Chris McCombs – Marketing Outlaw and Biker

Chris McCombs Interview  http://www.IncomeDiary.com/rec_chris.mccombs_15_Sep_2009_19_27_46.mp3

Michael: That’s brilliant. You’ve just covered your business and what it’s like running your first business. But was the transaction going from illegal to legal? Would you like to weight it out for those people out there, some people could possibly be trading illegal, or could be even selling dope like you were.

Would you like to give us some comparisons on why it’s so much better to be in the place you are now?

Chris: Well, it’s funny, because I actually stopped – I pretty much stopped illegal activity when I was around 25. But I didn’t have financial success legally until I was about 33. So I was broke for the first five to eight years. The first five years I was jobless.

After I quite dealing, I was jobless. I would work as a bouncer here and there, throwing drunks out of bars. But I couldn’t hold down a regular job. So that sucked.

And then I would get minimum wage jobs, and that completely sucked too. I had to learn that. One of the reasons I think I did the illegal stuff was I never liked having a job and living by someone else’s values. I’m an entrepreneur by nature. I have to do something I’m passionate about, that gets me going, that I can be obsessively focused on. And it has to be something that’s in line with my values.

And if I’m doing that, then I’m a pretty happy guy. I’m willing to work hard. Sometimes before a launch, I’ll put in 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week. Usually we don’t, but before a big launch or something I will. And as long whatever that is, is in line with my passion and my purpose and my values, then I’m completely satisfied.

If I’m not, if I’m just out working a regular day job, I’m completely miserable. And to be perfectly honest, I had a lot more fun selling the pot that I did having a regular day job. A lot more fun.

However, it’s not in line with my values today, for one. Two, there’s this thing called Karma that can come back and kick you in the ass. Three, I used to have nightmares about getting busted. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and imagine they were breaking down my door. That sucked. I don’t have that today.

So there’s a lot bigger piece of mind that I have today. But I’ve just found that as long as whatever you’re doing is in line with your values, that’s the most important part. That it’s part of your purpose. And if it’s something that helps other people and can help you to be financially successful, then all the better. That’s the best place to be.

Michael: Brilliant. Great share. Thanks very much, Chris. OK, so you’ve gone and you’ve done all the offline stuff and now you’re coming online and you start a blog. Would you like to just cover with us quickly why you start blog and how it could impact your business?

Chris: I started a blog because I found out the thing I really loved to talk about was this Internet marketing stuff. I mean, I would be at a party and I just wouldn’t have anything to talk about with people, right?

I would feel a little socially awkward, unless there was one other guy in the room who was into marketing or Internet marketing, or business, and then I could really get into it.

So I go, hey, this is really stuff I love to talk about, why not do it in a blog? I could go do it my own way. I came out with a blog that was pretty controversial for my industry, it was pretty edgy. I made a blog that was a mix of good Internet marketing blog for the fitness industry mixed with “Maxim” madness.

It was a blog for guys from 20-40. 20-40 year old male fitness experts who typically might have a couple of tattoos and they either listen to some heavy metal music or hip hop. They like the movie “Goodfellas,” they like the movie “Pulp Fiction,” they like the movie “Heat.” They swear a little bit, but they’re generally good people. You know what I mean? That’s the guys I went after.

Those were the trainers I knew, so I went after them. I created a blog similar to them, and the industry had never seen anything like it. Most of what was out there, not everything, but most of what was out there was pretty bland.

So I came out with something edgy, exciting, controversial, fun. And I just poured my heart out in the blog, giving away basically my secrets.

Basically what I did in my business I was giving away on the blog, and that created quite a bit of buzz in the industry, because all of the sudden I’m on the top of the search engines for all these big terms that these other guys had been competing for these terms for years.

And all of the sudden I’m above them and I’m getting a lot more traffic than them. My Alexa rank is way better than them. I’m getting a lot more comments on my blog then them. And they’re like, “Who is this guy?”

I got in with all those guys, actually the big gurus in my market. I contacted them, I went out of my way to do some cool things for them. And then I said, “Hey, I’m actually coming out with an info product soon, I’d love you to promote it if you’re down.”

Now I didn’t go to these guys in the beginning and say, “Hey, would you guys promote a product I have coming out?” I made sure that three to six months in advance I went out of my way to help them and to be of use to them, and to create cool blog posts about them and send them some traffic, and to help them with their own websites and their own search engine optimizations and stuff like that.

And then I came to them and asked them to product my thing, and they pretty much all did across the board. However, if I didn’t have that blog, I wouldn’t have had the credibility that I did. I wouldn’t have had the traffic that I did to show these guys, hey, look, I’m creating quite an impact in the industry, and we should be on the same side.

So having that blog helped tremendously. It gave me a lot of authority in my market, it gave me great positioning in my market, it created a lot of buzz in market. It got me very well known in my market.

So it did a lot of things, and now it’s basically my funnel into my products. I don’t have an email newsletter, what I do is I have a blog. And I typically send out two to three days a week, I do blog posts, and I send people from my email list to my blog, and then my blog funnels to all my products.

The products are all in the navigation bar over on the right. They’re on my build your business page. And then usually in every blog post or two, I’ll mention a product or two in the blog post.

I’ll pitch it too hard. Sometimes I pitch it really hard, but other times it’s right in there in the content. And I’m giving, giving, giving people…

For one, that creates a law of reciprocity. I’m giving them all this great content, so when I come out with a product, they’re a lot more apt to buy it from me because they’re like,

“Damn. All this stuff he’s been giving us for free for this last year or two, that thing he’s selling must be really good.”

So it gets people buying my stuff because of the law of reciprocity, and they trust me and the position I have. And also it sucks in a lot of people from the search engines who are looking online for what I have to offer. So they’re searching. My stuff will come up to the top of the search engines, they’ll end up on my site, and then they’ll see all my products and services.

So it’s allowed me to sell everything from… I have low end products that are like $47 a month continuity products, up to $10, 000 coaching programs, and my blog is what helps me sell all of that.

Michael: Wow. That’s incredible. What a great share. I think everyone listening to this right now, hears instruction on great points on just personal branding for one, because your blog really brands not just your business but your name. And you can take your business so much further with just having a blog.

Tell me Chris, what your top advice would be for someone who is starting their blog and wants to do something like you have.

Chris: One is be different. Do something to separate yourself from everybody else out there. That’s really important.

Make your blog fun. I like to look at it as, make it a personal conversation between you and your reader as if they were your best friend sitting down with you at a pub or a bar. Or if you’re a female, maybe at a coffee shop having tea, right?

Michael: Yes.

Chris: They are your best friend, and you’re sitting down having a personal one on one conversation. You’re not talking down to them. You’re talking on an equal level. But once in a while, you’re cracking a joke. You’re telling a fun story. You’re doing some stuff like that. So make it fun and interesting on a personal level. That one is huge.

And the other one is, hey, be willing to do some work for the next six months or a year without getting paid for it. Don’t think you’re going to put up a blog post, and a week later the world’s going to come and go, “Oh my god, this guy’s got a blog. We all must come to see it.”

You know what I mean? Because, I don’t know what there are, but there’s probably millions of them out there now. You have to spend some time, find your voice, and start getting the traffic and building the relationships and stick to it.

I mean, for the first nine or twelve months I had my blog, I wasn’t making any money at all. But I was doing it because I knew the money would come, and you have to be willing to do that. Don’t think you’re going to put up a blog today and in two weeks you’re going to have a big paycheck.

Michael: I’ll tell you what, Chris. You’re giving it to them straight. I mean, I couldn’t agree more on your comments about having to be on their level, because I have to tell you what.

So many bloggers out there, and marketers – they’re up and they’re saying, “Hey, I am so much better than you.” But it’s almost like you have to be a bit humble and be their friend. I have to agree, you can get a lot further doing that.

OK, cool. So you start your blog, and then you launched your first information product, which I believe you made about $50, 000 in the first week. So would you like to just take us…? Because so many bloggers think about launching their own information product.

And I would like to cover just quickly how bloggers or entrepreneurs should launch their first information product.

Chris: Well, it worked really good for me. I saw what the big guys where doing, like Jeff Walker and Frank Kern. And I go, “Hey, that’s working for these dudes. It’s going to work for me too.” And it was basically a six week process.

Luckily, I had been building the relationships for the previous three to six months, right? One of the key things is getting the big people in your niche to mail for you. If you can get that, you can make 10 times as many sales, right out of the gate, if you can get the big guys in your niche to mail for you.

The problem is, most of them probably aren’t going to want to mail for you, especially is you just come to them and say, “Hey, I’m coming out with a cool product. Will you mail your list?” Actually, they’re probably going to be pretty offended by it, and not like you right out of the gate if you come to them like that.

Go become friends with them, no expectation of them doing anything in return. Go out of your way to help these guys. Whether you can help them with their marketing, you can do cold blog posts about them, you can send them some books or products that have helped you. Whatever it is, go out of your way to start the relationships with these guys.

That’s the first thing right there; because they can help you make ten times as many sales right out of the gate. One of my affiliates made, out of 152 sales that we did, he made I think it was 71 sales in that week. So that showed me the strength of having some big affiliates. I have actually four really power affiliates, and that helps tremendously. So get the affiliates lined up.

And then I basically did the thing where I put out two weeks worth of really good free content on squeeze pages. I mean, here’s a video. If you want to see more videos, give your name and email over here. And I would have these guys send traffic to it, and it would just basically it would hit their affiliate cookie.

Whenever they would send someone over, that person’s computer would get cookied with their affiliate tracking. So let’s say one of my affiliates sends someone over, but the person didn’t buy anything for a week and half. If they bought, that person who originally sent it would get the commission.

So I did the basic… What you see Frank Kern do with Mass Control and Jeff Walker do with Product Launch, and you see all the big item guys do. And I’ll probably do five or six pieces of free blind content giving away really good tips in the videos, and making the videos fun and stuff like that.

And then the last few videos where, “Hey, here’s what – my program is coming up. This day is coming up, this time. Here’s my guarantee. Here’s how much it costs,” and all that.

Then I launched it at a certain time. I launched it at 9:00 AM on a Tuesday morning. Immediately we did like $30, 000 of sales in just the first few hours. And I had a hard deadline, that at 150 people we’re closing the doors. That created a lot of scarcity which got me a lot of sales.

But I think the big thing was having everyone in the market all talking about me at the same time. When there’s five big viewers in your market, and four of them are all talking about you for two weeks, each of them are sending six or seven emails to these videos you are creating, it really creates a buzz, and you become the talk of the whole industry.

So that was huge. And that also helped me build my list really fast. It helped me build my list with a lot of buyers, for one, because the people who were coming over and opting in were the cream of the crop on these guys’ lists. Right? So it helped me get some of the best people on their lists. And now I reciprocate, and I go back and promote stuff in reciprocal promotions.

But it’s really important to be willing to promote these relationships by starting them off with a giving hand. Don’t just come to people and say, “Hey, will you promote my thing?” I get those emails all the time. We don’t even acknowledge them, because it’s a backwards way of doing it.

Go out. Help these guys who have the big lists in your niche, and don’t expect them all to promote it. If you can get 20%, 30%, 40% or more, you’re doing pretty good.

But don’t expect them to. Don’t do something with the expectation of something in return. Just do it and trust when time comes, when help from them will promote your stuff, that you’ll do pretty good. That one is huge, right there.

It’s just basically following that classic launch formula, that these guys, especially Jeff Walker and Frank Kern, especially, are the two big ones who really got it popular. It’s following that proven formula, because it works.