Bryan McAnulty: Welcome to the Creator's Adventure, where we interview Creator's from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. My name is Bryan McAnulty. I'm the founder of Heights Platform. And today I'm talking with Zach Spuckler about how his business has generated over 2.4 million in online course and coaching sales over the last seven years and how to build a successful membership site.

Hey everyone. Today, I'm here with Zach Spuckler. He is the founder of heart, soul, and hustle and creator of the, not your average online marketing podcast. He's generated over 2.4 million in online course consulting agency and coaching sales since starting his business. Seven years ago, he's worked with six and seven figure businesses to build multiple six figure plus launches and automated funnels.

He coaches entrepreneurs inside his membership called not your average membership to grow their leads, sales and bottom line, Zach, welcome to the show.

Zach Spuckler: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Bryan McAnulty: Cool. So you mentioned actually just a moment before we started recording that there's gonna be a big winter storm near you.

Where are you actually located?

Zach Spuckler: Yeah, so I'm in Ohio recently in California, which was super warm, super great, but no family and everything was locked down. So we moved back to Ohio and right out to my right. If you can see like the, the blinding light, I keep trying to even it out with my, my nice lights, but that's, that's snow coming through the blinds for you.

Bryan McAnulty: That's funny. Yeah. So I'm in Austin, Texas. And today, this morning we had just the lightest dusting of snow the first time this year. And, oh my gosh, everything's shut down. Everyone's panicking. Yesterday we got calls telling us that like our appointments today were getting canceled and everything.

and I think what happened is cuz last year, Texas had this big, the big power issue and everything and it, it was scary actually. I'm sure for a lot of people we were pretty fortunate with everything, but I think everyone's just worried about something like that happening again, hearing that it's gonna be freezing.

Yeah, so barely anything happened outside, but but it's, it's eerily quiet out right now. .

Zach Spuckler: Well, we're happy to hear. It's not too bad in Texas. .

Bryan McAnulty: So you started your company at the age of 22. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and what made you decide to become

Zach Spuckler: an entrepreneur? Sure. So, you know, for me, I really started playing around with the idea of, of making money online when I was about 12 years old and I used to do all kinds of random stuff.

I've done freelance writing, I've done website Flipp. I've done eCommerce. Like I've, I've dabbled in a lot of it. And what really motivated me was, you know, there's this funny story. My dad was trying to teach me how to change my oil one day. And this was like the third time he was trying to teach me.

And he said, you know, you're gonna have to know how to do this. And I said, oh no, I'm not. I'm just gonna hire somebody one day to like, do my oil for me. This is never gonna be a problem. And it's a little tongue in cheek. It's totally something that's like, what, what would a kid say? It's a. Would be a little outta turn if an adult said it, but it's funny because that's what really motivated me to start was this concept of like, I wanted full autonomy over my life.

And you just don't get that within nine to five, you clock into work. I actually got my first nine to five when I was 14. I would work in the summers, literally from nine to five in a call center. I did that until I was 18. I started working evenings and nights. And when I was in college, I got a job.

Within my first semester I became a manager in my job role, and then I started working at a public health department in an, in an assistantship when I went to my master's program. And, you know, the whole time I was like, this kind of sucks. Being accountable to somebody else and being accountable to yourself is just, it's a totally different experience.

So, you know, my journey has evolved over time in the sense that I've really discovered what it's like to not have that full autonomy, but I've always really craved it from the start. And that's what really motivated me. I tell people all the time. When I started, I was very money motivated. I'm definitely more motivated by like income and impact and reach and having a mission with our company now.

But when I started, that was not the case. I just wanted to make good money, have a good time, do fun things. You know, my first year in like full entrepreneurship, I traveled like California and New York. And I was like, man, this is crazy. This is cool. And you know, now I, it's just a, it's just second nature to just really have that autonomy over your life, your travel and your.

Bryan McAnulty: awesome. So with your company, heart, soul, and hustle, you sell digital products, online courses, challenges, and you have a membership site. Yes. Which one of these would you really consider like your main offering now?

Zach Spuckler: Yeah, our primary offer is probably our membership, not your average membership. We started that about six months ago and it's actually not my first attempt at a membership site, but now I have a, a team in the structure behind us to make it run like a really well oiled machine.

And that is our membership. We came up with this concept. That's like, we, we love the online course space. So I always preface by saying like, we love online courses. I take online courses all the time. I probably buy one or two a week. Literally I'll buy like a mini product or, or a high level course around everything I've, I've invested in, you know, courses around financial advice, you know health wellness.

I, I took a flow course one time. That was really fun. Highly recommend learning more about that. But I also feel like sometimes in the online course space, when you're first getting started and you're trying to learn this business model, it can be really expensive. There's stuff, that's just like, it's like, oh, join the course for $2,000 is gonna teach you everything you need to know in eight weeks.

And, you know, as someone who's been in the game for a while, we know that you're not gonna master everything in eight weeks. Right. So we said, what if we made a membership that had. That premium information at an accessible price point where we've been doing this long enough, that we know the ins and outs of, of the marketing side of things that we could really serve people.

At a maximum level at a way that you generally can't get, unless you invest in a really high level course. And so our goal with this membership and the concept of not so average is we're working with people that want that same mission, right. They may not be pricing low. And I wouldn't even say we price low.

I would say we price fair for a membership. But they have this craving to actually make an impact outside of just in their own life. And so we're working with people who want to do things ethically. They wanna do things morally. They wanna do things the right way and they wanna do things that feel good because and I promise I won't get too tangenty, but a lot of times in marketing, we get told like, oh, you have to do this.

Like, this is the secret to getting more people into your course. And it's things like. Oh, you know, set up your evergreen funnel and put a fake deadline timer in there. It doesn't matter if it works or not just put it in there. More people will buy. And we're kind of challenging that notion of like, what if you can do things that really feel great and work great at the same time.

And so that was the conception of that membership and that's become our primary product. We absolutely love it. We also have like an agency arm of our business. We work as a small boutique agency with like five to seven clients, max running Facebook ads for them. I would say that's also like a primary product, but we look at it as two completely different arms of the business.

One is about working with people one to many, and one is about being in the trenches, working with clients one on one, and trying to be really current on what is, and isn't working in the front of like advertising, marketing, launching in courses.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. So we saw that you mentioned your membership, not your average membership.

You mentioned as directed to people who you call the not so average marketer. So can you go into a little bit more detail about that? Is that what you're saying? The, I, the idea of someone who wants to promote themselves in a more like ethical way or, yeah.

Zach Spuckler: Yeah. So we, you know, non average marketer, it's, it's funny.

And I remember I, we talked a little bit about this, that some people don't identify as marketers, right. So it's really not necessarily challenging, but it's definitely an educational opportunity because a lot of people say like, oh, I'm not a marketer, I'm a creator. Or I'm not a marketer. I'm a, a specialist or I'm an agency or I'm this, or I'm that.

And. For most of us when we start our business, it's just us. Right. And if we're really pulling the funds together, maybe it's an assistant. I know that's how we started. I didn't have an assistant for the first year when I hired an assistant side note game changer. I didn't even know someone could check your email for you and like schedule things.

It's phenomenal. But. A lot of people say, like, I'm not a marketer and we need people to understand, like my stance is that if you have an online business, you are a marketer. You don't have to identify as a marketer or be like, I'm a digital marketer by trade. But if you're marketing your business, you have to at some point where that marketer hat, right.

We know that we wear the finance hat and the delivery hat and the customer service hat. And. Creation hat, but that marketer hat you do have to wear, right? It's like we've all seen or heard the quote from field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Well, anyone who's built an online course without an audience or a marketing plan knows that that is just not the truth.

You can't build it, throw it up on the internet. There's billions of websites out there now you're just not gonna get found. And so the concept is that we want people to understand. You can be a marketer without having that, that kind of perception of what marketing is. And it's kind of akin to, when you think back, people are like, oh, I don't wanna be like a used car salesman.

People have that connotation with marketing. There's a running joke in the marketing community that says marketers ruin everything, right? The minute something comes out, we learn how to market on it. And we ruin it and we're like, well, what if we didn't ruin it? What if we enhanced it? What if we made it better?

What if we served people first? We. One of the things we teach inside of our membership is we teach people how to write these really long form. We call them epic blog posts or ultimate guides, but they're like 5,000 word pieces of content that you put on your blog. And our thing is like, most people don't do that because it's like, well, why would I give all my best information away?

We just did a launch where we literally taught people how to run Facebook ads. Like we actually. Into the ads manager clicked. The buttons said, here's what you do, supported people for a number of days on it and then said, Hey, if you loved this and you want more come into our membership and it was one of our highest converting launches, but the conventional wisdom in the online marketing space is like, oh, never tell people how to do it.

Just tell them what to do and then sell them how you do it on the back. And our thing is like, what if you showed people how amazing you are and they wanted to work with you at a deeper level. Right. And yes, there's nuances to that. You can't just be like, oh right. We don't like, we're still a business. We still generate revenue.

We still have goals and metrics and things that we have to achieve to support our team and, and support the business. But we also believe that you can do all that and still lead with really quality content and value.

Bryan McAnulty: Sure. So, yeah, you're not saying to go and actually do the whole entire thing for somebody and then.

Well, would you mind to pay me a little bit? You're saying that exactly you can show them something and you can, you can do what you wanna do, prove how you would work with them. And when they see that, then it's a lot more natural for you to sell something to them because it changes the conversation from like countdown, timers, and fake scarcity and all that into, Hey, this is what we're doing.

If, if you're enjoying the relationship so far and you want to continue, then you can purchase my membership. My course, my coaching.

Zach Spuckler: exactly. And I'm not saying like, and, and this is what I always try to emphasize. Like I'm not demonizing those things. Like we use countdown timers. My thing is like, if I'm gonna use it though, it's a legitimate deadline.

Yeah. We use scarcity and bonuses, but if I'm using them, they're legitimately adding value to the program. They're not just there to like, make the sale. Right. Sure. And we just think that you like, as marketers, we could do so much better and there is. The conventional wisdom can change. And that's really where we get like the, the, not your average marketer mentality.

Bryan McAnulty: Cool. Yeah. I mean, I think it's really important. I really I really feel pretty strongly and agree with that, that viewpoint that you have as well. Like it's important to like use tools that are available to you, like scarcity and everything. There's a place for it. There's a reason for it. And if you're doing it for a real reason, and it's, it's a real thing, it makes sense.

But if you're faking it, then it can be a little bit unethical. And like, we we've seen similar kind of thing. Even with our competitors where we run some kind of discount, we have the countdown timer, our countdown timer is real . And then we see our, our competitor has a sale, like a like black Friday or something, you know, and then it's like, and then there's looks like it's gonna end.

But then soon as the timer goes to. It goes back up and now it's a, it's a new one. And it's like, okay, well fine. But really, I think if you are someone who's a creator, if you can, if you kind of agree with our, both of our viewpoints here about this, I would say that the people who are doing the, the fake scarcity tactics and all that kind of thing, Like they can make money doing that.

Of course. And there's gonna be people who either don't know that it's happening and will buy from them. There's gonna be people who, even though they realize it's happening, they'll still buy from them. But in, and at the end of the day for there's, there's some part of your mind, even as a customer that there's this uneasy feeling about the whole situation and relationship, you might feel like, okay, I'm gonna buy.

I feel that they're gonna give me that value. But if you're somebody who you don't feel like you, you can be that kind of marketer and you don't wanna be that kind of marketer, you can still get the same transaction and have someone buy from you. And in the back of their mind, they'll actually feel more confident, more connected to you.

Hopefully even more likely to give you a positive review because there's not some small feeling that like, is, are they kind of tricking me or getting me into buying this weird.

Zach Spuckler: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. So what's the focus of your membership site? Why would a client join your membership?

Zach Spuckler: Yeah, so our membership site, the focus is really more leads, more sales and bottom line business growth.

So what we do is every month we release a new training and it's around one specific topic. So one of the things that we notice when we talk to our audience, or when we look at what has, and hasn't worked well for. is a lot of times it's implementation. They say like, oh, I joined this big course. I spent 2, 3, 4, 5, you know, sometimes courses even get up to $10,000 and they.

But I didn't get to go through it. And so we kind of asked the question, what would it look like for someone to be able to actually get through content and have multiple systems of support, accountability, and opportunity? So every month what we do is we drop one specific thing. Like for example, one month was how to grow your email list with one Facebook ad strategy.

And we taught the Facebook ad strategy as a pre-recorded. We taught it as a live class. We do an implementation week where we break down the live and pre-recorded class into five days of daily action steps. And then we have a bonus coaching and consulting call where you can just come on and ask any questions about anything in your business.

But lots of people like to ask about that content for the month. So we're creating multiple touch points to digest the same content in various ways in various avenues, in. Messaging and positioning, and we find that people get really amazing results. We've got people in the membership who are adding from that single month, months ago who report back to us and are like, I've added a thousand people to my email list and we're like, great.

Now you can launch your thing. You can push your thing out there. And that's one example. Another, like this month we're doing Instagram reels. We're doing some training. How to use them, how to push people onto your opt-ins or freebies with Instagram reels. But we position the membership so that you have your first 30 to 90 days in there where you learn how to generate leads, how to set up your first email sequence and how to create a low ticket product that you can put in the sequence.

So that once you have that running as your engine, everything that you learn going forward in the membership can, can drive the fuel to that engine.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. Yeah, I think Again, you're touching on a good point that I think we, we really share some of the same thinking about things that if if the marketer tries to sell you this expensive course, but then you never actually complete it, then it's hard for the person to really be making an impact because you're not getting any real result from it.

So, if you care about your customers, hopefully you do care about your customers, not just making some money, then you want them to be able to get a result from it. And if they can get a result from it, then it's also gonna benefit you in the long term. Not just to feel good about yourself for making an impact on them, but also because you have the benefit that they're getting this result, they're gonna leave you a nice testimonial and everything like that.

Zach Spuckler: Yep. Yeah. And we get, you know, we get really great testimonials from our membership and yeah, we ask for them from time to time. But a lot of times they're just unsolicited. Like this membership is great, or we really appreciate this. Or, you know, this is like totally worth more than I paid for. And that for me is what we want.

That's the experience we want people to have. And for us, it's about elevating the customer experience, elevating how people experience us and just continuing to serve our audience.

Bryan McAnulty: I saw that you also run a lot of online challenges. We're big fans of challenges ourselves. I wanna ask. What do you use challenges for in your business?

Zach Spuckler: Yeah, so we use challenges to launch our, our membership, our courses, our offers. We've been running challenges since 2015, and we've been teaching them since 2016. And the iteration of our challenge education. Evolved and changed really dramatically over time. But we use them to get people engaged and connected with us and to really show them that we're delivering value.

And what's really nice about challenges is that it's super easy to showcase your talents because people are paying attention for a period of time. And if you can deliver. really quality content in that first day of your challenge. Like we do like five day challenges. If you can deliver really good value that first day people come back for more.

And if you continue to deliver that value, you build this inherent trust. In our last challenge, just to give you a really specific example, we had somebody who signed up for it and they were like, this is so good. I love this. And they went to their Facebook group of like 3000 people and posted about it.

We got. A hundred new signups to the challenge. And so I reached out and I said, Hey, I, I like thank you so much, promoting it. If I'd known, you were going to, I would've given you like an affiliate link and you could have promoted it. And they were like, well, that's great. I'm totally willing to email my whole list of like 10,000 plus if you do give me the affiliate link.

So we set them up as an affiliate. It went super well. They ended up converting really well on their segment of the launch. And we started building a mutual connection where now we're doing an exclusive webinar for her. A month and a half later. So you just, you know, when you really, really show up for people in a way that you can, with a challenge, like really cool things happen, and I'm not anti webinar, we've done webinars before.

My thing is like, you're never gonna deliver the value in 60 to 90 minutes that you're gonna deliver over the course of five days in a private community. Networking connecting, helping people, helping people connect with other people. One of my favorite things about challenges is that we build this community of people who stay connected.

I have people who go through challenges and like groups together and tell their friends when they join the challenge and, and do it together and just get amazing results. And what's really cool from like a, a conversional perspective is if you have a group of five people doing it together, and one of them gets results because they know that person.

They trust you even at a deeper level, whether they got the results or not. So we end up helping and serving people at a really deep level. And it's, it's just my favorite thing to do really awesome.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. I mean, I think that challenges are so powerful because compared to like offering maybe like a free mini course or something like that, it's really hard to get the engagement going with something like that.

Yeah. Because there's no, there's no reason that the person has to go through it. They say, oh, this is great. I'm I wanna sign up for this. Then they completely forget about it. and the challenge it's happening at this time. If you wanna do it, you have to participate in it. And and you're right. Like a webinar is something that it it's the same kind of idea.

Like it's happening now you have to, to join it, if you wanna be a part of it. But the challenge, as you said, you're getting that extra social accountability as well. Like if there's a group of people going together, even if it's people that aren't like, they don't know each other, just to see like, oh wow, this person's doing this.

And they can start to learn from each other and build a community. absolutely cool. So can you give some advice to a creator who wants to run their first challenge?

Zach Spuckler: If you wanna run your first challenge? The most important thing is to get super clear on what your deliverable is. One big mistake that I watch.

A lot of Creator's make with challenges is they do like, like, let's say you teach Instagram. They say I'm gonna do an Instagram challenge. And that's the big headline, like, come join my Instagram challenge. And, and we've made this mistake before we made this mistake in a region promotion. It's not just new Creator's that are prone to this.

We get so excited about our idea and the promise. And the offer that we just are like, come join my thing. And people are like, but what is it like exactly. Right. So you need to make sure that you have a clear promise or premise for the challenge. So if you're gonna do, for example, the Instagram challenge, it should be like, grow your following on Instagram over the next five days, or create your next 30 days of content in five days, or create a Instagram strategy.

You can use daily, you know, you wanna have a really, really clear outcome. One other thing that I'll throw out there is once you have a clear outcome, you have to. This is where a lot of us, especially Creator's who are like Creator's to their core. We don't wanna brag. We don't wanna talk about ourselves.

We don't wanna put ourselves out there so to speak, but that is where the magic happened. You have to put yourself out there. It doesn't mean you have to like market or advertise yourself. But, you know, I talk to people all the time who are like, no, one's signing up for my challenge. And I'm like, well, how are you promoting it?

And they say, well, I post on Facebook and Instagram a couple times and I'm like, Well, you should be posting all the time nonstop 24 7. And I don't, I don't mean excessively, right? I'm not saying post 30 times on Instagram is like, come to my challenge, come to my challenge. It's what you do in the, in between that really makes the difference.

Are you consistently posting in a way that your audience can connect and see you? Are you consistently moving that needle forward in terms of growing your audience? Because we talked, I talked about this a little bit earlier, but like, just because you run a challenge, doesn't mean people are gonna show up, even if it's really great, even if you know, it's great, it's about selling, right.

We have to sell that. It's a gonna be a great experience. And that is where the magic happens is in, in marketing yourself. And that's really comes back to the root of what we were talking about earlier is. Yes, you're a creator, but you also have to wear that marketing hat. So get this really great promise that, you know, your audience is struggling to achieve and then market the heck out of it for a couple weeks and just get people so stoked, so excited that they just can't wait to get in there.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, you know, I don't wanna keep posting about it all the time. I don't wanna bother people about it. I don't feel like a marketer that feels so unnatural or weird to me. I like to say, to think of it from the perspective of you've created this thing.

And if you've created this thing, you're passionate about it. You believe that it's gonna have some kind of value to people, right? So. If that's what you believe, then it's kind of your duty to get it out there and make sure people can see it because you wanna help people, but you can't help them if they don't know about it.

And you might make one post, but not everyone in your audience is gonna see that post. And even people who maybe they're really engaged with you, they're gonna see that post. And they're gonna think about it, but then they're gonna forget because they've got just other stuff happening in their lives. So you gotta remind them and they wanna be remind.

And if they purchase from you eventually through that, like they, they do want that from you. They do want to hear from you. So you do have to, you have to do it maybe more than feels natural at first. But knowing that the reason that you're doing it is because you really truly believe you have something valuable to share with the world.

Zach Spuckler: Abs. Yeah. And, and just tack onto that. What I tell people all the time is. you're, you're marketing yourself because you, like, you sincerely believe in your product. Right. And you have to like, no, one's gonna believe in you beyond the level that you believe in yourself. And so, you know, there's always that exception of like that, that one person that sees it in you, but in terms of like your audience, no, one's gonna look at you saying like, oh, I don't wanna market it, or I don't wanna sell it.

And. Well, if he doesn't wanna sell it, but it, it must be really good inside. So I'm gonna join anyway, you know, , there's there's you have to have that confidence in yourself because no one's gonna do that for you. And it is, it's a muscle. You build it over time. You don't start going, oh, this feels so natural to put myself out there on social media, to do a live video, to promote my content, to run an ad.

None of it feels natural to start with, but it becomes natural over time and it becomes a clear. Path that you can take every time you want to get results.

Bryan McAnulty: Cool. So one of the things we like to do on this show is have each of our guests ask a question to our audience. So if you could ask anything to our audience, what would you want to hear from them?

Zach Spuckler: So I was thinking about this, cuz we, we talked about a potential question and I'm changing it. So I hope that's okay. Okay. Sure. You know. Several years ago, I was asked this question and it really changed the trajectory of me. I let my life. And I think it's a perfect question to introduce here because of the topic that we're on.

And that is when it comes to your business or your life, what is something you would do if you were 10 times braver than you are right now, and challenge yourself to do that. So it's like a legitimate question to think on, like, if you are 10 times braver than you are right now, what's something that you would do.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. That's a great. All right. And then also shifting gears here a little bit, I also just wanna touch quick that we noticed that you also have an e-commerce brand with your partner where you sell candles. And so I think it's interesting to like, you're, you're not just doing the digital space. You've also tried physical products as well.

Yeah. And in having some experience, like trying all those different things myself as well, I do feel like it's interesting to learn. From all the different ways. Things work from how digital product is, is digital. It's delivered digitally, a physical product. You have to ship it. There's all kinds of different challenges and, and interesting things.

You can learn. Some of those things you can take away and, and apply to the rest of your business. But I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit about the story with that business.

Zach Spuckler: So we started it as what I call a COVID business. I think a lot of us did that. We're just stuck in the house with nothing to do.

My partner and I were, you know, I obviously run my own business. We had just relocated to the country. He didn't have a job yet. And we were like, let's just, let's just go for it. And it actually started as a, as a crystal business. We sold, we sourced and sold crystals from all over the world and it.

Super cool. And we did that for about a year, and then we realized this is great in theory, and in, in profitability, but man, oh, man is sourcing and shipping crystals, a process. We had a garage full of crystals. Our neighbors were like, you're the crystal guys, which is so funny now, but we, we were doing that for a while and it was going really well, but we actually sold candles with crystals in them.

And eventually we said, What if we just went all in on that, you know, they're, we can take photos of them. They're scalable. The costs are clear. They don't really fluctuate in terms of cost. And that did really well. And we ran that for about a year and it was actually really challenging because. I was running this business.

I have the agency arm, I have the course arm, and now I had products to make process, pack, ship, customer service, advertising, marketing, email, marketing, social media marketing. It was a lot. And so ultimately we decided to sell that business. We, we made a nice little lump sum at the end of that. And we sold the brand to somebody who's gonna like really give it the TLC that it needs.

But what I loved about that business, what really started us was we wanted something we could do together during COVID so that we didn't kill each other being stuck in the house 24 7, but also because it's always fun to try new things. And you know, this was, I mean, I can't even tell you how many iterations of business I've tried brands.

Styles you know, drop shipping website, flipping affiliate market, like I've tried a lot of things. And so for me selling, it was like hard because you put your blood, sweat and tears into a, a physical business. Like it's, it's a lot of work and it was hard to let it go. But for me, I've let so many things go to.

Allow what I am focused on to blossom that it was less of a challenge. I, my partner really struggled with it, cuz this was like the first business he, he had run and he was like, this is like hard. And he even said, it's like, it's like a part of you is leaving. You know? And that was definitely a challenge, but what really motivated us to start?

It was like, let's, let's do this thing. Let's let's see what happens. And we've learned so much from the eCommerce business that we're now applying to. The online course business and vice versa. I knew so much from the online course world in the marketing world that I applied to the offline business, just to give like a really tangible example.

Every time we patched an order, we would put a postcard in there that was like, thank you so much for shopping with us. Like, we appreciate you any other day. I was like, oh my gosh, why aren't we doing that for the people who buy our mid-level products? Like, why are we not sending them a thank you note?

These products cost like the, the margin is even lower here and I'm sending out postcards, why am I not sending out postcards to all these new people? So I'm actually meeting with my team tomorrow. We're, we're figuring out how to automate that process so that we can send out cards to all of our new customers.

And it's just little things like that that you pick up. And, and I tell people all the time, I love to study cross industry. I. So often we pigeonhole ourselves and go, well, this is how it works in, in the online marketing space or the course world. And it's like, yeah, but what are the physical product people doing?

What are the angel investors doing? What are real estate people doing? Right. Like even in real estate, we like cuz I've done a little bit of not investing one day, but a little bit of study of the real estate world. And one of the things is that people buy renovate rehab and, and flip houses and it was like, man, where can I use that in my business?

What assets can I buy? and then renovate or what assets can I build and then renovate. And so a perfect example was we we had a sales page and conventional wisdom is like, you either write your sales page or you hire someone to write your sales page. And I was like, well, our sales page is doing okay.

What if we renovated our sales page? Like, what does it cost to just edit the sales page? Like, it's, it's good. I don't need a full rewrite. And it's little things like that where it's like, we thought we just thought about it differently. And it saved us several thousand dollars and we still had a massively successful.

And a sales page that a copywriter had dipped their, their hand in. And so I just, I love to study across the industry. I know this is a little tangent to the original question, but it's like, can you do those things? Can you experiment in other places and spaces to give yourself that opportunity to just be creative and play and see what works and see what doesn't work and what you love.

And don't love. I, I won't lie. After two years, I was like, I do not wanna pack another box. I am done packing boxes and we actually hired somebody to help us towards the end. But it's little things like that. You just learned so much about yourself and business as a whole, that it it's one of the best things we ever did.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. Yeah. No, I think that's great because that's really what I was hoping to get out of you with this, that you're able to do that and then take a step away and have this perspective and have a new way to think. How can you apply some of those things or a new way to think of what you can do in the rest of your business?

So, absolutely. That's really powerful. Yeah. Cool. So that is all the questions I have for you today, Zach, but where can people find you online?

Zach Spuckler: absolutely. So if you wanna connect with us online, you can head over to heart, soul, hassel.com. That's where we host our entire podcast. The, not your average online marketing podcast.

We're on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, all those good ones. So if you wanna check us out, it's not your average online marketing podcast, and we would love to have you as a listener of any of this resonates with you. Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Zach.

Zach Spuckler: Yeah. Thanks so much for having.

Bryan McAnulty: If you enjoyed this interview and want the chance to ask questions to our guests live tune in on Tuesdays when new episodes premier on the Heights Platform, Facebook page, to learn more about the show and get notified when new episodes release, check out the Creator's Adventure dot com until then keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.