Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the creator's adventure, where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business Today's guest is a veteran Internet marketer who built multiple 7 figure businesses, and he did it without paid advertising. He's gonna share the story with us of exactly how he did that today. Hey, everyone. I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of HEIGHTS platform. Let's get into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:27]:

Hey, everyone. We're here today with Ron Douglas. He is the president of Automated Profits, a digital marketing company, a established in 2001, which has created multiple 7 figure brands, including webinar con, the number 1 mastermind event for webinar marketers. Ron is also the New York Times best selling author of America's Most Wanted recipes, a cookbook series, which has sold over 1500000.0 copies He has worked on Wall Street for JPMorgan and Citibank. However, in 2007, he left a promising career and 6 figure job to work from home and spend more time with his kids. Today, Ron enjoys helping students worldwide to use the Internet to earn more, work less, and have a greater impact. Veronica, welcome to the show.

Ron Dogulas [00:01:15]:

Thanks for having me. It's an honor.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:18]:

So my first question for you today is, What would you say is the biggest thing that either you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve freedom to do what you enjoy?

Ron Dogulas [00:01:30]:

The biggest thing that I did, I would say just building an audience, building a community that kinda led to everything else. I started my career as an affiliate, but I was doing list building, and I would promote affiliate offers with that kind of that skill propelled me just knowing how to build an audience, knowing how to bond with that audience, knowing how to monetize that audience, those things I learned early on, and I still use to this day. And open a lot of doors for me?

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:59]:

Yeah. That's a great answer. So I'm surprised that that's different than we've gotten from other people, but, like, the audience is so powerful to have that. So so it's interesting to mention that you you really did grow the audience then kind of before your own business since you said you started kind of as affiliate. And I think it's it's always interesting to see, like, the 2 paths. The 1 is, like like, something something like a YouTube creator, for example. Like, they have the audience first. But then there's a lot of solo entrepreneurs where they say, I'm gonna make this product, and they don't have the audience yet. So, yeah, that's interesting. Okay. Well, we got a lot to cover there. So before we we go deeper into that, before you started your businesses, you are worked on Wall Street for JPMorgan and for Citibank. And in 2007, you you left this promising career and 6 figure job to work from home. So now this is, like, a common much more common thing. But in 2007, I can imagine that you're more like the exception to the rule. So what would you say, like, pushed you into taking that step, and how did you handle the transition?

Ron Dogulas [00:03:12]:

I got laid off. Is I wish I could say that I Okay. And I wish I could say that I walked into the office and told my boss to shove it and walked out of there and you know, it's happily ever ever after. But no, I so I was planning for it. So I think I kinda manifested my own layoff. So so the way it was working was I had my business going part time. I started in 2001. I didn't leave the corporate world until 2007. I had my business going the whole time. And I was actually, at 1 point, making more towards the end. I was making more from the business than the job, but I had you know, small child at home. I was married. I had a house. I had a responsibility. So I I wasn't ready to leave. So but I had a date set. So I was gonna leave February 2008 no matter what. So every day I would come in and I had this little posted note on my desk that said February 2008, and that was the day. I looked at it every day, I'm gonna leave this you know, that was I was getting up the courage to do it. I was saving money, and I was planning to do it. And they did me a favor by laying me off in 2007, July 2007. And it was crazy because they did this right before, so we were expecting our second child Literally, my wife was 8 months pregnant at home and I had to call her and say I lost my job. Got laid off and and she was just so supportive. She's like, know, this is what you wanted. Like, I believe in you. Just go for it. You know, work on your business now. So that's what I did. Never looked back. Never went on another interview. Took my little severance and and I was off to the races. And then after that, all type of doors opened up for me in terms of meeting people, getting a book deal, doing my own events. All type of stuff happened. It's like funny when you're able to take meetings at 10AM or 11AM. You don't have this job. To focus on you you talk with other people, I guess, in that same circumstance, other entrepreneurs, and you start making connections. And and it works out for you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:17]:

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's it's hard when you're you're still thinking about maybe making that that leap and preparing for it. But I I think there is some amount of, like, hope, hopefully, we can inspire others, maybe still in that path where they're they have this job that they're they're planning to quit and wondering how that's gonna go. When when you have those extra hours, to be able to, like, have those meetings like you're saying and and talk with other people, it can really open up a lot of opportunities.

Ron Dogulas [00:05:54]:

Alright. So You don't have to be a hero. Like, you don't have to just quit with no plan b. I mean, save your money. Like, you know, you can do this stuff part time while you're building up your your asset So if you have so I would say if you have responsibilities, right, if you have a family, if you have a mortgage payment, all that type of stuff, I would say you wanna leave when you have at least 6 months of income saved up, and you also have an asset that continues to make money. So in my case, I had, you know, at that time, I had hundred and 75000 email subscribers for this business. So I knew I could make money, continue to make money. So I was super risk free when I did it. And it still felt crazy. It still felt like, oh my god. This is don't know what's gonna happen, you know. And then until I settled in and calmed down and I'm like, well, this business is still gonna make money. I'm still Ron Douglas. I still have connections. I still have my name, and and it's gonna be just fine.

Bryan McAnulty [00:06:52]:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm really glad that you mentioned that because, like, 100 percent, I I am I do wanna motivate everybody listening or watching this to become an entrepreneur if they wanna do that, but I'm not trying to suggest to forget about our responsibilities and and take these massive risks. And, like, I I can share that. I I feel that in some ways, I'm very risk adverse myself that I never had a traditional job. But before, like, building Heights platform, I did have other businesses that were bringing in income. And so, like, our story was starting as this web design studio. And we wanted to build our own products, get away from client work. And we we slowly shifted it, like, 50 50. And then, eventually, I had ecommerce businesses and other things that were bringing in income. So I would be able to take that time to focus on what I wanted to build. So having that savings, having some source of of income or an asset with you really makes a difference and and takes a lot of the the risk away there.

Ron Dogulas [00:07:58]:

Absolutely.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:00]:

So you turned your hobby of cooking into a multimillion dollar business. That's incredible achievement. Can you walk us through the process of transforming that passion into a best selling cookbook. And I guess what would you say is, like, the the biggest wins and challenges you encountered along the way.

Ron Dogulas [00:08:20]:

Well, I so I I started out to selling an ebook. Right? Selling an ebook. And I had a really good kinda blue ocean niche. Right? Really good opportunity where I was selling restaurant recipes that my cookbook, my old niche was copycat restaurant recipes. So I was able to kinda piggyback off the restaurant dishes, the names of the restaurants, all that type of stuff to say, like, here's my version of these recipes. And at the time, So I started out as an affiliate on ClickBank. And then the light bulb moment, I said, you know, if I had my own product with all these other affiliates, promoting me, I could benefit off the efforts, benefit from the efforts of many people instead of just my own. And I that was my, like, I first I did was, like, interested in cooking. What can I do related to cooking? I used to follow Corey Ruehl back in the days. I don't know if you remember him. He was a Internet marketing center. He was 1 of the original online marketing gurus, I guess, teaching digital marketing getting early on before we even called it digital marketing, right, back in the days. And they used to go around the country doing they kinda like on tour doing events in different cities teaching online marketing. And 1 of his big niches was car secrets. Right? So he used to teach people secrets to buying cars affordably and different things like that. That was 1 of his little, like, example niche sites that he would teach. So I said, okay, I'm into cooking. What can I do? Cooking secrets, recipe secrets, secret recipes. So I discovered this kind of secret recipe niche started this website recipe secrets dot net and started actively recruiting affiliates to promote our little ebook. And it was a 20 dollar ebook. We were giving away 75 percent on ClickBank. But over time, that product became the number 1 product in the cooking category for ClickBank. And it held that spot for like years, for like 3 or 4 years. And 1 of the things I did right was people that landed on the site that didn't wanna buy the cookbook, we would offer them sample recipes to get on our email list. So that's how I was able to build this big email list. And also, I caught a huge trend early on was really at the start of Google AdWords back then. Google advertising was just getting started and recipe related keywords you can bid and and get traffic for like 5 and 10 cents a click back then. It was just an amazing time. And I started doing that. I started reinvesting a lot of the profits back into that because I still had a job. I was doing all this part time. So the money from the business, I would just reinvest back into the business. Keep building, keep running ads. And then affiliate started to catch on, and I had some really big affiliates, like, big advertising Google advertising client like corporate type customers that would affiliates that would promote my thing and just blow it up. So it was a good time. Like, sometimes I would wake up to thousands of dollars from these guys just, like, scaling their ads because the traffic was so cheap. So that was 1 of the things I did right. And then we turned it into a physical cookbook. I started selling it on Amazon. And this was all before I had the book deal. This self published. So that worked out right. I would say 1 of the things I did wrong and it haunted me, still to this day, was I originally had a partner in this business. Right? And we when I was doing the affiliate marketing, we had we were building email list together. Right? So I came up with this cookbook idea. I had put it out on ClickBank myself. I published a book myself. I wrote it myself. And 1 of my big mistakes was I started promoting it to that list that me and this partner had together. And then it kinda became our product together. We started focusing on marketing. Even though I was the author of it, I should have had something in writing saying, listen. This is my book. I'm the author of it. I'm just using this company as a means to promote it. So long story short, me and him had a big falling out We didn't properly dissolve the company that we had together. And we still had this LLC agreement from 2001 And he was able to come back later on after he seen me getting on television, selling all these books, becoming a New York Times bestseller. He was able to come in later on and sue me, sue Simon and Shuster, sue like, he just sued everybody. And his friend was a lawyer, so I think they were doing a pro bono. I think he was kinda down on his luck. And just saw an opportunity. And he he sued me I I was I might be the only person you know that was sued at the same time and and Nassau County Court, like the county court and also in federal court. So Nassau County Court, he sued me for competing with the company even though we had long kinda, like, stopped working with each other. He just saw an opportunity. So I was being sued there, and I was being sued in the federal court for common law trademark. We didn't have a trademark. It was common law trademark and and copyright. So he saw Simon Shuster was in on it and his lawyers just saw an opportunity And so they ended up I ended up winning that case, but that dragged on for for many years. So I would say that was -- Yeah. Yeah. -- my 1 big regret was not getting the legal stuff in order early on. Like, we were printing off, you know, out of the box legal agreements from the Internet for free. I should've been hiring, like, had a lawyer retained to look everything over instead of just, you know, kinda winging at myself?

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:08]:

Yeah. So So to solve that, you'd say, like, just getting a lawyer involved to to get some of that paperwork all set in the beginning.

Ron Dogulas [00:14:16]:

Yeah. Yeah. I would say, you know, I have doesn't cost much to have a lawyer look things over, especially with a partnership. So I would say 2 things. Understand that a partnership is like a marriage. But it's not just a marriage. It's a marriage when where after so so think of it this way. You're in a marriage and you have this baby. Like, this baby is your business. And this baby, you're nurturing it. You're building it up. You're spending a lot of time with this baby. And then after the marriage, is over. The only way to conclude things is you buy him out, he buys you out, or you kill that baby. The baby must go. Right? So you gotta it's a divorce. The baby either has to go or or 1 person has to buy that baby, the other person has to buy it. So it's like, it's it's worse than a divorce. Right? It's like a lot on the lines. And you don't realize how impactful all this stuff is and how important it is to have things in order until you start making money, like friendships fall apart, you know, things get strained, the money complicates everything, and especially when they see you offer on your own making money and they just see you as an opportunity. So that's what it was. And, you know, you gotta watch out who you partner with.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:32]:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I I had some experiences in my my web design business where it it didn't work out great that it it reminds me of, like, similar similar things And I I said to myself, like, man, if I had like, I remember actually that 1 thing that ended up turning into a a big problem and and turning into a lawsuit, which It it worked out in my favor, and and we didn't do anything wrong. It ended up that I'm thinking, like, man, if only, like, these new contracts that we had if only, like, this client signed that contract and not the 1 that they had before because, like, the new contract basically said, like, you can't be that guy. And we we just didn't didn't have it all set yet. So that that would have made the whole thing I think easier for us too. So I can I can definitely relate to that, and it is important?

Ron Dogulas [00:16:22]:

Yeah. Folks just have to know, like, you can't get to millions without going through something. Right? It's something It will happen. Right. Whether it's lawsuit it's just part of the game, whether it's lawsuits or you know, government officials, Trump, FTC, or or different IRS. So so I don't know any entrepreneur that got to millions that didn't have to deal with something like problematic, something stressful. So it's just part of the game and and the more the higher you ascend, the more of a target you become, unfortunately.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:54]:

Yeah. Yeah. I I always I've mentioned this before, but But 1 of the things I really enjoyed reading by Tim Ferriss was this blog post he had of the art of letting bad things happen. And I think that's so important to, like, understand as an entrepreneur that if you want more good things to happen, undoubtedly, like, more bad things will happen. And you have to learn to become comfortable with that and not say, like, oh, there's this thing. It's a potential legal issue, and then you don't want that to completely just freeze you from being able to move forward because inevitably, as you grow, if you think of a a company out there that that you know about that's a major brand, like, they have legal issues. It's something that happens is just is going to come up at some point regardless of of what you're trying. The best thing you can do is to prepare yourself to have the the paperwork in place to

Ron Dogulas [00:17:45]:

make it less appealing or or less easy for somebody to wanna start to go after you. Right. And it's more, you know, it's more than just legal too. It's it's also just sometimes that you have bad business ideas. Sometimes you have projects that you spend money on that don't pan out. You know, and it's like you have to get through a lot of the failure like you're saying to get to the success. You know, you have to know what not to do in order to find that thing that that's working. Very few people just start a business and hit a home run right away without, you know, going through some type of trial and error or tribulations.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:17]:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always like to say, like, I I prefer to have to go through the failures first because if you really get lucky and hit the home run, then it's kinda scary because you don't know what to do next, and you can really easily you haven't messed everything up yet. So now you're gonna go and mess everything up. A lot easier if you figure out all the things that you can do wrong and and fail at. So then when you do hit their home run, now you know what to do, like, to continue growing.

Ron Dogulas [00:18:45]:

For sure.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:47]:

Cool. So, yeah, you sold 1500000.0 copies of that cookbook series. So it sounds like you would say, like, the affiliate marketing, that was probably, like, the the main driver of, like, as far as, like, the marketing tactics that you used.

Ron Dogulas [00:19:01]:

Yeah. Just being an affiliate marketer, you have to, you know, learn how to market things efficiently because you only you don't get a hundred percent of the the the profit. You just get, like, whatever your percentage is. So sometimes if you're getting 50 percent, you have to be double as good as as if you were getting a hundred percent. Right? So you learn how to market things, you learn how to promote things. I think that's a good foundation. A lot of people start that way in this business. But the, you know, the big money isn't having your own products, I believe, and having your own things to sell. So, yeah, that helps. I mean, building lists, learning lists building, as I mentioned, definitely helped. And that helped me get the book deal. Like, I would've never got a book deal. Like, I was self publishing for many years. I started the cookbook thing in 2000 late 2003, and I didn't get the book deal until 2008. And the was published in 2009. But by the time I had the book deal, it was easy for me to get a deal because I had a platform. I had an audience. I had a means to sell books. I I was a low risk proposition for them. I had a So they took my Eat my self published book and they published it in bookstores. So I had a proven entity because I had sold 60000 copies on my own. During that time. So I have a a proven product, and I had an audience. And I had, you know, a means they knew I'd be able to sell my own books. So it was a very low risk proposition for Simon and Schuster. Which is, you know, why the fur my first book there, they gave me a 6 figure advance to do 2 books, and then they gave me another 6 figure advance to do 2 more books once those books became successful and then they gave me another like 200000 dollar advance for my third deal. So I had 3 separate deals with with Simon Schuster with that. So it was a good times.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:50]:

Wow. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I mean, I only have experience with that at a much, much smaller scale, but my wife has a a book that was published. And, yeah, when you when you're working with a publisher, you really see that they wanna see how it's gonna make sense for them to make that investment. Because the way that they're thinking about it is they have to go through this process, and they're gonna be spending money on designing it, getting it in the bookstores, all that kind of thing, and printing it. And so they wanna know that if we're gonna print x copies, Like, what's the chance that we're gonna actually sell them and make money? And when someone like yourself can say, like, hey. I sold 60000 already, then a hundred percent, they know that there is profit there for them to go and publish something. And yeah. So, yeah, that's excellent. So alright. Moving forward, You then kinda decided to shift your focus into helping others earn more in their business. And you founded webinar con. So that, you turned into a 7 figure brand in just 6 months, which is really impressive. How did you manage to grow that so fast? And is it kinda some of the same strategies, or did you do anything different with that?

Ron Dogulas [00:22:04]:

That was a little different. By that time, you know, webinar con, the first 1 was 20 20. Actually, it was 5 days before the pandemic So the place that we did it in, the venue that we did it in, shut down 5 days later after that first event, And so we had Purell on all the tables. We didn't know what was coming. This was right before COVID, but we knew something bad was coming and we wanted to you know, make sure everybody's hands was clean and that type of stuff. And that I would say the the way we worked that was the way I got into webinars was was after the the lawsuit thing happened, my lawyer advised me, like, hey, you know, Who knows what's gonna happen? Who knows what the judge is gonna say? You're probably gonna win this case, but any money that you continue to make in the cooking space is kind of on the table for this lawsuit. So I had to leave that stuff alone and then but people wanted to know, like, how did you do all this stuff? How did you you know, sell so many books. How did you get on TV? How did you self publish? How did you get a book deal? So I started teaching that stuff. And that's how I kinda discovered webinars. Because I was an online marketer the whole time, but I saw that webinars were really hot. It was kinda like the start of when webinars really got popular, like, around 2010 ish, you know, 2010, 2011. And a lot of my friends were doing webinars. So I started doing them, started selling courses, and got really good at it, and I started meeting all of the promoters in the webinar market and we would do swaps and I would go to events and stuff and and that's how so so when when we launched webinar kind, I already had a network of people. So folks would go to different events, the big events, and you know, you would have to kinda find the people you wanna network with. But there's like a million newbies and folks that you don't necessarily wanna you know, do lunch with or a network with or mastermind with so you have to find the folks. But at webinar com, the topic of webinars and the price point. It's a 5000 dollar event. And the people, you know, it's just the people that go there are just higher level folks. So they're all in 1 room. Right? He he's sitting right next to Perry Belcher or or Rich Sheffer and or Jason Flatland or, you know, they're in the room with you. You know. So that they we created that environment and it helped having Onyx and Gall as a partner. I kind of approached him with the idea early on and he was well known, well respected, still is a online marketer. So that first event people just wanted to go. It's like, hey, we're having this mastermind, weekend mastermind, come by. Everybody's going there. And the more people we started, sharing, like, this person's going. This person's going. It became like a must go event. Like, everybody's going. I gotta be there. So it kinda dominoed that way. And it created a lot of momentum. Because people loved it. They just loved being in that environment of, you know, you like, you go to normal events and they're telling you, oh, this is what a funnel is. You go to webinar con, and we're showing you data on how to improve your conversion. You know, it starts out just high level the whole time. There's no, like, kinda talking at a at a remedial level to folks. So they they just like that whole aspect of being able to you know, people have come to that event and like, made millions actually, like, we've had people say, like, they would come there, they have, like, say, events in November, they would have a launch in January or February, they would come there and recruit affiliates like crazy and then have like multi million dollar launch and a lot of it was from the people that they you know, shook hands with at at webinar concerts, that type of event. And we kinda found a good niche, found a good angle, And it's just an easy thing for us to promote.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:54]:

Awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much value in that And, like, yeah, for me, last year, I went to this conference. I got to talk with the 1 of the cofounders of ClickUp, and, like, that was so valuable to me. I feel like Like, just the conversation alone, like, that was more than worth, like, the ticket price. You know? And I I think it's interesting that you mentioned this because even if you're watching or listening this and you're not saying you're you're saying like, well, okay. That's cool. But, like, in my business, I don't really see myself making, like, an an event like this, like, an in person event, I think it still speaks to the power of, like, building a community. And even if you wanna build, like, an online community, that being able to bring people at a similar skill level with a similar interest altogether is is so valuable. And because we we spend so much effort trying to find that, right, and trying to make those connections online. So if you can facilitate that for people with your audience, that's really, really powerful.

Ron Dogulas [00:26:53]:

Yeah. So we've never run ads for webinar con. We've we don't have to pay speakers. We don't, you know, people pay us to be on stage. So we we spend, like, all of our expenses are covered by sponsors now. It's just an amazing thing that we've built from scratch with no real upfront investment, just having a community, having that network, and just word-of-mouth and reaching out to people. Like, hey, here's what we're doing. Check it out. Come through. Here's who else is going. All the cool kids are gonna be there. And but you can do a similar thing if you had a, you know, even if you had a Facebook group on a given topic, Right? And you got everybody interested, high level folks interested in that topic. And then that they they feel like, okay, this is our group. And then you say, okay. We're having this event for this group. And everybody in this group's gonna be there, like and then people start saying, I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. Before you know it, that social proof pulls everybody in and then you have an event that's like packed and then you can keep doing it year after year. So it's not like magic, it's just consumer psychology and it's just a a value offering of, you know, people wanna be around like minded people that are doing exciting things and people that are accomplishing things that they want to accomplish people that they know, right, are doing those exciting things. So

Bryan McAnulty [00:28:09]:

Yeah. Well, that's even more impressive because I didn't know that. I would have guessed that you spent some money on advertising at least. And so that's that's crazy, and I think that should be even more inspirational to anybody considering something similar that the the possibility of of where you are able to grow it without spending money on a bunch of marketing. That's really incredible. Alright. I'm curious kinda, like, with webinars, what would you say is like, is there anything that would change going forward that you see of, like, how people should think about doing or, like, holding a a webinar for their business if they're selling a a course or a coaching product. And I guess I'm asking that because Like you mentioned, like, 2010 webinars became this big thing. I think there is, like, a lot of a lot of hype about it in being this new thing. It's like, wow. Attending a webinar. Right? And and now you're you're so surrounded by by all these possible ads and people pitching you things. It's not the the same, like, novel, like, new approach, I guess, as much. But I still think there's a lot of power in it. So, like, nowadays, if if you wanted to hold a webinar, like, would anything change in your your marketing for promoting that?

Ron Dogulas [00:29:28]:

Yeah. Like you said, I mean, back then, it was easy to get people on a webinar. It was just like a thing. Like, just like when email first came out, people forward to opening their emails, not bombarded with a thousand emails. But what makes them open 1 email versus another? Right? It's It's the person that is from, and it's also the subject line of the topic. Right? The same thing with webinars. What makes someone interested in the webinars? The the person that's doing it, if they know that person, have a relationship with that person, and also the topic, the hook. So it's like, what is your hook? Is it something that taps in to something that they wanna know about? Like, is it something that's current, something that's hot, something that's trending? Is it Is it something that they feel like they don't wanna miss? You know, if if it's just another webinar, then it's they can miss it. But if it's something that, hey, you gotta be here for this, you know, this is the thing. Like, right now, AI. Everybody's talking about AI. So AI is some of the easiest stuff to promote. I also promote webinars as an affiliate. And people are taking old, outdated, like, topics and then slapping ARR on it. So I just promoted 1 the other day. It was like, how to get how to build digital real estate using Google free traffic from Google and press releases and different things like that. And that was a old topic. Like, you know, if I would've just promoted just that, if they would've just went with just that topic, show up rate would've been low. But they said, and you can do it using AI content. And all of a sudden, this is a new thing. Oh, AI content. You could do it without writing the content yourself or without paying for writers. So you gotta know what excites your market, and you have to know you have to know your your audience. Right? What makes them tick? What makes them take action? What makes them wanna stop what they're doing and show up for something. And that that that's how you get people on. I mean, you just have to have a a good hook And the other part of it is you have to have a a good process for following up. You know, we tend to use well, we like to use multiple marketing channels. You know, you have your email, you have SMS, text, you have Facebook group, or you have Instagram page or you have the YouTube channel. So the more you put it out there as this is an an exciting event. People can sense your enthusiasm for it. The more it gets people wanting to to come on it and the more different multiple channels that you use, the better you're able to reach people because some people prefer 1 over the other.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:09]:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's excellent points because they're like, for for anyone, III think it's a mistake that newer entrepreneurs tend to make is that they they tell everybody about their offer once, and then they're done. They say, oh, some people didn't buy it as much as I thought. But you have to keep letting them know because they they may really wanna buy it. They just forgot they went on with their the rest of their life. But, like, you send them that email, and then later, if they see it on Instagram too, they they get reminded of it. And they're like, oh, wow. Like, Ron's really doing this thing right now. This is this is the big thing that's really happening. And getting getting that follow-up really can make a huge difference and especially even just with email alone. Like, I tell people that often, like, the last time you send the email about the promo will do more sales for you than the first time that you send it. So -- Right. -- you send it once, and you you send it a couple times. Remind everybody, and you say, hey. It's gonna end, and then that's when everybody buys. But a lot of people make the mistake of of never sending that reminder or that follow-up. So, yeah, that's that's interesting. Alright. And and, definitely, I think I can also attest to the the hook and the figuring out what the market's interested in. The AI is a great example. It's such a hot topic right now. And, like, we've seen, like, course creation and, like, the idea of becoming a a course creator, for example. Like, that's not as as popular or hyped up as it was in, like, 20 20. And but now you add AI to that. It's a it's a whole new thing. Everybody wants to to hear about it. And, like, So, like, we we have these AI features in our product now, and suddenly, like, there's all these people discovering us from searching for that specifically. And yeah. So I think if you're if you're not getting the connection that you you feel you could, but you have the audience, think about what what it is that they're excited about that everybody's talking about right now.

Ron Dogulas [00:34:09]:

Yeah. AI is funny. Have you ever seen a movie half baked?

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:14]:

No. I haven't.

Ron Dogulas [00:34:15]:

Oh, okay. So you wouldn't get the reference. There was a reference where so John Stewart was in the movie half baked. He had, like, a cameo. And so half baked everybody was, you know, high and smoking. It was a movie about weed or whatnot. Right? So they all they're all high and whatnot. And John Stewart is talking to Dave Chappell, and he's like, have you ever seen a dollar bill? Like, it's freaky. You look in the background in the picture, And Dave's supposed to say, yes. I've ever I've seen a dollar bill. And he's like, have you ever seen a dollar bill on weed? Like and he's showing them that. And he's like, oh my god. It looks different now. So it's, like, AI is, like, that thing. You know, it just makes everything different and enhances everything. And makes everything more more appealing, I suppose. So you have to find what is the AI for your industry? Or what is the high thing you can add to your thing to take an old hook and just change it into something super sexy that people gotta know about?

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:13]:

Yeah. Definitely.

Ron Dogulas [00:35:15]:

Sorry for that bad reference. If you haven't seen the movie, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:21]:

I've heard of the movie, I think. So I'm I'm sure some people will will know it. So on the show, I like to ask every guest to have a question for the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether it's something that you're just genuinely curious about or something that you kinda want them to, like, think about. It's more of an introspective question. What would that be?

Ron Dogulas [00:35:46]:

If I could ask the audience any question. Well, I'd be curious as to, you know, I'm always curious as to what people kinda like breaking point is in terms of what they've tried. Right? So so in an audience, usually, you know, you have people that are just getting started or people that buy courses and and just follow different gurus and jump on from 1 thing to the next. So I'm always curious, like, how long that like, if you buy a course or try something new, how long do you give yourself to try to make it work? Are you a person that focuses on it, and I'm just gonna stick with this until it works. Are you are you are the type or are you the type of person that's like, okay. I tried this once. Didn't work out for you. Maybe this is not for me. I'm gonna move on to the next thing. So we have I spoke to a guy the other day. He sent me an email and he was pretty much saying to me, you know, I see you're promoting this new course. I spent so much money on courses. I'm in a financial problem right now. I have a financial problem right now. I I spent all my money on courses. I know it's my own fault, but, you know, being I bought your course, you know, I was hoping you can give me some guidance or whatnot. And he said, I know that my problem is I haven't implemented what's in these courses. And I've just moved on to the thing, bought new courses, and I haven't really taken action. I'm just learning. So I'm like, you've just answered your own question as to what you need to do Right? Stop jumping from 1 thing to the next. Take action on what you're learning. Be around people that are doing the things you wanna you know, do and and just decide, like, I'm gonna do this thing and I'm gonna stick with it because I know it works. So I'm always curious as to, like, what people have tried and how many times have they have they given themselves a chance to fail and then rebound from that failure and keep going? Or did that first initial obstacle caused them to just say, this is not for me. I'm gonna move on to the other thing. Because sometimes that's the difference between people that succeed and people that just you know, always in the learning phase, just learning new things and never actually accomplishing much.

Bryan McAnulty [00:37:59]:

Yeah. A hundred percent. I think that's an interesting question. I'm kinda curious about that too. What what I like to tell people is, as much as possible, try to set yourself up for some kind of small quick win early on. Because, like you said, like, the people who who get lucky with with something like that a little bit earlier, that's often the motivation that will keep them moving forward. Versus you you try something, no 1 bought it, and then you just give up, move on to the next thing. So, like, what's the way that you can get, like, 1 person to buy from you or get that that first dollar or something that kinda propels you forward with it. Right. And that's also a very good point for people. I know you have course creators and coaches and whatnot.

Ron Dogulas [00:38:39]:

What what what small quick win can you help people get? Right? People that are struggling as part of your course. What is 1 small thing, 1 small win you can help them get to give them confidence to make them wanna continue to make them wanna finish your course, to make them feel good about themselves. So you wanna put that in as well. It's really a it helps reduce refunds. It helps like your reviews. It helps people to respond to to refer your product to other people. So it just It's a huge thing to have in your program in itself. Give people an easy win when they first start out, and it helps your business a lot.

Bryan McAnulty [00:39:19]:

Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, like, in our own business with our software, we're actively trying to improve the time it takes a creator to get to their first dollar or their first student. And so, yeah, definitely, that's that's really important for for everybody to consider when you're you're offering, especially like a information product. Yep. Alright. Awesome. Well, Ron, thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going, where else Can people find you online?

Ron Dogulas [00:39:47]:

Yeah. You can find me at Ron Douglas dot com, 1 s, Ron Douglas dot com, or interested in webinar con, you can find us at webinar con dot com. The con is short for a conference, obviously, but some people like, who who are you conning? Show up for Concrete. Webinar dot com. And yeah. And on Facebook, you could find me You can find us at facebook dot com forward slash webinar com. Alright. Awesome. Thanks so much, Ron. Alright. Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun. Appreciate you guys.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:20]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5000 creators at creator climb dot com. You enjoyed this episode and wanna hear more, check out the HEIGHTS platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9AM US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at the creators adventure dot com. Until then, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next episode.