Below is the transcription for this episode:
Dave: What's going on my friends? This is Dave Sharpe. Welcome to Wake Up Legendary as you can see in the title today, which I think is rather catchy and I didn't come up with it, actually our guest marketed former full time electrician lights it up with both all my marketing TikTok. I just love the creativity in that title. I think I'm gonna be excited and jewelry you I am excited but I think I'm gonna get a lot of value out of here in the sky share this morning so would everybody help me give a warm legendary Welcome to mark what's going on my brother
Mark: Hey, thanks for having me on Dave. It's a pleasure. This is actually I was telling Mater there this is one of my goals and I'm checking off me to be on the show here with you.
Dave: Nice. Hey, my pleasure, brother. My pleasure to have you so, you know, the we can't we're you know cut from the same cloth. We're both from the trades. You seem to know, it sounds like you're a little bit more formal with an actual trade. I was kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. Back when I was working construction, I'd kind of go wherever the money was. We'd do bathroom and kitchen remodel. So we did a little bit of everything. But my dad was a master plumber and he just kind of rolled his skills over into carpentry and and and you know, tile work and so forth. He's actually a master craftsman. But I'm the one who's less handy. He's super crafty. But tell us how you got here brother. I mean what led you from a lack? Basically metaphorically speaking, one side of the world is pretty much workwise to the other offline to online.
Mark: Well, I'm an electrician by trade, doing that job for about 15 years now and I'm currently still doing that job. So I know a lot of videos that say you know you are planning on quitting your nine to five job but I'm not planning on quitting my nine to five job. I've got a really good job. And I enjoy the work that I do. How I came across affiliate marketing well, just like a lot of people. My daughter was on Tik Tok and musically and all that stuff before doing the dances and everything and I didn't really think much of it. Ironically, a buddy of mine pushed Tech Talk to my interest there and showed me you know, there's at least good looking girls on here dancing the way you should see this. So that's how it started. I was flicking through and watching girls dance and then next thing you know, I came across a gentleman that really got my interest and started watching a few of his videos and doing some research about affiliate marketing. And then I jumped right in, and I haven't looked back since and it's kind of been a difference for me. It's really made a big change.
Dave: Nice. Nice. When did you get started?
Mark: I started back in the middle of June. So just before the summer started,
Dave: Okay, had you ever done any sort of online marketing any sort of anything like this before?
Mark: No experience at all. Like I said, I've been a tradesman for the last 15 years. Before that. I worked in the tourism industry here in Niagara Falls. Did that for a few years and then before that I worked all over the world on cruise ships. So no no marketing experience at all.
Dave: So what were you going through our 15 Day Challenge ? What was it about it that sort of lit you up?
Mark: You know what, like, I got really excited about it. Like I said, Because I saw other affiliates making some good money and I thought, this is something that I want to do. I mentioned it to my wife, I got my wife involved in it and we started doing a challenge together. We had an excellent business adviser that put me onto some of your videos here as well too. That got me in touch with some other guests that you've had a Wake Up Legendary and it just really got me excited and my wife wasn't so sure at first, but she's definitely on board now. And I just haven't looked back since.
Dave: Why is she so on board now?
Mark: Because she started to see the success coming and she started to see the money rolling in too. So that's why she's not bored.
Dave: It's amazing how that works, isn't it? I mean absolutely. Less of this and more of this. And it's, you know, there's a little bit of comedy. See, I am a funny guy. Yeah, I think, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm the funniest guy. No, but then like, I'll roll something out to my family and it'll just be like dead silence and I'll just be like, and then you know, I'm like maybe I start to second guess myself. I'm like, that was funny, you know? And then you know so anyways, it's probably because they've heard my jokes 1000 times. So I always say that it's easier to get a new audience than it is to get new material. You know what I mean? You know, I try to roll out to different people to see if I can work on them. So as you know, I can relate to this man. What I know, just kind of, I actually did still love construction even at heart just because I was appreciative of it. As you know, I was able to work with my dad and so forth. But one thing that I noticed about something that you said a second ago was that you're able to speak to other people and talk to them about potentially quitting their nine to five or if they want to quit their nine to five but you you don't want to quit your nine to five you love what you do. And you have no shame about your job. I think that is so big because I think so many folks who come in and start an online business or start with something like this. They almost have it's like they have shame in having a job. Instead of just a drive or a motivation to want to get out of it. It's almost like their shame there. versus just leaving that job as like a goal, something that you're motivated towards. And I think that's a shame. I think that really affects somebody's self esteem and keeps them from being able to go out there and create content, because they think well who's gonna listen to me? I'm not, you know, I still have a job. Can you talk to us about that and help us to understand how you do that? What are your thought processes, and help some of these folks who do have some of that shame or guilt or embarrassment around? Having a job but still also marketing online to people who may want to quit their job, even if they want to quit their job too.
Mark: There are a lot of people out there that do want to quit their job and that's one of the target points that I've hit on. Like a lot of people reach out to me, but part of me having my job and number one of the number one reasons why I'm not going to quit my job is because I really appreciate the camaraderie I have with my fellow employees. It's that touch point of being able to get out of the house and talking to other people face to face. Now, what I've discovered too in affiliate marketing now is developing that connection. With people and not just responding by comments to any questions that they ask on any of my videos, but also developing a connection like I said, like reaching out and having a video chat with them just kind of like what we're doing right now. And I find that that's the camaraderie right there that really helps the most and it really helps people trust you. And that's what I should have. What I wish I would have learned back in June, it didn't really help me click until about August, September when I started getting a little bit more successful. But that was the one of the key points that I really hit on.
Can you say more about that? It just give us some more context and examples of what it was like before that clicked for you and what it was like after that click for you.
Yeah, like Dave, when I started when I took the challenge, like first of all, I said I came across this gentleman on TikTok that was making money with affiliate marketing and I said, You know what, like, if this guy can do it, I can do it. And I'm sure a lot of other people have said that as well too. And, and I said, like, you know what, I probably got some humor as well too, that I can put into these videos, but
I really wanted to how do I want to say this, I'm losing my train of thought here
Dave: You had your own sort of imposter syndrome, right? That started to kick in that self doubt, right?
Mark: Is that Yes. Like it's not as simple as just clicking on the link in my bio, you know, like that's, that's kind of what I was thinking it was all about. When I started off. I was like, You know what, it's just getting people to click on the link in your pile. I can definitely do that. But it's not just about doing that, you know, like, yes, I've had people go through and purchase a challenge that haven't even made contact with you. And those are the real killers. But the ones that have questions, those are the ones you're gonna definitely want to reach out to and like I said, the felt that connection with them, make them feel like they can trust you and that you're not going anywhere. You know, like I don't want to, I don't want to see you spend your $7 and then you're never going to hear from me again. Like I always let people know that I'm here to assist them with any questions or comments that they have with regards to the challenge and I'll be here along the way to answer those questions for them.
Dave: And this applies to anything, any niche, any product that you're promoting, I mean, for so many folks a little bit of contact in a chat or a message or an email that they send you before they buy. It's very common. I mean, people just kind of check in and there's ways to do customer support and sales at the same time. You know, and if we really want to kind of treat our business like a business, categorize conversations that we're having the real US customers or in their sales, and I think a lot of people think that they you know, have to do one or the other like I'm either in customer support or I'm answering questions all day and just kind of directing people to other things and and you know, just just basically busy work, but I think one of the keys that was was sort of groundbreaking for me was to realize that I could do customer support and sales at the same time. I got kind of good at including calls to action in my messages, right? As well as in my video content as well as in my email. So if somebody would reach out and say, Hey, is this really real? Or I got a specific question about how does this all work? Right? I wouldn't just, you know, give them some value answer. I would, I would, I would respond and say and kind of validate their curiosity by saying hey, that's a really great, great question. And so it's not that it is rather complicated, right? But there's some steps that you can take to make it really simple and you can start out really simple and the reason why I recommend this training is because it takes you through one two, right? And then I'll say feel free to check it out if you feel called to do so if not, thanks for checking out my content, right. So that's a way I think so many of us, when we start getting messages, we just feel an obligation to just sort of respond right and don't want to be pushy or salesy, but there is a way to be totally respectful in and have great manners and be, you know, compassionate and pleasant in the DMS or the messages as you say when people start to reach out, but also give gentle nudges and have conviction about what it is that you're promoting and include that in your message. Is that something that you kind of started to do as well as incorporate that sales and customer support and what did that look like?
Mark: Yes, you're right, like a big part of that is love. Follow us. Just following up with any lien sia has what's a great part about this affiliate setup errors and lets you go through and see everybody, every all of your members and where they are in the challenge. If you can follow up with them like there are a lot of people Dave that have purchased the challenge, but then they don't start so that's why I always like to give that little nudge to them and reach back out to them via email and say, hey, look, this is just a private message coming from me. This isn't one of my email blasts. This is just a private message just to let you know that you know, I'm here in case you have any trouble you've already paid for the challenge. Let's start and see if we can make a difference.
Dave: Yeah, I think that really understanding that somebody is really a lead when whenever they reach out okay, first and foremost, whatever they reach out via like a direct message on a platform like TikTok they also really become a lead when they buy something for like $7 or $5 or $10. Like that's not like if we really think about it in terms of the big picture like that's not really a huge income producing sale. Like you know, in order to make tons of money off of a couple of dollars for every purchase. You got to be Walmart or Amazon. That's their business model is they make new pennies off of a million purchases per second, right. What we want to do is we want to move people through a value ladder, right and ascension process, and we start them off with something that's low ticket, high value just to get them an appetizer to see to let them decide whether it's a good fit for them or not, you know, here's a taste or something to get you started. It's sort of like coming into a bar or a restaurant and having a drink. Do you like to sit at the bar? Do you like the atmosphere or do you want a bowl because you know, you're not really feeling or the appetizers are cold so let's not have dinner here. You know, it's kind of like that and we move them through that ascension process and let sort of a sales system or a sales process take over at that point. But really, I think without just you know, I'm not trying to dehumanize people but in a sales sense some of us who come from an employee background to where we maybe we weren't in sales. We have a hard time kind of really viewing when somebody reaches out to us as a lead or somebody buys something like a low cost, you know, course or something as a lead but they really are. What does lead mean? It means they're hot, they're there, you know that they're ready you know what I mean? They're they're not reaching out because they just have nothing else to do. They're reaching out because they're interested or they're buying something for a couple of dollars, because they're interested. And that additional follow up. I'm glad you brought that up because I think that is so key and likely market something that the majority of marketers are not doing. Is that what you find as well?
Absolutely. And like I said again, that's just something that I just started doing recently and I've noticed such a big difference by doing the follow up. Another thing you touched on too was giving value. So what I've also incorporated now is giving a free gift like you talk about in the challenge there as well too. So I like to I incorporate just something small like a little six pamphlet ebook, like it's not gonna win a Pulitzer or anything, but it's just something to give people a little bit of information and like I said value, and that's one of the most important
things and how did you, what is the eBook that you give away about and how and I'm asking you because you know, so many folks feel unqualified to write out Oh, who am I right? And how did you feel qualified? How did you look? I mean, did that even enter your mind as you tell us how that as Dan Kennedy originally called it, how did you develop that lead magnet?
Mark: That was just from doing the training and learning what I had to do in order to provide value also to by being an affiliate. I'm sure every other affiliate has done this as well, too. You want to look at what other successful affiliates are doing. And by clicking on their link and signing up for their emails, receiving their emails and seeing what they might be doing differently seeing that other affiliates are giving out ebooks as well too. So that's something that I kind of wanted to just, I wouldn't necessarily say copy but kind of put it in my own words and see if it can be successful for me and it definitely has.
Dave: Yeah, so do you give that away on your opt in page?
Yes. As soon as you sign up for your account, put your name and your email address. That's one of the first things that comes through is that email and it'll just be a link that they can click on to get that free eBook. And you advertise that free eBook on the actual landing page, or is it just a free bonus that they don't have yet.
Mark: I'm in the process of making another landing page, but right now I'm just sticking with the basics. So I'm gonna kind of split the test shortly and see how that works for me, but right now it's kind of something that I just advertise on my life and he's like, TikTok and gets people interested.
Dave: Yeah, it's, it's, it's brilliant. It really is smart. Because when you can tell somebody that hey, I've you know, I've got I've got a free ebook for you. I've got something that's basically a kind of, you know, a 20 minute read. That will give you a full overview of this. One of the most brilliant funnels and simplest funnels in all of time is simply just either offering that free ebook, you know, somewhere on the front end, whether it's in a video or whether it's kind of on your landing page. And then basically, I don't know if you do this on your bridge page per se your ebook, your bonus ebook will be delivered to your inbox in the next 30 minutes. While you wait, watch the video below, right. So check this out. Check this out. The reason why you want to say that is because instead they're just checking their email and they're not going through the fun onto whatever it is that you're that you're promoting. Right. So what I like to do when I deliver those sort of ebooks as bonuses or kind of lead magnets, I like to delay that first email going out for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. So it gives them time to actually go through and watch my bridge page video in my sales page video because if you think about it, you need to know how long it takes to watch the videos of the products that you're promoting. Let's say you're promoting some sort of, you know, a jewelry cleaning product and that in that sales video is only five minutes. Well, you know that within 15 minutes that person has had a full chance to be able to watch that sales video and kind of make a decision whether they're going to buy now if you're promoting something like for example, our 15 Day Challenge. There's a 25 roughly 25 minute long video there, right so after somebody opts in to your landing page, how long has your bridge video, let's say that that's two minutes, 30 minutes. So if we've got 25 plus three, we've got nearly a half an hour that after somebody opts in, they need clear total focus they need at So again, if we've offered them an ebook and then they opt in and then they're going searching their inbox for that ebook. We just may not have as much of a chance to give, you know, total focus on that sales. I don't know if that's helpful to you at all. Yes, it really is, you know, direct response marketing is about if I was to really boil it down. It's about singular focus. And the big difference of why, you know, small time marketers like us have the ability to make millions and millions of dollars per year doing this little thing we call digital marketing, you know, usually selling information products, is because of the way that we market, okay, it's it's not because of anything else. It's because of the way that we market and the difference of how we market is about singular focus, versus this kind of traditional New Age marketing of just basically having a website with 100 Different things for somebody to do read your about me page, you know, go in and check out your product page with all of your products right? I mean, we do like most all of our sales and our sales funnels, not on our legendary marketer corporate website, right because most people think that that oh, gosh, you know, I've, I've had somebody working on my website for you know, six months, it's finally ready and I can be in business and then they've not done shit for six months and now all of a sudden they think they put their website up with 1000 Different things for people to go and check out on the website, click around and then they still make no sales and that's usually after they spent $15,000 on the website. Six months bullshit around now they're like, Okay, I got a marketing problem here. No, I don't have a product problem because nobody's even seeing the product. Nobody's even bought the product. Right? So direct response marketing is really about singular focus. It's about it's about it's about really clarity, right? So if I'm doing a Tiktok video, I want a clear message. I don't want to go in a bunch of different directions. I want a clear call to action when somebody comes to a landing page. I want a clear message with a clear, you know, call to action. There's one thing to do: it's either basically opt in or leave right? When somebody comes to my bridge page, and that's one of the reasons why I've always hated these link tree things, he asked me to okay, because somebody comes to your link tree and you've got your five different options there. Well, if they knew what they needed to do, they wouldn't have been watching your shit in the first place. Right? They're looking to you for direction, right? So we have to give them that singular focus one, step by step right, one step at a time on this page. You're going to kind of buy into the big idea a little bit more and enter your email for access on this page. Right? I want you to know that I'm going to send you an e book but that's going to say that my system takes 30 minutes to send it out. Watch this video and then click the button below to continue once you're done with right cellular focus. So anyways, I'm ranting about that a little bit, but hopefully it was valuable.
Mark: It's all good info though.
Dave: Well, if you brought me out on your job, you know, I'd probably kill myself. But I do a little something about this because I've been doing it for 10 years for God's sake. And now I pick up a hammer and I feel like I'm, you know, on some different planets. Sometimes I just rather hire somebody to do that. It's fair. You know, I just questioned whether I was actually ever in construction or not, because I'm literally I can be so clumsy. And my wife likes to make fun of me. She's like, she used to be you know, trying to do something and she's standing over me pissing me off as I'm fumbling around with it, but yeah, man. So what else? What else? What other tips? What other stories do you have that, you know, have been major milestones or breakthroughs for you on this journey, the short journey for you so far.
Mark: It's just what everybody says, Dave, it's about consistency. You've got to show up every day. Now, like I know, everybody's had to deal with the TikTok bans or you know, your account got shut down for a couple of days because you posted something that maybe they should know or had some community violations. Unfortunately, those are the breaks and you have to overcome those. But still, you have to show up every day posts consistently and and after four weeks, like after about a month's time. You will start seeing the auction and it will just start rolling downhill like a snowball. It's an amazing thing like TikTok, an amazing platform for advertising your business. I like to use other forms of social media as well too, but really TikTok the main one, and there's people all over the world and that's the great thing about tick tock is you can reach out and develop that connection with just pretty much anywhere in the world.
Dave: So how have you gone from somebody who never made a piece of content likely in your life besides you know, taking a selfie and sending it somewhere, to going now to having and finding ideas to be able to make these short little content videos. And what are the majority? What would you say your secret to creating content is for Mark?
Mark: The secrets to writing a good copy, you have to write good copy just like he's just like you address in the tree. I've started to incorporate that a little bit better by doing a little bit more studies and reading books about copywriting. That's definitely helped. But again, like I a lot of us, we looked at what everybody else is doing and what seems to be working for everybody else. And I go with that. And there's really no secret to it. I know all the other affiliates out there we all copy a whole bunch of other material and that seems to be working for me and I don't know what else to say earlier but that ‘s been a good ride so far. Yeah, we'll just get better.
Dave: It's sort of like you know, my buddy over there ClickFunnels calls it Funnel Hacking and it's almost content hacking, you know? I mean, the entire, you know, the entire basically, you know, meaning behind Funnel Hacking was going find the funnel that's working and basically kind of make it your own. You know, don't copy it word for word. And don't you know, don't get into any sort of unethical where you're plagiarizing anybody or in some cases illegal. But you know, get that it's sort of like an artist who gets where to get your inspiration from, you know, basically the naked lady was laying in front of me and I painted her that she was my inspiration. Or I was sitting in front of a beautiful landscape or a beautiful beach and that was I mean, in met. Sometimes people will paint something that looks totally different than whatever their inspiration was. But every artist has for most every piece of art, some sort of an inspiration and I kind of look at marketing nowadays as simplified inspiration because you can look around there's so many different examples. I mean, it's like if anybody thinks that you know, they can't do this, that all you gotta do is go on to say tick tock, basically tick tock for 15 minutes, and you see somebody who you know, and this is no disrespect to them. It's more credit to them because they're an action taker, but they're dumber than you. They're uglier than you. They're fatter than you, they're skinnier than you, they're shorter than you, they're taller than you, you know all the little things that you may be sitting there picking off about yourself as aligning to this or I'm to that or I'm too unqualified. You got people out there who just got started and literally the next week, they've gone through some training. They've gotten some initial foundation and they're beginning marketing there. We've got people here in our community who are watching these shows, who are going through our training, who ‘s initial content, they're taking what they learned and putting it in their own words and then they start to find inspiration from other people out there on social media. So what you're saying there's brilliance in the simple answer, I get it, I understand it and I think that it just leaves somebody who really wants this really with no excuses. In unlimited inspiration. Would you agree with that?
Mark: Absolutely something I always say to people imitation is the highest form of flattery. When I started my TikTok account I had four followers and now I'm almost up to 20,000. So it takes a little bit of time. But before you know it, it'll blow up like my 12 year old daughter who's on TikTok 23 and a half hours a day. It just blows her mind how the followers I've been able to incorporate and they seem to get a lot of her friends that like to join my lives as well too. They think it's a big kick and, and they're all really interested in what I'm doing too. So it's been fun. It's kind of been able, like it's brought me back to like when I was in college, I took Television and Radio Broadcasting. So it's kind of brought me back to my radio broadcasting days of being able to be on the radio and speak to people and it's been about 25 years since I've been there. But hey, it's like my flame again.
Dave: Nice man. So if somebody you know, maybe somebody who knows you and who's been following you on Tik Tok or somebody who's just landed here on this alive and is wondering, you know, maybe they're skeptical. They're sitting on the fence, like, based on like, what's happened in your life? Over the last when did you take the challenge?
Mark: I took the challenge back and you started getting into running my own business. I incorporated that like I said in the middle of June, and I haven't looked back since . One of the mind blowing things that happened to me was about a month ago, I was at the gas station fueling up my work vehicle. And the guy the next day over he looked over at me goes, Hey, you're that bald guy on TikTok that's making money. And it was kind of like it was like my 15 minutes of fame. It just really hit home and they made me feel good. And like I said, if I can do it, just about anybody out there can do it. All you have to do is just take, just take a little bit of time like I wasn't really when I started off. I was doing one two hours a day with my side hustle. Now I'm incorporated a little bit more because I'm getting a lot. I'm getting it. I'm way more busy than I was. When I started. I'm answering more emails, reaching out to people having video chats with people every day. It's just you know, it's fun and my wife says to me every day she's like, you're really enjoying this. I can tell and, you know, it's not a hobby, like keep like you said, you can't treat this as a hobby. You got to treat this as a business. And as long as you understand that, you'll be successful. You just don't quit, keep going. It'll work for you. You've got a great product you're in place, the product sells itself, just keep going and stick with it.
Dave: Well hey dude. Awesome, awesome. Keep it up. Congrats. You know, love to see somebody who you know. I just love to see somebody who doesn't want to leave their job just loves this and this is so worth their time, both from a happiness standpoint and also a financial standpoint, that you just you know, who knows where it'll take you where you'll be in six months. We'll check back in three to six months to see where you're at, but I'm just thrilled. It's such a different kind of message this morning just about, you know, this is possible. It's fun, it can be fun. It is fun. Like don't take it so seriously. And you know, I've always lived by or tried to don't take myself so seriously or else nobody else will. You know, if you get in there and if you take action like it'll come and it'll come just let it come to and you just you just embody that this morning Mark. So keep up the great work, brother and thanks for coming on, man.
Mark: No problem. I know. Hopefully, I'll see you at one of your masterminds. In the near future. I'm really looking forward to one of those two. That's another one of my goals. So we'll see.
Dave: Can't wait man can't wait to hang out. Okay. I'll talk to you soon. Mark, see. I might make friends, go and check mark out and follow him on TikTok. You can see his handle there. So Mar productions, s o m m a r production. So more productions that's going to be his tick tock handle and you can check his content out there, you know, lift him up, support him, like his stuff, comment on his stuff. That's how we support each other in this community is we have an online community okay, that that's what this is and the way that we communicate and support each other is by liking and commenting and you know, if we see somebody going live or we see a video that somebody posted on tick tock don't just watch it and scroll by leave a comment and say great content, awesome creator, like something like that like to where you lift somebody up from this community and what will happen also which is which is interesting. People will begin to do the same thing back to you. You know, and you're more you're more quicker. You'll more quickly. I'm a little tired this morning. You're quickly building your connections, right? Because you know, what's the most important thing to somebody when they post a piece of content is that people engage with it. So if you're somebody who's sitting there engaging with somebody like Mark's content or any of our guests here, anybody from this community, you become somebody who they notice and somebody who's important to them, and then they even start commenting back on your stuff. And that's how relationships are born. And that's how we support each other. We have an advantage here. So we know each other and we can support each other when we see each other out there online. So do that. We'll meet you back here. For another episode. As Mark mentioned, we do have a mastermind coming up all last week. We interviewed speakers and talked about the mastermind. If you're not registered yet, go to your back office. If you own a mastermind ticket of course, go to your back office register now if you want to come spots are almost filled up my friends get out of here. We'll see you back here. Tomorrow at 10am. Eastern time. For another episode.
