Below is the transcription for this episode:
Dave: What's going on, my friends, this is Dave Sharpe, welcome to Wake Up Legendary. This morning we had another guest. We are going to hear from who went from full time employee to full time online entrepreneur, please everyone, help me welcome Mike Mefford to the show what's up Mike.
Mike: Hey, what's going on, Dave.
Dave: Not much brother where you are calling from.
Mike: I live in the Kansas City Metro Area, Lee's Summit Missouri to be exact.
Dave: Okay, okay, and you've got the old wood wall behind you too man. Is that just what was there before your online business or is that something that you've recently installed.
Mike: That's something new. I'm in the process of remodeling my office right now. This has totally changed everything about me.
Dave: Nice man, well tell us about that, tell us how, give us a nutshell version so we can get to know you here in the first few minutes of the show, how you got here and how you started online.
Mike: Yeah, I actually lost my job at the end of January, so I kind of scrambled to find something that had been following a few people on tick tock, like everybody else and you know I decided to jump in and give this a try and from day one of the challenge I knew this was what I wanted to do. I did not want to go back to a nine to five job. I, you know, I like doing this. It was totally out of my realm of comfort, I had never done a TikTok. I'm still in amazement that I'm on the show with you today. I like to thank you for everything you've done for me and my family.
Dave: Hey man, You're welcome, buddy. Well, I didn't even know I did it, you know, so it's it's good to know it's one of the, one of the benefits of this show for me has, has been that I get to meet, you know, actual customers and students and some of our affiliates and, and actually, you know, get to hear how you've used our training how you've used our system how, you know, how your life has evolved changed, so you know I think I get as much out of this, as you do man so thanks for saying that. And glad you're here. So, was this the only training that you've, You had ever taken, was this the only online business that you had ever tried?
Mike: Yep, this is the only thing I've ever tried to do online. So, holy crap, man. Wow, and so I jumped in full steam so I got a very supportive wife behind me so that helps a lot.
Dave: So, tell me about, like, tell me about that beginning process of you, have you clicked a link watching a sales video enrolling in the challenge watching that first day, I mean what was the things that were said, What did. What did I say? What did you hear that said that made you say, okay this is what I want to do, I mean what gives us insight into your head and what was your aha moment. What did you see that made you say, this makes sense?
Mike: Just what everybody else was saying on TikTok, how, how wonderful you were how, how the support community was a big piece of it for me, you know, you know, you know, because I had no experience so, you know, I didn't want to jump into this and then not have any support on the back end of it so and I've reached out to, you know, lots of people and all of that but just everything you said. I mean, you know, this is life changing. You know I wanted more time with my family. You know I was sick of commuting to work and working a nine to five. So, yeah, so.
Dave: So at the end of the day, I mean, the bottom line is is you just didn't want to go back to work, working for somebody else, and you were willing to have an open mind to something that made sense, something that would allow you to work from home to not have to go back to a full time position working somewhere else outside of the house in the middle of a, you know, in the middle of 2020 and 2020. We all know what's going on. You have to say it and have Facebook, you know, cancel our live video here because, you know, it is proven if you say certain words you will get. You will get penalised. I guess so we all know what's going on, right, we don't need to. We don't need to go into those details, we all know what's happening out there in the world. And, and you want no part of it, you want to build your own economy right at home is that pretty much the bottom line. That is the bottom line right there. Yeah, so if we cut through all the excuses my friends here if we cut through all this shit. The bottom line is, is that we all just want to be at home, have the ability to have unlimited upside, be in control of our time and are in our money, and in, do more of what we love, versus essentially taking orders, driving to a building that we don't want to be at taking orders from people that we don't want to take orders from.
Mike: Yep, I've spent 25 plus years doing work.
Dave: So you were working as a contractor or you were working 25 years at the same company?
Mike: I didn't work 25 years at the same company but I did. I was a system administrator for data analytics and reporting so that's what I spent my whole life doing.
Dave: Understood. So, you find this online marketing thing you go through the challenge you start taking some training, and what sort of hurdles, either mentally or what were some of the things that if you look back, you could say Mike, that could have took me out like that was a landmine that I, you know or that was a, you know, that was something that I, I almost let get the best of me or could have got the best of me, or that's something that I'm glad I overcame like what were some of the biggest hurdles and challenges that if you look back in the very beginning, if you're getting started, you, you're thankful that you overcame them and you realize they could have took you out.
Mike: The first one was the amount of information, the amount of information you provide is unreal. So processing all of that, you know, and only concentrating on the pieces that I needed to at that time, and then the big one is I wasn't comfortable on camera. That was not my cup of tea. You know, I've done 1000s of TikTok videos now I think so, it's really grown to.
Dave: So, you had to, you had to get, you had to decide what information that you wanted to pay attention to or you had to, you had to either look at being overwhelmed, as a, as a positive thing because it's better than being underwhelmed, or did you have to. Did you have to be really careful that you didn't get overwhelmed or how did you deal with the feeling of overwhelm at the beginning because you happen to mention, information overload, it's a common thing. Other people feel overwhelmed by other things, how did you deal with your specific flavor of overwhelm which was potentially going to come from information overload?
Mike: I picked up, I just started from the beginning and broken into small chunks and, you know, work through, you know the, you know that I did the blueprint so you know I, you know, I did each section and then, you know I practice that section and, yeah, so I didn't try to do it, do everything and then go back and try to implement everything at one time I did the Facebook section and then I, you know, I finished that. And so I did it in blocks.
Dave: When you went through the blueprints was that that was this year of course right?
Mike: Yeah, I did it. I think I did the 15 Day Challenge in March, and I immediately went into the blueprints after the two weeks of that do
you find the blueprints, the depth of the blueprints. When you look back at it you do you sort of, would you, would it be fair for you to describe it as kind of the, the challenge, although valuable being the shallow end of the pool, the blueprints, being the deep end of the pool?
Mike: Yeah, most definitely went through a lot deeper than the 15 Day Challenge part of it.
Dave: Yeah, yeah, well that's what I was hoping you were gonna say but I opened up a bunch of shallow shit Dave and you're just too big. But, but, thankfully, thankfully here live on, you know, that's the whole thing with going live man I mean, you know, it's one way to get comfortable with, with the idea of, you know, messing up, of, of, you know, looking like an asshole in front of a bunch of people, whatever, getting over that real quick is just going live. Because, you know, here we are at, at, you know, look at your phones and tell me, does your phone say the same exact thing my phone knows yes we are live, is that, you know, get you comfortable being on camera and not worrying about every little thing if you do it enough time so have you begun to what is your strategy are you, obviously you've done some marketing on TikTok, are you also going live, and doing other things besides just posting videos on TikTok, give us a little idea of what your strategy looks like and we'll also post your link so people can check you out.
Mike: Yeah, I definitely do. I have TikTok live. I did a couple weeks of it, I didn't, I didn't. I didn't see a big benefit and I didn't get a whole lot more leads or sales. The biggest change for me here in the last two weeks is Tyler Well being marketer, gave me a kick in the butt and said you need to have one conversations with people that are reaching out to you, so I have really started doing that. It is crazy now I spend three to four hours a day, replying to DMS. TikTok and Instagram comments so, yeah, I'm getting my sales rate through the roof now and so.
Dave: Well golly gee willikers you know, that's, that's, that's the one thing that a lot of people are sort of unwilling to do who have that sort of expectation of, you know that that quote unquote automated business they've watched too many, you know, too many of those, too many of those rented Lambo gurus, with the push button system sales videos, and they've, they've got this idea that there's going to be some button that they're finally going to find once they pay, you know $37 For you will make money on online product on Clickbank or JVZoo or something, and that they're, they're going to discover that push button thing and the truth is is that, you know, I haven't found that yet it's like sort of like the pot at the end of the rainbow. And the more that I can blend here's been my secret I think sounds like you're saying the same thing is blending high touch with high tech.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, I fell into the trap of hey, click on my link and buy this product from me and opt in to my email list and.
Dave: So, what are some of your calls to action? Now, how are you getting people to reach out more so you can have more conversations via DM?
Mike: Well I, I changed my mindset, a little bit a couple of weeks ago where I know I'm not just posting about hey let's say you want to learn how to do affiliate marketing, I'm like, Hey, here's this side hustle or here's these work from home job, and at the end of my always put the call to action is hey if you want to learn how I make money online, click the link in my bio, but that's not my main focus of the TikTok at the beginning it's you know, if you want to work for Facebook remotely, this is how you can do it. So that's working pretty well for me or the last couple of weeks I know I've gained 77,000 followers on TikTok in the last two weeks so
Dave: Well that's pretty kick ass. So in opt in rates are crazy so crazy good or crazy bad?
Mike: No crazy good I'm at like 86% of people who hit my Ads and I were running some ads, Dave: And we're at 30% trying to figure out how to get to 60% Maybe we need to move we need to come and learn from you.
Mike: That's what my Clickfunnels stats are showing me and since I started October 3 that the options are like 86% O
Dave: Okay, well that's awesome bro, I mean, soak it up and enjoy every minute of 80 plus percent opt in rate percentages mean the beautiful thing about organic marketing free traffic. Not only is it free. Right, but it's warmer, right, because they, they've, they've likely seen a video or two or four or five from you before. And they, they, and a lot of times if they like something from you, they're gonna go and they're gonna watch a few more videos on your, on your, on your profile. I mean think about how you interact with other people's social media. Think about how you do that. A lot of times you're going to go over to somebody's profile like there's this joker let me go see if this is the only video on their profile, it's just something or let me see if this is like a real person and this is a real profile. I think when we talk about authenticity, or at least when I talk about authenticity. I think of it, less, as I have to, you know I have to be the same person I am, with my wife right because I'm a little dial down I'm not like super old mister wake up legendary with my kids and in life I, you know, because they'd be like, give us your inside voice that you know like tone it down a little bit I get all hyped up and excited because this is, I love this and in a different way that I love my kids if I'm hyped up and I'm outside playing with them and I'm gonna use my outside Wake Up Legendary voice I'm gonna get all fired up. But what being authentic to me being authentic online to me means is that people can find my real estate, online, whether it be my daily show, or whether it be my tick tock profile, whether it be my Facebook profile, and they can see a consistent pattern of me showing up with a consistent message delivering consistent value, and it's clear that I'm a real person, and that there's actual, there is a life, there's a human being behind some of these claims, this is not just a video that I threw up that I'm reading from a script that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I eat, sleep and breathe this stuff, what I'm sharing with you on this video, in terms of how online business has changed my life. You can see a track record of that if you go over to my profile and scroll through the history, right, and so I think that we have to remember, we have to remember that people do that, they don't always just, you know, click on on our, on our, you know, Profile link or right to the bio know they scroll they want to do some research, they want to find out who this joker is but after they've gone through and watched four or five videos, if your videos are quality stuff. They're going to be even more convinced and more excited to go click that link in your bio, or send you a DM right might say hey, this is this stuff oh real that you're talking about.
Mike: If you do that with the consistency part though, you can show up one day and then take three days off and then show up again because that doesn't show consistency for your audience.
Dave: Yeah, yeah, and people really, really are counting on you to not be consistent. They're counting on you to get distracted and not do the same. They're counting on you failing. Okay, this is what I think, one, it's hard for me to say this in making it clear because it's a complex thing and I think it all happens subconsciously. I don't think people purposefully want you to fail, or stop or get distracted. But I think that's what most people do is they get excited about something for a short period of time and the next week they're talking about something else, or they're doing something else, or they've quit. And that's probably how they operate a lot in their lives because most people are really good at starting things but not so good at finishing things. So when they see you day after day, or they go over to your tick tock Pro and you have three months, or you have six months of videos they're, they're like holy shit this person does this full time, this is what they do. Right.
Mike: Yep, exactly. Yeah, I do this, I post to TikToks a day. I use block scheduling. So, you know, I set a certain time every day to work on my content or my email sequence or something like that.
Dave: Yeah, nice man. What other things have worked, that you would like to share with the community that you think would be valuable for them, what other tips, what other strategies that, that you think would be a value here in the next few minutes just because I have a couple of other questions that are not related specifically to your marketing?
Mike: Okay. Consistency is the big one, you know, showing up every day, producing good content that your audience is going to find valuable. The one on one conversations. You're very rarely going to get somebody, you might get them to buy your low ticket offer but without those one on one conversations I don't think you're gonna make many sales on high ticket so definitely have those one on one conversations. I think that those are my two big ones right now that I concentrate on not being consistent and, you know, having those conversations with people.
Dave: Yeah. Cool man, well that's valuable and I love that you're talking about what's going on currently in your business. I do that too. You know I, I talked about kind of what's going on, like right now, And I love to hear that from people as well. You'd mentioned that your wife is really supportive and I just wanted to circle back on that and just ask, you know, how did you how did you how did you present this to her, and how did you get her support, you know, how did you win her support, what was it, is it a certain history that you have of communication is it that you guys had no other options mean how did you go, most people when they go to their spouses who have no experience doing an online business or something that's not traditional, they get a lot of pushback. So how did you win over the support of your wife and what tips would you give to our audience to win over the support of their spouses?
Mike: Well like I said she's always been supportive and whatever I wanted to do some of it. I want to buy a motorcycle. Okay, well, This was that I you know I showed her tic TOCs and Brian Brewer and stuff like that. She sat down and watched your sales pitch, so we don't know we have an open line of communications. I've had a couple of times during this that, you know, Maybe this isn't for me if you know I'm not generating any leads. Well, she's been right there behind me now. Let's give it another month and see what happens and keep doing your thing, you know you're getting better at the TikToks, your contents are getting better, you know. So yeah, she's super Yeah, and I didn't, we didn't want to. We were in a situation that I you know I needed an income to bring in some money to help pay the bills so you know that was a little, you know, we're going to make money doing this I go yeah we're gonna make some money eventually down the road but
Dave: I'd had that conversation, bro. I've had all that, you know, I've, I've been there, done that, man, I, when I started down this down this journey I got involved in network marketing first. And, you know like herbalife and you know Amway and those kind of things and, and, you know, I remember, you know, several of the company one company that I that I got involved in the product was a cell phone, and I paid, you know, $850 to join 500 of it was for the cell phone I never got the cell phone for the company shut down about two weeks after that and then another one was a lotion, lotion, skin lotion company so I have purple boxes and skin lotion, you know, under bed, and this one company was numismatic coins, right. So, I was paying 100 a month for these numismatic coins I thought it was bullion, I didn't understand the difference between, like, like a bullion coin which is, you're paying for the weight of the gold, whereas a collectible you're paying for the, like the collectability of it, and it's so these were $100 coins but they were only really worth like 25 or 30 bucks so anyways, I got I was in the company for a few months, and I hadn't made any money, and, you know, I was struggling one month to pay my rent, and thankfully I had at least enrolled in this numismatic coin company because I took him down to the pawn shop. And I was able to get some money back to be able to pay my rent, but, you know, God, I look at that. For me, you know, I'd asked you what were some of those times to where you look and you said, you know, maybe that that was a time that I overcame something I certainly could have quit. I mean, for me, that was a rock bottom. And that was before I got started in entrepreneurship, you know what I mean, I was already in entrepreneurship, I was already talking big shit about how I was going to succeed, I'm going to get rich with this and or I'm going to at least make some money with this I'm going to go full time and here I am pawning these numismatic coins to cover a portion of my part of the bills because this was before, before we were married the first or so or two of our relationship. But yeah, I mean, for whatever reason, both my, my then girlfriend, now wife being supportive, supportive and, and, in her own way, you know, she ended up buying me a computer because I was doing offline stuff in these network marketing companies, You know chasing down friends and family, being held in the doors pounding the phones pounding the pavement, dragging people to home and hotel meetings and stuff like that, trying to get them signed up. And, you know, after, after two out of three companies shut down and I had to pawn my numismatic coins. I was like okay this, I gotta find something else, but I didn't have a computer do. And so, you know, she took me to Best Buy and she bought me a computer for five or 600 bucks, and I paid it off 50 bucks a month, you know, over the next, however long it took me to pay it off, you know, the next year or so, and. And that was a computer that I worked on. And it was kind of my, my bread and butter as a matter of fact, and I encourage all of you to take some pictures, you know, this was back. This was back before we all just had. We all just had cameras on all of our cell phones, you know, and it was just so easy to take a picture of everything, but this is me sitting at that very computer, you know, with, you know, the. It was a Samsung you can see there, and I had the, I had it up on a, on a little stand there so I could, I guess see better or whatever and a little, little keyboard there, you know, detached from the thing and I had the nicotine patch on there, not sure if you can see that but I had the old quit smoking nicotine patch on the right shoulder there, you know the the desk was set up right in the middle of living room. There was no home office that was the home office. And, You know that was the computer that I had started my, you know, online marketing career with paying it off on my, my, my then girlfriend now wife's credit card $50 a month at a time. It was kind of like putting a piece of furniture on like one of those payment plans that, you know, whatever this furniture place is. And I looked back and I felt nowadays I buy a Mac computer it's, it's, you know when they whenever a new one comes out and it's no big deal but, I mean there was a time man to where that was the biggest purchase in my life at that moment, you know, it was just that computer to be able to work on. And so, yeah, I think it's important, Mike and everybody listening to stay close to your the beginnings of your story and to that struggle into what that look like and, in, I know it's hard to appreciate it at the beginning, you know, because it's tough, it sucks, you know, it's like this sucks. But you look back on it and that becomes the greatest story that you have, you know, when you become successful, you get to look back on that you get to talk about that you get to show pictures if you have it, those pictures of you working. I've got another funny one of mine I had got. I had finally got enough money that I felt comfortable enough to buy a, you know, I guess I'm a Mac/iMac guy, Right. And, but I, I guess, for whatever reason I didn't have a desk or something to set it on so I set it on this nightstand or whatever, it's like backwards sitting there in the corner, you know, and I'm just kind of sitting up hunched over it, you know that that would create massive neck and back pain for me, for me today you can tell, the pictures not very good, knows what it was taken on but, you know, the point is is that those beginnings are, are part of the most, or the most powerful part of your story, and they're what makes the journey, enjoyable and real as you as you grow in and kind of move away and move on. Those beginning So, anyways, your story of getting started reminded me of that and I appreciate that. My brother. I appreciate your time. It's been an honor to chat. Thanks for the kind words about our, our process and our system here, um, I've had a couple of folks on this week, it's well actually yesterday and today, who both said that they'd never done any other training, never done any other online business before. This was the first one, and they're off and running and kicking, kicking butt and taking names so what would you tell somebody who's on that day one, are thinking about getting involved here and might have some of that skepticism that some of us have at the beginning, based on your experience in what you've got out of this, What would you tell maybe yourself if you were sitting there at that at that day one again. What would you say to yourself?
Mike: Stick with it. No, don't, don't build that on day three and, you know, don't, don't think it's going to get too hard, there's plenty of support out there to help you with whatever problem you may have you don't have to be a tech whiz or anything to do this I mean, there's lots of help out there YouTube videos to help you along the way, you know just be consistent, you know, finish the 15 day challenge I have lots of people who don't finish the 15 day challenge so I reach out to them and, You know, tried to get them motivated started again and stuff like that but yeah you keep keep grinding.
Dave: Yeah, stick with it. It's amazing how many people will even buy something online and then not even log into it, it's unbelievable. It's crazy, folks, that is the norm, just so you understand that a lot, we've we've had a lot of our affiliates who have gone through the challenge and it's like, well, you're clearly new man you've not you'll, you don't know the behaviors of human beings, especially online, this is the norm that people buy something, and don't use it, it's like buying a gym membership, and not going. I've never done that, you know, I've for most of my adult life hadn't had a gym membership, and didn't go to the gym on a regular basis that I had a membership, you know there's probably been times that I've had multiple memberships, you know because we buy stuff. We in the heat of the moment, impulsive decisions, we, we have a moment of motivation or inspiration, you know, and, and we were my the only one who's just at some times in my life has been great at something and just bad at finishing, I can't be the only one, you know, through my decade of doing this. It's been unbelievable Mike I'm saying that it's, I'm obviously being sarcastic. Unbelievable how many people will buy something or not even log in and not even start or buy something and not go through it. And for me, I always like to see the silver lining in that. And for me what that shows me is that there's not that much competition. Most people are lazy, most people are distractible, most people, even if they're out, even if they can outsmart me out with me. They cannot last me. Right. It's like a game of survivor and sense, if you don't have, which I've not over the years have the technical skills, had the grammar the selling the, you know, a lot of these skills that keep a lot of us from being embarrassed I used to write emails out to my list and they'd send them back saying this is the worst thing I've ever read. Never email me again, you know, because the grammar was horrible and I was just a bad writer, but I've outlasted people, and I think we, on your note of consistency. Just remember folks when times get tough, when you feel like, I don't know if I'm ever going to blow this up and become successful with this. Those who are successful are not the smartest, they're not the best dressed, they're not most likely to. They didn't get that award and it's not because I certainly didn't get that award any time in school. It's not the people with the highest IQ, it's not even the most charismatic, right, because even those people are distractible. It's the people who do the deal, consistently, and stick with it on a daily basis, over a period of time, and that's with any business, that's not just this, that's with any business use you roll your hot dog stand up to that corner for long enough, or if you got to change course are fine, but eventually you're going to find a niche you're going to find a hot spot you're in, it's in it's going to blow up, but it's the folks who invest all this hot dogs gonna blow up I'm gonna get rich with this and they go out there for a week, and it's, you know, selling hot dogs and they're like I want maybe their wife says or whatever and they listen or maybe they're just all negative but to get down on themselves, but they quit too soon, you know,
Mike: They jump to the next shiny object.
Dave: Absolutely, absolutely. So all right, my brother will listen. Have a great day, tell your wife that we said hello.
Mike: I will do that.
Dave: Again, my friend. Thanks for supporting and knowing how important that is and please come back and keep us posted on your journey. All right, brother.
Mike: Well thank you very much.
Dave: Alright see Mike. All right my friends you can follow Mike, as I've put up here, a couple of times at Mikemefford6 on TikTok. And as always say, lift, lifted brother up, lift the sister up, leave them a comment like their stuff, that's how we can support each other in this community is by is by, you know, showing support is by sending positive energy is by collaborating and masterminding and learning from each other and just, again, it's all about collaboration not competition. Make a decision, you know, it's almost like, you know how many times for some of you sitting on the fence, do you have to see or hear some of these stories to go all in to really, you know, to really make a powerful decision I hope that today will be that day for you. And if it's not keep coming back, we'll keep talking and keep sharing stories, and trying to inspire and bring new hope where we are at in your journey with that being said, Get out of here, have a great Tuesday, Peace.
