Ahead of the Curve with Guest Maxwell Finn: MakingBank S2E20

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SUMMARY

What does it take to be a great entrepreneur?

Well…it takes confidence, pride, and a good idea.

But more than anything, it takes a whole lot of guts.

(Not everyone can walk into a room of ice-cold investors and drop an elevator pitch, or leave the security of a job to launch a company with little more than an idea.)

Great entrepreneurs have an incredible amount of courage.

They need that courage because as much as they prepare, research, and plan, nothing is certain.

No entrepreneur knows if their product or service will be a success, all they know is that taking action is the only way to drive a result, be it a positive or negative one. Entrepreneurs leap before they look, and learn as they go.

For those of you looking to meet an entrepreneur who is the very embodiment of the word “courage”, sit down, strap-in, and get ready for today’s episode of Making Bank with guest Maxwell Finn, a man loves to take action and learn on the fly.

Maxwell’s done everything from training realtors in the art of online marketing (a nearly impossible task), to surviving a failed startup thanks to a bunch of crooked IT professionals. His biggest success, a t-shirt company that celebrates entrepreneurship called, Startup Drugz, became a six-figure business in just 12-months.

Today, Maxwell is a managing partner at Quantum Media Marketing and Maxwell Finn, where he uses his knowledge and his entrepreneurial experience to help millions of clients achieve their own marketing success.

Tune-in to hear Maxwell and host Josh Felber discuss why courage is such a critical component of entrepreneurship, as well as…

• Why you need to know IT to build an IT company
• The importance of capital in constructing a tech startup
• The most common mistakes made by ecommerce website and how to fix them
• How you can maximize ecommerce success with specific tools
• What it takes to create a winning Facebook Ad campaign
• The best process for turning ice cold leads into sales

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Transcription

Josh Felber: Welcome to Making Bank, I am Josh Felber, where we uncover the success strategies, and the secrets of the top 1% so you can amplify your life, and your business today. I’m really excited today’s guest. We’ve had a lot of time to connect, and really get to know each other. Max is just out there crushing it. He’s the founder of Startup Drugz, the awesome T-shirt company, as well as a managing partner at Quantum Media Marketing. He has years of experience creating hugely profitable Facebook ads, spending millions of dollars in both his clients and his own companies. Max is a serial entrepreneur, has launched and sold several e-commerce brands, and venture backed startups. He’s passionate about helping new entrepreneurs and small businesses achieve their success. Max, I want to welcome you to Baking Bank today.

Max Finn: Always good to be here Josh. We have these chats pretty frequently, so at least we’re recording this one.

Josh Felber: Yeah. Well cool. Hopefully we dig in, and dive in with all your knowledge, and really uncover some really cool gems and nuggets for people out there today, and start implementing in their business. I guess give us-

Max Finn: Well first-

Josh Felber: Yeah-

Max Finn: First we should say that this is a coincidence. Josh and I did not plan this at all. We just happened to wear the exact same T-shirt today.

Josh Felber: Truth, yes because I have a whole stack of T-shirts that I brought with me for shooting all the different episodes today, and I just happened to throw this on.

Max Finn: Yeah.

Josh Felber: Awesome Max, well I guess give us a little bit of background. Obviously, you’ve owned multiple different companies, sold and everything. How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

Max Finn: Sure, so it’s been kind of in my DNA. So my grandpa was an entrepreneur, started one of the first networks of real estate companies before the franchise model was popular in the ’60s. My dad grew that company into a multinational company with 5,000 brokers in 55 countries. So I’ve always had that, from day one, this is just the world. You do your own thing, you take risks. There’s benefits to it, being your own boss, setting your own hours, getting the luxury of that, but there’s also obviously the downsides of, you’re working nonstop. You have to put other things in front of some things that might be more important in the long run, like friends, and family, and stuff like that, and security. But it’s always been like that from day one.

It’s just starting your own ventures, taking risk. So all through college that’s what I was doing. Then out of college, I’ve been in the startup world. So I never had a nine to five job. Well obviously other than the college ones, where you’re working behind a deli and stuff, but since college never had a nine to five job. Never had a paycheck to depend on, so it’s tough to get started, but at this point there’s no other thing that I would rather be doing than [inaudible 00:03:57] running different startups.

Josh Felber: No, that’s awesome. With your grandfather, and your dad then with the real estate company, did you dive into that area at all? Or did you, go out and focus on your own stuff?

Max Finn: I did, so that’s really where I started a lot of the marketing-

Josh Felber: Okay-

Max Finn: Was in that space. So back in the … 2006, 2007, really helped them roll out a corporate blog using WordPress [inaudible 00:04:23] for all the offices. Did a lot of deal work for them, helped them get on social, which at that time just meant Facebook and Twitter. That gave me so much experience because if you know the real estate finance market, you know that they’re the most stubborn people in the world, and they’re always behind the curve technologically.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: So getting a 55-year-old broker, who’s been doing this business the same way for three decades to start tweeting, or writing blogs is really difficult. So overcoming all those objections with that demo, made it so much easier when you get into the consumer market, and you start talking to people who get it. Or are not super late adopters, that are kind of middle of the road. So it was a lot of great practice early on, especially since I really started peak recession.

That commercial real estate market just got crushed. Guys were doing 5, $10 million a year, and then were making $0 a year. So trying to get people to try new things, when they’re making no money, and the world is falling apart, was definitely an exciting, and kind of scary learning curve of trying to navigate that, and help people try to establish their personal brand, and grow their business.

Josh Felber: So after college, what was your first venture that you dove into, and started to take that risk, that first startup for yourself?

Max Finn: Yes so, I started out at Emory University in Atlanta. At the time I went to a boarding school. There’s only 20 colleges that exist in that world. So it was the best school I could get into, and it just didn’t provide what I wanted. So I ended up transferring to Babson College, much small school, but it’s the best for entrepreneurship. So I knew from day one that’s what I wanted to do. Got there, got an incredible education that’s so unique, and pretty much you couldn’t find anywhere else.

Right out of that, a buddy of mine from Emory, who I went to school with and lived across the hall from, reached out to me and said, “I had this idea, and I know a few years ago that we are talking about some things in the dorms, and I’d love to kind of pick your brain on it.” That kind of blood into our first venture, which at the time was called the Daily Hundred, eventually became Loot.

So the idea behind that was basically a long tail user generated content platform for brands, so a way for them to incentivize their [inaudible 00:06:41] fans to create and share branded content for them. So native advertising. We did that for about 2 1/2 years, raised a lot of money for. We were always one step ahead of the curve. So we were mobile first, before mobile advertising started really taking off. Then we were native advertising before brands started really adopting native advertising.

So it was definitely a huge learning experience of trying to deal with Fortune 500 marketing departments, all the bureaucracy there, and trying to be innovative, but at the same time realize that big companies, they allocate their marketing budget for the year based on different categories.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: So very small percent of that is kind of experimental stuff. So you gotta try to fit into that experimental budget, and you have 10,000 startups pitching for that small budget. But we had a lot of success but that, and eventually rolled it out to an agency, and moved onto the next thing. So I was really our first big startup. It was really exciting. It had about 40 employees at our peak. So we really went from 0 to 100 pretty fast.

Josh Felber: Along the way, what were some of the challenges that you ran into with that. Obviously, I mean just fresh out of college, and starting the startup and everything, what were some of these challenges that you hit?

Max Finn: Yeah so, pretty much everything is a challenge your first startup. You don’t know how to do anything. So you have this naivete where you’re like, “Zuckerberg doesn’t know anything, and he just killed it, and all these guys that are just, they’re just brilliant. They came out of school and they had no problems, and they just made a billion dollar company in a year.”

For us especially, as non tech founders building a tech company, this is something that I get a ton of inquiries on a weekly basis from entrepreneurs who are, “Hey, I have an idea for an app, or a website, or software, but I don’t know how to code. How do I get started?” We really struggled through that for probably eight months of going through developer, after developer, after developer. We didn’t know how to vet them. We didn’t know the right questions to ask. We burned through tens of thousands of dollars. Half of the people are totally unqualified. The other half were pretty much just con artist, and didn’t do anything, didn’t deliver any products.

So that was our biggest hurdle from day one, is getting a [inaudible 00:09:03] product, without any experience on how to code. Eventually we found the right person. We found [inaudible 00:09:08] who then we could depend on to build a team under him.

Josh Felber: Yeah, a lot of that is, and I was the same way, you go in, and you starting thinking, “Oh yeah, these people know whether talking about because you see stuff out there about them, or whatever.” We’ve hired a lot of the wrong people as well. You spend a lot of money on the so called, hey I’m a guru in this area, and I’m doing great. A couple hundred gram later you’re like, “Where’s all my stuff? What’s going on?”

Max Finn: Exactly, yeah, and they go MIA. I mean, I could write an entire book just about that first six months of business, and all the crazy stuff that happened, and all the scary moments. But that’s why I kind of taught myself to code. Not to the point where I can build crazy, cool software, I’m not good at it, but I taught myself enough that one, I do things on my own, if I need to make changes, and two, I know how to ask the right questions-

Josh Felber: Right-

Max Finn: And I can tell when someone is BSing. That something I recommend for any entrepreneur. If you’re going to get into the tech space, there’s so many resources out there that you can just spend a few weeks learning. There’s all kinds of Code Academy, and stuff out there that are free. Free resources, you pay a little bit, and at least learn enough that you can then be smart in these interviews, and when you’re vetting contractors, or potential hires. Otherwise, you are just going to get burned. You’re going to lose a lot of money and a lot of time, which is even more valuable in the space.

Josh Felber: Yeah definitely, I agree. As entrepreneurs sometimes we think, “Hey I don’t think I need to go learn this or whatever,” but even having a base knowledge, so you can ask like you said, ask the right questions to make sure that they’re not BSing you. To make sure that as you’re moving forward with the project, they’re hitting whatever those targets are that they set, and you’ve set with them, and everything. So I think that’s definitely a huge key point for sure. Can you stick around for a minute? We gotta take a quick break?

Max Finn: I’d love to stick around.

Josh Felber: Alright, awesome. I am Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank, and we’ll be right back.

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Josh Felber: Welcome back to Making Bank. I am Josh Felber, and we’ve had the honor, and the privilege to start speaking with Max Finn, owner of Startup Drugz, partner in Quantum Media. A little bit about his background, how he got started, some of a little bit of the struggles that he had creating his first tech company, and trying to find the right people. Try to make sure he wasn’t getting BSed. I just want to welcome you back to Making Bank, Max.

Max Finn: Well, it’s good to be back. It was a fun little break there. I got a little drink break, we’ll all good to go.

Josh Felber: Good to go, had the … I think what, Fit Aid Focus?

Max Finn: The Fit Aid? I’m just going to pretend like this is Fit Aid, because I do like Fit Aid, but it’s a Red Bull. So if I had a Fit Aid, I would be drinking it.

Josh Felber: We gotta get [Aaron 00:12:31] to get you out some.

Max Finn: Yep.

Josh Felber: So what happened with that company then? Did you guys sell that? Did you kinda just shut that down? Whatever happened with Loot then?

Max Finn: We ended up rolling it into another agency. It wasn’t a huge deal. It wasn’t what we had hoped for, but it was definitely a positive outcome in the grand scheme of things. But I mean it’s … We were really far ahead of the curve, in pretty much everything we did, which is that it’s a really tough problem for tech startups, is you want to push the boundaries, but if you don’t have a massive amount of capital backing you, it’s hard to basically stay put enough, to let the market catch up to you.

So you look at all of these VR companies that are in the space, and AR companies. The ones that are surviving, are the ones that have raised $500 million. So they can be cutting-edge, and be way ahead of the curve, but they have enough cash in the bank to last until the market is ready to adopt the technology on a massive scale. So companies like Magic Leap, and Meta, and Oculus obviously rolled into Facebook, but Magic Leap hasn’t released their first product.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: They’ve been building this technology in Florida for six years, and they’re a billion dollar company. So that’s really the necessity nowadays, if you’re going to build a cutting-edge tech startup is, you need to have that capital. Or you need to figure out a way that in interim, we can commercialize our product to at least cover our overhead until the cutting edge stuff is ready to go for commercial application, which is rare.

Josh Felber: Definitely, and I mean Obviously you see that a lot of the startups are always raising so much capital. There’s another round of funding, another round of funding. I know a lot of your T-shirts with the Startup Drugz kind of plays into some of those things. So what was kind of you guys next step then after Loot? Did you stay on board? Did you kind of, hey we’re going to move to our next type of project?

Max Finn: Well we had … In the interim, towards the tail end of it, we had started doing some more consulting, because we did have a lot of subject matter expertise in the space, having developed the native advertising platform, and a mobile advertising platform. I really didn’t want to get involved in another type of venture backed startup, primarily because of what you just said, which is, I really don’t like raising money. I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs out there who do like raising money. There’s a few reasons. One is it distracts from the core focus of the business.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: So your day today, where you should be working on the company, and building this innovative product, and growing the team, you spent countless hours traveling, pitching, updating the financials. It’s just so distracting. Two, it’s just an uncomfortable situation. You have to go to these rooms, and have to sit there and basically ask somebody to give you $5 million. You’re saying, “Well, here’s our projection for the next five years. We’re going to be $100 million in year five.” You know in the back of your mind that this is all just … They’re educated guesses, but then they’re still guesses.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: Is why I think a lot of VC shops have started even, stopped even asking for three to five year financial, because they’re so irrelevant, and they don’t provide any real, tangible data on whether this is a good investment are not.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: So we had dabbled in the consulting, and then towards the tail and we started Startup Drugz as a fun, little side project. It just took off from day one. So I didn’t have a lot of experience in e-commerce, and even less experience on Shopify. So we made even more mistakes with that launch, because we didn’t foresee the surge of traffic we were going to get. We assume, we put the store up to launch our product on, and a few hundred people will come and check it out, and we’d sell a handful of shirts. That would be the business, because it wasn’t meant to be a business. It was just a hobby, a fun little side project, and obviously we were wrong, because we had 25,000 people come to the site in the first week-

Josh Felber: Oh jeez-

Max Finn: From our product time. I hate to say it, but we probably could’ve made 20 times as much money as we did that week, just because of a dozen mistakes we made that were total amateur mistakes that … When clients come to us with e-commerce stores, I look at them like, “You’re missing so many key things. You’re just leaving money on the table.” So we went from knowing nothing, to being a kind of subject matter expert, in a matter of two years.

Josh Felber: So what were some of those big, glaring mistakes that you see other e-commerce sites making that you guys did, that are easy to correct, and little simple things?

Max Finn: Yeah, so there’s a handful of things. We call it our Conversion Optimization Package, that we offer to all of our clients. Kind of the key things that entails, one is making sure we’re grabbing as much customer data up front as possible. Without asking for too much. It’s a fine balance between asking for too much information, and having people bounce off the site, but getting enough that you can then follow up with them.

We use a tool called JustUno. SumoMe is also really popular for grabbing that email, for that first time visitor. Usually we’ll offer some type of discount, free shipping, 10% off. If you’re a knowledge product, or an info product, you can offer an e-book, a white paper, a free video series, just in exchange for that email. That’s all we ask for, not a name, not anything else. That way we can put them in the email sequence.

Josh Felber: Okay.

Max Finn: So that’s number one, that has to be on every site. If you are not collecting emails, you’re just missing out on a ton of value there. We also then do a thing, one of my favorite tools is a sales ticker. So there’s a tool called Credible that we use for Shopify. Essentially what it does is it adds [inaudible 00:18:34] to your store by displaying almost a live ticker on the bottom left of recent purchases.

Josh Felber: Okay.

Max Finn: So every 20 seconds or so, you’ll see a little message that says, “Hey Josh Felber in wherever bought X.”

Josh Felber: Okay.

Max Finn: So one of the biggest challenges new store owners, is if you’re not Amazon, or Zappos, or Apple, you don’t have the level of trust and credibility that they do. So anybody could put a site, anybody could accept money over the internet, so what’s to say this isn’t just a scam, or what’s to say nobody else is buying it. Nobody wants to be the first person to the party. Nobody wants to be the first person to buy something, or to try something.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: So that has a huge impact on conversion rates, by establishing that trust right off the bat, and making people feel more comfortable about making a purchase, so that’s number two. Number three is exit intent popups. This is a huge one. This is something that we’re watching [inaudible 00:19:33] right now who is just next level guy. That’s one of his biggest things, is exit intent popups. So you need to have them. He showed some stats for some of his stores, and I think his exit intent popup brings in 12 or 15% of total revenue for their stores.

Josh Felber: Wow.

Max Finn: Which is just insane.

Josh Felber: Yeah.

Max Finn: And essentially an exit intent popup is a little popup that appears in the same screen when somebody goes to leave the site. So at their mouse moves to X and close the page, you can have a popup say, “Hey, give us one last shot. We’ll give you 25% off just now. Last chance to do it.” So it’s kind of a Hail Mary to get the person to buy, instead of leaving the site. So that’s another, that’s a total necessity.

Then I say another one, I don’t want to go into too many, but another really important one is adding upsell after the purchase. So this is where a lot of people lose a lot of money. This is what also makes it very difficult for most businesses to not be profitable paid media.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: Is their average order value is too low, which makes it incredibly difficult to be profitable. So we use a tool called OneClickUpsell from Zipify for Shopify. It’s to my knowledge, the only way to do true, one click upselling with Shopify, where when somebody makes a purchase, before they even get to the thank you page, you can then show them a very specific offer and say, “Hey you just bought this product, buy this product right now, and we’ll give you 20% off.” Or to add an extra product, so you can add different logic to it. You can add different bundles. The goal of this is really just increase that average order value.

It’s more natural and easy with other platforms, like Click Bundles and stuff, which is built for that. But Shopify it’s been very difficult so that tool from Zipify really makes it easy and insures that you can really maximize that value of that customer you’re acquiring.

Josh Felber: That’s awesome. I mean, I think those are some definite key points. Like you said, a lot of e-commerce sites don’t have them. I mean plenty of them, I’ve been on myself, and you’re buying something, and there are just things you naturally notice anymore these days is, “Hey I didn’t see this happen, or this happen, or this happen.” And everything, so definitely some awesome strategies.

So tell me a little bit about, because I know Startup Drugz, you guys scaled that up pretty fast. I mean you had a lot of people there that first week, and it scaled up pretty fast. What did that lead to, because I know you guys have created a partnership with Kevin Harrington now, with Quantum Media. Right?

Max Finn: Yeah.

Josh Felber: They just kind of bring us up to speed where you are today.

Max Finn: Sure, so we did over $100,000, actually $200,000 in our first 12 months in business with Startup Drugz, which is really, really exciting, and getting to the high five figures on a monthly basis in sales. We had some of the coolest entrepreneurs, people I’ve looked up to, buying our stuff. That’s what’s been, I think the most exciting part about it is getting to … Our customers are different than a typical store. A typical store, you’re just selling to the general public.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: Our customers are thought leaders, serial entrepreneurs, VCs, social media influencers, people that you would recognize, that have circles of influence.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: So … That’s how we met. When you first bought our stuff, and then kind of getting to know you, and seeing your huge following and stuff. Then building this relationship. Having people like Russell Brunson buy our stuff. The Miami Dolphins bought our stuff, so that’s been so cool this first year and a half, to see that happen, more so than the dollar value.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: Ironically enough, the whole Quantum Media, Kevin Harrington relationship started with Facebook ad. We were running a Facebook ad for Startup Drugz, and my two partners, Ian Smith and Jeremy Adams, who were 1/2 of the agency, they saw the ad. Ian had commented on it, tagging Jeremy in it, and saying, “Hey these are cool. We should check them out.” I replied with, [inaudible 00:23:47] We ended up having lunch together, and meeting up. One thing led to another, and we just started our own little agency. That eventually morphed into we were doing work for Kevin, helping him build his digital brand. He was so happy with the results, and he [inaudible 00:24:03] details on a daily basis that need more marketing services, that it just seemed like natural progression-

Josh Felber: Right-

Max Finn: To let’s merge, let’s pool our assets. You’re bring in all this business, we have the ability to grow those businesses, and hello everyone make a lot more money. So kind of flash forward to today, we now have an agency that’s just been growing exponentially. We’re working with some very, very big Fortune 100 companies. Then we’re also working with some incredible B to C product companies.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: That are either just getting started, or just running into a lot of traction, and we’re helping them really kind of supercharge that growth.

Josh Felber: I know especially with some of the clients that you guys are working with … I mean you guys are crushing it. You guys have been able to figure out certain models, people, what they’re buying, and just some of the really cool Facebook, and strategies, and online marketing strategies that you guys have implemented. I know you guys about does so with our Primal Life Organics skin care company. I mean just the results are … I mean what, 500 X or something, some [crosstalk 00:25:14]-

Max Finn: I wish 500 X. I think I checked yesterday when we spoke. I think it was at about 1,800 in spend, and about 4,500 in sales, or something like that. So on the [inaudible 00:25:25] targeting, I think we’re at 35 to 40 X. Then we have that cross selling campaign that we’re running. That’s a 10 X, so those are doing good. That’s [crosstalk 00:25:35]-

Josh Felber: So I think what would be cool is maybe to share some of these … Maybe your top three strategies that you utilize when you’re putting together a campaign that makes something super simple, that any of the entrepreneurs watching this, they can go out and click on Facebook, and go to the ads, and get something set up, would be really cool.

Max Finn: Sure, so I think one of the most critical things to understand is the flow of your campaign, and the fact that it’s not just a matter of run ad A to product page B, and expect a sale. I think that the misconception that a lot of people that we speak with, and that reach out to me, that’s what they’re doing. That’s the extent of their advertising on Facebook, is just trying to drive cold traffic to a product page, and expecting them to buy.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: And that can work to an extent for impulse buy products, commodity type products, and products that are lower priced. It doesn’t work as the price goes up, and as the education gap increases. So if you’re selling something that’s new to the market, that has some type of new and evolutionary technology, that’s very expensive, that model just fails, and doesn’t work. So you really need to treat it just like you would any other marketing file, where you’re taking a cold lead, and you’re nurturing that lead before you try to sell them. So you’re filtering them through different layers, where that first layer is really about … [inaudible 00:27:08] that the content is purely based around the problem that the product solves.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: And so that the first, just like we’re doing with Primal Life. We have an article that talks about the dangers of the big consumer brands mineral makeup, and all the bad things that are inside them. So it’s not a pitch of your product, it’s a pitch of the problem. They were getting people to click on that ad, read that ad, and we’re targeting those people to the next step. So we’re weeding out all the people in the cold traffic audience, that just aren’t interested in the problem. They don’t have that problem, they can’t relate to it. So why would we spend money pitching the solution, if they don’t have the problem?

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: So the big thing to understand. It’s just that flow of bring up the problem, make sure you filter out people at that point first, because it’s a lot cheaper to do that using video view ads, or link click ads, then it is to try to get them to do website conversions, which are more expensive, because you’re trying to get a purchase out of them. So that’s a big thing Ezra Firestone is teaching right now in his video course. All his brands, he has a video ad that takes a piece of content. They turn it into a video, and they run that video to some really broad audiences. Obviously they’re targeted and filtered.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: But they’re still big [inaudible 00:28:28] audiences. If you watch 75% of that video, you’re then going to get re-targeted to a presale page. Then you’re going to get re-targeted to a sales page. So that the key components understand, is that initial process of vetting cold traffic, warming them up, and then getting them to that product page. That would be the first thing I’d talk about.

The second is that once you get them there. You need to have the re-targeting audiences … The custom audiences for the re-targeting set up to push that buyer to the finish line. So somebody could’ve viewed the product, and not added to the cart. Somebody could add to the cart, and not bought. There’s reasons at each step, why they might not have done that.

Josh Felber: Okay.

Max Finn: So some of them might’ve landed on that product page without buying. They’re clearly interested in the product. They have the problem that you’re offering the solution for, but they need some more validation. Maybe you need to share with them some … If you’re a medical product, a doctor testimonial video. Or user generated content. Customer review video testimonials. Things that help convince that prospect that your product is the real deal, and that there’s other people talking about it, and using it.

If you’re on the cart page, and somebody gets there without leaving, 9 times out of 10, it’s the price that’s the reason why they didn’t pull the trigger. Is so altering tier discounts, for different retargeting levels. So the first two days, doing a free shipping discount. Then days two to seven, doing a 10% off. Then 7 to 10, doing a 25% last ditch discount to get them to buy is critical, because at that point, you don’t want to lose that lead. I mean you done all the work to get them to that point. You need to make sure you’re following up with them, and pushing them to that finish line.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: That would be number two. Then I guess the third and final thing … It’s not the final, there’s 150 things we could talk about, but just for the sake of the short amount of time we have, is most people, I would say 95% of people that I talk to, don’t do anything past that purchase.

Josh Felber: Okay.

Max Finn: So the entire marketing, not just on Facebook, but everything, is built around acquiring a customer, getting them to buy, and that’s it. So acquiring a customer, get them to buy. Acquiring a customer, get them to buy. The crazy thing about that is, it’s so much easier, about five times easier to sell an existing customer, as it is a new customer. So you have people that have bought from you. You’ve already done the hard work in selling them.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: Now you can maximize the lifetime value. You can increase that average order value, especially if you have multiple products. Or of your products that … Like your products, where they need to get reordered. So if you have A product that is going to run out in a few months, and they need to reorder it, you should have a campaign in place, to remind that person.

Josh Felber: Right, okay.

Max Finn: If your product runs out every 30 days, you should have an ad that runs three weeks after purchase, that gives people a special deal if they reorder now. So things like that, where you’re doing cross selling, upselling, and you’re doing reminders about reoccurring type of orders, is so critical to really maximizing the profitability of your Facebook campaigns. It’s probably the lowest hanging fruit for most businesses, and that’s what’s so shocking about it, is how few people do anything with that, especially since it’s so easy.

Josh Felber: So the cool thing too is … All this is available to be done in Facebook. It’s just going in, and setting up ads, and picking the right ad typesets and everything. Right?

Max Finn: Yeah. It’s 100% free, with the exception of obviously the media cost, but there’s no extra tools, or software, or anything you need to do what we just talked about.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: Obviously there’s tools and software out there, that could supercharge some of those things. Or if you’re more advanced, and you have a big product catalog that could make it more powerful. But at a fundamental level, to accomplish all that, it’s taking the time, and it’s going in there and really mapping out that user journey from cold traffic all the way through repeat purchase. And mapping out the touch points, and what you’re going to say at each level, and how you’re going to communicate with them. Then turning that into the Facebook campaign itself.

Josh Felber: No, that’s awesome, and I know just utilizing that same process. I mean you guys have created significant revenue, and results, and everything for a lot of the clients, and everything, you guys are working with now. As well as Startup Drugz, testing with that, and really helping figure out that whole process, and everything along the way. Who do you reach out to as a mentor for you? Who do you look to connect to keep furthering your education, and keep moving yourself forward?

Max Finn: There are people that I look to as kind of thought leaders in either just states of marketing, or digital marketing. I don’t get all the pleasure of knowing them, and getting to talk to them frequently, but Russell Brunson, who I’d love to talk to, we’ve talked in email a few times, but as a Startup Drugz customer, [inaudible 00:33:58] talk.

Josh Felber: Sure.

Max Finn: We speak frequently, but Russell is so incredibly smart, and ahead of the curve when it comes to funnels, and sales copy, and such. They had their Funnel-U product that we own, and that we follow religiously. Frank Kern, we have a lot of his courses. He’s great. Ryan Deiss, DigitalMarketer guy. The main scene there is incredible, and they create top-notch content in everything from organic social [inaudible 00:34:26] to Facebook, and everything in between.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: Then I would say from specifically Facebook, Ezra Firestone is probably the … I would say the most successful, and best Facebook advertiser that I know of, in terms of results, and just overwhelming amount of knowledge. So he has Facebook video mastery course that we just purchased recently, and it’s an incredible course. It’s something that if I had the time, and the team to build something, that the exact course that I would build, because it’s just … It’s so comprehensive across the board.

Then again, the other thing with Startup Drugz is getting to meet people like you. We chat on a weekly, or biweekly basis. So getting to the brain of other people that are ahead of me in their careers, and have done a lot of the things that I want to accomplish. So it’s so critical, I think for any entrepreneurs, surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, or more successful than you. You never want to be the most successful, or smartest person in your circle.

Josh Felber: Right.

Max Finn: It’s hard maybe to admit that, if you have an ego of something like that, but if you’re the smartest, most successful person in your circle, nobody is going to be pushing you forward. Everyone is going to be pushing you back, because they’re all behind you. So that kind of the rule of thumb I think for myself, and everyone that I work with, that’s in my network is, they’re trying to find a person that’s where they want to be, and getting to meet them, and talk to them.

Then obviously, Kevin, getting to work with Kevin Harrington, and spend time with him. He’s just such a gracious, and great guy, just obviously brilliant, and incredibly successful. So having him as part of the agency, and getting to do calls with him on a weekly basis and everything, is always exciting.

Josh Felber: Then just, we’ve got a couple minutes left, where can people find out about you, Quantum Media? Where do you want to have them find out more information?

Max Finn: Sure, so they can go to QuantumMedia.co, that’s the agency site there. We’re in the process of launching a thing called Quantum Entrepreneur Academy, QEA. That’s going to be a really great, not even just one course, it’s going to be a comprehensive group course, digital product, from people like Kevin, and other really high end thought leaders. It’s going to be video content, ebooks, guides-

Josh Felber: Cool.

Max Finn: [inaudible 00:36:58] everything in one. Obviously a component of that is going to be the Facebook advertising course, and courses from Ian, videos from me. So that’s something that we’ll be announcing relatively soon, probably in the Q1 2017. So if you go to QuantumMedia.co and sign up for our email list, we’ll be sending out updates there. Then anybody can follow Startup Drugz, StartupDrugz.com. I post a lot of our stuff on our Instagram account, so @StartupDrugz. I share a lot of videos, and pieces of knowledge there, or on the Facebook page at Facebook.com/MaxwellFinn. So that’s the plug for the day.

Josh Felber: Awesome, and then what’s one device that you can’t live without?

Max Finn: The obvious answer is obviously my phone. I don’t know what I would do without it, and I don’t think anybody knows what they would do without it. So it’s kind of a double edged sword of being constantly connected to everything.

Josh Felber: Cool. How about what’s an app on there that you just love, that it helps you run everything?

Max Finn: I was a Slack is probably my favorite app because it connects to our entire team. Our managing part of our group, we have a Slack, then our whole company has Slack. So just being able to instantly communicate with everybody. Then I think Instagram, and Facebook are the two social apps that I use a lot of. Buzzfeed News is, and I never thought the day would come where I would say, Buzzfeed and news in the same thing, but they put hundreds of millions of dollars into their investigative journalism, and so they pump out some really, really great news stories, investigation pieces, politics, and technology, and business, stuff. So those are the group of apps, and the Stripe. So again-

Josh Felber: Stripe-

Max Finn: [crosstalk 00:38:57] the money. Stripe is great.

Josh Felber: Cool. I really appreciate you coming on Making Bank today. It’s been an honor to have you, and just really start to dive in a little bit about what you guys are doing from a technology standpoint, marketing, online marketing, and everything. Definitely have you back on next year again, and really dive into more ins and outs of what … How can people implement, and more in depth of what you guys are doing. So again, thanks for coming on Making Bank today, sharing your information. It was an honor to have you here.

Max Finn: Thanks Josh, you have a great day.

Josh Felber: Cool, you too man. I am Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.