Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
Okay.
Today's guest is an author, marketer, and reality TV pilot host.
He's the author of the book Feed a Starving Crowd, which features more than 200 marketing strategies to help you find hungry customers.
The Huffington Post called him one of the most influential online marketers across the globe.
And Startup Australia named him as one of Australia's top 5050 entrepreneurs.
In this episode, we're going to learn exactly what a starving customer is, how you can go about finding them for your business, and some practical, practical and actionable advice you can start implementing right away to help you grow your business.
So today I'd like to welcome Robert Khoury.
Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Coorey (01:14.110)
Thanks for having me.
Omer (01:16.110)
Now, before we get into that, I've got to get this out of the way.
Tell me about the reality tv.
What is that you're doing there?
Robert Coorey (01:24.560)
Yeah, it's a really good project we've got going on at the moment.
We filmed a pilot episode in Long beach in.
In California, and it's been a really good experience.
Like, we turned around a martial arts studio in 30 days using little to no cash, which is great.
And, yeah, we're working now on talking to the different TV networks and getting it picked up for production.
Omer (01:48.880)
What?
Do you have a kind of a working title for the show?
Robert Coorey (01:52.790)
We do.
It's changed three times.
Every time I reveal the name, it gets dated and it changes again.
We'll have to wait for the show to come out.
Omer (02:04.710)
Briefly, what's the premise of the show?
Robert Coorey (02:07.190)
The show is we go into a business that's about to fail.
We turn it around in 30 days using little to no cash.
Omer (02:14.070)
Awesome.
So you're going to become like the Gordon Ramsay of business and marketing with this, right?
Robert Coorey (02:21.020)
The thing is, that's one analogy, but I don't swear as much as Gordon, so I wouldn't do him justice.
Omer (02:28.860)
Cool.
Now, I always like to ask my guests what gets them out of bed.
And some people like to share a favorite success quote and something that sort of really resonates with them.
Other people just like to share what drives and inspires them.
So what motivates you?
What gets you out of bed?
Robert Coorey (02:47.610)
Well, look, the quote that really drives me is the one from Winston Churchill where it's never give up.
Never, ever, ever give up.
I think there's A lot of times in business where you just look at things and you're like, oh, my gosh, it was so much easier being an employee.
It was just easier getting a paycheck and leaving work at 5 and not having to worry about it anymore.
Then those are the tough days.
But the great days are so much more rewarding than.
Than the tough ones.
So I think, really, for me, being a business owner is.
It's a big roller coaster, but it's exciting because the highs are fantastic and the lows, you just work with them and you roll with the punches and you make it happen.
So, yeah, that's the quote that quite resonates to me, that one from Winston Churchill.
Omer (03:33.260)
Yeah, I like that.
And I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who's an entrepreneur, and he was kind of talking about that as well, where suddenly he has these highs and.
And he thinks that, you know, everything is going his way and this is it, and.
And suddenly the next day, you know, it's kind of like, oh, my God, just one little thing happened and it feels like everything's falling apart.
And I was like, you know, I think it's like that for everybody.
It's just.
We just don't talk enough about that.
Right.
But it's just kind of part of being an entrepreneur.
And personally, for you just said sort of resonated with me as well, because I was like, I have those days where I'm like, why did I leave the job?
Right.
It was like, it was so easy.
You didn't have to worry about all this stuff.
But, but then when you have those great days and, and you're able to kind of pursue the things that you really care about, I. I don't think I'd have it any other way.
Right.
It's, it's, it's worth it in the end.
Robert Coorey (04:30.580)
Absolutely.
Omer (04:32.420)
All right, so let's.
Let's start by maybe explaining to the audience a little bit about what exactly a starving crowd is.
So can you.
Can you kind of like, just tell us a little bit about the book?
Why did you.
Why did you decide to write that book?
Robert Coorey (04:56.090)
Yeah, well, I was inspired by a piece of work that Gary Halbert had.
I believe it was an article he wrote on his website a good 15 years ago or so.
And he was just a little story that not a lot of people pay attention to, but he said if I was going to run a hamburger stand and you were going to run a hamburger stand and we were going to be in competition with each other, he would be Happy for you to have any advantage in the whole world over him.
But as long as he had a starving crowd, he believed that he would outsell you.
And that made a lot of sense to me.
When I reflected back on all the different businesses that I've worked in and ran myself.
Every single time that I was feeding a starving crowd, or in other words, giving the clients what they already wanted, business was a lot easier.
And then when I was trying to educate the market and tell the customers what was right for them, the business was a lot tougher.
And look, business is never easy, as we both know it's always going to be hard.
But it can be less hard if you're beating a starving crowd than if you're not feeding a starving crowd.
Omer (06:03.190)
And how long did it take you to.
This was your first book, right?
Robert Coorey (06:07.030)
Yes, I saw my second book.
My first one was a Kindle.
Yeah, a Kindle ebook.
Omer (06:11.750)
Okay.
And you didn't.
This wasn't self published, right?
You went through the publisher route with fetus driving crowd.
Robert Coorey (06:17.510)
Yeah, this one's by Aviva publisher, who's a boutique publisher in New York.
Omer (06:22.710)
Cool.
How long did it take you to put the book together?
Robert Coorey (06:27.360)
It was about six months start to finish.
So it wasn't like it wasn't a five minute job or a book in a weekend kind of job.
But I did put a lot of thought and research and time into it and what took the longest was the editing.
So it was one thing to get the book out and done and I'm a pretty good writer, so I thought I would just give it to my editor and that would be pretty much the end of it or there'd only be some minor changes.
But to my surprise, when I gave the manuscript to my editor, he came back with 350 comments, not track changes.
So he didn't even track the changes.
He just changed things that weren't right.
But there was 350 comments of things I needed to change myself.
Omer (07:06.410)
Wow.
Robert Coorey (07:07.130)
Which is phenomenal.
And I'm a good writer to start with.
So that did take a while and I was quite angry with him at the time.
But then I realized he actually did me a favor by helping it become a world class book.
Omer (07:17.770)
That's awesome.
Yeah, I was, I wrote a piece for a, a print magazine a few weeks ago and sort of, you know, I, I was kind of invited to kind of go and sort of write something for these guys and so I put something together and then the editor came back and said, hope you don't mind, I'm gonna change a few things.
And I was like, yeah, okay.
And he made a bunch of changes to this thing, which initially I was like, whoa.
But once I read it, I was like, this is, like, 10 times better.
And I was like, why can't I just.
Can I get this guy to do this for me every time?
Every time I write a blog post or anything?
So it kind of.
It was a good example.
And just thinking about the value of, like, having a great editor can make a huge difference to anybody's writing, I think, no matter how good you think you are.
Robert Coorey (08:13.280)
My friend Michael Drew says there's no good writers, only good editors.
Omer (08:18.160)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I believe that now.
All right, so 200 marketing strategies in that book.
Where did you come up with these?
200?
Robert Coorey (08:33.040)
So there's 227, to be specific.
You cut me short.
27 strategies.
Omer (08:40.390)
Wait, wait.
I'm pretty sure it said.
Robert Coorey (08:44.150)
Yeah, it's like, more than 200.
Omer (08:47.190)
Oh, more than 200.
That's what I missed.
I'm sorry.
Robert Coorey (08:50.230)
I worked hard for those extra 27.
Omer (08:54.310)
There you go.
You have to give me another virtual slap for messing up on that one.
Okay, so 227 and how long.
Yeah, where did you get them from?
Robert Coorey (09:04.150)
They're a combination of the strategies that I've implemented for my private clients and also ones where I've gone out to some of the top marketing experts around the world and really drilled down into what's been working for them and to share their strategies as well.
Omer (09:20.310)
Got it.
Robert Coorey (09:20.750)
It's probably about 50.
50 if I had to make a guess.
Omer (09:23.750)
Okay, so just, you know, I mean, in the context of a hamburger stand, a starving crowd makes.
Makes complete sense.
But just in your own words, can you tell the audience a little bit about how do you define a starving crowd in the context of any business when food is not involved?
Robert Coorey (09:41.540)
Yeah, I'll give you a couple of examples.
Well, this is a different food one, but one of my clients is one of the world's top nutritionists, and we ran a product launch webinar for that client, and we had 7,991 people register to come along to that webinar to learn all about this new product that was coming out.
So that's like almost a small football stadium, and that's certainly a starving crowd to get their hands on that information.
Side note, that webinar actually crashed.
We had so many people on the webinar, we crashed the server.
Wow.
It was one of my greatest successes, but one of my greatest failures at the same Time, quite ironically, in the real estate market.
I've had 40,000 people registered to come to live events in the last two years.
So that's certainly a starving crowd.
I'll give you an example.
What's not a starving crowd?
In 2010, I started up a video production business because I saw that YouTube was starting to get some really good traction and Most businesses in 2010 still didn't have videos on their website.
So I thought, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to all these businesses and I'm going to tell them that I can go build videos for them.
Then I'd hire some uni students to make the videos and I'd make all this money in the middle.
Being the middleman sounded like a really good business plan, but didn't really work out that way because the price to do a video is about $5,000.
And a lot of businesses said to me, rob, look, you're a good guy, but we just spent $2,000 building our website, our whole website, and you want to charge us like quite a $5,000 to build just a video.
And so, yeah, I worked really hard that year.
Worked nine to five, then would have dinner, then would work six to midnight, seven days a week.
Just busted my guts on that business.
And wasn't just me, it was my wife working double full time as well.
So we had essentially four full time hours, four times full time employee hour rates going into this business.
And it didn't really dawn on me that it wasn't a starving crowd until the end of the financial year because I knew that we weren't going great, but I just didn't want to look at the numbers.
I just had no idea what was really happening.
Just doing my best to try and sign up more people.
At the end of the year, we filed our tax return and the revenue for that year was $32,000.
That was the revenue, not the profit.
And the costs were $32,500.
I think we lost $500 that year.
And yeah, we worked both me and my wife double full time.
And so at the end of that year, I worked out that, look, I believe in never giving up, but if you've spent a whole year of your life and you've lost $500 coming from a good six figure salary and no one wants what you're selling, well, then that's probably not the best business to be in.
Omer (12:43.490)
Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's a, that's a tough lesson to, to Swallow for anyone.
The.
When I kind of came across the book, one of the things I read was about five reasons to read this book.
And you know, what I want to do is I want to spend some of this time in this conversation talking about some, some tactics and strategies that people can take away.
Hopefully people won't want to go out and buy the book, but even if they don't want to do that, hopefully they'll take away some useful insights here that they can go and apply.
And I think reading the sort of going through those five reasons was a really good sort of context setting for me as I started.
So let's talk a little bit about that before we get into specifics and, and sort of strategies.
The first thing that you say is that most people say you can't sell on social and they're wrong.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Robert Coorey (13:47.590)
Yes.
So I think a lot of the advice we get given is don't be too salesy on social.
Engage with your audience, add value and things like that.
And look, that's all perfectly well and good.
I'm not saying don't do that, but the biggest mistake people make is they might just keep posting photos of, you know, flowers and sitting on the beach and, and things like that.
But that stuff doesn't help you sell any more product as a business owner.
And so even though you might get 50 likes or 100 likes, if you put up an inspirational quote and you feel good about yourself, it doesn't make the cash register ring.
And so my, my recommendation with my clients is, you know, if you want to do that stuff, that's fine.
I'm not going to say don't do that.
But we should be using social as a way to generate leads.
And I cover a lot of those strategies in my book.
Exactly how to do that.
And it's different for every business.
Depends on what you're selling.
But, you know, whether we're a business, you know, and you've got to treat social like any other channel like social, you know, if you put an investment into social, whether that's time or money you need to get.
So even if you just say I'm just doing free posts and it doesn't cost me any money.
Well, it does because you've, you should be charging yourself out at an hourly rate to the business.
And even if your rate is quite low, just say you charge your rate out at $50 an hour or $100 an hour to the business.
Well, if you spend like, if Your rate is $100 an hour that you want to earn, and you spend an hour every day just typing up free posts.
Well, that's, you know, $100 a day over a month is like $3,000.
And every year that's $36,000.
So you've spent $36,000 typing in free posts and inspirational quotes.
Is it worth $36,000 to put inspirational quotes or pictures of the beach or things like that on Facebook?
And it might be.
Maybe that does convert to your business and turns into revenue.
But my message is really to be strategic and make sure that you are getting a return on your social media time invested.
Omer (15:47.020)
The other points that I got from that were, one is that the majority of the marketing strategies in the book require spending no money on advertising at all.
And those are things that people can sort of get away, get started right away without having to spend any money.
You also talk about
Robert Coorey (16:11.590)
how
Omer (16:13.750)
you have a lot of information in there that help people squeeze every last dollar from the budget if they do have an advertising budget, and how to get the most out of that.
And then there was also a comment about that there's gold outside of Facebook and not just Facebook, that.
I think the point you made was that most marketers tend to focus on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
But your point is there's a whole world out there of smaller, less known social networks that can be an incredible source of traffic, right?
Robert Coorey (16:50.700)
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
For example, there's been a new trend, and it's called native advertising.
And so what you can do, essentially if you look on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald or the Australian newspaper, they've all got these online websites and you can click on the articles and read them and things like that.
Now, at the bottom of the articles, there's quite often some links, some recommendations of other articles that you may want to read.
And so you can actually, some of those articles are sponsored and you can pay these native advertising networks just a cost per click for your article to be on the New York Times or on the Sydney Morning Herald or on the Wall Street Journal, any of these kind of websites where they have advertising space for native advertising.
And so there is a huge amount of traffic.
Like if you think how many people every day are reading these publications and your articles can be on there, it's a massive, massive opportunity that a lot of people just aren't even aware of and they don't know that exists.
Omer (17:58.840)
So let's kind of continue on that because as I mentioned to you earlier, the.
The Majority of people listening to this show are software entrepreneurs.
Maybe they have a SaaS product in market or maybe they're planning to launch one and some of them may be doing some kind of have some kind of services business as well.
So kind of thinking about those people, let's say I am somebody who has a SaaS product or of my own, where would be a good place for me to start?
Because, you know, when I opened up that book and looked at 227 marketing strategies, where do I start?
Robert Coorey (18:47.400)
Yeah, so I cover a four step process and it's really important to follow the steps in the right order.
Because if you don't follow the steps in the right order, you can do all these other things, but they won't lead to any results.
So essentially the first step is to make sure that we find the starving crowd to start with.
So for example, if you're selling software, we need to make sure.
Do people even want to pay money for what you're selling?
If you talk to someone on the street and you tell them what you're selling, do they want to buy it?
If they're qualified to buy it and are they happy to pay you money?
Essentially, we need to make sure that we've got at least $10,000 of revenue, no matter what format that comes in, whether you have to talk to people on the phone or talk to them in the street, or do a webinar or sell it online, no matter how you sell it.
But we need that first $10,000 in revenue to work to determine that.
Hey, okay, we've got an offer.
People are happy to pay for the offer.
They can use it and they like it.
Okay, this works.
That's a really important step because some businesses that are just getting started, they think, oh, we've got to Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Pinterest and Instagram and blogging and content marketing and blogger outreach and influencer marketing and YouTube.
They just think, I've got to do 58,000 things.
But that's all well and good if you've got a proven funnel that works.
But until you've made your first $10,000 in sales, you've just got to do whatever you can to get that first $10,000 in to make sure that people want to buy what you're selling.
So that's the first place to start.
Omer (20:19.060)
Okay, so yeah, let's talk more about that.
So, you know, I completely get the idea of finding that starving crowd.
Or I guess the way that, you know, we'd put it is just Somebody who has a deep enough pain that they're ready to buy the solution from you.
But how do I.
How do I figure out who those people are?
And even getting to the first $10,000 when you're starting out and kind of going back to the video production business you talked about, you know, can be quite an uphill struggle.
So.
And I think absolutely, the natural thing is, okay, I've got to figure this out.
How do I do that?
I don't know.
Let me start doing Facebook and Twitter and Google AdWords and all of this thing.
Robert Coorey (21:13.120)
Yeah.
Omer (21:14.040)
So what would you recommend is a good path to get to that first 10,000?
Yeah.
Robert Coorey (21:18.880)
So look, firstly, we need to identify what the issues are in the marketplace, like what is the crowd starving for?
And in the book I cover, I think about 10 different ways how to do this.
But I can give you a couple just now because we haven't got a huge amount of time.
So one thing that I did when I wrote my book before, like I started up this fetus Harvard crowd business, was I went to Amazon and I looked in my category and I looked at the top 100 books and I found out all the three star reviews where people were criticizing the book.
And I worked out there were some really common criticisms of marketing books and marketing consultants.
And so when I wrote my book and started to launch my marketing services, I made sure that I wasn't making those same mistakes that people were complaining about in Amazon.
So if your software product is like reflected in a category in Amazon, you can look up all those books and work out what people's pains are.
If it doesn't relate to that, most businesses can do that and that works really well.
If it doesn't, well, there's a few different ways you can do it.
You can go then and look at all the other products in the market.
You can write them all down, write down all the features and benefits, and then you can see if there's any gaps there.
Like, is there one or two things that you can do that everybody else isn't doing?
That's what we call Blue Ocean strategy, written by the guys about 10 years ago in that really wonderful book.
If you can be a little bit just 5 or 10% different is all you need to be to get an advantage.
And then once you've got that kind of offering ready to go and you know what you're going to charge and you know what you're going to include, then the next step is really making that first $10,000 in sales and the way to do that to start with, if you want to do it in a leveraged format, you can run a webinar.
People say, well, how do you get people to register for the webinar?
I haven't got a list.
It's okay for you, Rob.
You've got 10,000 plus people on your list.
That's great for you to say that, but I've got anybody on my list.
I disagree with that.
I say, yes, you do have a list.
You've got business cards.
You've probably been in business in some way, shape or form for quite a while now.
What are all those business cards you've collected over the years?
That's a list of people.
What about your email address book?
All the people you've emailed over the years?
That's a list.
What about your mobile phone contacts?
That's a list.
What about your Twitter followers?
What about your Facebook people?
What about your LinkedIn people?
Out of all those different sources, even though it's not a beautifully formatted mailchimp autoresponder list, they are all lists in different ways, shapes or forms.
And if you didn't have at least 500 to 1,000 people across all those different lists, I'd be gobsmacked.
You have to.
Across all those different platforms.
Not every one of them is going to be an ideal prospect for what you're selling now, but maybe a handful are.
Surely a handful would be.
That's where you start.
You start with your existing network.
You just look through all those different platforms, and then you can just send each one of them a personal message saying, hey, Jim, I'm just saying, I'm starting this new business.
I'm going to run a webinar about this topic, and it's next week.
And here's how you log into it.
And that's how you do it.
You get started manually.
Omer (24:26.350)
Okay.
Okay, Got it.
Yeah.
And so the idea basically is find the people that you believe have a real problem that you can help solve.
There's different ways that you can do the research to get some of those insights.
Robert Coorey (24:45.230)
And.
Omer (24:45.720)
And then the most important type of validation is people spending money with you.
Now, obviously that could vary because, you know, if you have a SaaS product that is focused on consumers and you're giving it away as a free product, then.
Then maybe it's not about the revenue.
Maybe it's about who's actually signing up and actively engaging with your product.
Right.
Not just signing up and then never coming back.
And I guess even the $10,000 sounds like sort of an arbitrary number.
Right.
It sounds like it's more about getting to a point where you feel like there's significant enough demand to validate that you have a business here.
Yeah.
Robert Coorey (25:36.080)
And the $10,000 is just a number that I've chosen.
That, to me, like, once you've got that kind of revenue coming in, it feels like you got some momentum.
But for other people, that might be a drop in the ocean, say, $10,000.
What's he talking about?
You need $100,000 before you even think about anything else.
Or there might be other people that say $2,000 is a good start.
So it's not the number specifically.
That's a number that works for me.
And like you said with software businesses, depends on what your business model is.
It might be about engagement rather than revenue upfront, because a lot of software businesses have a freemium model where you get a lot of people in for free, and then you either introduce advertising or a premium level later down the track.
It does vary for different businesses.
You are right.
Omer (26:23.070)
Okay, so that is step one.
Finding the starving crowd.
What is step two?
Robert Coorey (26:31.230)
Step two is what we call main course.
And with the food analogy, of course.
And so with the main course, what we want is what we call a sales funnel that converts.
So we want people to come to your website, inquire somehow to be a customer, and then come out the other end as a paying customer.
And so that's really step two.
Once you know that someone can visit your website and go through your process and turn out the other a paying customer, then we know that you've got the main course all set up.
And that's very important because you can't scale unless you've got that in place.
Omer (27:06.960)
Okay, great.
So can you share maybe an example
Robert Coorey (27:11.200)
of
Omer (27:13.680)
a business that has set up something like this?
And then maybe we can take those lessons and apply them to what that means in the software world.
Robert Coorey (27:23.520)
Yeah, definitely.
So, like, let's look at my online course, My Business, because that's quite easy to get your head around.
So with my business, people might come to my website, they might download my book, and then I'll ask them a few survey questions about their business and where they're at.
And then based on their answers, I'll recommend a different course for them based on what they've spoken about.
For example, if someone says, I'm just getting started and trying to make my first sales, then I might recommend a course on how to find your starving crowd in the first place.
Then if they're already Established, but their business is quite lumpy.
So they might have some good months and then some bad months.
It's like a roller coaster up and down, up and down, up and down.
They want to smooth out that revenue.
Then we might look at a different one where it's more about establishing a consistent flow of leads and sales.
Then I've got other people that come to my website, they want to be more of a public personality.
They want to do media, put a book out there, do public speaking, all that kind of stuff.
And so that's.
Then I would do some training with them on how to be a public personality.
And then so basically like everyone comes through the same process.
Like they get the book, then they get asked to survey one of the survey questions, and then they're offered a different product based on what they spoke about.
Sometimes like, I've got an all encompassing package that includes everything and I offer that as well.
And, and so someone can come to my website and turn out the other end, a customer.
Once going through this process, and you see this every single day on the Internet, all over the place.
So you might have a video hosting software like Vimeo.
So Vimeo is free to upload and to put your videos into, but if you want to do a certain gigabyte allowance or you want high definition or the other features, you have to pay for that.
And so Vimeo has a process where people can come in for free and they can come out the other end as a paying customer.
And they know a certain percentage of people that sign up for the free one will end up being a paid customer and they know their numbers.
And so that's where we want to get to with our businesses.
We want to say, great, if 100 people visit the website, 10 people will take up the free download or the free trial, and then one or two will end up being a paid customer.
That, that's the numbers we want to work through.
Omer (29:45.270)
Okay, so let me make sure I got this straight.
So typically the framework here is you're building a funnel that you're driving the traffic to, which hopefully is generating leads for you.
And the first step of that would be like in your example, somebody signing up to get a copy of your book.
And then sort of behind the scenes there, you're segmenting those leads based on the information that you derive from them.
And you're using a survey to do that.
But you could be using implicit or explicit signals to figure out where that user is.
So for example, for a software product, it could be based on maybe how they're using the product or what kind of FAQ type information they're looking at might give you a sense of where they are with their business and, and then you're making relevant offers to them based on how you've segmented them.
Now, now in the, in the SaaS world we often see they're sort of like, obviously the primary call to action is getting people to sign up for a, a software product and there are all kinds of models, whether it's the freemium or, or giving people some kind of free 30 day trial before you start charging them, you know, these kinds of things.
But you know, I also often see many SaaS products having some kind of, I guess, lead magnet as well, which may be something as simple as, you know, and seven day email course on whatever problem is kind of relevant to that customer.
And I guess the thinking is, you know, if they're not ready to sign up, then maybe getting them onto the email list will help to nurture that, that lead and eventually drive them into subscribing or signing up for the product.
What's your view on that?
Do you, do you believe that that's, that's kind of a good way to do it or.
Robert Coorey (32:01.990)
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, definitely.
So it's a very, very valid way of doing things because sometimes when people get started, like they might visit your website for the first time and they might say, well, you know, I don't know about this company, I don't know if they're legitimate, I don't know if this is going to do what I need it to do.
I'm busy right now.
You know, I've got a meeting that starts in two minutes.
There's a lot of different reasons why people might not sign up immediately on the spot.
And so like I find with my online course it takes an average of 9.1 visits to the website for someone to purchase my online course.
I've looked at my stats and that's what it is and I've got, and I've got quite a good reputation in the market and I'm well known.
So if your business is less known, then that's, that's going to be even harder again and it might take you longer.
So yeah, if I didn't have any email follow up sequence, I would only make a very small fraction of the sales that I've made.
Omer (32:54.210)
So, and typically, I mean, I know, I know you, it's, you know, you, you don't have a software business, but from, from the point where somebody becomes a lead to the point they may become a customer.
What, what, what's sort of a typical time frame for that?
Robert Coorey (33:12.690)
It does vary, but as a marketer, you always want to be trying to shorter than that time frame because naturally the faster they pay, the better for your cash flow.
Because if you imagine that, let's say for example, you're doing paid advertising, so let's say you're running Facebook ads, right?
And you, so you spend ad, you spend your ad dollars.
Today someone becomes a free trial, you know, and they take six months then to become a customer or 12 months to become a paid customer.
Well then you've got a big cash flow gap of 6 or 12 months from when you paid for that ad to when, when you get some money back from the customer.
So naturally, as a marketer, we're always looking to try and shorten that cycle when we can get paid.
And so there's lots of different ways you can do that.
Probably the simplest way and the easiest way to get started is to make them a one time special offer as soon as they register.
So for example, if your regular price is $10, well, when they register immediately, like for the free thing, you can offer them a one time offer of $5 half price and say, look, this is only going to be shown on this screen.
You'll never see this offer again.
It's now the very best time to take it and you need to be true to that as well.
So if you say this is a one time offer and it's $5, then they say no, then they turn up five minutes later, it's $5 on the general website.
Well then you're out of integrity and there's no reason for them to take that up.
But if, yeah, if, if you make a really good offer, you'll find that a good, like a good percentage of customers will take that up and you get paid a lot faster.
Omer (34:45.130)
Yeah, I can't remember who it was.
I was on somebody's list and they made an offer and you know, said something like the offer expires in, you know, this weekend or something and, and I was like, yeah, right, you know, I'll just come back some other time or, or I'll use a different email address or something like that and you know, see the same offer again.
And you know, these days when using tools like things like infusionsoft, you know, that's not so easy to get around those kinds of things now.
And I remember like, you know, a few weeks later kind of going back and saying, oh, maybe I might be interested in that thing now.
And I couldn't find that offer anymore.
And when I tried to use a different email address, it wouldn't work.
And I was like, oh, my God, he was serious.
He really meant it.
So, yeah, the next time I came across an offer like that, I was like, okay, no, he means it.
This is a real deadline.
And, yeah, I ended up getting my credit card out.
Robert Coorey (35:42.310)
So, yeah, we had that happen just this weekend as well.
So I had, like, I do webinars quite often with different partners.
And so, like, at the webinar, we'll make an offer to say, look, it's, you know, you get this special discount off this.
Off the course is valid the end of this weekend.
And after that, you can still buy the course, but it's the regular price.
Because I never say I'm taking the course off the market or you never get it because that's just a lie.
It's a digital course.
You can get it anytime you want to get it.
But what I can do is offer a discount for a short period of time.
I did that.
We had a discount at the end of the weekend.
Then Monday morning, somebody emails me and said, I didn't get a chance to go buy that course.
Can I still have it for the discounted price?
And I replied back.
I said, look, I'm really sorry.
I'd love to have you on the course, but that offer was just for that weekend.
And the course is still available, but it's at the regular price now.
It would have been really easy for me as a business owner and say, you know what?
I could really do that extra money.
I should take that sale because the guy didn't go ahead with it.
Now, I lost out on that sale, but that I would have been out of integrity and all those other people that purchased it.
If this person spoke about that or post on social media that he got a really good deal after the fact or anything like that, then I would be completely out of integrity.
And anytime that I made a special offer in the future, it wouldn't work.
So it's really important that if you're going to make these offers that they're in integrity because that's how they work really well.
Omer (37:14.050)
Okay, so that was the second step, the main course.
What's step three?
Robert Coorey (37:21.570)
So step three is dessert.
And dessert is.
Omer (37:24.210)
I love these food.
Robert Coorey (37:25.490)
Yeah, it's all food.
It's all food.
And so dessert is when you can pay for an ad and they can go through that funnel and come out as a customer because it's Very different for warm traffic.
So people that you know already or people that are already on your email list to go through that funnel and turn out a customer, that's, that's very different to, you know, paying for an ad.
Someone's never heard of you before.
They click on an ad and they come out the other end as a customer.
Omer (37:50.760)
Okay, so, yeah, so tell me about this more like why, why would somebody need to get to this point to, to, to pay for advertising and when does it make sense to do this?
Robert Coorey (38:07.270)
Yeah, you need to do it because that's how you scale.
So if you just rely on warm traffic coming through said people that know you already or people to search you or referred traffic or things like that, that's all well and good and I like that kind of traffic.
It's great.
But the problem is that over a period of time that traffic has a good chance of drying up.
And so you're not in control of your revenue anymore.
But when you pay for ads, you know that, hey, if I pay a dollar, I'm going to get a click from Facebook.
I know that as a matter of fact.
And so you can say, great, our budget is going to be $100 a day or whatever that $50 a day or $20 a day.
And we know we're going to get 20 clicks or 100 clicks or however many clicks that we get.
And then we know our numbers, we know that 10% are going to register for free and then one will buy at the end of that.
And if you know that, then you can confidently scale up your advertising and go hard.
Omer (39:01.850)
Yeah, yeah, I, I don't know where I got the quote from where somebody said something that you don't have a business until you can kind of predictably kind of buy customers or something, something like that.
I don't know, it was, it was some kind of like direct response marketing person.
But anyway, yeah, I, I totally get the point.
Right.
So, and, and I think I, I see that a lot with startups as well in that in the early days you don't have a budget or have a lot of money to spend on advertising.
So you're doing all kinds of things, whether it's just, you know, trying out kind of like no load, no cost growth tactics or doing content marketing and these kinds of things will, you know, will definitely get the word out and eventually start driving traffic back, back.
But as I've seen with some of the more, more established software companies, they do start spending money on advertising because they do get to that point where they realize that if they don't do that, they're not going to be able to scale.
And they become a lot more clearer about exactly what you said.
You know, this is our customer acquisition cost.
This is how much for every, you know, every X number of dollars we spend, we're going to get a customer.
This is the, this is the lifetime value of that customer and how long we expect them to be a customer and how much money they'll spend during that time.
And so then when you're in that situation and sort of the economics of that thing makes sense, you wouldn't have a problem spending $100,000 on advertising if you know that's going to convert to $200,000 worth of revenue from customers.
Robert Coorey (40:50.890)
Absolutely, yeah.
And I've had clients that have spent almost half a million dollars in one month with me on ads because they knew that they would get a return from that.
And so you can scale up to these big numbers.
And people say to me, rob, how do you get 40,000 people into live events and things like that?
Well, because my clients know their numbers and they're very confident to scale.
And they get to the last stage, which is all you can eat.
And so they say, rob, we know our numbers.
Just if you put people in that room, we know we're going to sell and do whatever you can do to put people in that room.
And same thing with the software business.
If you know that without a shadow of a doubt that 2% of people that get a free download or a free trial or a free account, if you know that a certain percentage of them are going then to become a paying customer, then you can confidently throw a lot of money into ads, into that, into getting people to take up a free account because you know that a percentage of them will end up going to the paid account.
And so that's the last step, the all you can eat stage.
Omer (41:54.050)
Okay, yeah, Tell me a little bit about, what does that mean, all you can eat?
Robert Coorey (41:58.690)
So that's where we go.
All the things that are fads and fun and good to do, then we just do all that stuff.
We try a bit of everything to see what works the best.
So you can try your Facebooks, your Twitters, your Linkedins, Instagrams, native advertising, public speaking media.
There's a million things we can do and there's 227 things in the book to do.
So there's no shortage of things to do.
But it's knowing that once you've got that funnel in place and you know that it Works from paid traffic.
Then we can go through the whole book and go through every single strategy in there and work out which ones are going to be the best ones to apply for your business.
Omer (42:34.700)
Okay.
I was fascinated by the social networks.
Is there maybe another example that you can share on maybe a social network outside of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which has proved to be a great source of traffic for you or your clients?
Robert Coorey (42:56.690)
Yeah, I've got some really good case studies in the book.
There's some really good Pinterest case studies.
I'm very conscious of making it relevant for your software entrepreneurs.
So Pinterest is more of a.
There's majority of females on there rather than men and it's more about homewares and things like that.
But if you've got a product that aligns with that audience, Pinterest is a fantastic way to make that happen.
YouTube is quite underestimated.
A lot of people will say, YouTube, you can get fantastically low cost clicks from YouTube.
I've had some good success on YouTube.
I've got some clients that are doing amazing things on YouTube because a lot of people just don't think to advertise on there.
They think that it's for big brands or whatever.
And it's a little bit harder to make it out on YouTube because you need to produce a video.
So because a lot of people aren't going to the trouble to make a video, then they're just not making that happen.
I've got some really good case studies about Reddit in the book.
So Reddit, one guy ran like a coupon code to get a free copy of his course on Reddit and had hundreds and hundreds of people that took that up.
So yeah, there's a lot of different ways to do it.
I cover heaps of these in the book.
SlideShare, StumbleUpon, there's some fantastic social networks out there that have very inexpensive clicks that are looked over by a lot of marketers.
Omer (44:27.460)
Okay, cool.
So just to kind of recap on that, we said step one is to find the starving crowd and to get whatever validation makes sense for your business.
Step two was the main course and building out the funnel so you can take somebody, you know, from traffic visitor through to eventually becoming a customer or a user of your product.
Step three was the dessert, where you can pay for advertising and use that as a way to start scaling your business.
Because now you have that funnel and you're building some predictability around how much traffic you need.
For every hundred visitors that I get, I'm going to get, you know, 10 leads.
And of those leads, there's, you know, two are going to turn into customers.
Therefore, I'm, I'm, you know, comfortable spending X dollars on those hundred visitors because I know those two customers at the end of the funnel will more than pay for that.
Right.
And, and then sort of all you can eat is kind of looking through and, and sort of figuring out through the book what are the things that make the most sense and as you said, align best with your target audience.
And I think the Reddit and the Pinterest examples are really good because if you are in the consumer space, most likely you're going to find a predominantly male audience in a place like Reddit and a female audience in Pinterest.
But I think those were just two good examples of where people can go and look.
Yeah.
Robert Coorey (46:14.830)
Good summary.
Omer (46:16.110)
Okay.
Yeah, good.
I was paying attention.
That's great.
So if folks want to get hold of the book, it's available on Amazon or they can go to your site, right?
Let me just check.
So they can just go to feed a starvingcrowd.com and they can get a free copy of the book from there, right?
Robert Coorey (46:48.500)
Yes, that's correct.
Omer (46:50.660)
All right, let's get on to the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
Are you ready?
Okay.
Robert Coorey (46:59.700)
Yes.
Omer (47:00.020)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Robert Coorey (47:06.620)
Building subscription revenue into your business.
Omer (47:09.980)
What's one book you would recommend to our audience and why?
And it has to be something other than Feed a Starving route.
Robert Coorey (47:17.980)
Oh, that's a shame.
Oh, forget it then.
Let's just change it.
Go to the next question.
In line with that subscription business model.
There's a book called the Automatic Customer that talks about the different ways to build a subscription business.
And it's a very good book.
Omer (47:33.650)
That's cool.
I had John Warlow, the author of the Automatic Customer, here on the show a while back, and we talked about those, the various business models there.
I actually really loved his first book as well.
What was it built to?
Built to Sell.
Did you read that?
Robert Coorey (47:49.490)
Yeah.
He's a smart guy.
He's a real smart guy.
Omer (47:52.530)
Yeah, I love that story in there because it was like a really good example of this guy running this, this agency, this advertising agency or design agency and, and kind of refocusing on just like a business that creates logos.
Right.
And on the face of it, you're like, that sounds like a dumb idea.
But when he kind of walked through it, you were like, it was a really great story to hit home.
Some powerful lessons about focusing and.
And I guess, productizing your service.
Robert Coorey (48:18.880)
Yeah, absolutely.
Omer (48:20.400)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Robert Coorey (48:27.770)
Well, like I said at the start, they never give up.
Even when times are tough, they don't give up in saying that.
You don't want to be ridiculous either.
So if you clearly don't have a starving crowd, then it might be a good idea to move to something different.
Omer (48:41.210)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Robert Coorey (48:46.170)
I've got RescueTime that I've just recently installed, and I think that's a great way because you're held accountable and it really shows you how much time you spend on Gmail and Facebook and things like that that are very distracting.
Omer (48:58.470)
I've got to get something like that because I'm kind of going through these sort of days at the moment where it's just like, before I know it, the day's over and I'm like, what did I actually get done?
Robert Coorey (49:09.030)
They're the worst days.
Omer (49:10.470)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, maybe I'm going to go out and get rescue time as well.
Robert Coorey (49:17.910)
Yeah.
Omer (49:18.870)
What's a business idea that you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
What's kind of one of those ideas in your head that you kind of come up with and just say, oh, if I only had the time, I'd go and do that.
Robert Coorey (49:30.690)
Yeah.
I would build a nice sticky piece of software, like a marketing automation system or something like that, like infusionsoft or something like that.
Because those things are something that people use every single day, and they're generally quite sticky.
Once people use them, they stay around for a while.
Omer (49:51.010)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Robert Coorey (49:57.380)
I first started.
My first business was a DJ business when I was in high school.
Omer (50:02.100)
How did that work out?
Robert Coorey (50:04.260)
It was good.
Most of my friends were earning like $5 an hour, you know, stacking shelves at the supermarket, and I was getting maybe $300 a night, $400 a night when I worked.
So, yeah, that was like 80 hours worth of as, like, two weeks of work with my friends versus, you know, five hours playing music.
Way better.
Omer (50:24.490)
Very cool.
And.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Robert Coorey (50:30.490)
I love tennis.
I love playing tennis.
Omer (50:33.850)
Are you any good?
Robert Coorey (50:35.690)
Oh, I like to rate myself.
Cool.
Omer (50:41.530)
Robert, it's.
It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
Thank you for sharing your experiences with us and kind of walking through the, the lessons and sort of insights from, from the book.
And if, you know, as I said earlier, if folks want to get a copy of the book they can get it for free by going to feed a starving Crowd.com and you can, you can get the PDF there or if you prefer you can buy the Kindle version from Amazon.
And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Robert Coorey (51:20.080)
Yeah, I've got a contact details on feedstarvingcrowd.com it's all there.
Omer (51:24.320)
Cool.
Thanks again.
And you know I forgot to mention you're down in Sydney, right?
Robert Coorey (51:32.400)
I am, yeah.
Omer (51:33.840)
So have a great day down there.
Robert Coorey (51:38.640)
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think he's just getting started so it's all good?
Omer (51:42.560)
Yeah.
Cool.
All right.
All the best.
Take care.
Robert Coorey (51:45.720)
Okay, nice chatting.
Bye.
Cheers.
