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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
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once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.
Jonathan: Welcome back to another edition of List Building Lifestyle, here is your host Mr. Igor Kheifets.
Igor: Hey Jonathan, how are you doing my friend?
Jonathan: I'm doing awesome, man. You sound good. You sound strong today.
Igor: Oh yeah, I'm like an ox. You know my daughter has just discovered Kung Fu Panda III and there is this ox, this evil ox walking around with a couple of blades and swinging them and whenever he comes on screen she is like oh look the evil bull, the evil bull.
Jonathan: [laughter]
Igor: So I kind of sound like that dude, only I'm not evil. I'm actually furry like a pussy cat.
Jonathan: [laughter] Mr. Pussy Cat, what do you have in store for us today?
Igor: Well, Jonathan you know how there is no shortage of influence education anymore. I mean right now with a tip of a finger you can access quite literally like a gazillion different sources of information as far as how to influence somebody to buy something from you or to do something you want them to do. There are hundreds of books on Amazon. There are thousands of online courses. There are dozens of online seminars and boot camps so no shortage of education. However all of these education sources, they all talk about instant rapport building, split second influence and so on but nobody talks about one of the most essential persuasion elements of them all which is the passage of time.
Jonathan: Nice. So we can't just build one second rapport?
Igor: Well, no. I'm sorry you can't. Although, Jonathan, let's be honest some experts will tell you of course you can. I mean all you have to do is just get your tonality right and make sure your body language is on point but let's be honest how many times did you see somebody for the first time and 10 seconds later you threw yourself into their arms or gave them $10,000 or something? It doesn't happen quite often. Right? There needs to be a time buffer between them meeting you or first finding out about you and them giving you money or doing something you asked them to do. If we're talking about a major commitment like the other day I got an email from a potential client who wants to apply for coaching and he said, Igor, I've been listening to your podcast for the last couple of months and I've also heard about you before that and now I'm ready to move out of my trading business and kind of venture into online marketing. So I wanted to see what kind of coaching programs you got. Well, let's be honest, it took him awhile and this guy sounds like he has money. So he's not supposed to be timid and scared and frustrated and over-protective of his financial capital or whatever but you know it took him awhile, listening, researching, investigating, and talking about me with other people before he felt comfortable to just reach out. He didn't even buy anything yet. He just reached out to ask what I got on sale.
Jonathan: Have you ever read Neil Strauss, The Game?
Igor: Yeah, I just read it about six months ago.
Jonathan: You know what it reminds me of what you're saying, the passage of time. One of their techniques is to move the girls to location to location to speed up the passage of time. I was just thinking about that like how can we move people around to make time move faster.
Igor: Well, actually there is a trick and I wasn't planning on revealing it or anything but Ö
Jonathan: My bad [laughter]
Igor: Yeah, now I kind of have to. So what you're referring to, Jonathan, just to make sure our audience is aware of what we are talking about. What you're talking about is the pick-up artist strategy to move a girl from one bar or venue into another one and then into another one which then makes it seem like you spent a lot of time together like you've shared a bunch of experiences together and puts you guys closer to each other emotionally. The same thing could be achieved online if you "attack" or "hit" your prospect through different media which of course is one of the greatest things about this podcast is I can talk about how we practice what we preach so if you're following me around. You're listening to my podcast, you're getting my emails, you're watching my videos, you're probably following me on Facebook that's at least four different media where I'm engaging you and that is contributing to the idea that we are now getting closer and closer because I'm everywhere. I'm a part of your life.
Jonathan: Nice. [laughter] I didn't mean to sidetrack you but dude; it was such an opportunity there.
Igor: So when it comes to influence, passage of time in any one of its forms either the classic form of actually letting time pass or maybe speeding up the time a bit through the engagement through different media. Either way it is absolutely critical which is why you should not be frustrated if you ran a solo or a Facebook ad or promotion of some sort and they did not buy from you right away. That is one of the most common issues I see out there right now, people are so frustrated. I've seen people jump systems and I'm serious, Jonathan, so somebody invests like 10 grand into a marketing program, runs a couple of promotions, doesn't make instant sales and immediately precedes to invest into a different high ticket program believing that this other program isn't good enough because it didn't produce sales. So they move into another one and spend more money hoping that they will and of course, Jonathan, it never happens so they keep investing, they keep investing, and this can go on for years until they just run out of money with the business.
Jonathan: Yeah, I've seen that. I might have played that part a couple of times in my life. [laughter]
Igor: I guess it's one of the subversions of the shiny object syndrome' or the way we called the shiny object syndrome' but that's what people do but they ignore this element the passage of time which is absolutely required. Just think about relationships, you're a married man and I'm a married man. It took me three years to propose to my wife. If I proposed on the second date, guess what would have happened? I would probably get a kick in the balls or something and she would go away because she would be like this guy is so weird, I don't want to deal with him anymore. It took me Jonathan and I'm willing to admit it, okay, I'm willing to say this out in the public. It took me two weeks to get agree to have sex with me.
Jonathan: Two weeks?
Igor: And I was good. I was handsome. I was well-spoken. I dressed well. She was into me, you could see that. We were always holding hands and everything but it took me two weeks to have sex with my wife. Two weeks is a fair amount of time for somebody who is 19 years old. So again it tells you that hey engaging the prospect is one thing, starting the relationship with the prospect is one thing but damn it converting them is a whole other animal and you have to allow the passage of time to build the necessary trust for them to agree to buy from you.
Jonathan: No kidding, man. That's part of our society's problem isn't it? We have this microwave instant gratification entitled society and when you have to actually put in some work and wait for a return on your investment most people are just aren't in that mindset. I wonder why?
Igor: Well, McDonald's. Can we blame Mc Donald's? [laughter]
Jonathan: [laughter] Maybe.
Igor: It's the fast society and everything is instant. You know the internet definitely contributed to that and you I see a lot of people treat off-line businesses differently than they do online businesses. You know if someone starts an offline business like a shop or anything, they are really patient. They can go six months not making any money and they would be like, Okay it just takes time to build. I need to build my customer base, etc. But when it comes to the online business, I see a lot of people get in saying I need to make money really, really, really fast that's why I'm here. But why is this supposed to be any different? I don't understand just because you have a larger pool to fish in. Well, guess what the competition is larger as well and you can't really escape that. So while the territory you're hunting on is pretty vast but you're also got more hunters so the marketplace condition is pretty much the same.
Jonathan: That is interesting. I was talking to someone who was a business coach and then she jumped to the online business and she threw away everything that she knew about business coaching and started doing stupid online tactics and six months into it she realized that "Oh crap, I'm doing everything wrong." I wonder what is it; you said it's a bigger pool. Is there anything else that makes people think that they can make money in an instant online? Because it's really not that way. I mean you said it took you two years?
Igor: Yeah, three and half years, it took me three and half years to make my first decent amount of money and why do people treat it like that? I don't know. I honestly don't know, man, but I guess it's just the nature of the world we live in. It's the zeitgeist, you know what I mean? We want it fast, we want it downloadable, and we want it instantly available in our smart phones. I guess I can understand that. But we have to keep in mind that the way business works hasn't really changed much, you still got to get a customer, you got to convince them, you got to solve their problem, you got to charge them money, I mean all that stuff is pretty much the same as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. The media changed, sure. The ability to reach a wider market changed, absolutely. The payment methods changed a little bit, yeah sure. There are a couple of stores and businesses that have revolutionized certain aspects of the business like Amazon for instance or EBay, yeah absolutely. But the foundation, the basics never change and people forget about that. They just do that is just how people are which is why I want this podcast to serve as a constant reminder to not fall for all of these micro-traps which not only create false expectations but also keep you back from success for years. The only reason I'm mentioning all of this stuff is because I, myself, am guilty of making all these mistakes. So I know exactly how they hold you back.
Jonathan: I think that you touched on a key point there like for me when I left electrical work and got into real estate; I didn't know anything about business so I had to figure a lot of things out by trial and error more error than anything else but maybe that's one of the things. Right? Because people jump online, they don't know anything about business, they are trying to leave their job, they are trying to get more security and they really don't know what the hell they are doing and so it takes them even longer to actually to get the results they are looking for.
Igor: Not only do they not anything about business and they don't see this as a business which is a problem in and of itself but they also don't know anything about persuasion, they don't know anything about influence, they don't know anything about sales or marketing and they refuse to see those as necessary skills required to succeed in this field. They honestly believe that the technology alone is enough to make them money and that is one of the largest issues we are facing today in the home-based business space. Technology is not the solution. Technology is a tool which allows you to reach your clients that is all. It is still up to you to persuade and convince the client that you are their best choice when it comes to investing to solve the problem of some sort.
Jonathan: So a couple things: you can drop the mic after saying "Technology is not the solution" and I believe that's one of the big problems right now because I actually wrote about that in my newsletter. You'll see it when it comes to you. But I was writing about funnel suck and funnel sucking time out of your day, sucking money out of your wallet because people are obsessed with this funnel idea, this funnel software, funnel this, funnel that, funnel experts and they don't know anything about basic salesmanship and for some reason that is something that nobody really talks about and I'm wondering what you think it is that people think sell is a four letter word so nobody wants to talk about it, it's dirty. But if you know how to sell, the technology really doesn't matter.
Igor: It's really they don't understand what that really means. There is a great book which we recommended on the "Seven Books That Will Make You Millions" episode where we spoke about Harry Brown's The Secret of Selling Anything. I believe anyone who feels queasy or weird about selling and doesn't know how to do that should read that book because they'll discover that selling is not the used car salesman stuff. Selling is not the bad thing you do to ram a nasty product down someone's throat. Selling is actually a good thing. Selling is something you actually do on a daily basis. You don't even really realize it and selling is a necessity in your business that can define whether you're not you're going to be in business next year.
Jonathan: It's one of those things that is kind of unrated and like you said it's heavily misunderstood because I love your opinion on it but for me selling is finding out what your market's problem is and seeing if there is a way to tie that problem to your solution so that's actually you solving problems that is what selling is to me.
Igor: Yeah, you could say that for sure. I mean you'll get paid to the extent that you're able to solve problems for your marketplace and that's definitely it. I guess I'm referring to selling as in the process of communication between you and the prospect when you explain to the prospect how your solution is going to solve their problem. Right? The actual need to solve someone's problem should precede the sales conversation, in my opinion.
Jonathan: Yeah. Okay makes sense. Makes perfect sense. I'm over here highjacking your show, my apologies, I get hot about selling. [laughter] So what other thoughts do you have for the List Builders?
Igor: Well, let's do a quick refresh. We spoke about there is no shortage of information on influence but most of it lack one critical element, the passage of time. So everybody looks for the instant sale when in reality the instant sale is really unlikely to happen unless the prospect has been following you around for awhile before reaching your sales pitching, if you will. This is not to say that you should now wait for two years before someone commits to you but this is to say that you must install the element of passage of time into your marketing strategically. You must make it happen because this way you'll have much higher control of your sales process.
Jonathan: So Igor, what would you say or is there actually a reasonable amount of time where you say alright so these people came in here and they bought here, do you have an idea of what that should look like? Or should you just keep people on your list forever? How do you do it?
Igor: That's the kind of thing you got to let the person decide. So some people take eight months, some people take eight days, some people will take eight weeks, it really depends on where they are in their life and how pressing the issue they are trying to solve is. So with that in mind, you just got to let people take their time that's all and the best way to do it is to detach yourself from the outcome like when you market don't think of the sale, market with the purpose of building rapport and establishing trust not so much closing. Closing is something you do once the prospect is already sold on you until then your job is to build rapport and if you market from that point from that perspective you will not be obsessed with where is the sales going to come from, where is the sales going to come from because that creates neediness and neediness as we know repels the prospects.
Jonathan: Smart and so a little more technical question for you, when people come into your funnel is there a time frame in which they don't buy, you'll delete them like two years into being in your database, you delete them or do you just leave everybody on the list forever till they buy or get off themselves?
Igor: Yeah, well, let's be honest. If they haven't opened a single email of mine in the last six months then there is no point on keeping them on the list simply because they are either not receiving the emails or maybe they are not interested anymore in me or the product or both. So I'm definitely deleting them. But if they keep reading, I'm definitely keeping them. I will let them take as much time as they need because obviously they are getting some sort of value out of this communication so whatever that is, I'll let them have it.
Jonathan: Nice. That was a good little tip. So what do you have coming up for us next time?
Igor: Well next time, I'm interviewing a man who I've known for years who might be the only person I know who actually makes money in his sleep. You know the kind of thing that everybody want to sell you on, make money in your sleep, make money on vacation, this guy actually does. He lives the two hour per day work week, five days a week that's how much he works. You cannot get him to do anything else. Two hours per week completely automated business, ridiculous profits considering the amount of time he puts in and he's like the nicest guy in the world who hates hype or any of that stuff. So I look forward to sharing his wisdom and model with the List Builders.
Jonathan: Alright, looking forward to that so that is a wrap for another List Building Lifestyle. Thank you, Igor. Thank you, List Builders. We'll be back with you next time.
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