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Summary

When you see entrepreneurs at the top of their field it’s easy to assume they started off with low prices and worked up and that they must have a huge team in order to continue that growth. Neither of those are true for today’s guest.

You can enter your field at the high end and you can build a business model that doesn’t rely on endless scaling and team building. The ideas that Nicholas Kusmich was about scaling are fascinating and will make you rethink your own plans.

 Today on #MakingBank, host Josh Felber invites Nicholas Kusmich to talk about his entrepreneurial journey from watching his parents struggle to building an incredibly profitable business that he loves. He shares some interesting marketing and business ideas including how he figured out that endless scaling wasn’t for him.

Nicholas Kusmich is an international speaker, creator of the Art of Lead Generation, and founder of NicholasKusmich.com. He is best known as the world’s leading Facebook advertising strategist and for having the highest ROI in the industry, up to over 30,000%. He works with A list clients, including top thought leaders, New York Times Bestselling authors, top Inc and Fortune companies, providing strategic oversight, and fully managed marketing services. He specializes in using his proprietary, contextual, and congruency method, which creates mass influence on social platforms.

So, tune-in to hear Josh and Nicholas talk all-things entrepreneurship and marketing, as well as…

• How Nicholas went directly into high-priced services.
• Why you need to think about where your prospects are now and how to bridge that gap.
• How to create the business model that works best for you.
• Why Nicholas prefers netting up to scaling up.

And more…

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World’s Leading Facebook Ad Strategist Guest Nicholas Kusmich: MakingBank S2E47

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 and transform your life and your business today. I’m excited for my guest, Nicholas Kusmich, he’s an international speaker, creator of Art of Lead Generation, and founder of NicholasKusmich.com. He is best known as the world’s leading Facebook advertising strategist and for having the highest ROI in the industry, up to over 30,000%. Wow, we’re going to have to see how that works for sure.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah.

Josh Felber:                          He works with A list clients, including top thought leaders, New York Times Bestselling authors, top inc, and Fortune companies, providing strategic and oversight, and fully managed marketing services. He specializes in using his proprietary, contextual, and congruency method, which creates mass influence on social platforms. I’m excited today to welcome Nicholas to Making Bank.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Hey Josh how are you? Thanks for having me.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome man, yeah, I’ve just been excited. I’ve been following you online for a little while. Then some of my good friends, Kieth, and Dan Martell, and everything, you’ve been connecting with them. It’s an honor to have you on the show today.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Absolutely, the honor is all mine, thanks for having me.

Josh Felber:                          I guess, tell me a little about your background, and what kind of got you all started with online marketing, as an entrepreneur.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, you know what? I wish I could say I popped out of mom a born entrepreneur, like DNA, like I had a lemonade stand, and all that kind of stuff, and that wasn’t, in fact, the case at all. Entrepreneurship, I think, was kind of thrown on me. Again, I use the term entrepreneurship a little loosely, I mean, to me true entrepreneurs are like the Elon Musks of the world, who are changing the world through what they do. I’ve got my little lifestyle business here and it’s serving us well. I think it was just kind of thrust on me because I’m an only child, I saw my dad have his first heart attack when I was four years old, and most of my childhood was plagued with me spending a lot of time in hospital with dad.

Both parents are immigrants so they did what they can. They did have their own little convenience store business that they ran together until I was 17. When I was 17, dad had another heart attack, bad enough to take him out of commission. That meant he had to let go of the business. Mom had to find work. Josh, there’s a feeling, dude, like your mom who is, I guess she was around 50 years old at the time, would go to a job interview and come back crying, saying, “I didn’t get the job because I can’t speak English properly.” Something turned in me, and I’m like, “You know what? I will never, ever, ever let this happen ever again.” I made a promise to myself and my mother that day, and my father, for that matter, that they would never have to worry about money, and life.

I was forced, at 17 years old, to be the primary breadwinner of my family. I was figuring out how to do that. Unfortunately when you’re kind of in that situation, you’re kind of set up for a lot of scamy type stuff. When I’d the email that says, “Make $1,000 an hour,” I’m like, “All right.”

Josh Felber:                          I’m in.

Nicholas Kusmich:           “Yeah, I want to go.” Yeah, so god, the first little while was joining all these weird multilevel marketing things, and survey companies, and stuff envelopes. Through that journey I came across what’s commonly known as online, or digital marketing, or internet marketing. I realized that there was an opportunity there, so I mean to make a really long story short, I bought a few courses, I tried to figure the thing out, I failed miserably over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. I got to the point where I was able to make just enough to pay the bills and that kind of opened my world up to this world. That was kind of the beginning. Again, for the most part, I don’t wish entrepreneurship upon anybody. It’s a long journey.

You and I both know, it’s not an easy journey, it’s not filled with Lamborghinis and multimillion dollar houses, and chicks by the pool. That’s what it’s being presented as, but it’s a difficult journey. I don’t think everyone is cut out for it. I think the general entrepreneur kind of industry does a disservice to everybody else who paints the picture as all glamorous. However, that being said, I would not trade it for the world. It’s created a lifestyle that we’re very happy with and I just hate having someone tell me when I can eat lunch, and when I can go home, like that doesn’t work with me. It fit me perfectly, but that was kind of how it all began.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome, and so I guess moving forward then, what do you do now with the internet marketing? Was that kind of your main first business venture, or I know you’re kind of doing the little different things along the way, or did you have several other startup companies that got you to that point?

Nicholas Kusmich:           I wish I could say I had startup companies. I’m not that smart. I mean, I had a few side hustles that just all didn’t work, but I had a turning point several years ago when I was in an event. Again, look, I was a struggling marketing consultant. Like I had understood digital marketing, I had some small little successes that kind of gave me the confidence to continue down that path. I was doing this internet marketing thing, I was a marketing consultant. I had a few clients. I was barely making bank.

Everything changed a few years ago when I was sitting in a conference and somebody asked the question, “How many people in this room use Facebook advertising for their business?” About 80% of the hands went up. Then the second followup question was, “How many people have found Facebook advertising profitable for your business?” About 80% of those hands went down. Then something kind of clicked in me, because at that point I had been on Facebook since Beta Ads first came out. I figured I’d cracked … I figured I’d figured it out. My assumption was so did everybody else. That moment is when I realized that I have an opportunity, a window of opportunity here, to slide into this space, and to position myself as an expert, because I figured it out. It was working for me. That was kind of the turning point. That was several years ago and that’s when I started to build a real business. That’s where we have what we have today. It’s evolved over the last couple of years, but that was the turning point for me.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. Along the way, what kind of challenges? I know you said you had a little of wind here and there, but what were those struggles that you kind of kept running into along the way?

Nicholas Kusmich:           God, everything.

Josh Felber:                          Especially with the Beta Facebook Ads.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest challenges were there’s the macro and the micro. I think the major macro challenges were just confidence. It’s like when you’re stepping, when I’m stepping into a space, and I had these conversations a lot of time with people right now. When you’re stepping into a space where you have a skillset, and you think you could do something, and you listen to the guru who just says, “Hey, put up a video that does this and you’ll get a 90% conversion rate,” and you put up the video, and the thing tanks. You’re like, “I did exactly what the dude told me to do, but it didn’t work.” I just had repeated experience of that over, and over, and over again, to the point where I was just like, “Is this worth continuing?” I think in my situation, I had no choice. What was I going to do and where was I going to go?

Yeah, I think the major challenges was the self confidence of working through the initial struggles of starting up, and how am I going to get paid, and how am I going to find clients, how am I going to build my client base, and learning the ins and outs of the business. Because when you go from side hustle to real business, where taxes, and bookkeeping, and account receivables, and client management, and all that actually, stuff I had no idea about, becomes a reality. Just the whole learning curb of figuring all that out was probably the biggest challenges up front.

Josh Felber:                          Cool. Then what was that big win that you realized, man, I know you were in the conference, you’re like, “Okay, cool, people … ” I mean, what was that big win when you first landed that client that really, “Man, I’m onto it, now I’m making some bank.”

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, so I had this idea of I can either start from the bottom and then work my way up or I could start the top. I figure, starting from the top would be so much easier, and so much faster. I had to come up with a creative way to do that. When that clicked in for me, and I said, “Okay, well, I have a market I could serve here. The Facebook advertising space seems to be a space I could serve,” but again, that’s a huge space. Everybody could use Facebook Ads. My next question was, and I had two criteria, how can I find an underserved segment of this marketplace who was also affluent? That was important to me. I said, “Who is an affluent underserved segment of this marketplace,” and I identified, at that time, and this is years ago now. The times have shifted. At that time it was the high ticket, coach, consultant, thought leader, information marketer, who was being underserved.

I said, “You know what?” I put together a list of all my dream clients, the people I just, I would die to work with. These were heroes of mine at the time. It’s an interesting journey where people go from heroes, to colleagues, to clients, to students. That was kind of my journey over the last few years. These were heroes of mine. I had put this listed together and I said, “You know what? This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to approach all of them and I’m going to make them an offer they can’t refuse. I’m essentially going to say, ‘Hey this is what I do. These are my fees, but you only pay me after I get a result. If I don’t get a result for you, you don’t pay me. If I do get a result, these are my fees that you pay me for.'”

I think that’s an important distinction Josh, because a lot of people are like, “Hey I’ll work for free for you if you just give me a testimonial.” The problem with that, is that devalues your brand right out of the get go. In this case I said, “These are my fees, I know they’re not cheap, but let me do this for you, and if I get a result then you pay me.” Of all the people I reached out to, I got responses from two people. It said, “Okay, my back is in the corner here. This is my make or break. If I make this work, I know I can build a business around this. If I don’t, I’m screwed, and I got to figure out something else.”

Fortunately, we had two grand slams for some pretty high profile people and then the floodgates opened up. As soon as you got some good results for some high profile people, they tell their friends, they tell their friends, they tell their friends. I then took that, I leveraged it for my own person brand, and literally in a matter of 18 months we went from unknown to one of the top authorities in this space, and one of the most sought and highest paid people in this space. It was quite the journey, but that, in fact, was the breaking point, when I made that offer and two people said yes to it.

Josh Felber:                          That’s really cool. Can you stick around for a minute, we just got to take a quick break,

Nicholas Kusmich:           Absolutely.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. I’m Josh Felber, you’re watching Making Bank, and we’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Making Bank. I am Josh Felber. We’ve been speaking with Nicholas Kusmich. Just diving in a little bit about his background, how he got started in the internet marketing, some of the challenges, and one of the interesting things that he said is he went out and went to the top echelon of the clients that he wanted to focus on. Not just building at the bottom, and saying, “Hey, I’m going to just take anybody that comes to me. I want these specific people,” from his dream 100 list, and went after them, and picked up two of those. That’s one of the biggest things is, when you’re in business, whether you’re just starting, you’re moving along, is going after those people that you may think are your heroes, like you said Nicholas, but being able to find them, connect with them, maybe even then have them have you work for them on a consulting basis, is a major stp moving forward in your business.

I just want to welcome you back to Making Bank.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Awesome, I’m so excited to keep this going.

Josh Felber:                          Well, cool. One of the things I wrote down here, you said, “Pay me if I get you results.” Had you set down measurement for those metrics of like, “Hey, here’s what a result is for you,” and say, “Okay, you made a buck, so let’s … ”

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, no, no, that’s a great question. This is one thing you learn along the way being in client services, which is one of our major businesses, is understanding what KPIs are, and what you can control, and what you can’t. Initially, when I was talking to some of these guys, I said, “Well, what’s the most important thing to you?” At that point, and it’s changed a little, but at that point it was X number of leads at X number of cost. “If you can get me leads at this cost, we would consider that a success,” because they know they convert those leads into clients. Some people put some strong demands on us. I got to be honest with you, when we were first in that space, I was like, “I don’t know if we can pull this off.” Fortunately, the gods were in our favor, we worked real hard, and we … Again, the one thing I knew is I understood the game. I knew the tactics, I just needed to prove them now on a larger scale. Understanding those metrics, delivering those metrics, is what got us those results, and got some happy clients from it.

Josh Felber:                          Moving forward then, you landed two big clients.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah.

Josh Felber:                          That kind of really kick started the whole business. Now, is your focus on client management, still kind of at that level? Because I know you do a lot of everything from teaching, and seminars, everything else as well.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, so there’s two streams to our business. One is our agency model, which is fully managed Facebook advertising services. That is a very boutique service, so we only take on 15 clients at any given time. Currently we have a three month wait list for that and it’s by invite only. When I say invite, I mean referrals from either, A, a strategic partner, or a current client. It’s a really tight ship, that’s filled up. We can’t serve anybody else in that space and we’re fortunate to be in that space.

Now the other side of the business is our consulting side. What we found was working with 15 high, high level clients at any given time was an awesome experience, but it really did limit my reach. I mean, I could touch more people then I wanted to and not everybody could afford to play at that level anyways. I remember sitting in an event and having some conversations with my wife. We said, “What about if we just teach people how to do what we do? People who may not want fully managed services, but want to run Facebook for themselves?” Now my only condition was I didn’t want to do just another seminar, because there’s millions of seminars, and there’s tons of masterminds, I didn’t want to do that. I took a stab at the seminar business and said, “We’re going to do implementation workshops.” In other words, you come to with whatever you have, and by the end of day two, you didn’t learn much, you actually implemented everything we taught in those two days. Rather than leaving with a to do list, you leave with a done list. We do those now, six times a year, which are great. Those are limited to 20 people, or businesses at any given time.

I do have a bit of a consulting practice where clients will put us on retainer for a certain hourly slots per month. We consult with people that way. It’s a nice blend. We do some teaching, we do some consulting, we have our fully managed agency. It just works really well for us right now.

Josh Felber:                          How big is your team to be able to manage all of what you’re doing?

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, so it’s a beautiful question. Originally the aspirations and hanging around with really high achievers, it’s like, “You need to build $100 million business, and you need to have a massive agency to do that,” so at one point we had hired a whole ton people. We had staff, and very quickly I wanted to kill myself, like I am not cut out for this. I’m not cut out to manage people, and have people’s livelihood bank on me, and to worry about this person, and so and so was talking about this so and so behind their back. I’m like, “Hell no.” We stripped that all down, we went from having tons of clients to only 15, and now we run a really lean and mean ship.

By that, I mean we have zero employees. We have two partners, which is myself and my wife, and we have four outsourced, locally, but they’re four outsourced contractors who help us with various parts of the business, but that’s it. Lean and mean. Now I’m excited to wake up. We got so much time freedom and not the headache, and the overhead, of all that other stuff. Yeah, very tight ship here.

Josh Felber:                          I think that’s one of the biggest things people look at, especially when they’re starting a business, or they’re moving their business forward, and they’re trying to scale. Obviously, certain businesses, if you have physical products, and things like that, you have to have …

Nicholas Kusmich:           Right.

Josh Felber:                          … a certain amount of people to help with things. With the way you structured your business and everything, is not having that is a huge no burden on you now. You can really focus on what you love instead of all the other stuff.

Nicholas Kusmich:           All the other stuff, yeah, I think it’s an important point that you mentioned there. A, we don’t have the burden, B, we don’t have the overhead. If you look at our profit loss, we’re like 80% margins right now. Our expenses are only 20% of everything. Then more than that, I think, and this is a big shift that happened for me. Hopefully it will benefit one of the viewers and the listers, I was in this scaling up mode. I always thought as business owner scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, that’s the only way to go, up and to the right. Then I realized, well maybe that’s not the answer.

For a while I was preaching scaling down, like that was my message. “Hey you don’t need to scale up, scale down.” Then I realized, I didn’t really scale down, I netted up. That’s kind of a term that I start now using. Instead, I let go of headache clients, I let go of staff, I let go of all that, and now, we charge way more money, and we work with way less people. My bottom line actually increased, but my workload heavily decreased. That, to me, is netting up. That was a perfect play for my specific business. Now all of our questions come around that idea, is how can we net up even further without having to worry about all the traditional things that are attached to scale.

Josh Felber:                          Yeah, it’s an awesome term and the way you guys are looking at it, because as you’re scaling, a lot of times, is revenue goes up, but your net goes way down. At the end you’re like, you do 10X, and you’re like, “Wait a minute, I only got $10,000 net left?”

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t realize that. To me revenue equaled profits.

Josh Felber:                          Right.

Nicholas Kusmich:           No, growth and revenue also meant expenses and everything else went up, and profits almost stayed the same, or increased a little bit.

Josh Felber:                          Sure.

Nicholas Kusmich:           It just wasn’t worth the time or the effort for us, so yeah.

Josh Felber:                          What is your focus on in the business? Your favorite part, I guess is probably the same thing, I would think.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, well I mean, my role, my wife’s role is kind of operations. She has a strong operations background and she’s kind of the engine that makes everything go. I’m kind of more the face and the strategic oversight. Anything to do with high level strategy, biz dev, anything that has kind of a front facing to the marketplace, that’s where I get jazzed up. Also, on the consulting side, I’m the only consultant. We don’t have a team of consultants, so I’m the guy doing the consulting, the strategizing, and I’m the guy who is teaching in our implementation. That’s really what excites me the most.

Josh Felber:                          That’s awesome, and so you’re actually there at the workshop overseeing everything that people are building and implementing right there.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Not even overseeing. I’m looking over their shoulder, and I’m saying, “Hey, change that and let’s call it this way.” I’m writing copy for people, I’m shooting images for people, and that’s why it’s a small intimate environment. We’re literally, and that’s what people are essentially paying for. You could learn this stuff digitally, probably, but you’re paying for the fact that I’m over your should the stuff with you right there live and in person.

Josh Felber:                          No, that’s awesome. As you guys are building this, and growing, what is kind of your next phase for where you see the business? Do you want to kind of just keep it in where it is now or do you … Obviously, you’re not scaling as you said.

Nicholas Kusmich:           You know, that’s a great question. Without getting too far into this, and without upsetting people, we have zero business goals. We have no thing on our wall that says, “Projections,” that by the end of this year we want to be here. That was intentional, and if we have the time we can go into why, but more specifically what had happened was, we just realized that the more we’re in the now, and going with the flow, and staying agile and pivot. I don’t like to use the word agile, it’s a very corporate word, but very kind of with the flow. If you asked me a year and a half ago, “Would you be doing consulting and intensives?” My answer would be a hell no.

Literally myself and my wife were at an event, and just this idea sprung on me, and I’m like, “What about if we try this?” Four weeks later, we did our first intensive, and now 18 months later, or not even, like 12 months later, is a major part of our business. That all happened not because we forecasted that, or not because it was part of the plan, or we had some revenue goals, or anything like that. It literally was birthed out of a weird serendipitous experience at an event. I like that. I like being agile, I also realized that Facebook could disappear tomorrow. If that’s the case, what we do? For us, we’re happy with the growth, we’re growing 100% year over year right now by netting down, which is a great thing.

Josh Felber:                          Right.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Netting up, sorry, scaling down, netting up. Yeah, goals, we love what we do. I love what I do every single day. Does it mean tomorrow I’m going to love it? Maybe, maybe not, and if it doesn’t, I’m just going to pivot. Yeah, it’s weird being in this stage of I just don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring, but I’m really excited about that. I’m totally cool with it. Yeah.

Josh Felber:                          That’s a nice thing I can see from you. You’re comfortable in your position. I think we, as entrepreneurs, we end up putting so much stress, and I got to here, here’s my goal, I got 10 million this year, 20 million next year, and then it becomes not fun any more. You don’t want to wake up and go do it. I think that’s really awesome that you’ve put yourself in that position to be able to feel comfortable, and happy, and you are good right now where it’s at, and how it’s going, and how you are waking up, and operating it everyday.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, I think the thing we all realize is that the only constant in life is change. That just happens so much in my life, where I just got really comfortable in the place of uncertainty, but confident in the uncertainty. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, there could be a shift in the marketplace, there could be a shift on platforms, there could be all sorts of things that could happen, but I’m comfortable with saying, “If we need to pivot we’ll pivot and we’ll just figure it out as we go.”

Josh Felber:                          Cool, so tell me a little bit about … I know Facebook Ads are your specialty and stuff.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah.

Josh Felber:                          I know we’ve had great success when we’ve had other different internet marketers on sharing some tips and strategies. Maybe give us three to five tips that our audience can take and utilize in their business to help it.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, sure, so sometimes I get asked the question, “What is the number one mistake that a lot of people make on Facebook?” Because obviously we want people to avoid that mistake. I think for the most part, and this is a rule of thumb not a rule of law, but for the most part the straight line is not the straight line. Here’s what I mean by that. Oftentimes, if I have an event to sell, so I’m trying to fill an event, and then I have my prospects over here, I figured well the best way to get people to my event is put a Facebook Ad to talk about my event. Now here’s the problem with that, and anybody I know who has ever tried that has lost money, or barely broken even, and finished scratching their head, “Why doesn’t this work?” Here’s the reality, when we wake up in the morning, nobody wakes up in the morning credit card in hand, like, “Okay, I’m going on Facebook to buy something.”

Josh Felber:                          You’re right.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Right? I mean we go on there because I want to see what my friends did, the grandparents want to see what the grandkids did, we want to see what’s going on. What did Trump say today, or whatever. Every one is just trying to see what the heck is going on. Nobody goes with commercial intent. You, as an advertiser, or an entrepreneur, or a business owner, if you come on to a social platform, and this is my whole shtick. My shtick is called Contextual Congruent, so what that really means is staying congruent to the context of the marketplace that you’re on. Facebook is not a commerce driven marketplace. If you as an entrepreneur try to jump on the platform with a commerce driven mindset, in other words, “How can I sell something today?” to someone who probably doesn’t want to buy it, you’re going to experience all sorts of heartache, and pain, and loss, and all that sort of thing.

The greatest kind of takeaway to start with is if this is the end goal, i.e., let’s fill an event, or sell a widget, or a product, or a service, and here’s where my prospects are, what is that intermediary step that I could use to bridge that gap without coming across too salesy? I think there’s two golden rules of marketing. Golden rule number one is always give before you ask. Then rule number two is every step of your marketing process should be beneficial in and of itself, so that if someone never does buy from me, at least they leave that experience with an exchange of value. Like, “Oh, I got something out of that even though I didn’t buy.”

As a case study, for example, our 30,000% ROI case study that we love to talk about. It was a friend of mine by the name of Taki Moore, he has a great coaching business. He’s brilliant at what he does, all kudos and credit to him for that. His plight was simple, he wanted to fill an event. Now the first time he did this with another agency, the agency said, “Okay, let’s set up an ad to try and fill your event.” They tried that, he spent $80,000 in one month, and made zero. Now, he recovered that, supposedly, over the next 12 to 16 months. They couldn’t really track it if they did, but he feels confident to say they somehow made that back over time. He was a little gun shy with Facebook. He came to me and he said, “Nick, we need to fill these events but I’m scared because we lost $80k the first time we did this. How are we going to do that?”

I said, “Okay, well let’s figure out what the intermediary step is to fill that event.” Now in short it’s what does your prospect need? What are your prospects fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations? What are solutions that they need? How can we deliver a solution before ever asking anything of them? Long story short, as we came up with a content piece, commonly known in our space as a lead magnet, we came up with a content piece that literally solved his ideal prospect’s ideal need. Our Facebook ads then drove them to a page that offered that content piece in exchange for a name and an email address. They got the content piece, it was truly beneficial. Taki’s information, his content is stellar.

They got that piece and then on the back end of that, through a bit of a nurture sequence, we made an offer to say, “Hey, by the way if you like this, we have this event coming up. Just because we just met, rather than paying full price for the event, why don’t I meet you halfway, you pay 50%, I’ll pay 50%, and I’ll see you there so I could look you in the eyes and shake you in the hand, and see how I can help you personally.” That put a whole ton of people in the room. Out of all those people, a good chunk of them, signed up for his higher ticket coaching program, which ended up, again long story short, it’s about an $1,800 ad spend did for that. He ended up netting about $500k.

Josh Felber:                          Wow, nice.

Nicholas Kusmich:           That’s where we get our 30,000% ROI. Here’s kind of the takeaway, the first time they did it, they went straight line. Event, ad, prospect, ad. The only shift was realizing that people don’t necessarily want to buy from you if they don’t know you. What is that intermediary step? What is that piece of content that can really shift and move the needle for somebody? You put that in between and all of the sudden everything changes. That would be kind of my greatest takeaway for someone who is looking to explore Facebook Ads, is don’t use Facebook Ads to sell anything. Use Facebook Ads as a means to build a list, to build a platform, to build goodwill in your marketplace, and then to nurture someone in a forward motion towards the end goal, which is to buy your thing, sign up for your service, et cetera.

Josh Felber:                          I think that definitely makes sense, because you know how you said, people are on Facebook just to check things out, and everything. One of the things, I know I’ve been playing around a lot with lately for our skincare company a lot is the whole thing with the now with the dynamic retargeting, and the product catalogs, and all that stuff. We’re seeing a huge massive ROI from that. I think the last 30 days was like a $500 ad spend with $17 to 20k return.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah. I love it. Yeah. I think the key to that, what you’re saying is the realization of marketing 101, or sales 101, that most people don’t buy on their first exposure to you, right? Someone needs several touchpoints in the process. That’s the beauty of retargeting. Retargeting says, “Hey, you’re interested in this, this specific item, let me show it to you again,” and then when you do they’re like, “Oh okay, now it’s time to buy.” That’s a beautiful example. I love that.

Josh Felber:                          Back to your point too is that one of the things that we’re doing is we’re putting other touchpoints in there as well. We have articles on, hey, why is the toothpaste you’re using making your [inaudible 00:28:39]

Nicholas Kusmich:           Killing you.

Josh Felber:                          Killing you, yeah. Then testimonial videos as maybe a second or third touch point.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Right.

Josh Felber:                          By the time they hit the website and come back, then it creates this whole full circle loop for them.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, no I love that, because I think what people realize is that at the end of the day the product is the product. As good as it is, they’re going to compare that with something else. I believe, and this is a great takeaway, I’m glad you brought that up. I believe that in today’s day and age, on social, and social to me is just another way to say the internet, because the entire internet is social now. To me, at the end of the day, the reason why somebody buys or transacts with us, I believe, comes down to resonance. It’s because they resonate with you, or your company, or your brand.

You create resonance by creating connection. You create resonance, like you said, by producing articles that speak to their needs, and the more of these exposure that they get to say, “Oh this company actually gets me, like they’re interested in me. I connect with them. They get me, it’s not just a product to them, it’s about … ” blank. As soon as someone feels like they get me, I like this, then they buy. I think that’s the important element that you’re bringing up with the articles, and the touchpoints, and testimonials, that all helps to create resonance and connection. As soon as you land resonance, people start pulling out their wallets and buying. Again, not necessarily because of your product, but because they feel connected to you.

Josh Felber:                          Yeah, definitely. I guess, one other question too I just had was with the whole Facebook Live, and the extra push that Facebook is giving to that, are you using that a lot with what you’re doing? How are you positioning that in your marketing strategies for your clients?

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, it’s a great point. The tricky part with video in general, whether it’s Facebook Live, or it’s video ads, or anything like that, is that the general populations, clients or otherwise, are intimidated as hell by video. Not everybody is so comfortable turning on their screen and just starting talking to it.

Josh Felber:                          Right.

Nicholas Kusmich:           In full transparency, most of our clients haven’t been able to utilize video and or Facebook Live, but for those who have, I think it just comes back to what we were saying here. At the end of the day the reason why someone wants to transact with you, is because they feel connected to you on some level. The more you could do that, and that’s the beauty of Facebook Live, the more that you can do that with somebody, the better off you’re going to be. I would say capitalize on any tool that you have, that allows you to further connect with your audience further. The more you can connect, the more you can resonate, the more you can do all that, the better off … This is a long game, but the more you do that, the more following you have, the more following you have, the more transactions you’ll create down the road.

Josh Felber:                          I think that’s a key point you brought up. It’s a long game. Most people are like, “Oh, I’m going to get on, make a million dollars in the next 90 days.”

Nicholas Kusmich:           From my one Live, yeah.

Josh Felber:                          Yeah. It is a big strategy, because I mean, my wife does probably two, on average, per week, live videos. Just talking about either a Q and A that came, a question and answer that may have come up, or just value points for people to help them enhance whatever they’re doing in their life right now.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, no that’s a great point. Again, if people can … I don’t know if anyone has used this term before, but if people can remember that today it’s like a connection economy, or a resonance economy, you just keep that back of mind in all that you do, you’re going to be better off. It’s not the old school days where you could force a product down someone’s throat.

Josh Felber:                          Right.

Nicholas Kusmich:           And compete on the level of price, or this, or that. You’ve got to really connect with the followers and then you’ll start to see those transactions happen.

Josh Felber:                          Cool man. Well, we’re almost out of time here. I just wanted to get what’s your one piece of technology you can’t live without?

Nicholas Kusmich:           We live out of Trello and Slack, so that’s a great software, but other than that, my cell phone. Without it I don’t know what I would do, yeah.

Josh Felber:                          Yeah, I don’t know man.

Nicholas Kusmich:           I’d freak out.

Josh Felber:                          Cool, and any last insights you want to leave our audience with before we go?

Nicholas Kusmich:           Geeze, I mean it depends on where people are at in their journey. I mean, if people are just starting out, it’s keep going. It may not get better, but you’ll get smarter, and you’ll get more skilled, so it will feel easier. If you’re already kind of living it large, and things are going well for you, and you kind of reach your pinnacle, think about netting up. Maybe consider getting out of the cycle of always scaling up and seeing if there’s other things that you can do to give you the time freedom, which is really the only reason we all got into this game in the first place, and to do what you need to do that way. I think those would be the kind of two takeaways there.

Josh Felber:                          Cool, and then just let us know where we can find all about you, and your events, and everything you’re doing.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, well, I mean everything is at NicholasKusmich.com. I know it’s not the most brandable name, Josh, so you’re going to have put that in the show notes somewhere.

Josh Felber:                          It will be a link on the side here.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Yeah, and then we also, I mean, or if you go to NicsBlog, N-I-C-S-B-L-O-G.com/secret. That’s kind of an easier thing to remember. That will give you access to some free trainings and various things that we’re doing right now as well.

Josh Felber:                          Cool, well really awesome. I appreciate your time today, and it was an honor to have you on Making Bank, and be able to share your insights and experiences with the audience, and everything. Again, thanks, and I appreciate your time today.

Nicholas Kusmich:           Man, the pleasure was all mine. Thanks for having me Josh. Appreciate it.

Josh Felber:                          I am Josh Felber. You were watching Making Bank, get out and be extraordinary.