar package at that point.

Michael: And they paid you all upfront.

Kory: Sometimes I’d take half upfront.

Michael: Okay, and then the other half when?

Kory: Like 30 days.

Michael: Do you ever have problems collecting?

Kory: No.

Michael: Because you were spending time with them and they were committed.

Kory: That’s right. Yeah, you got a relationship going. Abraham’s promoting his contingency marketing program and, you know, Richard when he started he went to Abraham’s seminar and protégés who went to the training they could do support phone calls, they were called Alliance Calls and I have the original how he’s been selling at the contingency model but he’s kind of systemized everything and this is the HMA System and he’s making it work and it’s about 45 minutes of Richard and Abraham going back and forth and Richard explaining how it’s working for him. Did you ever try contingency, meaning if I can show you how to make a dollar you don’t pay me anything upfront but you just pay me 25 cents on an ongoing? package model. Our current offering is usually $30,000 plus a percentage of increase sells.

Michael: But you’re getting $30,000 upfront.

Kory: Yep.

Michael: That’s great, but what about if you said “No money upfront just contingency.” Have you ever done anything like that?

Kory: I’ve never done a no money plus contingency deal I’ve always been able to get some kind of a cash outlay upfront.

Michael: What is it important to get money upfront before you start working with a client?

Kory: It’s critical because, first of all, you don’t really know how it’s going to work out with a client, you don’t really know how they’re going to perform and you’re not really sure if it’s going to be something you want to do long term with this person. So getting money upfront it gets them committed because people will take anything free and what I found in those cases where I haven’t charged upfront or I’ve charged very little they question everything.

Michael: Really.

Kory: Well, why are we doing this or why are we doing that? And they’re very hesitant to spend money to testing or marketing, it’s just setting everything up on the wrong foot by saying I’ll do this for nothing for you and that’s what they value it as. Whereas, if you want to get in a position where they’re looking at you as an expert, a trusted advisor, and they’re giving you a check in good faith that and they’re willing to listen to your advice, and that’s a huge piece. What’s important about that is when they give you that check you want them to listen to what you have to say. You’ve got the advice, you are the expert in this case, they’ve been doing their best and they’ve gotten wherever they’ve gotten, but that’s the best they can do. If they could do better, if they could go out and make more money they would do it, but they can’t so they need some help. And so the only way you can help them if you have to change what they’ve been doing you have to steer them in a new direction, you have to get them to buy into some concepts that maybe they’re not comfortable with or they’ve never tried before or they’re not sure about risk reversal or whatever it would be. And so they’re only going to be willing to make those changes if they trust you as the expert. And so when you come in and say hey, look don’t pay me anything right now and I’ll get some results it’s very hard to get them to really believe in what you have to say.

Michael: Too good to be true.

Kory: That’s right.

Michael: What’s the catch?

Kory: That’s right what’s the catch and, you know, if you knew what you were doing why would you work for free? You know if you really knew what you were talking about why would you be offering to work for free for me because no one else does? So much of what making this work, so much of getting big dollars and having successful projects is how you position yourself from the very start.

Michael: Now, there’s nothing wrong with contingency after you’re dated for a little bit. Just like you don’t want to marry the clients from the very beginning, you know nothing about them, you don’t know if they’re going to follow through on your advice and you don’t want to get into a long term relationship until you date a little bit.

Kory: That’s a perfect analogy.

Michael: Date a little bit, take them out to dinner, pull out their chair and then you move on, right.

Kory: That’s right, and you never really know someone until you’re in some kind of a stressful situation with them. You really don’t know someone until you do something and it didn’t work. How do you respond to that? And you start seeing the clients you want are the ones – they understand the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve and they’re not going okay, if this first mailing doesn’t triple our sells, you know, we’re through. They understand you’re trying to take them on a journey to a place that’s way better for their company and they’re willing to go along with you a little bit.

Michael: Right. Alright, so you told me you’re currently consulting with clients and you’re asking for $30,000 grand upfront and you’re setting up a piece of the action on the backend.

Kory: Right. lot of money, is it all good?

Kory: So it’s a big step up from where I was five years ago.

Michael: What’s the difference between you asking for $30,000 grand upfront and a piece of the action now and then five years ago you were only able to ask for $1700? Where is the difference? What makes that number larger? What would you say to the consultants, maybe, who are just starting out?

Kory: That’s a great question, you know, the only thing that has changed is my confidence. My knowledge of how to do marketing five years ago was plenty adequate to charge what I’m charging now. It’s really just my confidence and my belief and my ability to get the job done and also the value for these clients as I’ve worked with businesses I’ve seen the impact it has on a company if they get some good marketing in place. You’re doing them the favor.

Michael: And it’s all in the attitude, right?

Kory: Yep, that’s exactly right. So you have mindset and confidence was really the biggest factor.

Michael: How do you get that though?

Kory: Well, you get it through having some successes. I mean you go out there and you do an implementation and you watch someone got to be involved with their numbers, if you’re going to have a client they got to be willing to share, you know, the money that’s coming in with the expenses are and what they’re doing so that you can see the tangible results. So you start by just, you know, having some success, set yourself up for success find some clients and be choosey at first and find a client who’s really ready for you, find someone who’s got some customers, who’s got traffic already and help them improve that.

Michael: So there’s no shortcut to their confidence.

Kory: So there’s ways to shortcut that but if you want a guaranteed way to get confidence is just go out there and have some successes. And it took me a lot of successes before I convinced myself hey, this is really worthwhile but the reality is two or three successes and you’ve got everything you need. If you can point to three happy customers you can charge whatever you want to your fourth customer.

Michael: Now, do you think anyone can do that without being willing to sell?

Kory: No, you have to be willing to have some failures it’s part of the process, you’re going to do that and it’s painful. It can be painful, I’ve written a letter and we send it out and nothing happens it’s all on your shoulders you told them this is going to help you, this is going to get customers and that one didn’t work and how you handle that is really important.

Michael: Okay, let’s say a consultant does something like that and the letter bombs, what advice would you give them how to handle something like that?

Kory: Its two parts, the first thing is you want to set expectation to the very first day of your relationship. What we’re doing is we’re testing and measuring and we’re going to find out what works, you know, we’re looking for the formula or the letter that’s going to give us that bump in conversion so it might take us a few tries. And most people if you explain that upfront they understand that, you know, we’re not going to hit it out of the park the first time, so let’s look at what would happen if we could increase your purchases per year by 10%. What would that be worth to you? Oh, okay so that’s about $30,000 dollars let’s say on the table. So what they see is that’s okay, if we try a couple of mailings or three mailings if we can get this to work its worth $30,000 or $60,000 or $200,000 depending on the company. So the first thing you want to do is set expectations upfront of what the rewards are going to be if we can make this happen. And the second thing is when it happens you go back – you don’t want to beat yourself up or playing the victim “Oh, I feel terrible the mailing didn’t work”, you know, you want to be a professional about it, you know, and say well, that one didn’t work, you know let me figure out why it didn’t work and let’s talk about what we’re going to do next to adjust it. And it’s really a mindset of I’m disappointed that didn’t work but, you know, you don’t want to be saying “Oh, I’m such a bad marketing consultant” because that creates doubt and really what you’re trying to do the whole time is maintain this trusted adviser position with your client. No one expects perfection they’re not perfect, what they expect is that you’re doing best and you’ve got their best interest in mind.

Michael: The same with the doctors, you know, if you’re facing a terminal illness you try things and there’s experimental drugs you can take some don’t work and you go in a different course of action it’s no different.

Kory: Yeah that’s true. And how would you feel if your doctor came in all despondent and depressed and beating himself up because it didn’t work you’d have zero confidence in him? You’d be like “Oh man I’m so sorry.” You don’t want to come in there and say I’m so sorry this didn’t work, something about that just have people to start doubting you.

Michael: Well, they guarantee that our HMA consultants are taught to offer to their clients. We guarantee the system to grow your business and depending on what kind of promise or what expectation the client has and we say if it doesn’t well continue to work the system until it does. And then we can’t promise which the step the system is going to get them to grow, it could be the USP, it could be the joint venture alliance you just don’t know, but we guarantee if the client goes through all the steps in the system and they’re designed to work together you’re going to get the growth objective that they go after.

Kory: That’s wonderful. Can I talk about how your system has influenced me and the pain I would have saved myself if I’d actually followed it?

Kory: Because I see these numbers like, you know, we’re charging $30,000 and those are true I’ve had three clients take me up on that arrangement so far with a percentage, but it hasn’t worked out the way I would expected it to and here’s why it hasn’t worked out. When I do that we basically say we’re taking on all your marketing, we are basically now your marketing company, we’re going to implement everything for your company and we’re going to get a piece of what happens as a result. And part of what happens is we didn’t follow your advice, we didn’t date first, we didn’t do some projects first, we kind of just jumped in because we were excited about that big number upfront [inaudible 32:25] with $30,000 that was going to cover x amount of our time we know we can get something going for this customer, they’re going to see results so let’s just do that. And what has happened for me, and this is based on my experience and kind of my mindset that through me off is I go in there and I see all the possibilities. You know, my mind just expanded like okay, we can do joint ventures and we can treat your Web site and we can write a better copy for your promotion, and I have all these directions that I want to go and that I can see clearly in mind and I know it would work but when it comes down to what are we doing first, second and third there’s not a clear path, you know, there hasn’t been a clear procedure that we followed. There’s been a general one, like okay we’ve got to talk to your customers and find out, you know, why they’re buying from you and what do they want that you’re not giving them now. So it’s like there’s no process but I’m not coming in there saying these are the projects we’re gong to do, we’re going to do this first and then we’re doing this first and then we’re doing this first. If I had done that with my clients the results would have been dramatically different. The first project we did this with was a client and they make this gorgeous pedestal for underneath sculpture that’s their business, they’ve been in business 15 years but they were hurting cash flow wise, etc. And so…

Michael: They paid you $30,000 grand upfront?

Kory: No, we allowed them to do three payments.

Michael: And you’re promising them I’m going to come in and do all your marketing.

Kory: That’s right.

Michael: Have you set the expectations for any outside expenses for mailing or costs?

Kory: Those are all spelled out in the agreement that we have. We have a great agreement that we put together and it says “Here’s what we’re going to do for you, here’s what’s included and here’s what’s not included.” It’s all spelled out.

Michael: So in a nutshell what’s your promise? You’re going to do what for them? What do they believe you’re going to do for them?

Kory: What they believe is we’re going to handle the nuts and bolts implementation so we’re going to write copies, we’re going to look at their customer list and see what’s happening with their numbers, we’re going to look at where the opportunities are that they’re not capitalizing on suggest they’re not following up and they know they should be following up, and everyone I talk to knows they should be following up better. I’m sure you’ve had that same experience. We say “Well, what’s stopping you from following up?” And they go “Well, we’re too busy, we don’t know what to say, etc. So they expect that we’re going to figure that out for them and they love it.

Michael: Okay, so this client make the pedestals for – what were they for again?

Kory: For sculpture like in museums and galleries.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: They’re high end they’re like, you know, up to $8000 pedestals. So the expectation was that we’re going to do that stuff for you and as a result your business is going to grow. We didn’t promise a specific growth amount, we didn’t say we’re going to get you this 30% increase or whatever, we just talked to them about what the potential was for their business and if we can grow it. We felt confident that we could double their business. For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising and

Michael: So there’s no clear end to your work?

Kory: Boy Michael, you just hit it right on the head, there’s no end to the work and that’s what happened it was endless work.

Michael: I mean there’s always something you can be doing.

Kory: Always something and the big mistake I made is I let the client steer the projects and the priorities. They really wanted to upgrade their Web site and we were persuaded that that should be the first project. Looking back I would have said “Look, let’s get some direct mail out to your customers.” Again, I didn’t have a system.

Michael: You were winging it, that’s okay.

Kory: Yeah, I was winging it.

Michael: I did the same thing. I went through all of Abraham’s stuff, I had great ideas, people would call me, I’ve got these early interviews up on my site and we’ve give them my best ideas but didn’t know how to make any money from it, you know, I didn’t know how to monetize it or ask for an appointment or do an opportunity analysis or offer them the proposal broken down into projects. That’s right and that is the key thing that I hear over and over again from the consultants who come on. A lot of them had Jay Abraham experience and they love him and there’s great ideas and he was a huge influence in getting your mindset and you can’t take that away from them at all that there was no system. Richard has a great said “All the musical notes were there before Mozart came along.”

Kory: That’s great.

Michael: That just perfectly sums it up.

Kory: Yep.

Michael: Okay so give me some more stories with these three clients. So what happened with the one who made the pedestals?

Kory: What happened was we spent months and months. We shot video we flew to their client sites, we shot video, got testimonials and we ended up working on their Web site and there was a lot design revisions they were very specific about what they wanted and we spent a lot of money and time really getting a Web site put together and so now they’ve got a beautiful Web site. But the whole time their cash flow was suffering, they needed cash and right now they basically have downsized their entire company. We worked them for a whole year and really we couldn’t get their response. They didn’t have the cash flow to survive testing and the process that it takes to get things in place.

Michael: Did you get your $30,000 grand?

Kory: We got $20,000.

Michael: You got $20,000.

Kory: Yeah and we spent a fair portion of that on Web site paying contractors and…

Michael: And then there was no backend in line.

Kory: That’s right we both parted as friends, these are wonderful people, amazing people but it wasn’t making sense for us to continue and it was an example of my mindset really working against me, all these cases are going in there I’m going to help you, I’m going to save your business, we can do these things, it’s going to be easy and in my mind it’s easy but the implementation always takes longer than you think, especially when it’s unlimited, you know, and there’s no focus there’s no plan.

Michael: Yeah. Great, great story. What was the second one, what kind of client was it?

Kory: The next one is an association for women who are in the direct selling industry, so these two fantastic women have created this association they’ve been working on it for six years. They’ve built it up and they’ve gained credibility and it’s just an amazing business that they’ve created.

Michael: How many members?

Kory: Oh, they had I think 3000 or 4000 members and about 40,000 people on their mailing list. We met through a friend and a client and we started talking and I just was talking about what was their pain and they’re really struggling with their Web site. They’re struggling with technology, they had a guy who created a proprietary Web site it was restricting their growth. And so again I got myself in trouble. One of the things I do is because I’ve done so many things because I can design Web sites and because I can program and because I can write copy I just think oh, I can do everything. And so what they needed was a major transformation of their technology to allow them to grow. And they agreed to the fee.

Michael: Thirty grand.

Kory: Thirty grand plus…

Michael: Did you do payments?

Kory: We did payments with them. We did and they could only afford I think $6000 a month is what they started out with. And so we said okay, we’ll just pace ourselves we’ll pace the amount of time we put in each month.

Michael: So was your payment structure $6000 grand a month?

Kory: Six grand a month.

Michael: For up until $30,000.

Kory: Up until $30,000 and then it was 15% of increased sells.

Michael: Gross sells or net.

Kory: Gross sells.

Michael: How do you structure that and what’s your feeling on the percentage of sells gross compared to net?

Kory: You know that’s a great question. You have to look at what the business can afford and you have to look at the margins on their products.

Michael: Yeah and they were an association pretty high margins.

Kory: That’s right it was a membership model or a training model or just selling information in training and education, so the margins could support that.

Michael: And gross is good it’s cleaner.

Kory: It’s way cleaner, its way simpler to calculate. As soon as you get into net profits even if you’re really specific – and with the pedestal client we went with the net profit deal but we spelled out what the acceptable expenses were. So for example, the owners couldn’t go and buy a new boat and say oh, that’s a business expense, we had to spell it out line-by-line; anything that come out of the expenses before we calculate our piece.

Michael: Yeah, that’s smart.

Kory: Yeah, that’s critical.

Michael: Alright, so 15% of…

Kory: Increased sells.

Michael: Okay, so how did it go? They wanted a total upgrade on their site and you dove into it and then what happened?

Kory: We dove into it and from my past experience with software I told her at the beginning it was going to take six months and it was going to be really painful to switch over. And she kind of laughed and said “Well, let’s hope it’s not that difficult”, but that’s exactly what ends up happening because we switched all their core services to – are you familiar with Infusion?

Michael: Infusionsoft.

Kory: Yeah, Infusionsoft.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: Yeah, we’re a certified consultant with Infusion we’re probably the best solution for them. But it took us months and months and months of migrating one system after another to Infusion and changing their Web site and they couldn’t do an affiliate program so we had to move their affiliate program. So we spent, basically, six months getting ready to the point where we could market them. It was just dollars for hours, all that time and energy that we’ve put into it. And I put myself there this is all me creating these situations where I love the people I’m talking to, I want to help them out, I love the vision so I get involved and I can do it so I say “Yes, I will do it.” And that’s a big mistake and eventually after several more months I let it go and I should have let them go about three weeks ago. I walked away from it and we were in a position where we had evolved it to where we were just doing affiliate marketing and we had a great percentage on that but I realized that just ongoing it wasn’t satisfying it wasn’t what I wanted and it wasn’t working out for anybody.

Michael: Alright, so how would do it differently now?

Kory: Yeah, perfect. That’s the right question. So what I would do differently now is A) I would only work with companies who have a lot of money, they customers and they’re not a sinking ship there’s so many businesses out there – with the economy people are struggling but they still have some financial stability. I would look to implement some of the marketing you’re talking about. I’d like to talk about the impact of the HMA System because really that’s what I would do. I mean and that’s my intention with any new marketing clients I’m letting go of the whole idea of $30,000 upfront and a percentage, it hasn’t worked out for us. I’m not saying someone couldn’t make it work but it’s really the wrong approach to this opportunity to work in a small business. It puts too much pressure on you as the consultant to perform when you’ve got that much money on the line, I mean you’d better be able to make things happen and happen quickly, and without having to clearly define projects there’s no end to it, the expectations are unclear, it’s just been fuzzy and not profitable. So if I’d take any of these three clients and I had used HMA System from the very start, hey let’s do a USP for you guys pay me $3000 dollars or $1500 dollars, you know, or $1000 dollars, and I had followed the steps. When I look at what I made per hour on all these projects it’s a scary thought, $30, $20 maybe an hour, and for people with our skills and anyone who’s becoming a consultant with the idea there’s so much value in this stuff. When I look at what I can do with the HMA System and charge a $1000. Let’s say I make $100 dollars an hour easy, I mean worst case doing a USP if it took me 10 hours and I charge $1000 dollars that’s $100 bucks an hour and it’s very simple and straightforward. And when you can have the confidence to charge $3000 dollars, and I know some of your consultants do per section or for the USP, suddenly you’re making $200 or $300 an hour and one of the things I’ve learned to value is peace in my life, you know, get out of the stress and the pressure and just have something that’s simple and it works. One thing I wanted to mention is that my transition from really struggle at $1500 or $3000 and making this money really started when I found the HMA System four years ago. So really since I’d been consulting from 2002 to 2005 for three years really making no money and just getting very burned out because I was doing it wrong, I had no system, so I quite about a year and a half. My secondary skill is as an artist I do airbrush work and I’m actually pretty good at it and just taking about a year and a half off to do custom murals on Harleys and something totally different. I just got wasn’t making money doing that either. I finally said “Look, I got a family to support I got to figure this out.” And so I moved up to Canada where I’m from, my wife’s from the States, I moved back to Canada…

Michael: So where did you move from? Where were you?

Kory: Washington State.

Michael: Okay. And you’ve got kids?

Kory: Yeah.

Michael: How many kids you got?

Kory: I have three kids. I have an 18-year-old son and a 15-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. So this was I guess four years ago now. And so I moved back to Canada where I had some family and some support and I just sat down and I said “What am I going to do? I know I can do this.” It was then I found your course and it was just astonishing how it changed things for me by just seeing the structure, you know, listening to you and Richard talk seeing how Richard lays out the Seven Marketing Colors or the Seven Systems and having a clear definition of the first one, the second one, the third one, I probably spent two days just listening to all your stuff and making notes. So I did that. And so after like three or four days I worked on my opening question, you know, what am I going to say when I walk into a business? And that’s when I came up with my variation on it which was I can show you how to increase your sells 30% without spending more money on advertising, would that be worth 15 minutes of your time? That’s word-for-word what I came up.

Michael: That’s good. How did it work?

Kory: It worked like a charm.

Michael: They all said yes.

Kory: They didn’t all say yes. So what I did I took that question and figured I’d do 15 minute initial consultation, which is quick and easy, and I’ll just show them three ways to grow a business and ask them some questions about what they’re doing. If they like the 15 minutes we’ll set up a one hour, so like a two-step approach and I just went door-to-door. I found a business park because in those business parks there’s businesses of all kinds, you know, if you reasonable amount of rent they’re making some money from these companies.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: And so I just walked into business after business with my questions and the first few were a little nerve-racking but by the time I talked to three or four business owners they started saying yes. And I would say I think 30% of the people I talked to said yes to the 15 minutes. So in an hour I could go out and I could book three 50 minute appointments.

Michael: Would you ask the owner? say “I’ve got a question I’d like to ask.”

Michael: How were you dressed?

Kory: I had a sports coat on, an open collar and khaki pants.

Michael: You looked somewhat professional.

Kory: Yeah I looked professional.

Michael: Did you have a clipboard or what did you have in your hand?

Kory: I had like a black leather folder you put like a notepad inside. It wasn’t a binder it was a little bit thinner.

Michael: Yeah I know what you’re talking about.

Kory: Yeah, non-threatening.

Michael: Take me in there. You walk in. Did you say “Hi, my name is Kory, I’m with, is the owner here?”

Kory: Yeah I’d walked in and I’d say “Hi, my name is Kory and I’m with High Performance Marketing and I was just wondering if I could talk to the owner.” But that was it, it was a little clumsy but most of the time the secretary, whatever, I would just smile and say “Hey, I would just like to ask the owner a quick question” that’s what I would say. Actually I’d walk in and say “Hey, my name is Kory with High Performance Marketing. I was just wondering if I could ask the owner a quick question” and that would be it.

Michael: And they’d get the owner and the owner would come out.

Kory: The owner would walk out kind of looking skeptical like who are you, what do you want, and I would just say my question as awkward as it was I would just say “Hi, you know, if I could show you how to do this would that be worth 15 minutes of your time” and I would just be quiet. And they would say “Sure.” Some of them would so “No, I’m too busy, I’m not interested”, but you know what, if those people hear that question and they’re really not interested then they’re not a good prospect for you. It qualifies them so well because the people you want are people who are thinking about gosh, I’m spending so much on advertising. It’s on their mind when they wake up in the morning, how am I going to get more customers?

Michael: And I guarantee you most of those owners think you’re a guy selling advertising.

Kory: That’s right.

Michael: Because that’s whose coming in the door the people hustling radio time, newspaper, magazine, advertising and then you blow them away.

Kory: That’s exactly it. That’s it, Michael, when they hear that phrase without spending more money on advertising that hooks them, I mean that really gets them thinking and they go “Well, what are you talking about” and that’s the opening you need.

Michael: So will they invite you into the office for the 15 minutes?

Kory: Yep, they’ll usually say “Hey, come on back right now I’ve got a few minutes now.” A few times I would set an appointment to come back for 15 I was willing to do that.

Michael: Alright, so what do you do? Let’s say they come on in, you have a seat, what do you have with you to do that quick 15 minutes?

Kory: I’ve got my folder with me and I have a printout of a few of the questions and I had the diagram of the three ways to grow a business and the impact it would make and I would just quickly find out what are they doing now for marketing? How is it working for a rapport, rapport is so critical. You got to get them to really feel like you’re there genuinely concerned about their business. And I Ireland, said he would ask them for a tour; yeah, fantastic because it is their baby. So I wish I had of none that a few years ago. But that’s great just get them comfortable that you’re not here to pitch them anything you’re just here to give them some suggestions. Sit down and say okay, what are you doing now, how is it working? Okay, let me just show you a concept of how we can get these kind of increases 30%, 40%, 50% increases without spending more money on advertising. And I would just go through I’d totally copy the chart that was on your PowerPoint slide of here’s how to increase your conversion, if you sell more per year and you get this it’s a 30% across and if you do that in all three – and they just never heard that before. Of course, I always have my questions built in that are helping them picture the results so you always want to be asking them well, how often do you follow-up with your customers now? How many leads are you getting a week? How many of those leads are you converting?

Michael: What are you finding most of them have no clue?

Kory: No, most of them don’t have any clue. Most of them really have no idea what their numbers are or if they do they know maybe how many leads they’re getting but they don’t know what their conversion ratio is. If they know that you can be guaranteed when you ask them, you know, how often do you talk to your customers after they buy? There’s always a stunned silence pretty much. And so you go okay, so how many customers have you got? So the process of asking these questions is very scientific and the idea is if I’m talking right now Michael you could be thinking anything you want. You’re thinking about your kids or your next call or whatever. Yeah, I was going to give you a specific one, you have boys and girls or how old are your kids?

Michael: I have two boys a nine-year-old and a six-year-old.

Kory: Okay. So Michael, you could be thinking whatever you want while I’m talking and making statements like this, right, but if I ask you what’s your older son’s birthday? If I ask you how were you when you learned how to drive? If I asked you what color were your mother’s eyes? You’re answering those questions in your head aren’t you?

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: Okay.

Michael: I’m trying to find the answer first. happens is when I’m asking those questions I’m directing the movies in your mind.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: That’s the metaphor I’m using. Okay, so when I’m asking questions I’m the director I’m helping you make movies and you’re feeling in movies better than anything I could say. I could kind of describe to you the benefits of having more customers but if I ask you what would you do if you could increase your sells by 30%?

Michael: I’ve made the movie of what it’s going to look like in my mind.

Kory: That’s right, so you’re selling yourself constantly. And so I’ve broken it down into a series of questions when you ask and then a certain sequence it uncovers all their motivation so you don’t have to do anything else. So as I’m interviewing these people I’m asking them questions about their situation, what their problems are and what’s going to happen if they get them fixed and by the time we’re done I say “Look, I could come back for an hour and I’ll give you my best advice.” And so closing with a one hour appointment was like 95% doing the 15 minutes. have you been doing using this?

Kory: Well back then when I first made this transition I think 2005…

Michael: Is when you came back up to Canada.

Kory: I came to Canada, I was starting fresh, I really wanted to make this work. It took me about three days to have all the clients I could handle at that point.

Michael: Really.

Kory: Yeah, three days of walking around and I think I closed five different deals and I was charging them per project. I was totally doing the HMA System, you know, the system made it so easy to sell, it made it very easy for them to say yes and then I got into my old habits. As soon as I was in there as their consultant and we had a relationship going my brain would take over and say okay, we can do this and we can do this and we can do this and I would go all over the place.

Michael: Oh, really. Okay.

Kory: Yeah, and so that’s where it broke down for me. I would get the clients but I would still be working way too long to get the things done because it wasn’t focused.

Michael: And that’s something within you. overcome.

Michael: That’s interesting.

Kory: And so the system worked beautifully. I didn’t actually follow the system as prescribed I used it to get me clients, which it worked fantastic for, but then when it came to the implementation I was back to we can triple your business or we can do all these things and I was all over the place, so I hadn’t fixed the problem within me. But it was your system that allowed me to start and get into the consulting business. Right, this is like Kory Consulting 2.0, you know, I’d been here for four years, I took a break, and then I got back into it with the HMA in mind and it really changed my life because it allowed me to go out there and do it and get customers and it was way better than before.

Michael: That’s awesome. So what were you charging now that you had a new way to do it? Were you charging it project work selling four projects at a time, core four our?

Kory: You know it’s interesting I was charging per project trial and error, having great success, finding clients that could be great clients but consistently failing to make money at it because I would just do so much work. And I can trace it all back to not having a system and what would happen, wow, if I’d had, you know, easily would have tripled my income if I’d just been following it, getting the job done, go through the core four, make some money, the clients happy, go to the next client and in there, you know, you’re going to discover, like you said, some opportunities to work and partner and do some bigger things.

Michael: This is great. I mean I’m really happy you’re sharing this with me and the listeners. Seriously, this is great.

Kory: Yeah, it’s really a gift. The dream of marketing as a career, the dream of marketing consultant the thing that gets people excited with possibilities I love that, I love what that stands for and I totally understand why people are excited about this as a way to make a living compared to doing all the other options that are available out there.

Michael: Yeah.

Kory: And so.

Michael: It’s exciting, it is. I mean I know when I first learned I couldn’t sleep, I mean it’s just like this ultimate power you’ll be able to look at a business with x-ray glasses and see all these hidden profit

Kory: That’s a great way to put it. That’s totally right. That’s perfect. You have the secret thing that you know how to do.