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Creator of the $1K per Day
Platinum Edition
In this interview Barry Plaskow, one of the top Online Impresarios, details how he teaches entrepreneurs at all levels how to quickly and easily build a lucrative business with high converting webinars and a simple plan to partner with world experts.
If you’ve been held back by complicated marketing systems or bogged down with technology – this simple Online Impresario business model makes so much sense. You find a suitable expert to partner with, and create an online event, specifically a webinar, to showcase your expert to his own list. There’s a bit more to it, but that’s the basic idea.
EXCLUSIVE $500 discount to the 1K /day Platinum Editon
I’m happy to say that Barry has generously offered an exclusive $500 discount to his program for my audience. I have personally gone through this program and I can tell you it offers specific, step by step instructions, with a level of personal attention that makes success close to inevitable.To access the exclusive discount, click www.LeonSpecial.com.
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Here is the edited transcript of the interview:
The fateful meeting with Jay Conrad Levinson, founder of Guerilla Marketing, that changed Barry’s life
Leon: Hi everybody. It’s Leon Altman here at the Freedom Business Café. Today in the Café I have Barry Plaskow who I consider the Webinar Conversion King. Welcome to the Café, Barry.
Barry: Thank you very much, Leon, it’s good to be here.
Leon: I want to get started, because I remember the late great marketer Jay Conrad Levinson, the creator of guerilla marketing, really one of the great marketers of all time, and you have a very personal connection with Jay Conrad Levinson, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Barry: Yes. The truth is that Jay changed my life, there is no question about that. I was in a situation where I had just moved to a new a country with my wife and four children, I had a great job that was waiting for me, and I arrived in this new country to figure out that in fact – because of government cuts in education – the job didn’t exist.
And I very quickly found myself in over $100,000 in debt. As a person in education, there was no way I was going to find $100,000 to pay back those debts. I was in desperate trouble. So what I decided to do was to write to as many marketing and business experts as I could find in the world – literally – and asked them to help me build a business from scratch, and I would detail the process so I could share it with everyone else on the internet that was looking to build a business from scratch.
“. . . I’m in desperate trouble, do you think you could interview me?”
So I must have sent out over a hundred emails, and I didn’t get any responses until Jay responded, and Jay very kindly jumped on a call with me. And he said, “I’m getting into a webinar this evening, my guy just cancelled on me, I’m in desperate trouble, do you think you could interview me?”
So here I am that knew nothing about anything, I said, “What do I do, Jay?” So he says, “Here are the five questions,” and this literally the first conversation I had, “Here are the five questions, ask me these questions.” So I’m asking these questions. He was trying to promote his seminar which was I think $10,000.
And I was just blown away by this process of a webinar that I was invited to actually host for the world’s greatest marketer, probably of all time, and I made a complete idiot of myself. He made a ton of sales.
How Barry made a complete fool of himself on his first webinar – and still made $20,000
And what was unbelievable was what happened the next day. People had located my name on LinkedIn and sent me a message asking if I could help them with their startup, being a guerrilla marketing expert. Here I was, I was about to lose my house at the time, and I closed the deal that day for $20,000. It was $20,000 gig. I had never marketed in my life. But because I was interviewing Jay Conrad Levinson, people perceived me as an expert. And that was the beginning of my introductions to webinars.
I made $20,000 the first day I tried it, and that was just the beginning of the process. Jay and I became great friends. I trained with him, and he took me under his tutelage, he made me a guerilla marketing master trainer, one of only a few in the world, and I’m very proud that we’re following on in his great traditions.
Leon: Wow, what a start, and what a mentor to have right at the beginning. So you’ve had a meteoric rise. From that you’ve grown, and now you’re one of the truly big internet marketers. What does it take to succeed online?
The multi-million dollar online question . . .
Barry: It’s a good question. It’s a million or multi-million dollar question, what does it take? Here’s what traditionally people would say. People that are listening to this conversation right now, if you were to ask people what do you think it takes to be successful online, so those who have got some background in internet marketing or making money online would say that the number one most important element that you need is a list of people that know, like and trust you.
And this is where I fell short for so long. It could take you years upon years to build a list and create a credibility and a following amongst people that know, like and trust you, because no one’s going to buy anything from you or listen to what you have to say if they don’t believe what you say. I think that is the number one and most important element.
The second element is once you create or build that sort of interaction, that sort of relationship with an email list – and the beauty of that email list of course is once you’ve got it you can send out recommendations to other people’s products where you collect a commission – you can create your own product, whatever niche you wish to be, and it really is the holy grail of making money online.
You’ve got to have something sell – duh! And yet . . .
But a second element, what you’ve got to have obviously is something to sell. And I’ve met so many of our students that have spent years developing a social media or an email list and they’ve got a following, but they don’t make any money, because they don’t know what to sell, they have nothing to sell to their list.
So number one is having someone to sell , number two is having something to sell to them, but number three – and this is no less important the first two – is having a way to sell to that list.
Leon, you’ve known our team for a good couple of years. We sell products quite regularly to our list, we sell high-end products, we have a way to sell that engages people to the point that they’re not only going to buy from us once, but they will buy from us almost every single month.
So we have a dedicated following of people that are spending a lot of money with us, and they are successful at what they do, and therefore they spend a lot more money with us. So those are the three traditional elements of a successful business:
- Having a list
- Having something – preferably high-end so you can make more money – that you can sell to that list, that’s providing obviously a lot of good value, and,
- Having a way to sell. Unfortunately, people get stuck in stage number one, they fall down, and they never get to exercise steps two or three.
Leon: Let me ask you something that I don’t think a lot of people take into account. They get started, and before they know it sometimes they’ve gone years to get this going. How long does it really take if someone is doing things right, or let’s say they’re alternately not doing things right. Give us some timeframes, because we’ve got a lot of people in the audience that don’t want to spend years getting this going.
Two approaches to succeeding online. One slow. The other fast. Which would you rather take?
Barry: There are two approaches, and there is only one of these two approaches that you should choose. One is you figure out how to do those three things I mentioned before. Build a massive list, create credibility with that list, and then you discover or figure out how you can create products to sell to that list.
That, as you pointed out, could take a lifetime. And I know people that come to us that have spent years and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases. We have clients that come to us having wasted years trying to develop a business that they can run from home or from anywhere.
But they never mange to build that list. So one option is spending the time, the energy, the money, and hope that you learn how to build that list, which is something I tried for years and it didn’t work.
How to have a big, loyal list handed to you on silver platter
The second option, and this is what I’ve been teaching our members consistently, and it has changed incredible amounts of lives, is the following. You have the ability to inherit list, product, and a way to make money, literally on a silver platter. Let me explain what I mean.
And let me share with you an anecdote so you understand exactly what I mean. I have a student, his name is Ivan, he is from Bulgaria, he barely speaks English, certainly is not fluent by any means, and I suggested to him what he needed to do.
I said to him, instead of trying to build a list, why don’t you choose a niche that you want to build a business in and engage with an expert on Amazon that’s already got a list, that’s spent his or her lifetime cultivating relationships with people that follow them, that trust them, that like them. Go to them.
And we have a template that we give to our students that they send out to these experts, and traditionally 40% of those experts respond, because our template basically tells them how we could help them make a lot of money.
So they get the attention of these experts, let’s say in the case of Ivan it was in the health niche, so he sent it 20 emails to 20 experts in the health niche, he got something like 12 or so responses from those experts, and one of those experts – listen to this, Leon – has a list of 500,000 people!
So Ivan is like he can’t believe what he sees, and he contacts me immediately and says, “What the hell is going on here?” And he asked me if I could get on a call with him. And that’s exciting, so of course I’m going to jump on a call with him and his expert.
Show experts how to pick up all the money they are leaving on the table . . . and you have a 7 figure buisness
And it turned out this expert has got 500,000 digital clients, that means he has access to them. He has affiliates that are sending him 600 sales a day, every single day. He sells them absolutely nothing else afterwards other than an eBook, which means that – in my estimation based on my knowledge over the years – this guy has probably been leaving 20 to 50 times the amount of money that he has made, and he’s definitely made seven figures, he has probably left 20 times that on the table.
So when Ivan says to the expert that I can help you to make a lot more money, the expert says, “Well, I’m very excited about that.” And the expert is getting 33% of the deal, that’s it, Ivan’s got the rest. He’s now got a list to play with. The expert has got obviously a following of people that know, like and trust him.
Ivan got a template that we shared with him on how to create a product from scratch that he can sell to that list, and he’s got marketing assets that you know, as a marketer of many years, would take a lifetime of expertise to create, and he has just received them on a silver platter.
And Ivan’s gone from spending seven to eight years trying to make money online and never succeeding, to basically sitting in front of a seven figure business that’s probably going to be up and running in the next two weeks.
Leon: It could take easily a lifetime to get access to something like that. I love the phrase that you used, that it’s handed to him on silver platter because of this business model. Tell us how webinars enter into this business model
The different roles webinars play in this business model
Barry: If you remember what I said before, there are three aspects to a successful business. One is having a list, so if you can connect with experts that have a ready-to-go list that’s taken care of.
Number two is having a product, and it is simple, this is how you create products with experts, using webinars. What we’re having right now is obviously a conversation, but a webinar is a screen-sharing, live online experience. People love them and they are built to sell products.
What they can also be used for is the creation of products. For example, in the Ivan situation he is working with a person in the health niche, and that person will be doing three live webinars with purchases of the product. And the product is made up three live webinars, that is it. So, number one, webinars could be used to create products, and people are willing to spend a lot of money to be on webinars where they get a closer connection to people that they know, like and trust. Let’s just take an example. If a well-known musician that you absolutely loved– throw out a name of someone in music or in acting that you absolutely love.
Leon: Let’s say Paul McCartney.
Barry: Paul McCartney says, “I’m going to be doing three interactive live sessions. I’m going to restrict it to 100 people. I want you to get to really know me, and I’m going to answer your every question about the Beetles, about my past, about what I’m doing, what I’ve done, anything you just wanted to know about John Lennon.
I’m going to keep this limited to 100 people, and as this is going to be something that I’m never going to do again, it will cost $497 to be part of that.” Do you think, Leon, if you were to make that offer to Paul McCartney’s fans you would probably fill that up I about three minutes, probably less?
Leon: No, I would say about 20 seconds.
Barry: There you go. You absolutely would. The beauty of this is that experts have a relationship with their list. These are people that follow them. They listen to what they have to say about education, about dieting, about making money, about finance, about whatever it is that you want to build a business around. They’ve got that relationship.
And many of them have absolutely no clue how to transform that relationship with those many followers that they have into money, absolutely no clue whatsoever. So webinar’s number one. That’s a great way to create a product, allowing people to interact with the expert, that is the product.
Why you can make a 100 mistakes on a webinar and still sell like crazy
But webinars in their traditional fashion is the third element that I shared before, it’s the way that you sell products. And the way we do that, I’ll just give you a template, it’s very simple.
You bring the expert on to a line in front of his or her audience, and you give a little introduction, you ask four or five questions, just like you’re doing right now, and at the end you make the offer, we’re going to have three live interactive webinars, we’re going to restrict it to X number of people, if you want to join, this is your opportunity, and you start reading out the names of the people who join.
It’s an exciting type of environment to be on, and it has never failed for us. So that is what webinars do, they allow you to sell at a higher price, they convert better than any other means of selling online that I know, you don’t need to be an expert, and here’s the big thing of all, I think at least, you could probably make a hundred and one mistakes and it will still work for you.
If we have time, Leon, do you mind if I share a quick anecdote that shows the power of a webinar and will allow people to sense what they potentially could do if they themselves decide that they also would like to build a business from scratch like this?
Leon: Please do.
Barry: This is the story of Joe. Because it’s pretty embarrassing I won’t mention his family name, but suffice it to say that he is the brother-in-law of a very close friend of mine. He tried to build a business, spend years, wasted $500,000 of money that was given to him from people that invested in his company, tried to build a business from scratch, completely failed, and he came to me in desperate trouble.
Joe is making a fortune with webinars and doesn’t speak a word of English.
He was about to lose his house as well, and he was in a horrible state. So I shared with him this formula. The only problem that Joe had is he didn’t speak a word of English, literally not a word. So I told him to reach out to find an expert, and he got his secretary to do that.
I told him how to close the deal with the expert, we’ve got a template for that, and he had to get his secretary to do that. So that was all fine. I then showed him how he could create a webinar and sell a product on that webinar. I gave him my template, and he got his secretary to write the webinar. Now, she’s not a marketer. She’s a wonderful person, she’s not a marketer, she’s rather wooden in her delivery, and it was an absolute shambles.
Suffice to say, the last time I spoke to Joe was twelve months ago, I got him on his own [17:50], and at that month he was making $73,000 in profits from doing this. That was 12 months ago, since then his business has expanded. He doesn’t have time for me anymore, he’s too busy making money. And this is a guy who doesn’t speak English, has everything going against him, but this formula is very, very simple, it’s easy to follow.
And I think that’s the reason why so many of our students, like Ivan, like Joe, have managed to carve out a future for themselves, building a business from scratch when they had absolutely no marketing credentials or assets to their name when they got started.
Leon: That’s a great story. I want to ask you, before I get into this wonderful course that you, you have critiqued tons of webinars helping people, can you tell us one big mistake people make on webinars, and one key to a successful webinar?
The big mistake people make with webinars
Barry: The template that we have is really very simple. I think that is the biggest issue that people have. The biggest problem people have webinars is that people don’t do them. That’s the biggest problem. Just do them.
The template for example that we have, and I just described what it was a few minutes ago, that template you can mess it up, you can mistakes. This about the scenario, imagine a young rookie that knows nothing about business, knows nothing about marketing, nothing.
He’s a teacher, he’s an educator, and he’s interviewing the master of marketing, foaming at the mouth, slurring all over the place, asking stupid questions, acting very clearly as someone that was under a lot of pressure at the time, and he walks away making $20,000 from a webinar where he didn’t even make an attempt to sell anything, at least not of his own, he was just helping Jay Conrad. And that was me.
So if someone like that, under those conditions, can create a relationship with people on webinars, making every mistake under the sun, then anyone can do this. If a secretary that doesn’t know anything about marketing follows a template, and it was so wooden that it almost went up in fire, that’s how wooden her performance was, and she managed to pull off for Joe that sort of result and built for him what’s now clearly a seven figure business, anyone could do this.
So the biggest mistake that people make – it is not necessarily just with webinars, it’s with all things when it comes to building a business – is they simply don’t take action. And especially when it comes to webinars, people will try to build lists, and they try to come up with all kinds of ingenious ways of making money, when there is a very simple of doing it.
You don’t need to learn it, you simply need to do, and you want to learn how to inherit someone else’s list, someone else’s relationships, and help them to make a lot more money, which will make you a lot more money.
So what I’ve seen with our students, the only students that don’t succeed are the ones that don’t take action, it’s really that simple. So that’s the biggest mistake that people have.
The single most important thing you need to demonstrate on your webinars
When it comes to creating a great webinar, I think the one thing you’ve got to show is sincerity. I don’t care if your webinar’s got holes in it and you mistakes along the way, and you fail at all the things that we share with you. If your audience feels a sincerity – unfortunately in the world that we live in in the 21st century, sincerity is very hard to come by, which is very unfortunate.
It’s almost embarrassing that that’s almost a sales ploy, that that is something that people look at and say, “Hey, I love this guy. I’m going to spend $1000 with him.” It’s embarrassing that that’s not the norm. It’s not the norm.
So by being yourself and showing that you care, whatever it is that your audience is looking to achieve, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s longevity, whether it’s to reverse their diabetes, fitness, whatever it is that you’re doing, if you can show that you care, and by positioning yourself with your expert – obviously by connecting with an expert you’re positioned as someone that understands the industry – those two things together you practically can’t go wrong.
And because it is so strong and so powerful, I think that’s the reason why so many people that have failed to build a business come to us. They try something like this, and the results that people are generating are just extraordinary.
The simple 1K per day Business Model plus a mastermind
Leon: I want to talk a little about this course where you have put all of this information that you’re now talking about into this really wonderful course. And I can say that because I took the course, I was among I guess your first class. When I took the course, it was called 1K Per Day, I think you mentioned that you’ve the changed the title, can you tell us what the title is, and just a little bit more about the course itself?
Barry: We call it the 1K Per Day Platinum Edition. It’s pretty much the same course that you went through, other than these two additional elements.
Number one, there is an ongoing mastermind. We don’t bring in a ton of people into this, because the mastermind for me is something very precious. It allows us to interact with our students as they go through this process, and for them to learn from one another. It’s a very caring environment through what we deliver, but also from the interaction that people with one another.
I’ll give an example. There was a client that was on there that was having problems with the technical aspects, and within about 30 seconds she found four partners or people that wanted to work with her, they went off and they started building and formulating a relationship together, and they’ve gone on to very, very special things together. So number one is that mastermind element.
Not only are they receiving the step-by-step training that allows them to find an expert, turn that expert into an online product, which takes about a couple of hours, and then we show them how to set it on a webinar, which takes another couple of hours, so it’s not like it’s months and months of training. You can get this done very quickly. But on top of that, there is more hand-holding than ever. We have a mastermind, so that’s the first element.
Why experts will want to work with you
The second element, which is probably the biggest one of them all is what I’ve decided to do. It is to practically force our members to be successful. What I mean by that is we show them how to reach out experts and they will receive responses if they send out our templates from their experts.
When they get responses, we recommend that they just ask the experts that get back to them a few questions. Because it is so powerful, people will respond to these emails, and then you’re in a very strong position, you have the ability to decide who you want to work with. Traditionally our members are only working with experts that have a huge following, at the very least 10,000 email subscriber list would be basic type of person that you would want to work with.
Many of our clients are working with experts that are five, ten, and sometimes even fifty times bigger than that. So you want to choose your partners carefully. If you need help closing the deal with the partner, we’re doing that together with our students, with our clients. We help them close the deal at even better terms than they probably would be able to close by themselves.
Once you’ve got that in place, and you have a partner, an expert that wants to work with you, has a list that’s ready to make money from, has an expertise that people know, like and trust, then the chances of you being successful are such that you would have to make some serious mistakes to mess that up.
Two powerful courses in one
Leon: I want to say a couple of things about the course, because, as I said, I went through it. Actually I find it two courses in one. Even if you just want to learn how to put on truly successful webinars, for that alone the course is worth it. Just for the templates that you not only give, but the detail, the specificity where you talk about what to say at what point is truly terrific.
Bonus webinar critiques from the Webinar Conversion King
And then there is one other element, which you haven’t mentioned, that you offer critiques of people’s webinars when they send in the script. That’s incredibly valuable. I’ve gotten some of your critiques and your insights to what is missing or what is right about a webinar, it is truly terrific. So for that alone it’s worth it.
And for all of the other things, and going into this whole, I guess we can call the Producer Mode, where you’re getting an expert and working with the expert to create a product, and then to sell the product. That’s also terrific. So really I find it two great courses in one, Barry.
Whether you want to team up with an expert or you ARE the expert – this works
Barry: It’s a very interesting point you’re making. If you are an expert listening to his, you may be a professional, someone that would love to be able to share that expertise with a massive audience, but you may not want to go out and be a producer of someone else. You maybe be that expert.
And there is no question that webinars are the easiest and best way to sell your ideas to a large audience. Absolutely no question about it. I’ve seen people that have never sold a thing in their lives jump on a webinar, express and share their expertise with people that get to know, like and trust them through the webinar.
If you have an expertise, and you want the world to know about that expertise, and you would like to share more information with people and make money from that, then the webinar is the best, easiest way that you could possibly do it.
So you are absolutely right, Leon. This is not just for people that are looking to build a business from scratch, this is also for someone that has an expertise and wants to be able to perhaps make more money from that, build a new revenue stream, and to have a lot of fun along the way.
Leon: Yeah. And your conversion rates, as our mutual friend and well-known internet marketer Ryan Lee has said, he looked at your conversation and he said he has never seen webinar conversion rates as high as yours. So you’re getting terrific advice from someone who I call the Webinar Conversion King. Barry, you’ve created a link for my audience to access this course, what is the link to access the course?
Private, backdoor entry into the program gets you $500 off
Barry: Because this is going out to people that are following you, Leon, I’m actually taking $500 off it. This is something you will not find elsewhere, this is not some sort of sales ploy of some kind, you’re getting $500 off.
This is a special, backdoor entry point into the program. And the URL that I just got for you is leonspecial.com. Please keep this amongst yourselves, do not spread the world. I’ve never done this before for this program, and I don’t think I’m going to do it again. So this is a one off, please keep that between us. Again, you can find it at leonspecial.com.
Leon: That is fabulous. And I have this on the show notes, which will be Freedombusinesscafe.com/plaskow. It’s pretty easy to remember leonspecial.com. And Barry is offering $500 off. I thank you for that Barry, that’s just terrific. And also I want to thank you for spending the time with us. It has been terrific and illuminating. Thank you very much for coming into the Café.
Barry: Thank you, Leon, I appreciate it.
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To access the exclusive $500 discount to the 1K per day Platinum Edition, click: www.leonspecial.com