About this episode
QUESTIONS 1:37 - What has been your biggest challenge in growing your business online and how did you overcome it? 2:32 - How do you stay motivated and inspired in the face of setbacks? 3:28 - What is a breakthrough moment that significantly changed your business trajectory? 4:13 - How do you balance your personal branding with company branding in your marketing strategy? 5:05 - I'm struggling with creating viral content that resonates with my audience. What is your secret? 5:34 - How do you leverage influencer marketing to boost your own brands' visibility? 6:05 - What strategies have you found most effective for scaling your ad spend profitably on social media? 6:51 - What's the best way that you identify and capitalize on emerging trends in digital marketing? 7:54 - How much do you pay attention to data analytics and how does it play a role in your decision-making in your business? 8:45 - Can you share a story about a successful collaboration you've had with a celebrity or influencer? 9:21 - What is the best way to establish trust in your brand? 9:55 - I'm building my first sales funnel. What are the key elements of a successful sales funnel in your experience? 10:43 - We're struggling to keep customers. How do you approach customer retention and loyalty in your brand and business? 11:50 - I'm just getting my start in digital marketing. What is one piece of advice you would give me right now? 12:39 - How do you look at and measure ROI of all of your marketing campaigns? 12:57 - What's your approach to content creation and distribution across all of your different platforms? 13:34 - How do you manage and motivate a large team to achieve high performance? 14:39 - What do you think will be the biggest change in the next five years in the digital marketing and social media space? 15:03 - A couple of bad reviews have set our business back a lot. How do you handle negative feedback or criticism about your brand online? 16:31 - What is the most valuable lesson you learned from your worst failure? Connect with Rudy Mawer: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter FULL TRANSCRIPT 0:00 Rudy, what is the most valuable lesson you learned from your worst failure? 0:04 I think probably the biggest lesson, which is kind of ironic is I'm struggling with creating viral content that resonates with my audience. 0:12 What is your secret? 0:13 Something I've learned from a lot of people that are very successful on socials is just like, what do you think will be the biggest change in the next five years in the digital marketing and social media space? 0:24 The next five years, biggest change will probably be, we're already ahead. 0:28 I would say we've been doing it over 18 months now. 0:31 I think it's gonna change how content's made, how content's produced the ability to create content. 0:37 I think that's gonna be the biggest change. 0:38 It's a good question too. 0:39 I think a breakthrough moment. 0:41 There's been a few in my life. 0:42 I would say one was my name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life Podcast. 0:47 And I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. 0:52 If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill. 0:55 Take the red pill, join me in wonderland and change your life. 0:59 What's up guys? 1:00 We are back for another Q and A round on the podcast. 1:03 This is where you get chance to submit questions to me. 1:06 If you have a question for a future podcast, I try and do one of these every couple of months, send it in on Instagram and while you're there, make sure you D M me and let me know what you're loving about the podcast. 1:17 And if you can leave a five star review, and I would love to send you some of my free trainings just to thank you for your time. 1:24 So let's dive into today's Q and A. 1:26 This is where I try and cover up to 20 questions in 20 minutes. 1:30 Sometimes a little less. 1:31 These are questions submitted by the audience staff and here we go. 1:35 Question time. 1:37 OK, Rudy first question, what has been your biggest challenge in growing your business online and how did you overcome it? 1:44 Yeah, I think growing a business online, there's a lot of challenges or any business in general. 1:48 I'd say the biggest challenge. 1:50 I think you go through phases in business. 1:52 So like my biggest challenge to start was like finding a good product and getting traction, selling it. 1:57 Next challenge after that was probably scaling and like logistics of scaling and operations team. 2:04 And then I think the next phase is like all the other stuff hr and finance, finance and stuff you don't think about recruitment and then you kind of figure all that out and then it's like managing big systems, multiple companies, multiple entities, lawsuits. 2:19 IRS audits, big collapses in like a partnership that's making millions people scamming you, people stealing from you. 2:27 So there's, you know, different problems or biggest problems depending on your face. 2:32 Next question, how do you stay motivated and inspired in the face of setbacks? 2:37 I, I think I'm very, it's a good question too because I'm very intrinsically motivated to do this. 2:43 And I think I have a great mindset where even when we have like a lot of big problems, like to me it's just part of the game and it's a challenge and I always see it that way. 2:51 I think I've had enough problems in my business and setbacks and failures that most people would have quit by now. 2:57 But that's one reason I'm still successful because I like a challenge and I, I, I, I just, I guess, I believe maybe I tricked myself into believing from all the books and personal development. 3:08 But I think I believe that they're all just part of what it takes to be successful and they're just challenging to make me better. 3:16 So, yeah, I think it's just that belief in myself, belief that challenges and failures are part of the process and you can always learn something from them and hopefully not repeat too many times. 3:28 Rudy, what is a breakthrough? 3:29 Moment that significantly changed your business trajectory. 3:33 I think a breakthrough moment. 3:35 There's been a few in my life, I would say one was,, when I really got one product that I could scale with ads in a funnel and it helped me scale to millions and build my first million dollar business. 3:46 I would say another one was like learning, finding masterminds where I could actually travel to these events and meet these people. 3:54 I'd say another one. 3:55 I was like you know, partnering with big celebrities and major brands and influencers and a couple of big opportunities there. 4:02 And then I'd say my newest one is like a big TV show. 4:06 I can announce in just a couple of weeks what platform it's coming out on, but that's a big one too. 4:13 How do you balance your personal branding with company branding in your marketing strategy? 4:18 Yeah, personal brand versus company brand. 4:20 Good question. 4:22 I think it's interesting because more I I lean more on personal brand now. 4:26 I think people care less about your company until you get like to a really big level like 10 X like grands, right? 4:33 But I mean, it's important to grow your person, like for me and my industry, at least like grow my personal brand first and then grow the company through it. 4:40 Whereas some people are the opposite, right? 4:42 E-commerce brands, they grow the company brand and then eventually the founder wants to be famous and talk about how they grew this big company. 4:49 So cos mine's more like marketing and socials. 4:53 I I think people wanna do business more with me and then the brand grows behind it. 4:57 So I, I prioritize me, Rudy, I'm struggling with creating viral content that resonates with my audience. 5:05 What is your secret? 5:06 So with viral content, we have a couple of people full, not full time, but like every day they do a few hours where they're literally researching viral content and coming up with concepts similar for me. 5:17 So part of it is research and looking at trends and then something I've learned from a lot of people that are very successful on socials is just like consistency, right? 5:27 Do 100 posts that do you think you have chances of going viral and eventually a couple will Rudy. 5:34 How do you leverage influencer marketing to boost your own brands? 5:38 Visibility? 5:38 Yeah, I would say I'm pretty good at that. 5:41 You know, we have a lot of big celebrities and influences and that boosts my credibility, my reach, my connections, my the power intros, I get the opportunities I get because of it. 5:52 So I'd say I'm very good at that. 5:54 And I mean, everyone should be doing that right? 5:55 Leveraging other people's audiences and other people's years of work to build a tribe and a community for that brand. 6:03 It's a no brainer, Rudy. 6:05 What strategies have you found most effective for scaling your ad spend profitably on social media. 6:11 Yeah, scaling ad spend is a common question. 6:14 I was literally in Nashville yesterday teaching on this to a bunch of creators and a lot of people say, oh when I scale my ads, my ad spend it flops. 6:22 And I'm like, well, it's probably because when you start, it's like small warm traffic and then when you scale it's like cold traffic. 6:28 But I think you know, my biggest tips are lots of creatives, lots of testing, lots of audience testing. 6:35 And then just having a really good offer and funnel and product, but also being be willing to spend a lot and go in the red and make the money on the back end. 6:44 Rudy. 6:45 What's the best way that you identify and capitalize on emerging trends in digital marketing? 6:51 Yeah. 6:51 How do I capitalize on trends? 6:54 I try and pay attention to the market and pick my battles, right? 6:57 So like some trends, I've not capitalized on crypto and N F T si kind of was super busy running big companies and missed all of that. 7:07 But I think like a I, I saw it coming, I was in a better place to make advantage of that and we made a million dollars in a few months with A I, we've had now like 70 I mean, 67,000 people registering for our A I events. 7:21 And we've got hundreds of members in like our A I intensive program. 7:25 So I think for me, it's like seeing what resonates with me not making it faddish. 7:30 Like, we're genuinely using A I a lot every day, like all day, you know, in our companies and it, it's a big part of our company. 7:38 So it felt authentic and like, actually exciting. 7:42 and I do believe it's gonna play a big part in the future. 7:45 So that was very authentic. 7:47 So I'm looking at trends but stuff I'm genuinely also interested in and then I'm, I'm going all in on that, Rudy. 7:54 How much do you pay attention to data analytics? 7:56 And how does it play a role in your decision making in your business? 8:00 Yeah, data analytics and data is so important. 8:04 Like you know, I went through a phase about 23 years ago where I was obsessed with it and I, I still am I just, it's like normal now a part of my business. 8:13 But I get hourly reports, daily reports, reports on every department reports on every funnel. 8:18 Like everything, everything is tracked like hiring. 8:21 We know how many people applied today, how many interviews we did today, how many good people we found today? 8:27 Yeah, like everything, everything's tracked. 8:29 Everything you can imagine is tracked when people turn up in the morning. 8:32 What time they show up? 8:34 their happiness, staff's happiness rating every day, like everything is tracked, this guy wants you to share a story about a successful collab you've had with a celebrity or influencer. 8:45 There's been a quite a few, some better than others. 8:48 Some that I can't name some that I can name. 8:51 You know, I think,, more recently we've done a lot with some of the, you know, big experts in the industry. 8:58 Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, Les Brown, famous motivational speaker, you know, very successful clubs there. 9:05 I think my first ever successful club was a NFL Super Bowl champion and we did a, a million dollar launch in a couple of weeks. 9:14 So yeah, definitely, I would say the celebs stuff like 5050 some flop and, and some crush it. 9:21 Rudy. 9:21 What is the best way to establish trust in your brand? 9:26 I think building trust in your brand is a combination of social proof testimonials, proof of results and just putting out a lot of content and being everywhere because there's this repetition effect like Donald Trump knows that. 9:41 And he was very good at saying make America great again, right? 9:45 And eventually there's an old saying that if you say something enough times it becomes the truth. 9:49 So, yeah, I think all of those things combined. 9:53 Rudy, I'm building my first sales funnel. 9:55 What are the key elements of a successful sales funnel in your experience of business, key elements of the sales funnel. 10:02 There's a few on so I actually told that yesterday in Nashville too. 10:05 So it starts with the offer and the promise and then it goes into like unique selling points and the hooks and the results. 10:12 And then you need to talk about the system and how it works. 10:15 Then you want to have some testimonials and social proof. 10:18 You then want to have like a clear price, right? 10:21 And price justification. 10:23 You wanna have a guarantee. 10:25 And then that's like the main page. 10:27 After that, you want the ability to have Order Bones and a good checkout page and then you want the ability to up sell and cross sell, then you want the ability to put people into your back end, which might be a webinar, a sales call, an onboarding call, a live event, etcetera. 10:43 Rudy. 10:43 We're struggling to keep customers. 10:45 How do you approach customer retention and loyalty in your brand and business? 10:49 Yeah, for us, we built a massive customer backend department, like my fulfillment team is more expensive and bigger than most people's companies that I also know in this industry, you know, so you know, our, our, our fulfillment division is as big as, you know, most entrepreneurs, entire company because we care a lot about that and we obviously have a lot of customers and we put a lot of time energy and effort into it. 11:13 And honestly, it's something I wish I could spend even more time on. 11:17 But there's always a balance, right. 11:18 Keeping the business running, expansion, sales and retention. 11:22 So yeah, it's, it's partly investing in it, which we've done. 11:26 It's having great people, which we've done. 11:28 It's having good systems, which we've done. 11:30 It's adding new stuff and innovating, which we've done. 11:33 It's listening to custom customer feedback, which we've done, it's cutting out programs that you don't, maybe serve the customers as well as you want, which we've also done. 11:44 And are we perfect? 11:45 No, not by any means, but we're always striving to get better. 11:49 I have. 11:49 Hi, Rudy. 11:50 I'm just getting my start in digital marketing. 11:52 What is one piece of advice if anything you would give me right now? 11:56 I mean, if you just sign digital marketing, the best way to learn is go work with someone like me because, you know, customers pay me 50 100 150 k a year to learn from me. 12:06 And if you can work with me, you're gonna learn so much. 12:10 So, you know, I, I, I wish I had just like flown out and like begged Gary V or someone to work with him for a year. 12:18 because that would have probably made me like way more successful. 12:22 So yeah, I would just get in the rooms with the people. 12:24 and study like I binge watched every podcast, every course, every youtube video on like Facebook ads and funnels to become good at it, Rudy, how do you look at and measure R O I of all of your marketing campaigns? 12:39 Well, we measure R O I by Funnel by product by platform and then we look holistically at R O I over an entire month versus revenue. 12:50 Cool Rudy, what's your approach to content creation and distribution across all of your different platforms? 12:57 So I build content based on like one main platform like Instagram and then we'll splinter it out and recycle it out to other platforms. 13:05 Eventually, we want to do more curated content per platform, which we do for the podcast we do for youtube and we do for Instagram and then we use that curated content to create sub content and repurpose it for the other platforms. 13:19 Eventually, I would like to do custom content for every platform, but I focus on unique content and specific content for those main free the podcast, youtube and Insta. 13:29 And then we go from there. 13:31 Hey there, Rudy, we have a really large staff. 13:34 How do you manage and motivate a large team to achieve high performance? 13:38 I think motivating a big team is a constant battle, right? 13:42 Like it has to be, you need people that are intrinsically motivated in a fast growing entrepreneurial company. 13:49 Then you need...