Triple Your Thought Leadership By Getting Clear and Slowing Down

ThoughtLeaderRetreat.com – Episode #1

Get Clear, Slow Down, & Triple Your Thought Leadership

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Alan: Hey everybody, and welcome to Thought Leader Retreat. I’m your host, Alan Brymer. And I’m very excited to kick

off this first episode with you.

We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for this year, and also for this episode. I’m glad you could be here with me

while we’re getting started.

Now, as you know, or may not know, our focus is content marketing for thought leaders—people who are experts in

their field, and not only know a lot, but seek to have a following or increase their existing following by pushing the limit,

pushing the envelope, covering things people haven’t covered before, or contributing somehow to what they call the

noosphere, or the collective sum of human intelligence! Pretty exciting stuff.

So, we’re not trying to rehash the same old thing. We’re hoping to cover new ground. And this podcast and our blog that

I’m posting is for any business owner or person who offers their professional expertise, consulting, authors, speakers,

every people who run service businesses who are hoping to increase their following, through content marketing.

That’s what we’re going to cover on today’s call. Our guest, today Justin Christianson from Conversion Fanatics is going

to tell us a little bit about how he has helped other thought leaders to do the same thing, by improving their conversion

and sales funnels every step of the way.

First, here we are. It’s a new year. I decided to kick this off because I wanted to increase my own following and having a

lot more fun making content to promote myself. It’s basically been referral-only up until now and networking at

conferences and stuff.



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I’m excited to get a taste of my own medicine since I’ve been helping people produce content all this time, and frankly

it’s a lot more fun. The New Year is here. I don’t know what your goals and resolutions are. I don’t ever set any, because

it’s an ongoing thing, although, it is a good time of the year to start reflecting; so I did a bit of that.

I’ve been planning this for some time though. New Year’s eve itself—I don’t know about you Justin, did you do much for

New Year’s eve? I had some pork tenderloin and wine with my roommate and his girlfriend…other than that, pretty

uneventful.

How was your New Year’s eve, and how’s it treating you so far?

Justin: New Year’s eve was pretty uneventful as well. I don’t even think I saw the ball drop, actually. I just hung out with

some family. I agree with you on the no resolution thing. I actually don’t set them, because I don’t believe in starting

things just at the beginning of the year…constantly pushing forward.

Alan: I think I read somewhere recently only eight percent of New Year’s resolutions actually made - this wasn’t just

someone speculating. It was based on actual research by the University of Don’tquotemeonitseville, hahaha. I forget

what the name of it was. If someone really wants to know, I can look it up.

I party when I feel like it, not when the man says it’s time to party. But speaking of the man…by the time you all listen to

this, it’s going to be long past, but tonight as we record this it’s the State of the Union address.

It will be too late for you to participate, but I’m organizing a State of the Union drinking game. So every time there’s

applause, you take a sip of whatever your beverage of choice. Every time he says any of the key words like “plan” or

“GOP” or “cyber security” (I have a list of a couple buzz words that we expect will be repeated very frequently)…

We sip along so if anyone is following the hashtag, #sotudrinkinggame, you’ll be able to see me get progressively more

shit-faced as the night goes on.

Justin: You should have plenty of sips.

Alan: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. I think I’ll drink something with a low ABV.

Justin: There you go.

Alan: Or at least start out that way as I usually do, but why don’t we jump into business?

Justin: Okay.

Alan: We’re going to have our featured segment now. Justin, tell us a little bit real quick about what you do, and how

you got started.



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I know that you improve your client’s conversion funnels every step of the way, and you’re into incremental

improvement—which I think is cool, because although it’s sexy to talk about a fast dramatic transformative change, to

me that’s the same as yo-yo dieting, anything worth doing is worth doing consistently, and attentively over the long run.

So real quick, why don’t you tell us who are and what your story is.

Justin: Well, yes, absolutely. Well, my name is Justin Christianson. I am the co-founder and President of an agency called

Conversion Fanatics.

I got started at a relatively young age in this whole - in actually multi-level marketing back in about 2002, fell flat on my

face for several years and just kept dusting myself off, found internet marketing, went full-time with it in about 2005.

I got partnered up on an information publishing company in about 2006 through 2009.

Alan: You started internet marketing, what does that mean? What were you promoting and how?

Justin: I was doing affiliate marketing, actually very fitting to our topic of conversation today, and that was through a lot

of content, through blogs, through - at the time when search engine optimization was easier than it is today. I got a lot

of traction with it, and started a lot of lead generation giving away the ethical bribe, the good quality content, pdfs at

the time, the video courses, videos were just becoming kind of a cool thing to do.

We did a lot of video content as well and just pushed them in through a lead generation funnel and then promoted

affiliate marketing on the back until we had enough presence, you know enough results for ourselves to stand on our

own two feet.

Alan: And then how did you get to where you are now?

Justin: A lot of trial and error.

Alan: Incremental improvement?

Justin: Yeah, and that’s one of my philosophies that will kind of come up I’m sure throughout this and our philosophy as

a company is…I’m a firm believer in the philosophy of Kaizen, which you know means continual improvement and it’s

kind of the cornerstone of everything. It’s how can I be better today than I was yesterday.

Alan: And for those of you listening who are still obsessed with magic, there is a magic result that comes from Kaizen. I

believe the theory is if you improve your business or yourself or whatever it is, one percent per day, that’s all, right? Not

peaks and valleys. Not yo-yo dieting, but one percent per day, guess how much that improves things in just one year’s

time.

365 percent. In fact, it’s probably even more than that, because of “something something compound interest.”



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Justin: Yes.

Alan: So there’s the transformative factor, am I right?

Justin: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I’ve seen it everywhere from business, to personal, to even my own fitness goals and

everything. I mean, any little bit of improvement today, asking how can I leave this world a better place?

You know the old cliché of if tomorrow never comes, did I live my best life, and do my best each day to make yesterday

and the people around me better than they were yesterday.

Alan: That’s right, it’s just knocking it out every day, there’s not really a secret to it. I knew this one guy who was a

speaker. It was on real estate, but he told me he used to morbidly obese—or just really, really overweight, like 100

pounds over, 200 pounds over, something like that—and he decided he needed to make a change.

He didn’t go all out. It wasn’t like The Biggest Loser. There was no training montage; nothing ridiculous. It was more like -

he said to himself, “I am going to rid this exercise bike for one minute today, because that is infinitely more than I was

riding it yesterday.”

So he rode it for one minute, and then he said the next day two minutes, the next day three minutes. Then guess what

happened, three months later, he’s riding it for an hour a half a day, or maybe he stopped at an hour or something like

that.

You just do that enough times and he lost the weight. And then he had a body fat percentage that put me to shame, by

the time he and I were sitting around talking about. I was kind of the same way with meditation, because I wanted to

clear my mind and have little more control over my thoughts which are constantly racing and analyzing things non-stop.

I started with like three minutes, once a week and over the course of like five years it has progressed to like 30, 40

minutes per day. I just can’t emphasize that enough, before we get into the bolts, you all, I want to lay the groundwork

here, and that’s our style here at Thought Leader Retreat.

It’s consistency, long-term Kaizen. I’m glad you brought that out.

Justin: Yeah, absolutely, and I mean I do the meditation stuff too. When I first got into it, it was very sporadic and

now…I did 25 minutes last night, but it brings me back.

I just had a conversation yesterday with somebody talking about this improvement stuff. I said, well I’ve been doing this

whole internet marketing thing for 12 years and I still don’t have it figured out. I’ll tell you in another 12 years, if I’ve got

it figured you know because I’m constantly striving for something better.

Alan: And there always is something better. And there’s always 1,000 articles you could be reading, or things you could

be doing, but all that matters is what’s today’s to-do list, and did you knock out the most important things?



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Well, that’s cool. I didn’t know that you meditated too, it’s cool to see that catching on. Mindfulness is going mainstream

and unfortunately you’re going to see people cashing in on it. But, it’s not something you really jump into like extreme

meditation. It’s just - it’s more like a lifestyle, it’s just how you roll. It’s a mindset.

As globalization keeps becoming a reality, you’re seeing different philosophies from around the world blending together

and people taking some from here, some from there. And the practices that actually work, they are not just speculative

or not just woo, or pseudoscience, which I can’t stand, but stuff that actually works and is backed by research is rising to

the top, and I couldn’t be happier to see that happening.

Justin: Yeah, absolutely.

Alan: Anyway, let’s get started with defining what a thought leader is. I want to ask that of everyone who’s on the show,

because there are different definitions. And I want to hear what yours is. Is it just a buzz word that’s thrown around. Is it

actually a thing? How do you define it?

Justin: I define just as somebody that puts themselves out there in a way to benefit themselves - or benefit others, sorry

- benefit others and in turn, give without want and then turn you’ll get. So they constantly strive for that better that we

were talking about, and just giving themselves - giving their best every single day.

Alan: So if someone never has an original thought but they’re just out there helping people, are they a thought leader?

Justin: I would say, I mean to an extent, yes. But I think from learning from other people you come up with your own

thoughts and your own views on different things that can relate to other people that might already relate to the first

person.

Alan: I think anytime someone exercises initiative, they’re being a leader and the leadership starts with an audience or a

following of one, and that’s your ass.

Justin: Yes.

Alan: As Parliament free your mind and your ass will follow. You decide what to do, you have the vision, and then you

get your mind and body to conform with that, and from there that’s half the battle, maybe even 80 percent of the

battle.

From there it’s how do you get others to do the same and that comes through influence. I’ve been thinking of it all this

time as someone who has original thoughts and is getting the idea out there, but really anytime you influence someone

with your philosophy, even if it’s one that you don’t articulate with words is being transferred to others, just through

your behavior or your example.

Justin: Yeah, I definitely think there’s a place. Even in my business career - and I constantly try to test the philosophies,

and constantly try to push, but some of the ideas might not be necessarily new, but I don’t - I guess I’m kind of loss for

words on that, but you - I just constantly strive for that.



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Alan: You’re exploring new ground with your clients, because each of them has a different funnel, a different message,

and are helping them to get it out there.

Justin: Yes.

Alan: You’re obviously helping people, and you’re getting paid. That’s cool. But your service isn’t a wham/bam/thank

you ma’am type of thing. It’s from what I saw a 90-day intensive relationship where you go point by point through a

wide variety of criteria, looking at things in their existing funnel that need improvement.

I’m guessing you roll up your sleeves and get in there and decide which of those things to work on first.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah, we’re very hands-on with our clients and helping them realize the potential that they have and how

they can serve their customers and their clients in a better way.

Alan: That’s pretty valuable. Half of it seems to be traffic & generating leads. Half of it seems to be conversion. Or,

there’s conversion involved in generating a lead from raw traffic and even getting them to click on the ad.

However, you’re seeing people now who help others one-on-one to increase their own conversions, just like there have

been people who could hire in the past you with traffic. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing right now for your

clients that’s helping them and helping the industry I guess of conversion consultants like yourself to move forward.

Justin: I based all of what we do on sheer results. That’s how I push it forward every day. I try to instill that upon our

clients before they even come on board to make sure they realize the potential, and I guess what kind of sets us apart

from you know the others that are kind of in our space is…we are very results-driven.

We are very hands on. We try to alleviate that problem, rather than just do and say one-page optimization on their site.

Alan: You’re not the landing page guy. You’re not the sales page guy. It’s really whatever they need. It’s a wide variety

of things.

Justin: Yeah, we do click to conversion, so we just look for anywhere that we can improve. And, I just like to think that

we’re helping not only the client, but we’re helping their customers - because they’ve all got unique products or services

that are helping others.

It’s kind of the trickle-down effect, and as a whole, we’re making everything a better place and people are profiting

more from it.

Alan: How do you even know where to start? Let’s say someone’s got - well, okay, someone approached me about

content services, they’ve got four books, 22 or 23 home study courses, traffic coming in from a wide variety, so you can

probably relate.



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They come to you with a bunch of stuff, or they have a bunch of stuff going on, and now you’re going to focus on one

person per day or you know a couple items here and there. Where do you start?

Justin: We typically look for leverage points. So we’ll analyze all of the data that we have and it usually comes down to

the old adage the 80/20 rule. You know 80 percent results are coming 20 percent of the efforts, though they might have

a blog post that gets just significantly more volume, significant increase in volume of traffic, and we focus there.

How do we funnel those people into the end result and that’s becoming a lead-in of sale. Then we look at competitors to

see what they’re doing, what they’re doing right, what they might be doing wrong, and just discover those leverage

points. Then we focus - kind of narrow it, funnel it down to the biggest opportunity, the low hanging fruit based on their

distinct data.

Alan: Can you give me an example of how you did this for one of your clients?

Justin: Yeah, we have a client that’s in the fitness space. And he saw significant growth in his business, we’re talking I

mean off the charts growth in basically his first year. However, he was down to - he had a bunch of different products

and he was trying to go wide instead of deep.

We just got him focused on that main channel that was producing the majority of his results to dial that into you know

not only offer other products to those people in the chain, but funnel them through a specific path that they wanted to

go to increase those results and in turn make him more profit.

Instead of going wide, we narrowed it down to thin.

Alan: He had a bunch of products already.

Justin: He had a…

Alan: Go ahead.

Justin: Yeah, he had oh, seven or eight products at the time and majority I’m talking 95 percent of his results were

coming from one.

Alan: Got it, but his plan was to make more of them.

Justin: Um-hmm.

Alan: So what, you took that one and made it the front-runner?

Justin: Yes, made it the front-runner, put the other ones on the back, and then now that we’ve kind of got that dialed

in, we’re moving - starting to go a little bit wider now - we’ve got one working where we’re comfortable with, and then



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we’re moving onto the next one. Then we’ll do the same thing there, and then we’ll move onto the next one and do the

same thing there.

Alan: Basically, whatever the topic was of that one, you started what, he started running ads on that same topic that

got people to some kind relevant squeeze page?

Justin: Yes, he ran a lot of video content, a lot of snippets and you know different things posting to his blog, posting to

YouTube, pushing out content, pushing out reviews, and such all to get the buzz into that same funnel; so it was all going

back to the relevant landing page.

Alan: Was he having any problem with traffic at that time?

Justin: Traffic at that time? No, however, he was having some troubles with tracking that traffic, so kind of seeing where

the traffic was coming from, what was producing the most results, and we’re just now getting down to where we’re

understanding that. He had a lot of sporadic spikes in his traffic.

Alan: Probably cranked out a lot of videos, blog posts, all kinds of traffic from all over, didn’t know what was working

the best, what led to the most opt-ins and sales?

Justin: Yes, he just knew that he did this, and it resulted in money and so we just - we kind of got his focus down in

there and now we’re helping him really systematize that so he understands if we do X, we’re going to get Y result and

we know within a percentage or what that’s going to be.

Alan: That’s cool. A lot of people are just born content creators, you know you get them in front of a camera, you know

they’re always talking to their list, they’re always putting out new stuff, but it’s just so cluttered, and I can say you can

make too much content.

You can do too much, you know a lot of people talk about being the best, having the best, etc., but sometimes it’s too

much.

I think the best is “optimal.” Not the most, not the least…optimal. Just enough to reach your goals. But at the same time,

you’ve got to throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall sometimes to see what’s working. And you inherited a bunch of

spaghetti and said this meatball right here…

Justin: There you go.

Alan: This is the one. Did you help him to refine his content strategy at all, because I know a lot of people just wake up

every day and say I’m going to decide what email to send, or what to write about, or what to promote, or what blog post

to write.

Other people have it mapped out meticulously, which would be my preference, or maybe not meticulously, but you

know weeks or months in advance; so what was his plan at that time?



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Justin: At the time it was just wake up, he knew he needed to get content out there. So now we’re getting it down. It’s

not quite that far scheduled out, but we’re out to probably about a week now on exactly what content we are, so we

kind of can predict what’s going to happen.

We know that okay we’re going to get this blog post out, or we’re going to get this video up on whatever social media

outlet there is, what we’re going to do to YouTube and all funneling back. We did this additionally with another client

that was in the sports space. He was in sports training.

We did the same thing where we - he was just periodically putting out content and his readers loved it, every time he

posted a blog post, I mean people went crazy for it, you know hundreds of comments and so we got that down to a

meticulous schedule.

So, “Okay, let’s put out these two pieces of content every week and this is when we’re going to promote this, and this is

when we’re going to do this, and we just based it on what the readers were going to want.”

So what did the audience want? We did a lot of surveys to find out the biggest topics that they wanted to learn about,

that he had more than enough expertise to basically solve every problem in that space.

Alan: That’s awesome, because you know it helps to be flexible, but from what I found, if you’re just waking up every

morning, and saying “Oh my gosh, I’m under the gun, I’ve got to get this out today,” then either your life is more

stressful than it needs to be, or you just don’t get the same results because things are rushed and they’re not focused, or

you’re just behind and then you stop doing it.

Justin: Yes, that overwhelm factor can get you really quick, and that’s where a lot of people give up on a content

strategy, I mean it takes time. I mean it takes time to build up that audience, to constantly come up with the relevant

content and everything and push it out meticulously and like you said, if you rush it, who knows what the results are

going to be.

Alan: Yes, it’s just something you do. It’s just something you do. I was having brunch with a potential client two weeks

ago, and I was like if you’re going to start a blog and a podcast, or really get serious about content marketing, it’s a 6 or

12-month trial period.

I mean you don’t just do it for a month and then draw conclusions, or you don’t just say, “I’m going to stick my toe in.” I

guess you could, but to whatever degree your extent or volume that you make content, it’s just something you do. It’s a

lifestyle.

It’s a highly glamorous lifestyle. No, it’s just something you do. It’s something you decide to do and commit to do and it

may not even be the first thing that someone needs to do. A lot of people have businesses just from paid traffic, affiliate

traffic…maybe they put those things first. There’s certainly high leverage in that if you have the funds or the

relationship.



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But content marketing is incredible with regards to the quality of the leads that come. When else do you have 30

minutes of someone’s attention? It’s when they’re listening to a podcast, you know you have that long to be kind of

one-on-one with someone. So it’s pretty interesting.

What I want to ask you since you’re on the conversion side of things, you and I could talk about 12, 15, 20 different

types of content. There’s so many different kinds of formats and new ones coming out every day, it’s going to be oculus

rift before we know it…

Justin: Yeah.

Alan: Fitness training. What kind of content have you seen convert the best with regards to driving traffic, getting

people to opt in, or ultimately to making that first sale. Is there one kind that across the board attracts the most

customers who actually buy from you, or is that different for every client you’ve had?

Justin: It’s a little bit different. Are you talking medium as to which content is distributed, such as video or…

Alan: That’s right, let’s start with the medium or format.

Justin: Okay; so old school text typically wins out 90 percent of the time.

Alan: You’re talking about blogging, not text messages.

Justin: Right, yes, just text, just - yeah, like blogging, like a written out word format typically wins out all throughout the

sales cycle. I mean videos - supplement with some videos, new work, and it does vary a little bit from niche to niche in

different industries.

Typically, I mean that’s almost always our starting point and I would say 95 percent of our clients or anybody that we’ve

worked with in the past has been driven primarily by text.

Alan: I’m kind of glad to hear that, not only because I don’t like making videos, but because as a person who reads or

takes in a lot of content, I can’t stand videos. I can’t skim effectively, I can’t preview in five seconds or less everything

and then zero in on the part that I want to.

When I’m scanning through social media in my news feed every day, I see a text article, I’m thinking to myself, I could be

in and out in five seconds if I want.

Justin: Yep.

Alan: But if it’s a video is it 20 minutes, 60 minutes? Am I supposed to watch it now? Oh, I’ll watch it later, okay how do

I remember to come back to it? Do I want to like it and everyone sees that I like it? Do I copy and paste - you know it’s

just…I don’t know, I hate it. Maybe that means people like me spend more.



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Justin: Yeah.

Alan: I don’t know.

Justin: I mean even if you look at like the old-school long form sales letters that are pages long, I mean if I have to wait

for the buy button to come up, wait for the price, I’m 90 percent less likely to buy it personally.

Alan: When we’re talking about blog posts or written text, are we talking about the traffic generating, or the opt in

medium in the first place, or are we talking about the sales page?

Justin: Well that’s on a sales page, but you got me sidetracked on the buying stuff. I mean even – and I’m with you on

the social media as I’ve kind of been that way where I’m a skimmer, and I read relatively fast, so even on a blog post I

want to get in and get out - and I know that typically in the minds of like a Fortune 500 CEO or something like that. The

more I’ve learned is they’re constantly on mobile, and they don’t have time to watch a video.

Alan: It used to be their Crackberry.

Justin: Yep, that’s it, who’s trying to make a comeback now.

Alan: Well, you know, I guess it depends on what your audience is. If someone is targeting millennials or highly visual or

artsy people, then video is probably the way to go. I don’t see a lot of CEOs saying, “Oooh, a buzz feed video.”

Justin: Yeah.

Alan: I’m going to get distracted by this and go chasing after it. Maybe if you’re selling like a make money thing, because

then your target market isn’t actually business owners, it’s consumers who you’re persuading to start a business with

whatever it is you’re teaching.

Me, I’m looking for business owners. I’m looking for highly rational people who can make decisions and don’t have a lot

of time to waste, so why are we doing a 30-minute podcast? I don’t know. They’re probably pumping iron at the gym or

driving home or whatever. But it probably does come down to your market.

Justin: And there is. It definitely comes down to the market and I’m in the business of testing, so we test everything.

Another thing with text it allows you to make changes a lot faster. You know you can make slight edits and stuff versus

you produce this three minute long video and what happens if something changes. Then you’ve got to go back and

you’ve got to change the video.

I’m a firm believer in starting with text first, but there is definitely a time and place and audience for video.

Alan: The cool thing about a written post or a blog post, is there’s like seven or 10 different ways you can get someone

who is reading a page of your website to opt in or go to whatever page it is you want them to go to, like a sales page or

fill out a form to contact you for more information.



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From a video there’s only so many different ways. YouTube video has got the annotations or the link that pops up, so

that’s cool. It can tell you where to go, or show you where to go and have the link in the description, but really that’s

about it, unless it’s some kind of ninja secret I’m not aware of.

So I would say the more ways that you have to offer people the better. Have you found that, though? I mean who was it,

Roland Frazier had that epic slideshare presentation about 20 ways to get people to opt in or whatever.

If I were to put 10 different ways on my blog for people to opt in, would casting such a wide net help me turn visitors

into followers or leads, or is that something you test and you find that only by having two, or three, or four of the most

effective ones, there’s less clutter and increases overall conversion.

Justin: I would say test it and there’s definitely a happy medium. Do you want raving fans that are going to come back

and buy from you over and over again? That’s something to look at.

If you’re going to annoy them by having a popup here or they go to this page and they see this or this and this and

Roland did a - I know those guys test like crazy about what the different ways is, but the more tools you have in your

tool belt, the better you’re going to be but you’ve got to test what’s going to be the most effective.

Alan: You know what I don’t like about testing?

Justin: What’s that?

Alan: Everyone’s always like test it, test it, test it...How many visits it takes to have a substantial enough size of people

to draw significant conclusions from. When I found out how many it actually takes, I was somewhat depressed, because

I thought if I have to get 2,000 people there’s split-testing calculators out there and so don’t quote me on the exact

amount, it’s at least 1,000, but per page that you’re testing.

If I have to get that many people visiting just to draw a conclusion, well that sucks because what if I want to test five

different headlines? What if I want to test five different colors of buttons? I know you had a cool post on that.

You know even just from a blog post, I can think of 50 things, and so over time that’s going to take 50,000 visitors and

traffic can be expensive, and what I’m thinking the answer is - the answer would be prioritize what you’re testing, you

only have so much traffic, or maybe buy more, but prioritize and test the most important things first.

For those of you all listening, Justin has a bonus for you all. He’s got a pdf report that you can download on whatever

page of thoughtleaderretreat.com this episode is being posted from (Click here to go there). And it’s a 24-point

conversion checklist that you can use to stop your site from leaking profits.

It shows you exactly what you can check, and what you can test, and did you put these in order of importance, starting

with number one, your headline?



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Justin: Yeah, I mean there’s some order of importance there. You know usually the low hanging fruit.

Alan: That was a halfway Yeah.

Justin: Well, it was, it was, I think they’re all equally important, it’s just - it’s each person’s scenario is a little bit

different. The reason like number one is headline, because you’ve only got three seconds to capture somebody’s

attention to see if it will keep them on the page and to get them to go to where you need them to do or want them to

go.

I think headline is vitally important, and we’ve seen it time and time again just testing headlines, we get clients that

come and don’t test headlines or haven’t even tested anything like that. You make one word change in the headline and

the click-throughs on the page go up 40 percent.

Alan: Yep, and most of these too seem to apply to sales pages, which is cool, like something like price is obviously one

of the most important things to test, but that’s not something that you’re really concerned about, if you’re just putting

out a blog post, then I would do headline, social proof, things like that.

This is pretty cool. I’m going to go through this, and I just want to let everyone know that that is available, a free gift

from Justin, and I’ll be checking that out myself.

One of my last questions for you before we get into the brain picking session is that client of yours that had content all

over the place but wasn’t tracking it, how did you help him to measure the effectiveness and get the analytics and

tracking taken care of, so that you knew what to fix, and how your efforts were working or not.

Justin: Well, we use a lot of things such as Google analytics, we use other tools like Improvely, and some other social

media analytics tools. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember which one we settled on for that and just really tracking

everything all the way down to the content in the emails that were being sent.

Alan: Do you mean to say you use different tools?

Justin: Yeah, I think we settled on three or four different tools total, and then our split testing tools which we’re using

Optimizely for that.

Alan: So you don’t use the same tools for every client or every website?

Justin: Some clients we typically use you know a lot of the same tools, but some clients come to us with their own tools

already in place. We just leverage the tools that they have to get them the better data or sometimes we make

recommendations to switch. We don’t like to reinvent the wheel for the client that already has something that might be

working for them.

Alan: You know that’s one of the top concerns of small business owners who are using content marketing was the

number one ongoing theme, this is according to the survey that the Content Marketing Institute does once a year.



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They just came out with a new one, because it’s a new year, and I took a lot of it to heart. One of the number one

problems is not having a clear and documented plan of what you’re going to do, and I couldn’t emphasize that more,

plus I get off on planning, I just love it. I love it - people always poo-poo it…action, action, action.

Yeah, well you know what? Let’s not forget, if you don’t have a plan then your action probably sucks, so it’s more of an

either or thing - I mean it’s more of a “why not both” thing than a planning versus action type deal, but anyway I digress,

going off on my own tangent.

The other one was tracking the effectiveness of your content. How do I even know that this works in general, or if I

spend so many hours, or so much money making this many videos, how do I know I should be doing this? It’s not as easy

as something like testing a front-end offer with pay-per-click or Facebook traffic, with a conversion pixel and you’re

done.

Justin: No, it’s not. Some things you can measure there are the level of engagement, time on page, bounce rate, so if

you have an extreme bounce rate, thanks to Google and their lovely analytics tools which anybody can use for free is

you can see all of that information and you can look where they’re going after they leave that page.

Alan: I hope that all those slide show posts where they’re like you know the top 10 people some Kardashian is doing,

you go there and you’re like “Okay, who were the 10,” and they’re like click here to see number one, and I’m “Oh God,

and I click on it, and it’s like number one and there’s a whole page about number one.”

I have to hope that the reason those are so popular is because someone’s not checking their analytics. I hope that those

get a super high bounce rate, but maybe that’s what whoever the target market is, maybe that’s just what they want

and they are checking their analytics, but I digress.

Justin: Yeah, it’s the content marketing spiral.

Alan: The bounce rate can tell you, I guess they tell you about your headline, because it doesn’t get people to stay, it

can tell you about - that’s how it got on this, the type of content. If it’s type of content that sucks, people are going to

leave immediately, the format or the medium. You sound like you were onto something here, what were you saying?

Justin: Oh, I was just saying that’s you know - you’ve got to be compelling enough but a lot of these clickbait - going

back to those slide show things - they use a lot of clicks to get you in, you know it’s all about celebrities or whatever, see

which celebrities are shockingly smokers or something crazy, I think.

Alan: That’s right.

Justin: But then they just funnel that through to try to get you to other content, which people have paid to put there. So

you know I don’t know what their analytics are, but they seem to be ever so popular now.



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Alan: Well, I can’t wait until click bait stops working. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. Believe it or not, a couple years ago,

you said content is king, or maybe you said it before we started recording. People didn’t say that, and people didn’t care.

And I proposed the ridiculous proposition that you give people - this is before the free line started moving, am I right?

Justin: Yep.

Alan: Or this is before - not even that, not even that, because a case can be made sometimes you do nothing but charge

and never offer content; and you can still have a business. That is true. But I have seen the quality of the information

products, or training, or consulting, and coaching that I’ve seen come or used in the last few years, I’ve seen it increase

considerably and it used to be just who could sell the best.

And affiliates were promoting each other’s stuff without even reviewing it, without caring, all they cared about was EPC,

and here I am like “Have you considered caring? Have you considered the quality of what you’re selling?” And they

looked at me like I had AIDS or something.

Well, now things have changed quite a bit and content is becoming more and more important, and I hope the day comes

where people…where it just doesn’t work anymore for people to use misleading headlines or gimmicky stuff.

I think it always will with certain people, but if your target market is CEOs or small business owners, then I can’t say how

effective that’s going to be for forever, because times do change and I’d rather be a leader that’s ahead of the curve

than a one-trick pony whose time has run out.

Justin: Yeah, and like we said at the beginning of the call, it’s that consistency factor and I mean I’ve been around since

2002 and I’m seeing all of the trends over again, so it’s all coming back, there’s new tools and new methods for it, but it

all comes back and one thing I haven’t seen really change is those that care and put out great content, you know if

they’re consistent at that, they typically win.

You know I’ve just seen it, I mean it’s a cycle, you know the tools, the shiny objects are going to come and go.

Alan: Podcasting and blogging are on the rise now. I mean everyone’s doing it. When I first started promoting myself as

a speaker and an expert on real estate a couple years ago, I had a blog that was working well. I podcasted from time to

time as part of the blog. It was never like a weekly thing.

However, really no one else cared. It was all about paid traffic, build your list and then promote, promote, promote,

promote, every single day, and that’s all anyone cared about and so it actually pleases to me to see some people putting

forth the effort to have blogs that are very popular and they’re getting high quality leads from it, and things are working

out very well. That extends to pretty much every kind of business and offer out there.

What I want to do is move forward to the brain pick section of today’s episode, and that’s where I’m going to ask you a

couple of rapid fire questions that our readers will want to know, does that sound good?

Justin: All right, I think I’m ready.



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Alan: Okay, cool. First one, what thought leaders have influenced you and how?

Justin: A few of them that I’ve been studying a lot of lately are Richard Branson, Elon Musk - who’s probably the king of

coming up with new ingenious ideas, that’s probably him as far as a thought leader. Going back to the old school, I

follow a lot of Mark Cuban and even Warren Buffet and Charlie Monger.

Alan: So in other words, actual wealthy people. It’s funny how people always…

Justin: Yeah.

Alan: People talk about like who are your models for success and it tends to be people in the direct response marketing

industry. But if you look at who’s actually making tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, it’s some pretty forward

thinking people, it’s not just good copywriters.

Justin: Yeah, and it’s typically people that just stay the course. You know Mark Cuban is on the other side of the coin as

Warren Buffet. You know Warren just does his thing, does one thing, does it well. And Mark is very outspoken, but

neither one of them really cares so much about staying with the norm, which I think is part of the definition of thought

leaders.

Alan: You mean I can’t just tell people here’s what “the rich” do, because they’re actually different? There’s no set

formula, is that what you’re telling me Justin?

Justin: Yeah.

Alan: No, that’s what I’m saying.

Justin: There’s no real set formula, yeah.

Alan: What blogs and podcasts do you follow?

Justin: I read a lot on Forbes. And it’s kind of sporadic, it comes kind of whatever my flavor of the day is, I don’t really

have any real set - I listen to some that I have on my iPhone, but I mean I typically - I read a lot of books, aside from that,

so I carve out more time for that.

With all the noise of my daily activities, I don’t do audio books and stuff a lot, but I do carve out time…

Alan: Basically if you need to know more on a topic, you will research that topic?

Justin: Yeah, and I actually - I mean I constantly - I try to absorb as much information daily as I can. Going back to

Warren Buffet, he said, “All I do in my office all day, every day, for eight hours a day…is read.”



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Alan: And play poker.

Justin: Yeah.

Alan: What’s a really quote from a thought leader that you enjoy?

Justin: Probably a Richard Branson quote: “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated”. It’s

hard to make something simple.

What I get from that is a lot of people overthink it. Instead of just being true to yourself and going down the path, going

with your gut. Especially with systems and technology and everything else, everybody jumps from the shiny objects in

the rooms and looks for the next best thing or the thing that’s going to make it better instead of just being consistent

and true to what their message is.

Alan: We don’t have an information problem, do we? We have a focus and concentration problem.

Justin: Absolutely.

Alan: We have a clarity problem, and you know what it concerns me to see the younger generation - well, I mean

everyone’s got their face in their smart phone these days, but even like - I try to hang with some friends who are in their

20s, they can’t plan two days in advance. You have to text them the day of, you have to text them at like six at night, and

be like what do you want - do you want to go out tonight?

Whereas me, I have my whole week planned out in advance. Constant interruption just makes me wonder how much

concentration and focus are going to be valued by the world in general. But fortunately, it is a trend I’m hearing more

and more of in business and marketing circles is focus, focus, focus of bright shiny object syndrome. Would you agree

it’s on the rise?

Justin: Oh yeah, absolutely. And it was kind of funny you’d say that too. I mean I look at - you know people are always

looking at their competition, what’s other people doing and going back to that thought leader who influenced me, they

really don’t care.

I mean I sat down with a fairly high profile CEO, not too terribly long ago and I asked him who his competition was, and

he said, I don’t know. He said, “I don’t care.” He said, “I’m just doing what I need to do.” He just - and he even did it, I

mean he built the company up to 500 million dollar publicly traded company.

Alan: That pleases me. Because the business leaders of the past, especially corporate leaders were very competitive.

There was a culture of competition even within companies, which makes no sense to me. You’d think if you’re all on the

same team, then you’re working together.

Competition is out. Collaboration is in. Trying to be better than other people is out. Trying to be one percent better than

you were yesterday is in.



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External motivation is out. Internal locus of control and listening to your inner voice and knowing who are and all that

stuff that I strongly believe in…that’s in.

So it’s a great time to be alive, especially for someone with my values and if you check out our “About Us” page, then

the values of the type of community that I’m trying to build. It’s people who recognize this and embrace it, rather than

clinging onto the last fart of a dying corpse, and then will suddenly turn around at the last minute once it’s superhot and

get on the bandwagon, that’s what I’m trying to avoid.

Justin: Yeah, and that’s constantly what we’re striving for too is just stay that course. I mean you only have to be great

at one thing and good at the rest. So if you stick with that one thing you’re great at, you really can’t lose.

Alan: I love it. I love it. Well, it’s been fun. It’s been fun. It’s been a good first episode, and I really appreciate your time,

Justin. I think we’ve covered quite a bit that’s good.

Everyone who’s listening, you are going to get the free 24 point conversion checklist that Justin’s offering, plus I’m going

to transcribe this episode and if you’re like me, you may not want to listen to the whole thing. You may not want to read

the whole thing. You may just want to get the gist of it.

I hardly read any books anymore, because most of them can be summarized in six pages. Just give me the bullet list.

Well, that’s what I’m going to do with this episode and probably with future episodes, so you can get that at the same

page of thoughtleaderretreat.com where you’re probably listening to, or could listen to or download this episode.

Justin, thank you very much for your time. Do you have any last words of wisdom to leave with our listeners and readers

before we part?

Justin: Other than just kind of the ongoing theme: Be consistent, stay true to yourself, and live your best life daily.

Alan: I love it. I love it. There’s no secret is there, just keep on doing it, make it a part of what you do and things will

slowly and organically happen, but not so slow that they don’t happen, and you tend to look back and be like “Oh my

God, what happened?” That’s so much faster than I thought in hindsight.

I love it. Well, thank you very much Justin and thanks everyone for listening. This is going to be a fun ride together and I

hope that you will join us for many more awesome episodes to come.

Triple Your Thought Leadership By Getting Clear and Slowing Down

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Transcript of Triple Your Thought Leadership By Getting Clear and Slowing Down