How do you meet cool people? And how do you turn casual conversations into cash?
We've all heard that 'The Fortune is in the follow up'. But what does that really mean?
The good news is that, as Ely Delaney of Purple Knight Marketing puts it, automated system strategies can scale your money-making efforts without losing humanity or soul.
In this interview with Roger Courville, Ely speaks to
How to think about your own thought leadership in relationship to your network
Handling potential issues of compatibility or communication barriers
The importance of building a strong personal brand (and how automated systems contribute to this
And more
If you've ever wondered how to balance "human" and "automation," this interview is for you.
And when you're ready, www.ConnectWithEly.com will help you figure out the right questions to ask and next steps to take.
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Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #automatedmarketing #automationstrategy #marketingautomation
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Unedited transcript
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: How do you meet cool people? And more importantly, how do you turn casual conversations into cash? Well, hello and welcome, and I'm glad you asked. Welcome to meet cool people, turn conversations into cash. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with this blue chip crew to help you achieve excellence and results by helping you focus on something other than tech, which is a heart of service. And honestly, that is what I love about our guest today.
With me today is Eli Delaney of Purple Knight Marketing, automated systems strategist, but has a deep, deep well that goes a lot deeper than that. Best selling author, founder of the Networking Like a Rockstar course, 25 years experience.
simplifying the complex and putting things into systems, using tech to help thought leaders communicate more effectively, working with clients to establish systems that communicate and increase sales so they can spend more time doing what they do best. If that doesn't sound familiar, I don't know what does and I'm really glad.
Welcome Eli.
[00:01:16] Ely Delaney: Well, thank you, Roger. It is my pleasure to come and hang out with you, my friend. It's been a while.
[00:01:21] Roger Courville, CSP: It has been, I don't even, it's when it's been so long, you don't remember. Then it's been too long.
[00:01:29] Ely Delaney: Definitely way too long. It's probably been about eight years since we actually met in person the last time.
Yeah,
[00:01:33] Roger Courville, CSP: was that Washington
[00:01:36] Ely Delaney: DC? No, actually that was in the Portland area. It was at a like a little mixer kind of thing. Oh, right It was eight or nine years ago when I was still living in Portland
[00:01:46] Roger Courville, CSP: Well 34 years in Portland and I just moved two month ago because that's the whole getting married thing So well for our audience Fill in the gap or two.
What, uh, what else should we know about you?
[00:01:59] Ely Delaney: Uh, let's see, where do we want to start? You know, the, the fun thing about it is that I, I've been around for quite a while. I mean, my first company was a web and graphic design agency. I started back in, it was like 95, 96. I grew that from working out of my office or working out of my dining room to an office, five employees, closing three to five contracts a week.
We were killing it, having a blast. I realized I didn't like having an office, didn't like having employees. Um, it was not fun growth. and I completely revamped everything which ultimately led to moving forward to what I do today, which is teaching coaching the strategy side and really teaching people how to build stronger relationships with, um, the, the prospects, the people that they meet.
I mean, my, my running joke is I've got, I've actually done business in the drive thru of Starbucks before, you know, it's, but it's not about being a sales person. It's about building relationships and adding value to people's lives. And then of course I am a geek. So I like to use all the cool tools, technology that we have available to make it all happen.
[00:03:07] Roger Courville, CSP: And I'm sure we will get there. Um, because, you know, I mean, we can't. We can't live without it. The question is where and how do we do it and do it? Well, so let's start here. We've all heard that The fortune is in the followup, but what does that really mean?
[00:03:27] Ely Delaney: So most people, when they hear that phrase, we've been in business, if you've been in business for any type of timeframe, you've heard that once or twice, if not 20 times.
But the thing is that people don't realize what that actually means. And they think that means I need to, you know, I need to send an email every day, pitching a product. Uh, we call those pitch pirates. The only time you hear from them is when they want your booty. That's not what we want to be doing. We don't want to be known as that because that just feels yucky.
And the reality is the fortune is made in the follow up because of how you do it, how you build a relationship. And that's about whether you send an email, but not just sending an email saying, Hey, I got a special today and tomorrow sending another one that says, Hey, I got another special today or picking up the phone and saying, Hey, by the way, I noticed you didn't buy my stuff.
I got something extra for you today. You should buy that instead. It's about sending something of value or one of the best things in the world. And whether this is automated or, you know, in my, my world, I automate a whole bunch of stuff, but there's things that I don't, I will literally go to Facebook.
Open up messenger and just send a message to somebody who's like, Hey, it's been a while since we talked. Just want to check in and see how you're doing. No pitch. And that's not even a veiled pitch because we've all been there. Somebody starts with that conversation and they immediately go into, Hey, but you know what?
I got something really cool you should check out. No, you just lost it if you do that. It's about coming from a place of service and adding value first because reality is, if you've done a good job to let people know what you do in general, And they're ready to buy, they'll ask. And by you just reaching out and saying hi, you just opened up that door that maybe they've been meaning to reach out to you.
I mean, literally I had a guy, September 16th, 2020, he replies to one of my emails. My email was just sending a tip of some sort. Wasn't anything fancy. And he replies back and says, Hey Eli, you've done a lot to help me in my business the last couple of years. I want to really thank you for that. And I appreciate it.
Um, my son's starting a construction company. I'm wondering if you can help us with some marketing stuff and which starts a conversation and conversations lead to sales, which is exactly what we're looking for. But the funny thing is that CRM system. I'm like, what does a couple of years mean? He had actually seen me speak in Scottsdale, Arizona.
And July 3rd, 2010. So 10 years and three months later, he's coming back to me, referring his son's business to me because I sent an email that said, you know what? Here's something that that's kind of cool that I found useful to my clients are liking. You should check it out and see if it works for you.
That's all it was
[00:06:16] Roger Courville, CSP: just in case you are listening, but not. watching, which is, I trust a very real possibility since we're just having a conversation here and there's not much to look at and I have a face made for radio, but if you were looking right at this very moment, you'd see that Eli's hashtag says, meet cool people, hashtag meet cool people.
Talk to me, Eli. What's talk to me about? Because you know what? If this is just a guess, but I would guess that probably most people, if you asked them what their biggest challenge is, it's, It's top of the funnel kind of stuff. Fair to say, or would you evaluate that differently? Talk to me about
[00:06:55] Ely Delaney: cool people.
Okay. So, um, I will preface this with saying it's not as much of that as most people think we may or may or may not have time to go deeper into that whole thing because a lot of times it's not top of funnel necessarily. So the problem is it's actually back a funnel. It's the things that you've met the people, how do you stay in touch with them and bring them into the fold where they know, like, and trust you so much better.
But let's talk about meeting cool people because that is literally my favorite thing in the world to do. You know, when it, before 2020 hit in 2019 was I, I was traveling at least once a month, if not two or three times every month going across the country to speak at events, to attend events, to mastermind all the different things you do to get with other people.
Because reality is virtual is a great second choice. The fact that we have the tools and technology like zoom available today is phenomenal. But when you look at, is it great? No, it's not. It just happens to be choice number two. Choice number one is being in front of people in person because reality is when you can see somebody, you can look them in the eye, shake their hand, and if you get to know them, give them a hug.
It changes the entire game. You are in a place of really building a relationship. And what where me cool people even came from was I was traveling around doing this and I might speak on stage and after I get off, you know, I know a lot of your audience are speakers. So they'll relate to this. You get off stage and people come up to you and it's like, Hey, thank you so much.
It's great. You know, sometimes we joke about that being like the petting zoo after you get out and get off a stage. Um, yeah. For me. It's like, I love that. I love when people come up and share what their biggest takeaway was. It's phenomenal. But then I'm like, thank you so much. You know what? I'm getting some people together for dinner.
I would love for you to come join us. And I started getting 10, 20 people together for dinner and we would get together. We would just have good conversations. We get to know each other and I'm a firm believer that the best way you can really get to know somebody in person is by breaking bread. And at the end of the day, some of my best friends, some of my best referral partners, I have one person who joined me for one of those meals who I speak at her event twice a year now because of that meal.
And she brings me in to, to guest post and to mentor and coach her clients a lot. I have several other people who joined those that became clients and then became friends, friends that year, I mean, back in 2019 when I was doing that in now in 2023, guess what? These are still people I talk to every week and it's all because we got together.
And that's what meeting cool people is about. It's like, what are you doing to have conversations? and just meet cool people. I am the picture perfect epitome of what not to do with a don't talk to strangers poster because I will talk to anybody because I enjoy having conversations and getting to know human beings.
[00:10:00] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Well, I'm in the same, in the same, uh, in fact, you know, when I was a bunch of years ago, I was the president of national speakers association of Oregon. One of the things that being on the board often vaults you into is being the recipient of people who go, Hey, I'm thinking about being a speaker, , or a consultant.
Mm-hmm. , would you like to have coffee? Which is, you know, usually a veiled way of saying, can I pick your brain for free? Mm-hmm. or for the cup of coffee. And the truth is, I loved those and I do it every single time. Yeah. And right. And some people kind of go, oh, okay, well you can talk to me for the first 30 minutes for free, but then, and I'm like, you know what?
My underlying ethos is. I help people and it all works out because the people that I want to work with realize that I got to feed my dog and kids like they got to feed their dog and kids and sooner or later, you know, it works out and, uh, true story. I've often helped people and they're like, Hey, how can I return the favor?
And I'm either like pay it forward or Or pay me what you think it was worth. And I'm serious. I've had checks for, you know, somebody send me 500 bucks just outta the blue. Like, oh yeah, I talked to that person four months ago. They decided it was worth money to, I don't care. That's not the point, right?
because, Uh, because at the end of the day, and I love your phrase, breaking bread, I imagine you and I land in exactly the same place there. There is something special, even if it's a cup of coffee, by the way, I think even virtually, but there is something powerful about the nature of how people connect when, when in a way you live an interruptible life and you show up without an agenda.
Other than deepening relationship, tell me your story. Who, who are you? What, uh, you know, what makes you tick? And it's not the, Oh, so what do you, what keeps you up at night? Kind of, you know, marketing schlock. It's the,
[00:12:06] Ely Delaney: it's the, Oh, I'm so
[00:12:11] Roger Courville, CSP: sorry that you just, you know, had a death in the family or whatever. And they know that you mean it. Um, that's how people connect. And in today's world that is so. over noisy. That's, that's powerful. And you're, you're right. And I love, in fact, how you said, Hey, we connect. And then secondarily, we move into the digital space.
Tell me a little more about moving into the digital space. You've just met somebody. How do you then take it in the direction of, well, one of your specialties, automated systems.
[00:12:48] Ely Delaney: Okay, so couple things with it. It depends on the situation of that relationship because there's really so much you can automate and within rules and regulations of not breaking the law and things like that.
You don't want to just, number one, if you meet somebody, do not add them to your mailing list. Do not add them to your newsletter. That is a big no, don't do it. Um, that is the quickest way to ruin a relationship fast.
[00:13:14] Roger Courville, CSP: But you. I'm just going to put my hands in the air and say a big hallelujah on that one.
So
[00:13:22] Ely Delaney: don't
[00:13:22] Roger Courville, CSP: freaking put somebody on your list because you got their business card.
[00:13:26] Ely Delaney: Keep going. Yes. Now that doesn't mean you can't follow up with them though. So if you meet somebody, you put them into your database, but that's not your general list. Okay. So there's a. Difference between the two and you can send them stuff touching base.
Like, Hey, it was great meeting you follow up every once in a while. Hey, what's going on? You know, one of my favorite things to do and I do this on both people that are on my actual list and on people that I've just had casual conversations with, um, where I will be like, Hey, you know what? I have a book that I would recommend.
I highly recommend Picking this up. Like, here's a great one. I can't, I said, this book, uh, it's the go giver by Bob Bird is on my desk at all times, 24 seven. And I talk about it religiously. One of these days, Bob needs to get me some commissions off of this thing. Um, because I share it all the time. And I'm like, this is a great book that I recommend.
Here's why I like it. Check it out. It's an easy read. You can pick it, pick it up and read it in like three hours. I would love to hear your thoughts after you read it. And you notice I'm not selling anything other than the book. And if they go buy the book off of Amazon, and if they did actually, you know, it was an email and I happen to use an affiliate link, I make like 30 cents.
So it's not like I'm making money off of recommending the book. Um, but by doing that, I'm adding something of value. I'm touching base with them. It's like, Hey, how have you been? Here's a cool book that I thought you might find useful if you haven't read it already. And now I'm eliciting a conversation, which then once they've read it, they'll reply back to me and say, thank you so much.
I really appreciate that. That helped me with blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that's awesome. I would love, you know, I would love to hear more about your experience with it. Let's jump on a zoom next week. Here's a link to my calendar. And then they book on my calendar. Now you notice everything here is all about conversation and adding value, having, and there's nothing about a pitch yet.
Here's something really interesting. Literally like two, maybe three weeks ago, maybe as of this recording, I had somebody I met at a virtual event. That was a mastermind kind of round table situation. This person came randomly to this group. I'm not even sure how exactly she came in, but she was there supporting somebody else.
She wasn't even there promoting her own stuff and something gelled with her. She was like, I need to talk to Eli. And so she booked the call to talk to me. We get on a call. I find out what she was doing. I shared a little bit more about, you know, my life. And she was like, so what does it look like to work with you?
I'm like, well, this is how it works. And I explained it to her. It was not a, it was not a sales call in any way, shape or form. She's like, give me a second. And she goes and she's plugging in and she's coming back. It's like, I think I want to do that. And she joined my high level coaching program right there purely because I just got on a zoom call with her to talk to her and just get to know her.
There was no, I mean, I honestly didn't expect this to go this direction. It was purely a conversation call because I like to meet cool people. That's really what it was about. If you realize that the power is in the relationship, you don't have to pitch the sale. As long as you can explain it well enough, they get what it is and they see the value.
Just a good conversation and giving them the basics will get them to say tell me more and that's when you can actually go into Sales mode, but you don't have to do it all the time
[00:17:05] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I have I have this belief that people can sniff from a mile away the difference between transactional and relational and and Particularly, like even just talking about, uh, the example that you used early on and in this conversation about, you know, ending up on an email list and next thing you know, literally every 48 hours, I'm getting hammered with something.
And, uh, you know, one of the books that I've recommended often is Jay Baer's, uh, his first or second book, Utility, Y O U, Utility, right? I remember that one. Help, Not Hype. Yep. I, you know, an old phrase that I've always loved is some will, some will, some won't, so what next? And the nature, the truth is, I'm not out to try to close everybody.
Because when it's the right thing, it's a mutually beneficial thing and, you know. The same is true for virtual venues, right? I mean, we're in the professional services business. And people outsource professional services for one of two reasons. Because they can't do something. Like if it's super technical or they don't want to do something because it doesn't make sense.
It makes sense for them to spend their time doing something else. Well, 24 years ago, when I got into this space. Uh, it was a lot more technical and heady to get a virtual event produced. Right. True story. We charged 1, 500 and we built a registration by, by hand in HTML and sent out confirmation and reminder emails manually.
We charged 1, 500 for that. Now you can buy, you know, the whole thing in Zoom for 50 a month. So you don't need me to help you use Zoom. Right. But at some point. You know, clients go, wait a minute, it doesn't make sense for me to do this. Let me invest my finite amount of time in the things that only I can do and let, let somebody else do the thing that they're good at.
And um, and I would imagine in a way that touches down for you just working from one of the taglines that you had in your, um, in your LinkedIn profile. What is When someone comes to you, what's, is there a way that you approach that initial design conversation when you're just getting somebody. Somebody says, yeah, let's, let's do this.
How do you get them? How do you get them started on the, in a way that helps them avoid the most common
[00:19:41] Ely Delaney: mistakes? Okay. Now, so here's, here's my question. Are you saying somebody who has chosen to work with me as a client or somebody who's just interested at that point? Cause it is a little bit. Take, take your pick.
Let's
[00:19:52] Roger Courville, CSP: say you just had somebody. give you an honest inquiry. Hey, I'm really interested in working with you. But before I sign on the deadline, tell me how you get started.
[00:20:06] Ely Delaney: Okay. So the very first thing that I do with people is, um, I go, what I, I actually call this a client multiplier blueprint, and I have basically a format that I use and I show this to them.
It's like, here's all the stuff you got going on in your world. And I started looking as like, okay, most of my clients are speakers that are selling a high ticket coaching program of some sort. So I'm like, okay, what's your coaching program cost? It might cost 5, 000. So I'm like, okay, 5, 000. Now, let's look at these points that I can help you with.
And I go through and I show them literally spots where they're losing money on the table with just little tiny tweaks, little tiny tweaks in each area. And next thing I know, That, you know, 5, 000 client by getting one new client over here and one new client over here and one new client over here. We go down and like, okay, well in the next year we just added an extra 85, 000 to your bottom line and that's how they can see the process.
But while I'm doing that, I'm sharing with them, here's the steps you should do and you could take this and run with it. Or, I can give you the nuts and bolts of it using my methodology and this is how it's going to save you the process altogether. Oh, by the way, that 85, 000 is going to cost you 6, 500.
There's a big difference, you know? And so that's where we'll start, but I'll give them stuff that is like, you know, one of the things I, I mean, I mentioned this earlier is like recommend a book, you know, when you're starting to follow up with people, start off on the audit, on the manual side, go pick five people that are on your list right now.
And if you have their phone numbers. call them or text them. If you don't have their phone numbers, you can email them and just say, Hey, I haven't talked to you for a while, but I just wanted to send you something. I think it might be valuable. Here's a book that I highly recommend. This is why I think it's so good.
And I would love to hear your thoughts. If you read it, let me know. That's it. Don't, don't make it any more complicated than that. And that's where you can literally take that, run with it, go do something with it and get results. I had a client who sent out an email, and this is part of my scripting that I help clients with, one email.
So we wrote three emails for her. We did this whole process. First email goes out, sends out on an email on a Monday. Tuesday morning, she replies or sends me an email, says, Hey Eli, we need to stop the entire campaign. How do I do this? I'm like, um, okay. I'm picking up the phone. I'm like, what's, what happened?
Cause I'm figuring somebody yelled at her or something. Cause you know, things happen. She's like, everybody replied. What do you mean? Everybody replied. She goes, everybody replied. Her calendar was booked solid for the next 30 days. Nonstop, no openings whatsoever. She ended up doing over 12, 000 in sales by the end of the week because of the one email.
And that one email was a subject line. I'm such a slacker. And the email basically said, I'm a slacker. I haven't stayed in touch the way I should. I'm sorry. I promise to do better. I would love to hear what have you been up to lately? That was the entire email, which by the way, hint, hint, go use that, go use that, reach out to your people.
You will see results from that. I
[00:23:30] Roger Courville, CSP: love that. I do the same thing. I'm like, I literally just had this happen last week. I was in Denver for my two week doctoral residency for the doctorate that I'm working on and Some of the faculty started asking because of my background in instructional design and virtual events and classes asking a couple questions because they're rejiggering something and and Literally, I'm like you got you get 10 minutes Let me give you the keys to the kingdom and I walk up to the whiteboard and I put I'm like That's all you need.
That's literally where I start. It looks super simple at the surface I promise you it goes as deep as you want to go and you don't need to hire me There you go. And of course some people do come and hire you because they realize it gets However simple that is it gets really deep after that But you hand I love how you just described.
You know what I hand people the keys to the kingdom and say there you go Go do it.
[00:24:33] Ely Delaney: Yeah. At which the best way. I, so this, this is something I learned from a marketer. Um, some, some of you may have heard him cause he's been around for quite a while. Guy by the name of Frank Kern. Yeah. He's very popular in the internet marketing space.
The, I bring this up a lot because I, I want him to have credit for one of the most instrumental things that I learned as a marketer for my own business in my entire 30 years. Cause I've been doing this over 30 years altogether is the best way. to show somebody you can help them is by helping them. I mean, how freaking simple is that?
Right? But most of the time we miss it. We're like, Oh, let me give them 552 things that they could do. No, people just need one, give them one thing to start with because if they can go and get results from the one thing. everything else just expands on it. And it's like my, you know, the followup rockstar system, which is my coaching program is massive.
There's a lot to it is a lot of moving pieces, but I compare that to like an old style, old style pocket watch. Okay. If you look at it, it's a gear, you know, it's just made up of a gear gears, a little simple. It's a little disc little circle with some pointy things sticking out the edge. Right. And you take another disc.
And it's a little bit bigger, but it's just another circle with some pointy things sticking off the edge and put them together. And you just keep adding a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more. And eventually, you have this complex machine that's actually a work of art. It's beautiful, but it's just made up of a bunch of little circles with little pointy things on the ends.
That's all it is. And so... Everything that I do is based around that. That's how I teach people. And I think I encourage people to think about the same concept with their business. If you can give somebody one circle with a little bit of pointy things, it's going to help move them forward, AKA a wheel, and it can get them to move a little faster than they're going right now.
They're going to want another wheel that's going to leverage that and make it even better. And then they can get more results and then they can go to the next one. They can go to the next one and they can go to the next one. And that's where at that point, that's where they're like, all right, doing this by myself, I'm trying to, I'm trying to reinvent the wheel.
Well, I'm giving them one wheel. Let them try to reinvent the rest of them. Most people don't want to do that. They don't have the time, the patience, and they don't have the brain capabilities for that because their brain just works in a different way. Their expertise is what their brain is good at. What we do is different.
[00:27:14] Roger Courville, CSP: I know you might find this hard to believe, but every once in a while, a snarky answer has escaped my lips. I remember doing a public lead generation oriented webinar for, uh, the company that I co founded when I left Microsoft a bunch of years ago. And one of the, one of the, uh, one of the Q and a questions that came in was, you just taught me.
What I need to do. Why would I hire you? And I said, if you're asking that question, then you should go do it on your own because you don't understand the value that I bring. And I subsequently, I've learned to maybe tone that down a little bit. Um,
[00:28:04] Ely Delaney: but I think about it a lot. I try. I don't always win.
[00:28:10] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. You know, I think about it a lot. Like if I owned a Jiffy lube. You know, a, uh, or an oil can Henry's or, you know, uh, an oil changing business. In one way, the most powerful thing I could do to would be to teach you to change your own oil. And because if you think, Oh, I need five quarts of oil and a wrench.
You haven't necessarily thought through all of the time and, and whatever, not the least of which in the greater Portland area would include, you know, draining out the five quarts of oil in your car, taking the time to drive it to some reclamation site and giving them eight bucks or whatever they, you know, right, pretty soon the 35 bucks that they want to charge me to change my own oil on a time money basis looks really, really attractive.
And, Cheers. Um, so I think there are times to encourage people to go say, yeah, if you think running 100 webinars for your client, you know, for your, for your group this year, is that simple? Uh, because you once successfully scheduled a zoom meeting, um, keep going,
[00:29:23] Ely Delaney: you know, I can, I got a great story to share this, uh, years ago when I first started speaking and I started doing my own, uh, workshops, I was doing seminars and I was, I mean, I was filling the room in a heartbeat.
It was piece of cake for me. Um, I got really good at it, had a blast with it and I had some gal walk up one time and she was like, man, this is, this is a pretty good gig you got going in here. I mean, it's gotta be, it's, it's. Really simply, you basically just get a room and, you know, get a bunch of people to come in and just teach all day and you make a lot of money doing that.
I should start doing them. You have fun with that, sweetheart. I, cause you'd have no clue how much work goes into everything behind the scenes that you didn't realize that the workbook alone that we put into it had probably 150 hours Just to put the workbook together, not including all the slides for all the different modules of everything else that we did during the training and the negotiations of the room and making sure that we had all the snacks and all the different things and then the sales process and then getting out to everybody to make sure that we sold tickets to the room and all the other stuff.
I mean, people and people in general just don't realize what's easy for us. is not easy for other people when they go to first try it out. And that's, what's great is because I can teach you the basics and everything that I've said today, you can get out there and do. When you go to the next step, that's where you're going to want to have some help.
And it's a matter of, do you want to duct tape it together or do you want to have somebody who's got over 15, 20, actually 25 years worth of experience? Cause even before I was doing this as a business, I was doing all this stuff for myself originally, you know? And so that's where we all have it. And everybody, everybody listening here is exactly the same thing.
Your expertise for me. To do what you do. It's not going to go very well. I can figure it out. I'm a smart guy, but chances are I'm going to be miserable. It's going to take 10 times longer and it's going to annoy the hell out of me, but I could just pay you to do it and take care of it for me and give me all the shortcuts and tell me exactly what to do.
Step one, step two, step three, and we could be done. And that's, that's where every one of us has our own unique ability. And that's where that comes into play. Okay.
[00:31:46] Roger Courville, CSP: Eli, what metrics or measures of success do you use when thinking about automated systems?
[00:31:56] Ely Delaney: There's two sides to it and I don't have it handy and which is actually I know where it is.
Um, from last time I was traveling, I had these coins made and it's really sad. Usually it's always in my pocket. I just realized it's not in my pocket right now. Um, I had these coins made and it was really cool cause I, I spent a lot of money to get these little fancy coins made up. Um, it's two sides to the coin.
First one is if you're going to use the tools and the technology and all the stuff that's out there to help your business, number one, you're looking to make more money. So the stuff that you're using should be able to make you money. Or, the flip side of the coin is save you time. So, here is a great example of that.
Years forever ago, we're talking probably close to 15 years ago, when calendar booking systems first came on the game, It was brand new. Nobody knew what it was. And before that everybody was doing the, Hey, let's get together. You know, let's, let's have a call on Thursday. It's like, Oh, well, Thursday doesn't work.
Well, how about Friday before didn't Friday morning works? No, Friday morning won't work for me. How about Friday afternoon? And you have this email thread back and forth and it takes you like three days to go through and eventually you stop, pick up the phone, um, To call them in order to schedule a call with them, which makes absolutely no sense.
So booking calendar systems came out and I'm like, Hey, I can just send you a link that says here's when I'm available and you can find a spot that works for you and click a button, put in your name and email address and we're good. And I'm like, this is crazy brilliant. And so I jumped on board on like both feet ready to go on this one and immediately it saved me like five hours a week in back and forth silliness.
That is how much time money did it make? If that's negotiable because it depends on who I was talking to. Sometimes great solid leads ready to buy. Sometimes casual conversations that are just a virtual coffee doesn't mean necessarily anything, but the amount of time it saved me. Was extremely valuable.
So time and money are your two major factors when you're using technology. If I can go through, and this is another reason why I love automation, and I think long scale automation, not just you sign up for this, you sign up for an event, you do a virtual event, so you sign up for an event and you have those reminders that go out, by the way, Here's your information.
By the way, you should make sure you show up. By the way, don't forget silly, you know, you know, make sure if people actually show up, those are great, but I look for the long game. So I have a campaign that literally runs for three years automatic. Uh, my running joke is I could go outside and get hit by a bus today and still sell you stuff for three more years.
This is where I'm playing that game of how do we leverage this? And I might, I think I put probably, I mean, I probably put a hundred hours into building this thing out start to start to finish, but it didn't go all in one shot. It was a little bit at a time and I just kept growing it and growing it over time.
But I built this machine like eight years ago and it is a little bit of maintenance. Here or there Once a year. I go through and I look at everything, make sure there isn't something that was one of my follow-up processes that I don't recommend anymore, or I do a lot with technology stuff, so maybe there's a plugin I was recommending before and I don't recommend it now.
So I'll tweak things once a year, go through and tweak 'em and replace things. But beyond that, I built it once. It works forever. And I get leads all the time. I get people who opt into stuff and eventually they go into this campaign that just runs and I don't touch it. I tweak it once a year just to make sure everything looks good.
Beyond that, it just goes. So how much business have I made? How many sales have I made over a eight year timeframe? Because of that campaign, if you look at, you know, one sale that I got in the first month. Yeah, the time, the amount of work putting into it wasn't worth it. But you look at the fact that this campaign has worked for over eight years now, that's a whole different game.
That's where the power of it is, is you use automation to set up a system that is evergreen and will work forever for you. And even by the way, events, because you know, because you're using events, I'll use this as a great example. Once you have a framework for an event as a speaker, when I do a webinar.
If I have a webinar or a masterclass or whatever I happen to be doing, I set up the framework of it. I have everything built and it might take me 15 hours the first team time to put it together. The next time it takes me one. So how much is that worth to you that those are the metrics that I look at. If I can leverage that down to, all right, at the end of the day, if I'm going to make roughly the same amount of money, cause the same event, same part, number of people, you know, the numbers will probably play through fine.
They're, you know, pretty consistent most of the time, but if I can spend 15 hours building it the first time and one hour, the second, third, fourth, 10th, 20th and 50th time, the value of that is priceless at the end of the day.
[00:37:33] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. You know, even as you're describing that, two different things came to mind.
I don't even know if I, and I love how you just explained it. I'm not even sure that this this connection ever crossed my brain. One was is kind of from an accounting perspective that that sometimes long term models have a combination of fixed plus variable costs. And you're talking about dramatically reducing the fixed cost because certain, particularly for our clients, certain variable costs are always going to be there, right?
If I'm doing a webinar series for a lot of our clients anyway, and I'm finding a new speaker and getting them ready, ready for that event. You know, I, 20 speakers is going to take me 20x the time, but if I can drive a huge chunk out of my, in a sense, my fixed cost, right? The other labor that I've got to repeat, um, that's huge.
The other, the other model that came to mind was just the economics of like the nature of, um, media or content publishing, right? Whether it's a movie. or a band's new album or something like that, right? You've got pretty much a hundred percent sunk cost into the first copy of the movie and your marginal cost on every, every, every one after that is really low.
And I know we're, we're often not thinking in terms of buying physical media, right? The first DVD costs you a hundred million bucks to produce. The second DVD costs you a buck to produce. Exactly. Yep. And that doesn't mean there's no cost on the ongoing basis, but that kind of, oh, that just gives me a mental model for, for what you're describing right there and even applied into an events context.
Yeah. I think it'd be really powerful.
[00:39:30] Ely Delaney: And I've done that before. I had a client that I worked with for over a year. Um, doing, he's had an event every month and so I put the work into building the system we had. I wrote the copy for the emails, which I mean, email copy is like my specialty. So I wrote all the email copy.
I put together the, the bits of the copy for the landing pages and all the different stuff that goes with it. We build the campaigns out and it was about 3, 000 worth of work up the front. But then, he had the same event every time. We didn't change anything. So, every time we set up the next event for him, it cost him like 500 bucks.
Because the hard part was already done and all we did was we clone, tweak, save, then next month, clone, tweak, save. And it was a simple process to do that. And the cool thing is once you get it done one or two times, you have a formula. So even if you need to outsource it or want to, and you should outsource it to somebody else to let them do it for you, they literally just, steps one through five.
One, save, two, save, three, save. I mean, and then, you know, that's where you're freeing up your time along with reusing these assets over and over again. Think about your, your products, your emails, your conversations, your nuggets of knowledge that you have. These are assets. And once you put it together the first time.
That's the hardest part. That's like drilling for gold. But once you got the gold and you got the pipe already set up and ready to go, the rest of it's pretty simple. And once you do that in your business, it makes life so much easier. Yeah,
[00:41:24] Roger Courville, CSP: and let me put an exclamation point behind something that you said and you just said these words in passing But I want to shine a light on it You said, you know, it's and if it's something you outsource and you should I just want to say what you just described is the perfect thing to outsource because it's That repeatable thing, right?
What is, you know, meaning, and this is true in our virtual event production business, and I'm sure in, in, in at least parts of how you serve clients, because, you know, we've got clients that literally been clients for a dozen years, and we become an extension of their team. Now, part of the way that that creates value is they can throw something over the fence.
They know what we know what they're trying to accomplish. And more importantly, I know that one of our like one of our event Or managers or program managers actually starts to get to know the client and can actually partner with them. Right? So they're not just executing on a set of tasks, but when a tweak needs to be made or something extraordinary happens, right?
Every once in a while, one of your things unexpectedly blows the numbers out of the water and you wonder why, or it underperforms and you wonder why. And you know, going back and doing the reporting and analysis and that kind of thing. is, is really where the repetitive actually is part of, you know, if it'd be like if you hired the same plumber every week over and over and over, I could, I could, I fix the toilet.
No, but when I bring you in and you get to know me now, all of a sudden you can start to add value based on how you know me, even though the kind of the essential thing that is being outsourced is repetitive. And I think oftentimes that's, that's missed.
[00:43:13] Ely Delaney: Yeah. Well, and the cool thing about it is you have the formula.
Once you build the formula, like with me, everything that I do is based around my formulas and methodology, and I have very strict guidelines to everything. Um, how to write the copy, what to say, what not to say, all the different things that go with your communication Once that formula is put together, the cool thing is, and I teach it this way, is like, I want you as the client to go through it at least once so you get it, you understand what's happening, but I want you to have your assistant come in too so they're on board and they understand what's going on too.
And then now, Over time, you got the basics down so you know what's going on, but your assistant can take care of the rest and they can start tweaking things for your best interest and then they can come back to me if they have questions because I'm the strategist, but they, once they understand the formula, now they're just talking, how do, how does Roger communicate?
How does Roger sound when he talks? And that's where those follow up pieces make or break is by that communication level and somebody who works with you strongly can pick that up really quickly.
[00:44:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Eli, when it comes to using automated marketing systems, relationship systems, what are the ethical or legal things that should, people should be aware of.
[00:44:48] Ely Delaney: Um, so the first and foremost thing, uh, we already touched on this. Don't add somebody to your list if they didn't opt in. Okay. Now having a quote unquote, CRM, customer relationship manager, you can add everybody to it. You just don't add them to the list that automatically send off a whole bunch of stuff because that is your tracking.
Um, which by the way, If you don't have a CRM, get a CRM, okay? If you want to have a conversation of what, you know, what you should be looking for, reach out, talk to me, I'm happy to talk to you about it. Let's put that up. Yeah.
[00:45:22] Roger Courville, CSP: If somebody happens to be looking right now, you'll see that just flying into the screen is connectwitheli.
com. We'll come back to that.
[00:45:29] Ely Delaney: Keep going, Eli. All right. And I want to, I want to make sure we put this out there just because people will spell it wrong. Eli is E L Y, not E L I. Okay. If you do that, you're going to find some guy, some commercial real estate dude in the middle of Iowa or something, if I remember.
Um, but so yeah, reach out to me if you've got questions, but you should have a CRM. Okay. And I, and I'm not pitching any kind of program. Yes, I have my favorites and we can have that in a private conversation, but the, the kicker with it is you need to track the conversations you're having. That's the most important thing.
When you have a call with somebody. You put it into CRM so you can then reference that down the road because we're human beings. We will forget. You know, you want to talk about a pitfall, the pitfall is not a legal thing. The pitfall is how much conversation, how many things do you forget because you're just a human being just like the rest of us that would actually help you help that person better.
If you just remembered that one little sentence that they said last time. And so, I'm a big fan of take good notes and make sure you put it in the CRM and before you talk to somebody a second time, go look through your notes. Make sure you didn't miss any. Now, Number one, we already talked about this.
Don't, don't be just adding people to your newsletter. Nobody wants a newsletter anyway, but if you add it to them, that's called spam. The second thing with it is don't, there, there's a big confusion and there has been for years on how often should I follow up with somebody? The answer is as much as you need to, to build the relationship.
For some people, they can get away with every day. Most of us, that's not going to work, but no matter how much, first and foremost, I recommend like once a week, send an email roughly once a week, but don't make it about pitching all the time. It's not about your latest, greatest buy one, get one free type of.
promo or any of that kind of stuff. It's just adding value. It's like, Hey, here's something cool that I thought you might be, might be interested in. Hey, by the way, here's a YouTube video that I found that I thought was cool and this is why I liked it so much. Check it out. Let me know what you think. Then maybe another one that's actually a little bit more geared towards you is like, Hey, you know what?
Here's something that a lot of people ask me quite a bit and I just wanted to, you know, I don't know if this is useful for you, but people ask me so much. I figured I'd just share it and if it's, if it's valuable, let me know. If not, that's okay. And you just share a tip and you just mix it up to different things.
And if you're doing it right, even if they don't open all your emails, they'll never unsubscribe, they'll always stay in front of you, they'll always pay attention to what you have, and the day that they need what you have and you happen to email them, they are going to hit reply. It really is that simple.
And so, don't, don't come from a place of pitching all the time. Come from a place of giving value. And yes, it's okay to ask for the sale every once in a while. There's nothing wrong with that, but not every time people there's, there's this thing in the marketing thing. There has to be a call to action every time.
I agree with the call to action every time. Every time you have a conversation, there should be a call to action of some sort. That doesn't mean, how can you give me your credit card today? That call to action could be, go check out this video. Call to action could be reply back. Let me know what are you working on right now?
How can I help you? That call to action could be, you know what, if we're not friends on Facebook, yeah, go hit a, go do me a favor and hit a friend request for me. I mean, the call to action is just getting them to take an action. And my goal is get them to take an action that will benefit them in some way.
That's it. That's what we're looking for and everything you do, whether it's manual or automated, which by the way, there's stuff out there that is manually done. So like you want to actually pick up the phone and call somebody. The automation is setting something up in your CRM software to remind you to pick up the phone and call Roger on August 1st.
That's your automation. So when you can't automate something, can't automate the call, you can, it's, it's not really what I'm preferred for. I like to have a real call. So I have my systems remind me, Hey, by the way, go to Facebook and just comment on something that so and so has been doing today. Comment on something.
I mean, that's, that's like, it's really simple. Set a task to go to Facebook and comment on something that they posted. That's where you use automation so you don't forget to do the manual relationship building thing that you know, you should do But again, we're human, we drop the ball, we forget things, we get busy.
So use the tools and technology to help us not forget.
[00:50:37] Roger Courville, CSP: I love your reminder. Automation isn't necessarily a replacement for the manual relationship building things that we do. Right. Meaning we often think about that as how do we create email sequences, forgetting to do what, what you just said, go set up a reminder so that I remember to go make a comment on somebody's Facebook or LinkedIn post, which might mean I go to their profile.
I scroll down until I find something comment worthy and I hit like or say hello.
If someone is thinking about taking that next step, right, they think they're leaving money on the table. Whether it's finding better systems, outsourcing to a professional services provider, or both. What questions should people ask? That they often are not asking.
[00:51:41] Ely Delaney: So a couple of things, number one, and this is, this is really good.
This is good reflection time. Spend like a half an hour on this and it'll be really super powerful. Number one, just for one day, write down everything you do all day. And I mean everything. And then you stop and you look at that list, but a half an hour it's like, is there a way I might be able to automate these things?
And I live by, and I actually even teach a class on this, I call it, it's Automate, Delegate, and Delete. I call it Entrepreneur's ADD. Number one, can I automate it? If you can automate it, figure out how. If you can't, let's talk, because I am happy to talk to you about that. Delegate. If it can't be automated, who can I delegate this to?
Because if you could get somebody else to do, especially the stuff that's not your highest power, the stuff that's not in your gift, Then you should be letting somebody else do that, that it is in their gift and chances are they're probably not going to cost as much as you do. You can spend money making more money and letting them do the stuff that they love and it costs you less money.
And then the third thing, if I can't automate it and I can't delete it, is this something that I shouldn't bother doing anyway? And can I just delete it? So automate, delegate, and delete. Start with that, because if you can have a list, first and foremost, when you get to the delete part, that's a lot of fun, because you're like, I don't need to do this, I don't need to do that, I don't need to do this, and you just start getting rid of stuff.
All of a sudden, your day frees up. But the automation part, automate everything you can, because human beings get sick. Human beings forget. Human beings drop the ball. Technology generally doesn't. Yes, technology can break, but for the most part, you set it up, you walk away, let it go, and it just works forever.
It doesn't get sick. It doesn't have a kid that gets in trouble, gets kicked out of school, any of that kind of stuff. So automate what you can. And if, but you have to know what it is you want to automate first. So that's the first step is figuring out what is it that you are doing that you shouldn't need to do, and you don't want to necessarily do, but you know, it still needs to be done.
Can you automate it first? And then that's a, you have a good starting point from that standpoint. The second thing, it's a bit, it's a bit more detailed because people don't really think about it. How much like this goes directly into me. What I do is going back to like what I called the multiplier blueprint that I use with clients.
What are the things that you are dropping the ball on? That you know are costing you money because if you stop and think about that, and my, my little cheat sheet that I use with that is really powerful, really quick. Um, but if you can go through and figure out, okay, I just lost, you know, 10 sales because I didn't follow up with these people after this event, you know, you have a problem.
How do we fix that problem? And start with that. It could be, do you have a followup process after you speak on stage? What happens? How do you, if you speak on stage, people come up with you afterwards, or maybe you do an opt in of some sort, or like let me, let me give you my free checklist from stage kind of situation, which is common for speakers.
What happens after that? Because most people, nothing. It's like they put it, he's like, scan this code or opt in here or text this number, whatever version you want to do. Cause everybody has their own way of doing it, but then it's like, okay, here's your thing. And then they leave. They walk away. He's like, no.
Get them to consume the thing. Get them to stay in touch. Get them to book a call. You know, look at what's the next step. One of the best things I learned, my mentor, when I first got into this whole space guy by the name of Armin Morin, everything I do is based around three words that I learned from him.
All of my systems, all of my followup. Is based off of these three words. Write this down. Next logical step. You just want to think about that. They just saw you on stage. They thought you were awesome. What do you want to have next happen? What's the next logical step? When they do that, what's the next logical step?
When they do that, what's the next logical step? And filter it out. When you do that, all of a sudden you're starting to think in future pace of everything you do. And next thing you'll know, you're going to be building out a three year campaign that works without you. That's how mine started.
[00:56:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Eli, you've shared so much good stuff. Uh, I will again say connect with eliy. com is a great place to start. I presume that I, whether they want to chat with you on the phone or find some other goodies, given that you are a giver and a helper, I would imagine that's the front door through which they find the next part of your genius.
Is that the next logical step, Eli?
[00:57:02] Ely Delaney: That is the next logical step. And it's real simple. Yeah, I have some free stuff on there. You want to check out the free stuff, go grab it. Um, but there's a couple of other things on there. Number one, there is a spot. You can book a book on my calendar. I love to meet cool people.
I, it's right above my head. So book on my calendar, chat with me. It's not a sales call. It's a conversation. If you want to lead it to a sales call, cool. We'll go there. But that's after the fact, right after we get to know each other first, because guess what? You might come to me and you may not be a good client and I may just give you some good stuff and send you on your way.
I'm happy to do that. Um, but also that's where you can find me and all my social media links and all the other stuff as well. If you connect with me, do me a favor, then this is a huge little last minute trick for you guys. If you send me a Facebook friend request or a LinkedIn request or any of that kind of stuff, don't just hit the friend button.
Don't just hit the connect button, send a note with it, send a message with it. Hey, I heard you on the conversation with Roger. That was cool stuff. This is what I liked. I would love to chat more with you. Let me know where you heard me from and what was the little nugget today that you liked that you got out of this because that puts you to the top of the list for me and that's the important thing.
I got like 20 people on Facebook waiting for me to accept them. The ones that send me a message to go with it, um, accepted pretty much daily.
[00:58:23] Roger Courville, CSP: Eli, thank you. Really appreciate you taking a little bit of time. Uh, final question is, are there any other questions I should have asked you that you would have loved to have answered, but I didn't
[00:58:33] Ely Delaney: ask? Oh, that's opening, that's opening up a whole can of worms. I think we covered all this important stuff today.
[00:58:38] Roger Courville, CSP: And for our number two here with Eli Delaney. Yeah, um,
[00:58:43] Ely Delaney: and I've had those calls, by the way. So it's like, oh yeah, we're going to do this call for, you know, 30, 45 minutes, maybe three hours later. We're still recording. As you can see, I love this stuff. I love talking about this. I geek out on it all the time.
The, the biggest thing, it's not so much a question, just for everybody listening, get out there, take action. Go back and, and listen to this again and grab the stuff that I shared. Go do it. Go do this stuff and then connect with me and tell me what happened. I love hearing the stories with that. So please, please go do that.
That's the fun stuff. Um, from my standpoint, Roger, I enjoyed the conversation. We had a lot of fun. I enjoyed, I mean, I enjoyed chatting with you every time we do get to, it's just been a while, so I'm glad, I'm glad that we got to do this today.
[00:59:31] Roger Courville, CSP: Mutual. Hey, we should do this once every decade or so.
[00:59:35] Ely Delaney: Yeah, there
[00:59:40] Roger Courville, CSP: we you to Eli Delaney, Purple Knight Marketing, whom you can find at connectwitheliy. com. And again, thank you to our sponsor today, virtualvenues. com, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. We will catch you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations. Have a great day.
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