December 8, 2023 • 52 mins
Join Michael Whitehouse on The Guy Who Knows A Guy Podcast as he interviews Amanda Abella, an award-winning content creator and business coach. Amanda reveals how she slashed her workload by 84% through sales task automation and offers insights on cutting marketing and labor costs by 50% with improved systems. With networking expertise that led to a network of 130 referral partners, Amanda shares valuable tips on sales, communication, and leveraging technology for business success.
Mentioned in this episode:
JV Connect, December 12-13, 2023
Join us for JV Connect, the dedicated networking event December 12th and 13th, 2023 https://www.jv-connect.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Whitehouse (00:00):
Welcome back to the guy who knows a guy podcast.
We're so excited to be back with you.
And this season we are countingdown to J V connect the first of its
kind, December 12th to 14th, 2023.
This is going to be an incrediblededicated networking event, and you
are going to want to be part of it.
And this podcast here to helpprepare you to get the most
out of this incredible event.
(00:21):
I'm Michael Whitehouse,the guy who knows a guy.
And over the next few weeks, you're goingto get to hear from some of the best
people in the industry about networking.
As well as some solo training from me.
So be sure to join us on December12th to 14th for JB Connect.
And now, let's get to the interview.
Welcome once again to theguy who knows a guy podcast.
I, as always, I'm your host, MichaelWhitehouse, the guy who knows a guy.
(00:44):
And our guest today is Amanda Abea.
Amanda is an award winning contentcreator, keynote speaker and business
coach who specializes in helpingbusiness owners activate their
persuasion prowess so they can make moremoney and live a more affluent life.
Her clients go from hating salesand marketing to achieving 90.
(01:04):
Is that right?
That's not a typo.
It's 90%.
Amanda Abella (01:06):
It's 90%.
Yes.
Michael Whitehouse (01:08):
Wow.
90 percent close rates and closingmultiple five figure deals.
Her work has been featured inForbes, Huffington Post, Business
Insider, Univision, and many more.
Prior to teaching marketing andsales, Amanda spent a decade as a
financial writer and wrote contentfor companies like Wells Fargo,
Discover, Credit Karma, Santander.
It's not Sant Sant Santanday.
(01:28):
I think depends on what country you're in.
Okay, Santander, you know which bankI'm talking about the red one and more.
She's also partnered with companieslike Capital One and TransUnion
and financial education campaigns.
So welcome to the show.
Thank you for giving me a bio that gaveus something to talk about already.
And how are you doing today?
Amanda Abella (01:46):
I'm doing super well.
I mean, I was like, Oh dang, I gotto add to the bio, which is now, you
know, I'm living in Mexico, whichI found the Santander thing funny.
Cause that's literally the bank I have togo to, to withdraw cash with the lowest,
um, fee for American dollar to pay.
So, so I was like, Oh yeah, thatbank, I used to write for them and
I literally go there every week.
Michael Whitehouse (02:08):
There you go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I work with a credit union that I've.
I've done some work for them.
Um, not the level you have, butI've done some networking coaching
for them and speaking, uh, andlike, I know most of their staff.
So I figure I'll bank withthe people who I know everyone
from the manager up to the CEO.
That seems like the, the way anetworker should be doing is banking.
Amanda Abella (02:29):
Yeah, and actually in that 1st business where I was
working with a lot of banks, it wasmostly networking that got me those
deals because none of those bankswere going to go through a funnel.
You know, now it's a little bit differentbecause I have digital programs.
Um, and there was a reasonfor that because that business
model was more scalable.
Whereas my 1st business was not,but in my 1st business, when I was
(02:49):
doing content marketing for financialcompanies, or I would get hired as a
Spokesperson for campaigns like fortrans union, which you could find
the videos on YouTube somewhere.
Um, then most of that waslike, who do you know?
Networking.
There was a big event.
We would go to every year for moneyand media and I book myself out
for a year, but a lot of it wasnetworking cold pitching good old
(03:13):
fashioned sales and relationships.
Michael Whitehouse (03:17):
Yep.
So, so you didn't startwith a network, right?
You didn't like go to Harvardand meet everyone you know,
and that, that puts you in.
Amanda Abella (03:22):
No, I went to like some tiny Catholic school in Southwest Florida.
No one's ever heard of.
There were 80 peoplein my graduating class.
Michael Whitehouse (03:30):
Wow.
So let's start from there.
How did you go from tiny school tonetworking your way to jobs with
Wells Fargo and Discover and CreditKarma and the one I can't pronounce?
Amanda Abella (03:41):
Yeah, so funny story.
I graduated in 2010 andcouldn't find a job.
So I hear a lot of the people complainingnow about all the economic stuff
going on in the United States, verydifferent hearing it when you're living
in another country, but I digress.
But I'm hearing all those stories.
I'm like, dang, this soundslike 2008 2009 2010 all over
(04:03):
again, different circumstances,but people still struggling.
Um, and I, I was one of those,like, I went six months without
being able to find a job.
I had a literature degree.
I'd gone to like this.
I, I grew up Catholic, so I gotbasically sent to a Catholic school.
Um, and it was a liberal arts degree,which I now realize gave me the
foundation to do the things that I do now.
(04:23):
Mm-Hmm.
But back then, right, I was like,what the hell am I supposed to do
with this ? Um, so I couldn't finda job, but what I essentially did is
I Googled how to make money writing.
That's literally how this all started.
It started with a Google search how tomake money writing in the summer of 2010.
(04:46):
And it was literally justclawing my way and like, 12 hours
reading everything on Google.
I could get my hands on and I was justso determined to make something work
that, you know, 1 thing led to another.
I experimented for a few years,eventually really nailed down on the
financial niche because I was interested.
In money because I sucked at it.
(05:06):
Um, and I figured, well, if I get paid tolearn about it, that sounds pretty smart.
So why don't I just go do that?
Um, and none of us knew at the time thatthe financial blogging and the financial
writing niche was going to like take off.
So here's something interesting.
Whenever financial issues start happeningin the United States, people become
(05:27):
a lot more interested in finance.
So it was just kind ofa good timing thing.
That now I can see opportunity, butback then I had no idea how to do that.
I just got lucky, I guess.
Um, and you know, it was just like oneand I started making friends on Twitter.
Twitter was like the place to be if youwere a financial blogger back in the day.
(05:48):
And then, you know, we all startedgetting together, putting on
networking events because geekingout over money and blogging about it.
And then that turned into a massiveconference that turned into, um,
not that I put on, but that thecommunity put on that turned into
a lot of us who had started early.
Literally banks were our clients.
(06:09):
I mean, it was to the point where theywould like, throw parties for us once a
year and then that we would like, minglewith all the financial companies and
then they needed content because peoplewere searching for financial information.
And then that's how I kind of alsostarted learning about marketing was.
By doing it.
And what I didn't realize wasthat I was doing sales, right?
(06:30):
So I was like pitching ideas.
I was meeting people at events.
I was going to every event.
I could get my handson every Twitter chat.
Do you remember Twitter chats?
Are they even still a thing?
Right?
Twitter chats.
Back in the day and finance werelike, you know, you would follow it.
It was like a certain time you would geton Twitter and it was a certain topic and
then everyone would follow the hashtag andthen you would be able to follow the chat.
(06:51):
Yeah, I'm dating myself right now.
Right.
So we would do like these Twitter chats,and I would make sure to get on every
Twitter chat I could get my hands on.
Back in the day and I madea lot of friends, um, many
of which are still friends.
I just interviewed one of them on mypodcast and we've known each other
for 10 years since our finance days.
Um, and that's how Ibuilt my first business.
(07:13):
It was, you know, learning contentmarketing from the ground up.
It was sales and not knowing that Iwas selling and it was networking.
Michael Whitehouse (07:21):
Yeah.
And I think there's a coupleof things I hear in that.
The first is you, you knewwhat you were trying to do.
So you didn't say, Oh, there's no jobs.
I'll just go on monster and deed againand send out some more applications.
Amanda Abella (07:32):
Oh, I tried that, you know, and I did eventually get jobs
because I got the typical immigrantto America story, you know, you go to
school and you go get a steady job.
I didn't know that I couldlike make a whole business.
Michael Whitehouse (07:44):
Yep.
Um, but yeah, obviously that didn'tget you where you were going, but, but
you know, you're focused on, I want to.
Right.
I want to do finance and you weren'tthinking about, okay, where can I
make a million dollars or where canI, it's just, I want to do this thing.
You networked, you weren'ttrying to sell them.
You weren't trying toget something from them.
You're just, I'm into finance writing.
You're into finance, right?
(08:05):
And let's hang out and talkabout finance and writing.
Amanda Abella (08:07):
And pretty much that's exactly what it was.
Michael Whitehouse (08:09):
Yep.
And that's, and that, that'sreally powerful networking.
Cause you're not, you know, that'swhere networking goes wrong.
If people come in, they're like,buy my thing, promote my thing,
buy my thing, promote my thing.
Instead of we have this andthat in common, you know, the
higher levels of networking,which is often those masterminds.
That's the, they're not selling to eachother and asking each other to promote.
They're sharing ideas.
They're sharing experience and knowledge.
(08:31):
And that's what you were doing.
Um, and, and obviously that led to alot more and a lot more success, but I
think that's a great story for anyonelistening saying, you know, well, how
can I network if I'm not starting withthe right, the right thing now, one
of the dimensions, you know, Twitterchats, which is no longer a thing.
Um, so that's one of the challenges,the, the Internet shifting.
(08:51):
So the places wherethe connections happen.
aren't the same.
Um, for, for someone up and coming, do youhave an idea of where, where they might be
able to find connections and opportunity?
Amanda Abella (09:02):
Well, I'd say for up and coming, it's the same, right?
It's social media and it's content.
It's just the way in which we're usingsocial media and content has changed
dramatically since, you know, I'mtalking, I think, seven, eight years ago.
Yeah.
But the concepts are still the same.
Um, in fact, I would venture to say it'sprobably easier now in a lot of ways,
(09:22):
because we have a lot of tools now thatcan help us that we didn't have back then.
Um, my partner and I are in the process.
We're starting a 2nd brandcalled entrepreneur expat.
Um, because we are expats and there'sbeen a lot of interest for my community
on being an expat, but we're smartbusiness people and we're like, oh, okay.
Well, only a smallportion of our community.
(09:44):
Current community is into that.
We're going to make awhole separate brand.
For them, that's what we're going to do.
Um, so we're in the process of startingthe second one and we were both noting
because he's been in digital marketingas long as I have, and we were both
noting like how much easier it is nowin a lot of ways because you have tools
that can tell you what keywords to use.
(10:06):
There's tons of experts that you canfollow on Instagram that tell you how
to put together a good performing reel.
To get attention.
None of that stuff existed backthen because it was like the wild,
wild West and it was a new thing andno one knew what they were doing.
Yes.
Michael Whitehouse (10:20):
Yep.
Yeah.
And as a, as a thing about it, likeyou were saying, you're finding
these, these interest chats.
I feel like some of it now is in thecomments of different people's posts.
So if you find people or theinfluencers in the space, you engage
in the comments and reply to people'scomments in the comments and there's no
Twitter chats anymore, but there are.
Posts with comment threads whereyou can connect people there.
(10:44):
Uh, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebookor, uh, TikTok's not quite as good
with 80 characters, but LinkedInand Facebook are pretty good for
those, those kinds of exchanges.
Amanda Abella (10:54):
Yeah, I would, I would absolutely agree.
I mean, a lot of the networking I'vedone, you know, during the pandemic and
things like that, it was interesting.
I noticed it was like all on Facebook.
It was all in Facebook groups.
It was all in the Facebook DMs.
Um, even now, to a certaindegree, it is Facebook.
Now that I'm getting back on mycontent game because I just am able to
(11:14):
breathe after this house renovation,um, craziness going on over here.
Um, but I'm able to get back intoit and I'm focusing really on video.
So, you know, Facebook, Instagram.
YouTube and TikTok is my main focusright now while we're doing video.
And it's to your point now, you know,what used to be a Twitter chat is
(11:36):
now going on in comment sections.
Michael Whitehouse (11:39):
Yeah, that's, that's a key thing.
And of course you need to, youknow, sort of step over the muddy
puddles of the social media.
Um, because, you know, there's, it'slike if you're at a rowdy bar, you know,
having a good conversation over here andsomeone has a fist fight over there and
someone's throwing a chair over there, butif you just duck and the chair goes over.
Amanda Abella (11:58):
That's a really great way of putting it.
I've never heard anyone describe itthat way, but it's very accurate.
Michael Whitehouse (12:02):
Yep.
Um, yeah, something else I wantedto ask you about in the, in the
notes you sent ahead of time.
Um, when I asked you what's your bestnetworking tip, you said learn sales
and communication skills because youtalked about doing 400 calls in 2022
and 250 of them needed that advice.
Amanda Abella (12:18):
Yeah, so one of the things that I decided to do, um, you
know, after the first business, I movedinto the second business and the second
business, I started teaching people,you know, how I basically how I built
the first one, because they were asking.
So I'm like, great, I'm going to startteaching marketing and, and sales.
And I started becoming known as.
Teaching actual salesand communication skills.
(12:39):
So a lot of people teach onlinemarketing and it's great, but
marketers don't know how to sell.
Um, they don't know how to have thatpeople conversation part of things,
which a lot of people are strugglingwith now because they're dealing
with more challenges in the economy.
Or maybe a more jaded marketplaceor buyers in general are feeling
more apprehensive because they'rehearing all the world news and
(13:01):
they're realizing, oh, snap.
I don't know how to sell.
I don't know how to have aconversation with another human being.
So, I became known for helping people withthat and our clients get insane results,
even just in the last group that we ranof that sales training, they generated an
extra 6 figures in sales in a few weeks.
And it was, and it was fromvery simple things, right?
Like learning how to ask the rightquestions in a sales conversation.
(13:25):
Um, so that business started blowingup like in 2021 and I kind of
crashed and burned and realized thatI needed to build more leverage.
So I had been networking and doingthe one on one stuff for a long time.
And I realized that it was time toscale and kind of transition out of
that, um, you know, number one tohave a more sustainable business.
(13:46):
I'd gone through a lot of likefamily health crisis and issues and
life, you know, life is life things.
So I was like, great.
I need to build in more sustainability.
I'm going to have to start moving toward,you know, selling to groups or having
other people promote for me or usingsocial media more strategically instead
of these one on one conversations,but there's a transition period.
(14:06):
That occurs when you'regoing through that.
And my transition period was I want tobuild a network of referral partners.
I want to build a network of peoplewho that I can rely on to promote
my business to their people.
And then it's going tobring business over my way.
So, I have these advocates basically,um, and the reason I wanted to do that
(14:26):
is number 1, you could have a bunch ofpeople promoting you at the same time.
Uh, number 2.
You, they can promote you over andover and over again throughout time.
Number three, I don't haveto pay money in Facebook ads.
Number four, those guys can turn intoclients based on the conversations.
So there were lots of benefits to this.
The problem was I had to find them.
(14:52):
Um, and, uh, Really funny story.
Um, I was going througha challenging time.
I went to dinner with a friend and, um,he had mentioned he runs like an eight
figure publishing company and he mentionedto me, hey, anything that you need,
just shoot me a text and I'll help you.
Networking.
Right.
Like you meet people likethat who want to help you.
So I had been approached with thisidea of doing like a joint venture with
(15:16):
somebody from back from my finance days.
Like, Hey, if you promote thisand we do this, I'll give you
a cut and we can do vice versa.
So I sent to this friend of mine,a text message, the new friend.
And I was like, Hey, have you heard oflike referral partners or joint ventures?
Like, I'm not sure how to do this.
I don't know how to put this together.
And he's like, Oh, not onlydo I know how to do that.
I built a 20 million company.
(15:38):
Just based on referral partners.
Here's my course, right?
And you just gave it to me for free.
Out of, like, the goodness and generosityof his heart in that course, right?
He basically said, hey, you know, I wasdoing, like, 100 meetings a week now.
I was like, okay, so I sort of cold.
It's like, if you've got a 20Milliondollar company, I'm just going to go
(15:58):
all in and see what this is about.
Like, I'm a big experimenter.
I wasn't getting to 100 calls a week.
Maybe I was getting to about 50 a week.
Um, and I, and I would find, yes,um, referral partner calls, right?
So basically getting to know themand being like, hey, I think we
could make good referral partners.
I had no freaking idea what I wasdoing, but I did know how to at least
(16:18):
have a conversation with people.
And I realized that if otherpeople really had no idea.
What they were doing becauseI would go into these calls.
I mean, I was doing up to 10 a day and Iwould go into these calls and I would ask
people like, Hey, you know, I think wecan make really great referral partners.
Here's what I do in my business.
You know, I think this ishow we can collaborate.
Tell me what you've got goingon in your business and they
(16:40):
couldn't answer the damn question.
Yep.
And I was like, how do people make money?
They have no idea how to talk to people.
They don't know how to talkabout their businesses.
They don't know how totalk about what they do.
They don't know how to talkabout their client results.
They don't know how to talk abouthow they collaborate with others.
They literally have no idea.
So in realizing that, I ended updoing 400 calls, but that one of those
(17:05):
calls led to a group of joint venturepartners, and that led to another
group, and that led to another group.
I just had to go throughlike 200 to find them first.
Um, but I got a lot of data and whatI ended up realizing, um, again, to
your point is that most people do notknow how to have conversations with
other human beings about what they dofor a living or what they do for work
(17:26):
or what makes them stand out or howthey collaborate with other people.
And I was really flabbergasted becauseI was like, how do you all make money?
I don't understand.
Like, I don't understand likehow you make, like you must
make money by accident because.
Like, I'm trying to have a conversationand you can't so what ended up
happening was in that process.
(17:48):
I ended up creating, like, Istarted kind of figuring out my own
little process for finding referralpartners and things like that.
And I put that into an 8 stepguide, everything from finding them.
To how do we do this in a more leveragedway other than DMing people on LinkedIn.
To here's how you have that conversation.
Here is sentence one.
Here is sentence two.
(18:09):
Here is sentence three.
I mean, I broke it down to that degree.
And then here's whatyou do after the call.
Because that was another thing.
They sucked at the follow up after.
So I ended up putting everythinginto a guide, which everybody
listening can get for free.
Um, and I started experimentingand tweaking the guide.
And what I ended up, I eventuallydid end up finding the right people.
(18:29):
I built a network of about 100 referralpartners, uh, has literally kept my
business doubling, uh, between thatand the automations we've built while
I've been in the process of moving toanother country and renovating a house,
maybe working at 10 percent capacity.
The business has kept going and it's beenbecause of that referral partner process.
And also a lot of the marketingand sales automations.
(18:51):
We spent a couple of yearsbuilding on the back end.
Thank you.
But, you know, once you finally nailit, which my hope with that guide
is that people avoid the painfulconversations I needed to have first
before I found my people, beforeI found the referral partners.
Um, that's my hope is that you avoid allof that and that you actually get results.
(19:14):
But once you nail it, I mean, one ofour partners sent us 300 leads in a day.
Michael Whitehouse (19:18):
Wow.
So, yeah.
So, uh, you said you have, you haveover a hundred partners and one
thing, when people get into the jv,the joint venture space, they often
hear a lot about reciprocation.
You know, you Mm-Hmm, , I'llpromote you if you promote me.
And, um, I assume you're notpromoting back a hundred partners.
Amanda Abella (19:36):
Yeah.
So it's interesting that you bring thatup because I had no idea what I was doing.
I went, number one, I used salesbrain, and number two, I was
like, all right, I guess 2023 isgonna be the data collection year.
Because I guess because I have asales background, I just approach
everything with sales statistics, right?
So I'd already done like 200calls and most of them sucked.
(19:56):
So I just assumed going into these groupsthat it was going to be the same thing.
So what I ended up doing was Ibooked like 50 calls in two days.
Assuming half of them were going to suck.
Um, and that's actually not what happenedbecause once you get into the higher
level, I was literally shocked within twoweeks, I got booked out for like a year,
(20:18):
but I was not expecting that to happen.
So 2023 was like definitely theexperimentation year of what
works and what doesn't, whichwe've now put into that guide.
Hey, this leads to a lot of leads,but maybe not enough sales or this
leads to less leads, but more sales.
Now I have that data because I've promotedso many people and I've also, and they've
(20:38):
also promoted for me, or I know, hey,this type of referral partnership works.
This one does not.
Now I have the data.
Right.
So going into 2024, we're justgoing to be more scalable about it.
We're literally just making thecalendar of like, all right, this works.
Right.
And instead of maybe doing 1 webinara month for a referral partner or 1 a
week for 4 different referral partners.
(21:00):
We're going to have 15 people promotingthe same event at the same time.
Yeah, that and we know exactly whothose people are going to be and it just
requires more planning ahead of time.
I didn't know that going into 2023because I just didn't have the data,
but now going into 2024, I havethe data and I can make it more
sustainable and scalable over time.
Michael Whitehouse (21:21):
Okay, so, so do you promote, um, do you promote all
your referral partners or is it?
Amanda Abella (21:27):
We try to, yeah, we, we, Yeah, we try our best.
Um, and again, I justuse sales brain, right?
So I might overbook myself knowingthat like half of them are going to
fall through because some emergencyhappens or somebody had to push
their launch back or, or something.
1 thing I've noticed about whenpeople try and use referral partners
is they don't have enough of them.
Right?
So they will rearrange their wholeschedule for like 1 partner, but then
(21:50):
that 1 partner has an emergency andyour business is screwed that month.
Okay.
That's why I wanted over a hundred becausethat's life and that's what happens.
It's the same way thatyou're in sales, right?
You're not going to bank on one deal.
You're going to have ahundred people in a pipeline.
Michael Whitehouse (22:06):
But, but how are you able to, I mean,
there's 365 days in a year.
So, and you obviously need topromote your own stuff, I assume.
Yeah.
So how are you promotingjust by sheer volume?
How are you?
Promoting them.
Yeah.
Amanda Abella (22:18):
So we've tested different ways of doing things.
One of the things that we've done, forexample, is like a joint webinar, right?
So, for example, we're promotingeach other at the same time,
or now going into 2024, we havelike a schedule we can follow.
We didn't have that in 2023 becauseagain, it was experimentation year.
In 2023.
(22:39):
So now we have an actual schedulewhere we can plug people in or
another thing that we've tested ismaybe we'll mention five different
referral partners in a newsletteror we'll have them on the podcast.
Like there's so many differentways that we've learned to do this.
But that's after, you know, ayear, 18 months of experimentation.
And then once we experiment, nowwe can create more of a process
(23:03):
to make sure everybody is gettinghandled to the best of their ability.
And again, Knowing that not all 100 ofthem are going to be able to do their
launch next year because life happens.
Michael Whitehouse (23:14):
Yeah, well, and I, I think what you just shared
there, some people listening may belike, wait, you can, that's possible.
Like you could promote ahundred partners in a year.
Cause, cause the, the old, the oldmodel kind of what seems like the
tradition, the traditional model.
I mean, Nothing in the industryis more than 20 years old, but the
traditional model seems to be, youknow, this launch, it's 18 days long.
(23:34):
It takes up your, your list for a month.
And you can't possibly promote morethan nine people a year because, um,
because, you know, one of the conventionalwisdoms I've heard is if you promote
someone, you will lose between six and8 percent of your list on subscribe
every time you promote someone.
Amanda Abella (23:50):
Which it did jack up my list in the first six months of
the year until my partner and that'spart of what we figured out until
we were like, okay, there's got tobe other ways that we can do this.
So we found those other ways.
Right.
And I think that goes to your pointwhere people, people suck at networking.
They also suck at creativity.
Michael Whitehouse (24:08):
Yep.
Yeah.
Well, and that's, that'sone thing I looked at.
I'm like, I, I don't want to lose.
A 12th of my list becauseI promoted someone else.
Maybe if someone says I'm leavingyour list, I don't like you.
That's no big deal.
I call that an authentic unsubscribe.
I authentically don't like you, Michael.
I don't want to be on your list.
The inauthentic unsubscribe is Idon't want to hear about Amanda again.
(24:28):
I'm out.
I'm like, but you see the, uh, my, causeif they got on your list, they want you.
They got on my list.
They want me.
And so, yeah, I.
I got creative to how can I promote peopleand not have them fly out the door because
they're tired of all these promotions.
Amanda Abella (24:44):
Or maybe you put an event together or something.
There's so many ways that you cando this, but you know, people,
people lack creativity becausethey're trying to follow like
this one set pattern of things.
Um, but that's why I'm a bigfan of experimentation to see
what works and what doesn't.
And then you can make a plan from there.
And also like.
I know I'm going to dropthe ball at some point.
(25:05):
I don't just don't make myself feelhorrible for it because that's life.
Yep.
Michael Whitehouse (25:10):
Yeah.
That that's huge.
Yeah.
I think that's that creativityand experimentation thing is, is
key because some people are like,Oh, I'm going to follow them.
And especially the way the economy haschanged, the way markets changing, the
way technology is changing, just becausesomeone has an eight figure business
doesn't mean there you can emulate thembecause you know, maybe they made all
their contacts on Twitter chats and yeah.
(25:31):
So yeah, let's go out andTwitter chats and, uh, and.
Replicate that.
Oh, you can't, you can't anymore.
Huh?
That's crazy.
Yeah.
You know, I, I used to meet all my,uh, I used to meet everyone at Kaldor.
Oh, Kaldor's closed.
Amanda Abella (25:44):
Yeah, and also to your point, one of the things that we've
noticed, because a part of what weteach our clients now is how to sell
one to many instead of one to one,because once you nail it one to one,
now we got to start talking one tomany, or there's only so many hours in
a day and you only have so much energy.
Yep.
So we have to start having thatconversation and 1 of the things that
we've realized we have sent over 100,000 emails this year between ourselves,
(26:07):
our referral partners and for clientsand we've noticed right that when it
comes to the referral partner thing, uh,people tend to screw up in a few ways.
Right?
So number 1, your copy soundslike freaking everybody else.
There's nothing special about this.
There's nothing that exciting.
You sound like every other JV.
I've had.
You need to go repack these emails.
(26:28):
That's number one.
Number two, there's no personal story.
There's no personal likeconnection really with the people.
So we've noticed that's a problem.
Um, and we've also noticed that thesystems on the backend just kind of
suck and no one knows what's going on.
No one's tracking anything.
Um, and also just like the maintainingof the relationship, people
are generally not very good at.
So one of the things that I love todo, um, and this is something we're
(26:51):
taking more seriously now in 2024is having JB partners on my podcast.
And then they can promote me totheir list that way and drive traffic
to a podcast and I can promotethem to my list that way, right?
And then they get oddeyeballs and things like that.
And then number one, it's alittle bit more evergreen.
(27:11):
And number two, it's not as assaulting.
Yeah.
Michael Whitehouse (27:17):
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Um, and, and yeah, those are definitelyvery real, real challenge with the, with
the tracking and the, I mean, I'm alwaysamazed by when I have to chase people
down, um, for, for copy, for links, for.
Amanda Abella (27:32):
It's amazing how often you have to chase people down for copy, right?
And then they get mad at you when, youknow, it's like insane how like not
organized people are on the backend,but that's why I created that guide.
Because that people can get for free bylistening to this because those were all
the problems that I kept running into.
Well,
Michael Whitehouse (27:49):
and even if you have all that getting data, so
I'll vote someone and did it work?
I don't know.
Did anyone look on it?
I've, I've started using pretty linksfor all of my affiliate partners,
so I can check my own data andsay, how many clicks did I get?
But that doesn't tell me how manyopt ins or, or anything else.
Yeah.
So
Amanda Abella (28:07):
we can help you with that.
Yeah.
So one of the things we've evenstarted suggesting to our podcast
guests is like, Hey, we suggest havinglike a specific link just for us.
Here's some tools you can use,and then you can track what's
working and what's not working.
And then you can.
Double and triple down on what's working.
So one of the things I've had to learnhow to do, cause I'm definitely more
(28:27):
of a creative person is to get moreinto the data and the analytics and
then learning how to combine the two.
Michael Whitehouse (28:33):
Yep.
But even if I can track the clicks,that doesn't tell me what converted.
So they may click on it cause Itold them to, but that doesn't
mean they signed up for it.
Cause that's one.
Amanda Abella (28:42):
I've got you at the end of this.
There's there's tools for that.
I got you.
Michael Whitehouse (28:47):
So when I promote a summit or when I, when
I run a summit, I should say.
Uh, I send updates to my speakers everyday for the 14 days leading up to it, and
every one of them contains a link to thedocument with the swipe copy and their
affiliate links, because I used to dolike, I don't want to send it every day.
So I'll send it every few days,invariably, if I sent every three
(29:08):
days on one of the two off days,like, what's my affiliate link again?
I sent it Monday.
I sent it Saturday.
I sent it Thursday, but nowI said it every single day.
Because I understand, when I speakon a summit, the summit's one of the
things I'm doing, it's not a priority,it's not a main focus, it's one of the
things I'm doing, and I understand thatmy speakers, they're not living for my
(29:29):
summit, they're, they are, I'm givingthem exposure, they're certainly an equal
exchange, but it is barely on their listof priorities, because it's one of the
things they're doing, and so I need tosend them 17 emails, To say, Hey, 17 days
of the summit, 16 days of the summit,15 days of the summit as my job to keep
them engaged and keep them informed.
(29:50):
And yeah, most when I promote people,I regularly, I will get to a day before
the thing's supposed to happen and getthat even be like, so how are you doing?
Like.
Who are you?
What are we talking about?
Amanda Abella (30:01):
Yeah, exactly.
You've already forgotten who they are.
You've moved on.
It's like a whole thing.
And you could do the best that youcan to get them on the calendar.
And even still, you got to gofollow up with people, right?
Because they're not.
And that was one of the bigissues, um, I would run into
with promoting other people.
And again, it's why Iput this guy together.
So people don't run into those problems.
Michael Whitehouse (30:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to remember yourpartner, your people promoting
you, it's not their business.
It's your business.
You care about your business everyday, all the time, day and night.
They care about your business when youremind them for a few minutes afterwards.
Like, I'm happy to promote partners, butI got a lot of people to keep in my head.
Amanda Abella (30:39):
Exactly, right?
There's a lot of things goingon, and there's just, with life,
with business, with everything.
Right?
So, yeah, you know, it is alittle complicated sometimes
to keep it all organized.
But, you know, if you know how todo it for sales, and you know how
to stay organized with leads forsales and CRMs and things like
that, JB's is not much different.
Michael Whitehouse (30:57):
Yep.
That's if you know how to do that,of course, and that's that's a
big if yes, but but you mentionedorganization and we mentioned the
frail limitations of the human brain.
Um, one thing we haven't talkedmuch about is automation.
Modern technology.
And, uh, and you know,we have robots for this.
So talk a little bit about how you useautomation to, um, see, I believe in the
(31:19):
notes, you said you cut 84 percent ofyour workload by automating sales tasks.
Amanda Abella (31:23):
I did.
So yes, I'm a big, I'ma big fan of the robots.
So, um, when I hit my big burnout, um,after my business started skyrocketing,
doing the sales training, Um, you know,it was, my business was exploding.
My dad was in and out of the hospital.
Like it just wasn't a sustainable model.
I had not built in a lot ofthe systems and automations and
support that I really needed.
So of course, Amanda crashed and burned,um, after a six figure sales month.
(31:46):
And, um, what I realizedI had this idea, right.
And I was like, well, what if I couldjust create an automated salesperson?
Right, like, what would it look likeif I just took these 15 years of sales
experience where I know how to pickup the phone where I know how to have
a conversation where I know how totalk to someone in the DMS qualify
them and get them booked on a call.
(32:07):
I know all this stuff like the back ofmy hand because I've done so much of it.
But what if I could do that?
Right.
And somehow automate most of it, becauseone of the things that I started to
realize in teaching a lot of my clientsales is that most people just don't
do enough to get the sale, right?
So they'll get an email fromsomebody, a bunch of automated emails,
but you should be calling them.
(32:27):
You should be texting them, right?
You should be doing a lot morethan just sending a generic email
campaign that everybody has.
Right?
So that's what I would do.
I would send a DM, right?
I would make a phone call.
I would do a text, but Istarted running into a problem.
And the problem is if you get 300leads in a day, you're not about to
bang out 300 phone calls the next day.
So I started running into a capacityagain, story of my life, so I had
(32:54):
been in this process where I wastrying to figure out how to create
this automated salesperson, right?
Where I was like, here's all themanual stuff that I know how to do in
sales that a good salesperson would.
So worth their salt should be doing to geta deal across the table, which most people
don't in the online marketing space.
But I'm going to figure out a wayto automate as much of this as I
(33:14):
can and make it sound like a person.
Now, it was easier for me to make itsound like a person because I've done
so many sales calls for a decade.
So I want to be clear.
Do not skip that part of business.
I see so many people skippingthat and then when they try to
automate and scale, it doesn't work.
You don't have enough data.
I had a decade of data to make this work.
(33:36):
So, um, I'd kind of tried tofigure this out on my own.
And then a year ago, I met my nowpartner who I'm with in Mexico
through one of those 400 JV calls.
Right, and we started off as, youknow, work colleagues and it turned
into friends, then it turned into morebecause, well, that's a whole other story.
Right?
But 1 of the things thatI had said to him, right?
(33:59):
Was like, I'm really trying to build,like, this automated salesperson
and nobody seems to understand whatthe hell I'm trying to do because.
Online marketers don't knowsales and I come from a sales
background for crying out loud.
I came from finance, very traditionalsales background, and he did exactly what
I was trying to do because he used tobuild out CRMs as a software engineer.
(34:21):
So I was like, um, okay, well,there needs to be emails.
And so it was acollaborative effort, right?
Where he's like, all right, well, here arethe kinds of emails that work really well.
They are me, you know, 10xingthe businesses of people with
100, 000 people on an email list.
Here's what works really well.
Let's create that.
Then I was like, okay, but wegot to add in a text message, or
we have to add in some sort of avoicemail or something like that.
(34:43):
And the beauty is that now in 2023,we have tools to automate all of that.
So the robots are doing thework, but people think it's you.
So if I get 300 leads in one day overthe course of the next week, they're
going to get an email campaign.
They will get a textmessage within two hours.
They will get a voicemaildrop to call us back.
(35:05):
We can now do campaigns with text messagesand voicemail drops to, for example, get
people, um, A conversion event, uh, ourcurrent effortless sales engine program,
which is where we teach all of thesethings got filled up because of all the
automations where people maybe found uson YouTube four months ago and have been
going through all these automations.
Then they saw us with allthese JVs and then they were
(35:28):
like, here's my credit card.
Michael Whitehouse (35:29):
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And, and, well, like one thing youmentioned there sort of almost in
passing, um, is one of the thingsI really believe is integrity.
The fact that you use the systemto sell the system that you're,
you're, you know, nowadays peopleDM me and say, I'm going to teach
you an amazing Facebook ad method.
Amanda Abella (35:47):
We eat our own dog food around here.
Huh?
That's what we call it.
We call it eating our own dog food.
Yes.
Yep.
Around here.
Yeah.
Michael Whitehouse (35:54):
Yep.
Yep.
The best ones is the people who DM meto tell me that they have an amazing
methods you never need to DM again.
Like, yeah, can't work that well.
Amanda Abella (36:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Can't work that well.
But you know, this current, I mean,to give you an idea of how effective
this system is behind the scenes,we're about to sell this thing out.
And in the last three months, I moved toanother country was traveling because we
didn't know where we were going to live.
Then we had to find a house.
Then we find a house.
Then we have to renovate the house.
We've barely been able to work.
In the last three months and this thing,I've barely been on social media and
(36:27):
definitely not in a strategic way.
And this thing is still about to sell out.
And that's because of the JB partners.
Like I mentioned, we're sendingtraffic our way and we plan that
ahead of time and the YouTube.
So being very strategic with searchengine optimization and things like that
and all the automations on the backend.
Wow.
Michael Whitehouse (36:45):
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
The, the army of robotsare marching along for you.
Amanda Abella (36:49):
Yeah, and that's the goal, right?
Um, a lot of people talk aboutease and flow in business and, you
know, just being able to relax.
Well, you, it doesn't mean you got tobuild the thing first and put the work
up front and it's hard and it sucks.
I mean, there were some momentswhere we were up until, I don't know.
14, 15, 16 hours trying to figure thisthing out with all the tech issues or just
(37:09):
me experimenting with 400 calls, right?
So I did all the experimenting.
So our clients wouldn't have to, tofind what works and what doesn't.
We have the data to prove thatthis business, we're eating our
own dog food has doubled monthover month in the last quarter.
And we've only been able to workat 10 percent capacity while
we moved to another country.
Michael Whitehouse (37:30):
That is a pretty good, uh, pretty good case study.
Amanda Abella (37:34):
Yeah.
And, you know, now we're ready tostart sharing that stuff on social
because now is when we have the time.
Yep.
We don't have to rewire a whole house now.
It's all good.
We can get back to social media.
Michael Whitehouse (37:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What else?
I liked, um, one thing youmentioned about talking about
the copy, uh, was Was a personalstories that, yeah, a lot of copy.
Um, and I, I never know exactly whatI figure on exactly what is, but it's
like the, the, the sales story, ifyou know what I mean, it happened to
someone at some time, but it could beanyone, but it's really no one, you
(38:10):
know, where they say, you know, when Iwas younger, this challenge happened.
And then I overcame the challengewith this amazing solution.
And now you should come to my program.
Like younger, like.
Last week, last month,last year, last century?
I don't know.
As opposed to when I see a storythat says, Last Tuesday, I was
out with my dog, and, like, that'ssomething I try to do on my emails.
(38:33):
Is I'll be like, here's a picture ofmy dog and this thing happened with
the dog and people like, oh my God,he's a real person with a real dog.
Look at that.
Amanda Abella (38:40):
Yeah, a real person with a real dog, like literally one
of our biggest irritations this year.
And again, we've tested this with overhere's we go with the data and eating our
own dog food tested over 100, 000 emails.
This year alone.
And that was the common issue iseverybody sounds like everybody else.
And before we started recording,you had mentioned that, um,
what was it that you said?
(39:01):
You'd mentioned that being authenticis, um, it's like the most valuable
thing people can do, but it'snot an easy, what was it that
you said about being authentic?
Michael Whitehouse (39:10):
Yeah.
So, so it was really good.
Yeah.
Cause you were talking about howmarketers have ruined everything.
They ruined SEO and then theyruined blogging and they ruined,
and, and that's why authenticityis becoming more and more powerful.
Cause as you have more and more toolsto help you find, especially things
like Tik TOK, there, there's no, youcan't game the Tik TOK algorithm cause
it's AI based and it keeps moving.
So it's built around.
(39:31):
If you're authentically sharing amessage, it will find your audience.
Um, and so more and more peopleare sniffing through all the,
all the BS and all the copyand all the, the, the formulas.
And once they see the same formulafor the third time, it's like if they
went to, you know, if they went toone Burger King and didn't like it.
And they see a second Burger King, they'relike, no, I don't like Burger King.
(39:53):
They, they read the same type of copy.
They're like, Oh, I'veseen this kind of copy.
I don't like that.
And so, but if you're you, there's onlyone of you that ever seen you before.
And then back, Oh, this is new.
This is interesting.
Amanda Abella (40:04):
It's interesting that you bring that up because
I'm like hacking Instagram rightnow, because this is my, my fun.
I used to be a blogger.
Now I get to do this again, era.
And it's interesting that you say thatbecause I was doing some research, right?
I'm like, Hey, what's performingwell on Instagram reels.
What's working, what'strending that just studying.
Right.
And I saw like in threedifferent instances, right?
(40:28):
So with three different kindsof reels, I saw the same exact
thing, seven or eight times fromseven or eight different people.
Where were they performing?
I mean, it seems that theywere performing, right?
Because that's something that wastrending and it was really valuable
content, but I would go to the caption.
(40:49):
Like, this caption is literally exactlylike the caption I just read from this
other person, like, five minutes ago.
Michael Whitehouse (40:58):
Yep.
Yeah.
And then it fails to, well, so that, thatthing, that's part of why people do it.
Like if it's working, if, if a platformrewards inauthenticity, which is,
that's why I've, I've leaned towardsa tick tock over Instagram because
Instagram rewards, um, you know,paying the praying to the Zuckerberg
God and tick tock rewards, unique,nothing uniqueness and authenticity.
Amanda Abella (41:23):
Yeah, I mean I haven't like so i've been on instagram for
a while So i'm testing that one.
I seem to have a rhythm going onyoutube Right, and then now, you know
tiktok will be the next foray Yeah,but to your point like literally
this week while i'm creating themarketing calendar for the next month.
I ran into that very problem on instagram
Michael Whitehouse (41:43):
Interesting, but I think especially with emails.
Um, you know if when I open my my emailbox I mean I end up on all kinds of
people's lists because I meet all kindsof people and I'm like, yeah, sure.
I'll get a new list.
Let's see what you're up to.
And then I discovered their listis nothing but generic, bland,
sanitized marketing content.
(42:03):
And you know, they have no opinions.
They have no story.
I don't learn anything about them.
Um, I I've encountered partners whoyou could get on this for six months
and learn nothing about them becauseall they did was promote partners.
Because they're entirely in thisreciprocity like other people
promoted them and they promoteout so there was no value content.
It was just by this, by this,by this, by this, by this.
Amanda Abella (42:23):
And again, that goes back to that lack of creativity.
So I'll give a little behindthe scenes if you're up for it.
Sure.
Of the conversation we had before we evengot here because of course you're going to
be one of our referral partners in 2024.
We already talked about that, but whatdid I say before we started recording?
I said, Hey, and this is a verysimple thing people can do and
they do not do, but I learned thisback from my blogging media days.
(42:46):
I was like, Hey, is it okay if Irecord this locally on my end and I can
turn this into a bunch of short formvideos and we'll promote it for you.
I'll send you the folder.
You can do whatever you wantwith the short form videos.
I'm promoting you to my peoplewithout necessarily, you know,
burning through my email list.
Yep.
Michael Whitehouse (43:05):
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing isit doesn't burn your list.
You can provide value.
I promote I promote, uh, anaverage of seven partners a day.
So there are, I send daily emails andin almost every one of them, there's
at least seven links you could clickon that would go to some kind of opt
in page, sales page, registration page.
Amanda Abella (43:24):
That's another way you can do it.
Right.
And if that works for you, cool, becausethere's a lot of email marketers out
here who will say, don't do that.
Don't send seven links in an email.
And I'm like, do you whateverexperiment testing, whatever works
for you is what works for you.
Michael Whitehouse (43:37):
The crazy thing is that.
One offer is a pitch,seven offers is a catalog.
So if I have seven offers there, you know,if I come to you and I say, Hey, I've
got a shirt, do you want to buy a shirt?
You're like, why areyou selling me a shirt?
But if I put a thousand shirts ina building and I put a sign on the
front of the building, you walkin and say, show me your shirts.
Amanda Abella (43:56):
Oh, that's really smart.
That's very creative.
I like that.
Michael Whitehouse (44:00):
I learned it from Ellen Finkelstein.
So it's not original, but Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Nothing's original.
Everything's learned from someone else.
Um, but yeah, that's what I discovered.
And so she teaches that method.
And when I started doing it,I called the resource letter.
I can't remember if she calls itthat or something else, but when I
started doing that, um, I'd send outan email and like, Hey, let's try it.
I'm promoting seven partners at once.
(44:20):
And I got emails back saying, thankyou for providing all this value.
And I'm thinking theseare all affiliate links.
I'm not doing anything generous here.
I'm promoting seven partners.
You know, they're seeing it as thisis on seven things that might interest
me, seven things that might benefit me.
And also it's because it's, it's value.
(44:42):
If you send that generic email,that's, uh, that's, you know,
You know, George had a problem.
George doesn't exist, of course.
George had a problem, and that problem wasreally bad, but he used our system, and
now he doesn't have the problem anymore.
Amanda Abella (44:55):
Tom makes six figures your first year.
Okay, well, that's overdone.
Michael Whitehouse (44:58):
Like, there's no value in that.
That's completely overdone.
Yeah, that's, even when I proposesomething directly, I'll share a story.
I'll be like, you know, um, lastTuesday, I was talking to Amanda,
and she was telling me about herprogram, and what I liked about it
was, And then we talked in the podcast.
There's a link to the podcast.
And now there's a masterclasscoming up next week.
And you should check it out.
(45:19):
So it feels like you under
Amanda Abella (45:21):
you understand how to people though.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
People who understand how topeople know how to do this.
They think of those little details inorder to maintain the relationship,
not in a way you're trying totake from me by no means, right.
Or exploit me or anything.
Cause I know people are afraid of that.
It's just very simple, basic things.
The same way that I was like,Hey, my team and I can turn
(45:43):
this into short form videos.
You can use it on your social media.
Here you go.
Have fun.
Right.
But it's these little things thatpeople do not think about because
they do not know how to people.
Yep.
Michael Whitehouse (45:55):
Yeah, that was the first thing I learned of the first thing,
but the thing that changed everythingwith email was a shift from I'm emailing a
market to I'm emailing a list of friends.
And the fact that I built my listthrough networking, like most of
those people I'd done one to ones withwho opted in that also affect like,
I don't want to burn these people.
I've met them.
Like these are real people.
(46:16):
So I thought, okay, I'm sendingan email to hundreds of people.
I know it's not an audience.
It's a community.
It's like, I'm sending it out tohundreds or thousands of my friends.
How am I going to talk to them?
Well, I'm not going tosend them generic content.
I'm not going to cut and paste.
I'd never use swipe copybecause it feels plagiarism.
If I copy your text and put myname under it, that's plagiarism.
(46:39):
Right?
Like it's inauthentic.
And if it's a launch and sevenother people do the same thing,
now we all look like schmucks.
Um, but even if it's by itself, youstill like, that's not what you say.
Is that what you sound like?
So now they're thinking that's my writing.
And that's how I'm talking to them.
And I'm like, that's not my writing.
Now, what I will do is that what I calla JV guest letter, I will sometimes
(47:00):
take, I will quote it and I'll, I'll puttheir headshot next to it and their copy.
And I'll say, you know, letme share with you what, what
Amanda's doing in her own words.
And then there's four paragraphsnext to your headshot.
And then afterwards I'd be like, andnow you'll see why I'm so excited
about sharing this, go check it out.
So
Amanda Abella (47:18):
yeah, see, but that's, that makes sense.
That's creative.
There's some sort of personal story.
Most people are copying pasting.
Granted, I will call myself out.
I did it in the beginning of 2023,but I was also experimenting.
Remember I had no data, right?
So I was like, let me experiment.
So maybe it works.
Right.
I was like, I have no data, soI'm going to test this and see
what works and what doesn't.
And after sending thosehundred thousand emails, now
(47:40):
we have some pretty solid data.
That we can teach to our clientsbased on us experimenting and being
the guinea pig and eating our own dogfood as we like to say around here.
But, um, to your point, yes, thosepersonal stories are everything.
I mean, 1 of the reasons we're startinganother brand called entrepreneur expat is
because when I started sharing that I hadmoved to Mexico, I haven't even shared the
(48:03):
full on house renovation yet, but I will,um, I will because it's a story, right?
It's a story and I can, and I can turnthat life story into marketing and that's
a whole other skill that requires a lotof creativity and every, I feel like
everything that we've talked about inthis podcast episode are just skills and
it's skills that people need to practice.
(48:24):
It's skills that peopleneed to invest in learning.
It's skills people need toexperiment with and they just,
they just got to put in the reps.
Michael Whitehouse (48:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so I think we've been talkingfor like three and a half hours.
Uh, so feels like it.
We should probably wrapup but but in a good way.
Um, we can certainly talk longer.
But as we record this, it's Halloweenand my daughter wants to go trick
or treating as people listen to it.
It's not Halloween.
So they'll be all confused.
Amanda Abella (48:47):
But it's the mortals here.
They don't do Halloween.
They do the other.
Well, they kind of sortof do Halloween in Mexico.
But the other was more thoseis more of a thing here.
Michael Whitehouse (48:54):
Okay, go to Mexico someday for it.
Anyway, but yeah.
No time for that now.
Um, so you said, so I believe that youhave a link, which is definitely in the
description, although I don't have it inmy hands at this second, but it will be
by the time someone's listening to this.
Amanda Abella (49:09):
And it will be a referral partner link, so
you can track all the data.
Michael Whitehouse (49:14):
So what will people get if they go to that
link down in the description?
Amanda Abella (49:17):
So, you're going to get my free guide that explains the 8
steps that I use to not just find a 100referral partners, but also manage them
on the back end, which has led to dayswhere we get up to 300 leads in a day.
And it's a big part of the reason whythis business is doubled month over month,
even while we've been barely able to work.
(49:39):
While we're in the middle of a houserenovation, so it's the 8 step process.
I did the 400 horrible calls.
So you don't have to andgathered all the data for you.
So you don't have to gothrough the torture that I did.
Michael Whitehouse (49:51):
That's awesome.
And that's the freebie you're offering.
Amanda Abella (49:54):
That's the freebie I'm offering, yes.
Michael Whitehouse (49:56):
Your program must be amazing.
I assume it's taking that to the nextlevel and going through it with people.
Amanda Abella (50:02):
Yeah, actually, the woman who built Deepak Chopra's
sales team got her hands on it.
And she's like, if people followed thisguide, they would never have a lead
flow problem ever in their business.
Michael Whitehouse (50:12):
Awesome.
Well, so definitely, and I'll probablybe sharing that out to my list as
well because that seems like somethingmy community might be interested in.
So
Amanda Abella (50:20):
yeah, you do a lot of JVs.
They might want it.
Michael Whitehouse (50:23):
So that's, that is awesome.
So thank you very much to go.
So you listeners go look in the, thedescription down below or wherever it is
on whatever platform you're watching on.
And if you're somehow watching this in aplatform that doesn't have it, then just.
comment or email me andI'll make sure you get it.
So thank you so muchfor being on the show.
(50:43):
Any final comments?
Amanda Abella (50:46):
Just have fun with it.
I think people just take themselvestoo damn seriously and then that's
where you have the lit lack ofcreativity and the lack of people
and just like have some freaking fun.
It's not that serious.
Michael Whitehouse (50:57):
Have fun.
That is a, if it's not fun, why do it?
Exactly.
Well, thanks for being on.
This has been fun.
Amanda Abella (51:04):
It definitely has.
I look forward to your event, uh,in December and also where this
partnership goes and having youon my podcast for the part too.
Oh,
Michael Whitehouse (51:13):
I love being on podcasts.
That way I can talk a lot.
Exactly.
I'll see you there.
for joining us for the guywho knows a guy podcast.
I'm Michael Whitehouse, the guywho knows the guy, and I hope
you'll join us in December for the12th and the 14th for JV Connect.
Go to guy who knows a guy.
For more details now, if it's afterDecember 2023 and you're listening to
(51:33):
this, it's okay, because we're goingto be doing this event every quarter
to go to guy knows a guy dot com.
See what's new.
See what's happening.
And of course, check the shownotes, learn about our guests and
how you get in touch with them.
Check out our next episode formore great training, information
and networking tips from MichaelWhitehouse, the guy who knows a guy.
Welcome back to the guy who knows a guy podcast.
We're so excited to be back with you.
And this season we are countingdown to J V connect the first of its
kind, December 12th to 14th, 2023.
This is going to be an incrediblededicated networking event, and you
are going to want to be part of it.
And this podcast here to helpprepare you to get the most
out of this incredible event.
(00:21):
I'm Michael Whitehouse,the guy who knows a guy.
And over the next few weeks, you're goingto get to hear from some of the best
people in the industry about networking.
As well as some solo training from me.
So be sure to join us on December12th to 14th for JB Connect.
And now, let's get to the interview.
Welcome once again to theguy who knows a guy podcast.
I, as always, I'm your host, MichaelWhitehouse, the guy who knows a guy.
(00:44):
And our guest today is Amanda Abea.
Amanda is an award winning contentcreator, keynote speaker and business
coach who specializes in helpingbusiness owners activate their
persuasion prowess so they can make moremoney and live a more affluent life.
Her clients go from hating salesand marketing to achieving 90.
(01:04):
Is that right?
That's not a typo.
It's 90%.
Amanda Abella (01:06):
It's 90%.
Yes.
Michael Whitehouse (01:08):
Wow.
90 percent close rates and closingmultiple five figure deals.
Her work has been featured inForbes, Huffington Post, Business
Insider, Univision, and many more.
Prior to teaching marketing andsales, Amanda spent a decade as a
financial writer and wrote contentfor companies like Wells Fargo,
Discover, Credit Karma, Santander.
It's not Sant Sant Santanday.
(01:28):
I think depends on what country you're in.
Okay, Santander, you know which bankI'm talking about the red one and more.
She's also partnered with companieslike Capital One and TransUnion
and financial education campaigns.
So welcome to the show.
Thank you for giving me a bio that gaveus something to talk about already.
And how are you doing today?
Amanda Abella (01:46):
I'm doing super well.
I mean, I was like, Oh dang, I gotto add to the bio, which is now, you
know, I'm living in Mexico, whichI found the Santander thing funny.
Cause that's literally the bank I have togo to, to withdraw cash with the lowest,
um, fee for American dollar to pay.
So, so I was like, Oh yeah, thatbank, I used to write for them and
I literally go there every week.
Michael Whitehouse (02:08):
There you go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I work with a credit union that I've.
I've done some work for them.
Um, not the level you have, butI've done some networking coaching
for them and speaking, uh, andlike, I know most of their staff.
So I figure I'll bank withthe people who I know everyone
from the manager up to the CEO.
That seems like the, the way anetworker should be doing is banking.
Amanda Abella (02:29):
Yeah, and actually in that 1st business where I was
working with a lot of banks, it wasmostly networking that got me those
deals because none of those bankswere going to go through a funnel.
You know, now it's a little bit differentbecause I have digital programs.
Um, and there was a reasonfor that because that business
model was more scalable.
Whereas my 1st business was not,but in my 1st business, when I was
(02:49):
doing content marketing for financialcompanies, or I would get hired as a
Spokesperson for campaigns like fortrans union, which you could find
the videos on YouTube somewhere.
Um, then most of that waslike, who do you know?
Networking.
There was a big event.
We would go to every year for moneyand media and I book myself out
for a year, but a lot of it wasnetworking cold pitching good old
(03:13):
fashioned sales and relationships.
Michael Whitehouse (03:17):
Yep.
So, so you didn't startwith a network, right?
You didn't like go to Harvardand meet everyone you know,
and that, that puts you in.
Amanda Abella (03:22):
No, I went to like some tiny Catholic school in Southwest Florida.
No one's ever heard of.
There were 80 peoplein my graduating class.
Michael Whitehouse (03:30):
Wow.
So let's start from there.
How did you go from tiny school tonetworking your way to jobs with
Wells Fargo and Discover and CreditKarma and the one I can't pronounce?
Amanda Abella (03:41):
Yeah, so funny story.
I graduated in 2010 andcouldn't find a job.
So I hear a lot of the people complainingnow about all the economic stuff
going on in the United States, verydifferent hearing it when you're living
in another country, but I digress.
But I'm hearing all those stories.
I'm like, dang, this soundslike 2008 2009 2010 all over
(04:03):
again, different circumstances,but people still struggling.
Um, and I, I was one of those,like, I went six months without
being able to find a job.
I had a literature degree.
I'd gone to like this.
I, I grew up Catholic, so I gotbasically sent to a Catholic school.
Um, and it was a liberal arts degree,which I now realize gave me the
foundation to do the things that I do now.
(04:23):
Mm-Hmm.
But back then, right, I was like,what the hell am I supposed to do
with this ? Um, so I couldn't finda job, but what I essentially did is
I Googled how to make money writing.
That's literally how this all started.
It started with a Google search how tomake money writing in the summer of 2010.
(04:46):
And it was literally justclawing my way and like, 12 hours
reading everything on Google.
I could get my hands on and I was justso determined to make something work
that, you know, 1 thing led to another.
I experimented for a few years,eventually really nailed down on the
financial niche because I was interested.
In money because I sucked at it.
(05:06):
Um, and I figured, well, if I get paid tolearn about it, that sounds pretty smart.
So why don't I just go do that?
Um, and none of us knew at the time thatthe financial blogging and the financial
writing niche was going to like take off.
So here's something interesting.
Whenever financial issues start happeningin the United States, people become
(05:27):
a lot more interested in finance.
So it was just kind ofa good timing thing.
That now I can see opportunity, butback then I had no idea how to do that.
I just got lucky, I guess.
Um, and you know, it was just like oneand I started making friends on Twitter.
Twitter was like the place to be if youwere a financial blogger back in the day.
(05:48):
And then, you know, we all startedgetting together, putting on
networking events because geekingout over money and blogging about it.
And then that turned into a massiveconference that turned into, um,
not that I put on, but that thecommunity put on that turned into
a lot of us who had started early.
Literally banks were our clients.
(06:09):
I mean, it was to the point where theywould like, throw parties for us once a
year and then that we would like, minglewith all the financial companies and
then they needed content because peoplewere searching for financial information.
And then that's how I kind of alsostarted learning about marketing was.
By doing it.
And what I didn't realize wasthat I was doing sales, right?
(06:30):
So I was like pitching ideas.
I was meeting people at events.
I was going to every event.
I could get my handson every Twitter chat.
Do you remember Twitter chats?
Are they even still a thing?
Right?
Twitter chats.
Back in the day and finance werelike, you know, you would follow it.
It was like a certain time you would geton Twitter and it was a certain topic and
then everyone would follow the hashtag andthen you would be able to follow the chat.
(06:51):
Yeah, I'm dating myself right now.
Right.
So we would do like these Twitter chats,and I would make sure to get on every
Twitter chat I could get my hands on.
Back in the day and I madea lot of friends, um, many
of which are still friends.
I just interviewed one of them on mypodcast and we've known each other
for 10 years since our finance days.
Um, and that's how Ibuilt my first business.
(07:13):
It was, you know, learning contentmarketing from the ground up.
It was sales and not knowing that Iwas selling and it was networking.
Michael Whitehouse (07:21):
Yeah.
And I think there's a coupleof things I hear in that.
The first is you, you knewwhat you were trying to do.
So you didn't say, Oh, there's no jobs.
I'll just go on monster and deed againand send out some more applications.
Amanda Abella (07:32):
Oh, I tried that, you know, and I did eventually get jobs
because I got the typical immigrantto America story, you know, you go to
school and you go get a steady job.
I didn't know that I couldlike make a whole business.
Michael Whitehouse (07:44):
Yep.
Um, but yeah, obviously that didn'tget you where you were going, but, but
you know, you're focused on, I want to.
Right.
I want to do finance and you weren'tthinking about, okay, where can I
make a million dollars or where canI, it's just, I want to do this thing.
You networked, you weren'ttrying to sell them.
You weren't trying toget something from them.
You're just, I'm into finance writing.
You're into finance, right?
(08:05):
And let's hang out and talkabout finance and writing.
Amanda Abella (08:07):
And pretty much that's exactly what it was.
Michael Whitehouse (08:09):
Yep.
And that's, and that, that'sreally powerful networking.
Cause you're not, you know, that'swhere networking goes wrong.
If people come in, they're like,buy my thing, promote my thing,
buy my thing, promote my thing.
Instead of we have this andthat in common, you know, the
higher levels of networking,which is often those masterminds.
That's the, they're not selling to eachother and asking each other to promote.
They're sharing ideas.
They're sharing experience and knowledge.
(08:31):
And that's what you were doing.
Um, and, and obviously that led to alot more and a lot more success, but I
think that's a great story for anyonelistening saying, you know, well, how
can I network if I'm not starting withthe right, the right thing now, one
of the dimensions, you know, Twitterchats, which is no longer a thing.
Um, so that's one of the challenges,the, the Internet shifting.
(08:51):
So the places wherethe connections happen.
aren't the same.
Um, for, for someone up and coming, do youhave an idea of where, where they might be
able to find connections and opportunity?
Amanda Abella (09:02):
Well, I'd say for up and coming, it's the same, right?
It's social media and it's content.
It's just the way in which we're usingsocial media and content has changed
dramatically since, you know, I'mtalking, I think, seven, eight years ago.
Yeah.
But the concepts are still the same.
Um, in fact, I would venture to say it'sprobably easier now in a lot of ways,
(09:22):
because we have a lot of tools now thatcan help us that we didn't have back then.
Um, my partner and I are in the process.
We're starting a 2nd brandcalled entrepreneur expat.
Um, because we are expats and there'sbeen a lot of interest for my community
on being an expat, but we're smartbusiness people and we're like, oh, okay.
Well, only a smallportion of our community.
(09:44):
Current community is into that.
We're going to make awhole separate brand.
For them, that's what we're going to do.
Um, so we're in the process of startingthe second one and we were both noting
because he's been in digital marketingas long as I have, and we were both
noting like how much easier it is nowin a lot of ways because you have tools
that can tell you what keywords to use.
(10:06):
There's tons of experts that you canfollow on Instagram that tell you how
to put together a good performing reel.
To get attention.
None of that stuff existed backthen because it was like the wild,
wild West and it was a new thing andno one knew what they were doing.
Yes.
Michael Whitehouse (10:20):
Yep.
Yeah.
And as a, as a thing about it, likeyou were saying, you're finding
these, these interest chats.
I feel like some of it now is in thecomments of different people's posts.
So if you find people or theinfluencers in the space, you engage
in the comments and reply to people'scomments in the comments and there's no
Twitter chats anymore, but there are.
Posts with comment threads whereyou can connect people there.
(10:44):
Uh, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebookor, uh, TikTok's not quite as good
with 80 characters, but LinkedInand Facebook are pretty good for
those, those kinds of exchanges.
Amanda Abella (10:54):
Yeah, I would, I would absolutely agree.
I mean, a lot of the networking I'vedone, you know, during the pandemic and
things like that, it was interesting.
I noticed it was like all on Facebook.
It was all in Facebook groups.
It was all in the Facebook DMs.
Um, even now, to a certaindegree, it is Facebook.
Now that I'm getting back on mycontent game because I just am able to
(11:14):
breathe after this house renovation,um, craziness going on over here.
Um, but I'm able to get back intoit and I'm focusing really on video.
So, you know, Facebook, Instagram.
YouTube and TikTok is my main focusright now while we're doing video.
And it's to your point now, you know,what used to be a Twitter chat is
(11:36):
now going on in comment sections.
Michael Whitehouse (11:39):
Yeah, that's, that's a key thing.
And of course you need to, youknow, sort of step over the muddy
puddles of the social media.
Um, because, you know, there's, it'slike if you're at a rowdy bar, you know,
having a good conversation over here andsomeone has a fist fight over there and
someone's throwing a chair over there, butif you just duck and the chair goes over.
Amanda Abella (11:58):
That's a really great way of putting it.
I've never heard anyone describe itthat way, but it's very accurate.
Michael Whitehouse (12:02):
Yep.
Um, yeah, something else I wantedto ask you about in the, in the
notes you sent ahead of time.
Um, when I asked you what's your bestnetworking tip, you said learn sales
and communication skills because youtalked about doing 400 calls in 2022
and 250 of them needed that advice.
Amanda Abella (12:18):
Yeah, so one of the things that I decided to do, um, you
know, after the first business, I movedinto the second business and the second
business, I started teaching people,you know, how I basically how I built
the first one, because they were asking.
So I'm like, great, I'm going to startteaching marketing and, and sales.
And I started becoming known as.
Teaching actual salesand communication skills.
(12:39):
So a lot of people teach onlinemarketing and it's great, but
marketers don't know how to sell.
Um, they don't know how to have thatpeople conversation part of things,
which a lot of people are strugglingwith now because they're dealing
with more challenges in the economy.
Or maybe a more jaded marketplaceor buyers in general are feeling
more apprehensive because they'rehearing all the world news and
(13:01):
they're realizing, oh, snap.
I don't know how to sell.
I don't know how to have aconversation with another human being.
So, I became known for helping people withthat and our clients get insane results,
even just in the last group that we ranof that sales training, they generated an
extra 6 figures in sales in a few weeks.
And it was, and it was fromvery simple things, right?
Like learning how to ask the rightquestions in a sales conversation.
(13:25):
Um, so that business started blowingup like in 2021 and I kind of
crashed and burned and realized thatI needed to build more leverage.
So I had been networking and doingthe one on one stuff for a long time.
And I realized that it was time toscale and kind of transition out of
that, um, you know, number one tohave a more sustainable business.
(13:46):
I'd gone through a lot of likefamily health crisis and issues and
life, you know, life is life things.
So I was like, great.
I need to build in more sustainability.
I'm going to have to start moving toward,you know, selling to groups or having
other people promote for me or usingsocial media more strategically instead
of these one on one conversations,but there's a transition period.
(14:06):
That occurs when you'regoing through that.
And my transition period was I want tobuild a network of referral partners.
I want to build a network of peoplewho that I can rely on to promote
my business to their people.
And then it's going tobring business over my way.
So, I have these advocates basically,um, and the reason I wanted to do that
(14:26):
is number 1, you could have a bunch ofpeople promoting you at the same time.
Uh, number 2.
You, they can promote you over andover and over again throughout time.
Number three, I don't haveto pay money in Facebook ads.
Number four, those guys can turn intoclients based on the conversations.
So there were lots of benefits to this.
The problem was I had to find them.
(14:52):
Um, and, uh, Really funny story.
Um, I was going througha challenging time.
I went to dinner with a friend and, um,he had mentioned he runs like an eight
figure publishing company and he mentionedto me, hey, anything that you need,
just shoot me a text and I'll help you.
Networking.
Right.
Like you meet people likethat who want to help you.
So I had been approached with thisidea of doing like a joint venture with
(15:16):
somebody from back from my finance days.
Like, Hey, if you promote thisand we do this, I'll give you
a cut and we can do vice versa.
So I sent to this friend of mine,a text message, the new friend.
And I was like, Hey, have you heard oflike referral partners or joint ventures?
Like, I'm not sure how to do this.
I don't know how to put this together.
And he's like, Oh, not onlydo I know how to do that.
I built a 20 million company.
(15:38):
Just based on referral partners.
Here's my course, right?
And you just gave it to me for free.
Out of, like, the goodness and generosityof his heart in that course, right?
He basically said, hey, you know, I wasdoing, like, 100 meetings a week now.
I was like, okay, so I sort of cold.
It's like, if you've got a 20Milliondollar company, I'm just going to go
(15:58):
all in and see what this is about.
Like, I'm a big experimenter.
I wasn't getting to 100 calls a week.
Maybe I was getting to about 50 a week.
Um, and I, and I would find, yes,um, referral partner calls, right?
So basically getting to know themand being like, hey, I think we
could make good referral partners.
I had no freaking idea what I wasdoing, but I did know how to at least
(16:18):
have a conversation with people.
And I realized that if otherpeople really had no idea.
What they were doing becauseI would go into these calls.
I mean, I was doing up to 10 a day and Iwould go into these calls and I would ask
people like, Hey, you know, I think wecan make really great referral partners.
Here's what I do in my business.
You know, I think this ishow we can collaborate.
Tell me what you've got goingon in your business and they
(16:40):
couldn't answer the damn question.
Yep.
And I was like, how do people make money?
They have no idea how to talk to people.
They don't know how to talkabout their businesses.
They don't know how totalk about what they do.
They don't know how to talkabout their client results.
They don't know how to talk abouthow they collaborate with others.
They literally have no idea.
So in realizing that, I ended updoing 400 calls, but that one of those
(17:05):
calls led to a group of joint venturepartners, and that led to another
group, and that led to another group.
I just had to go throughlike 200 to find them first.
Um, but I got a lot of data and whatI ended up realizing, um, again, to
your point is that most people do notknow how to have conversations with
other human beings about what they dofor a living or what they do for work
(17:26):
or what makes them stand out or howthey collaborate with other people.
And I was really flabbergasted becauseI was like, how do you all make money?
I don't understand.
Like, I don't understand likehow you make, like you must
make money by accident because.
Like, I'm trying to have a conversationand you can't so what ended up
happening was in that process.
(17:48):
I ended up creating, like, Istarted kind of figuring out my own
little process for finding referralpartners and things like that.
And I put that into an 8 stepguide, everything from finding them.
To how do we do this in a more leveragedway other than DMing people on LinkedIn.
To here's how you have that conversation.
Here is sentence one.
Here is sentence two.
(18:09):
Here is sentence three.
I mean, I broke it down to that degree.
And then here's whatyou do after the call.
Because that was another thing.
They sucked at the follow up after.
So I ended up putting everythinginto a guide, which everybody
listening can get for free.
Um, and I started experimentingand tweaking the guide.
And what I ended up, I eventuallydid end up finding the right people.
(18:29):
I built a network of about 100 referralpartners, uh, has literally kept my
business doubling, uh, between thatand the automations we've built while
I've been in the process of moving toanother country and renovating a house,
maybe working at 10 percent capacity.
The business has kept going and it's beenbecause of that referral partner process.
And also a lot of the marketingand sales automations.
(18:51):
We spent a couple of yearsbuilding on the back end.
Thank you.
But, you know, once you finally nailit, which my hope with that guide
is that people avoid the painfulconversations I needed to have first
before I found my people, beforeI found the referral partners.
Um, that's my hope is that you avoid allof that and that you actually get results.
(19:14):
But once you nail it, I mean, one ofour partners sent us 300 leads in a day.
Michael Whitehouse (19:18):
Wow.
So, yeah.
So, uh, you said you have, you haveover a hundred partners and one
thing, when people get into the jv,the joint venture space, they often
hear a lot about reciprocation.
You know, you Mm-Hmm, , I'llpromote you if you promote me.
And, um, I assume you're notpromoting back a hundred partners.
Amanda Abella (19:36):
Yeah.
So it's interesting that you bring thatup because I had no idea what I was doing.
I went, number one, I used salesbrain, and number two, I was
like, all right, I guess 2023 isgonna be the data collection year.
Because I guess because I have asales background, I just approach
everything with sales statistics, right?
So I'd already done like 200calls and most of them sucked.
(19:56):
So I just assumed going into these groupsthat it was going to be the same thing.
So what I ended up doing was Ibooked like 50 calls in two days.
Assuming half of them were going to suck.
Um, and that's actually not what happenedbecause once you get into the higher
level, I was literally shocked within twoweeks, I got booked out for like a year,
(20:18):
but I was not expecting that to happen.
So 2023 was like definitely theexperimentation year of what
works and what doesn't, whichwe've now put into that guide.
Hey, this leads to a lot of leads,but maybe not enough sales or this
leads to less leads, but more sales.
Now I have that data because I've promotedso many people and I've also, and they've
(20:38):
also promoted for me, or I know, hey,this type of referral partnership works.
This one does not.
Now I have the data.
Right.
So going into 2024, we're justgoing to be more scalable about it.
We're literally just making thecalendar of like, all right, this works.
Right.
And instead of maybe doing 1 webinara month for a referral partner or 1 a
week for 4 different referral partners.
(21:00):
We're going to have 15 people promotingthe same event at the same time.
Yeah, that and we know exactly whothose people are going to be and it just
requires more planning ahead of time.
I didn't know that going into 2023because I just didn't have the data,
but now going into 2024, I havethe data and I can make it more
sustainable and scalable over time.
Michael Whitehouse (21:21):
Okay, so, so do you promote, um, do you promote all
your referral partners or is it?
Amanda Abella (21:27):
We try to, yeah, we, we, Yeah, we try our best.
Um, and again, I justuse sales brain, right?
So I might overbook myself knowingthat like half of them are going to
fall through because some emergencyhappens or somebody had to push
their launch back or, or something.
1 thing I've noticed about whenpeople try and use referral partners
is they don't have enough of them.
Right?
So they will rearrange their wholeschedule for like 1 partner, but then
(21:50):
that 1 partner has an emergency andyour business is screwed that month.
Okay.
That's why I wanted over a hundred becausethat's life and that's what happens.
It's the same way thatyou're in sales, right?
You're not going to bank on one deal.
You're going to have ahundred people in a pipeline.
Michael Whitehouse (22:06):
But, but how are you able to, I mean,
there's 365 days in a year.
So, and you obviously need topromote your own stuff, I assume.
Yeah.
So how are you promotingjust by sheer volume?
How are you?
Promoting them.
Yeah.
Amanda Abella (22:18):
So we've tested different ways of doing things.
One of the things that we've done, forexample, is like a joint webinar, right?
So, for example, we're promotingeach other at the same time,
or now going into 2024, we havelike a schedule we can follow.
We didn't have that in 2023 becauseagain, it was experimentation year.
In 2023.
(22:39):
So now we have an actual schedulewhere we can plug people in or
another thing that we've tested ismaybe we'll mention five different
referral partners in a newsletteror we'll have them on the podcast.
Like there's so many differentways that we've learned to do this.
But that's after, you know, ayear, 18 months of experimentation.
And then once we experiment, nowwe can create more of a process
(23:03):
to make sure everybody is gettinghandled to the best of their ability.
And again, Knowing that not all 100 ofthem are going to be able to do their
launch next year because life happens.
Michael Whitehouse (23:14):
Yeah, well, and I, I think what you just shared
there, some people listening may belike, wait, you can, that's possible.
Like you could promote ahundred partners in a year.
Cause, cause the, the old, the oldmodel kind of what seems like the
tradition, the traditional model.
I mean, Nothing in the industryis more than 20 years old, but the
traditional model seems to be, youknow, this launch, it's 18 days long.
(23:34):
It takes up your, your list for a month.
And you can't possibly promote morethan nine people a year because, um,
because, you know, one of the conventionalwisdoms I've heard is if you promote
someone, you will lose between six and8 percent of your list on subscribe
every time you promote someone.
Amanda Abella (23:50):
Which it did jack up my list in the first six months of
the year until my partner and that'spart of what we figured out until
we were like, okay, there's got tobe other ways that we can do this.
So we found those other ways.
Right.
And I think that goes to your pointwhere people, people suck at networking.
They also suck at creativity.
Michael Whitehouse (24:08):
Yep.
Yeah.
Well, and that's, that'sone thing I looked at.
I'm like, I, I don't want to lose.
A 12th of my list becauseI promoted someone else.
Maybe if someone says I'm leavingyour list, I don't like you.
That's no big deal.
I call that an authentic unsubscribe.
I authentically don't like you, Michael.
I don't want to be on your list.
The inauthentic unsubscribe is Idon't want to hear about Amanda again.
(24:28):
I'm out.
I'm like, but you see the, uh, my, causeif they got on your list, they want you.
They got on my list.
They want me.
And so, yeah, I.
I got creative to how can I promote peopleand not have them fly out the door because
they're tired of all these promotions.
Amanda Abella (24:44):
Or maybe you put an event together or something.
There's so many ways that you cando this, but you know, people,
people lack creativity becausethey're trying to follow like
this one set pattern of things.
Um, but that's why I'm a bigfan of experimentation to see
what works and what doesn't.
And then you can make a plan from there.
And also like.
I know I'm going to dropthe ball at some point.
(25:05):
I don't just don't make myself feelhorrible for it because that's life.
Yep.
Michael Whitehouse (25:10):
Yeah.
That that's huge.
Yeah.
I think that's that creativityand experimentation thing is, is
key because some people are like,Oh, I'm going to follow them.
And especially the way the economy haschanged, the way markets changing, the
way technology is changing, just becausesomeone has an eight figure business
doesn't mean there you can emulate thembecause you know, maybe they made all
their contacts on Twitter chats and yeah.
(25:31):
So yeah, let's go out andTwitter chats and, uh, and.
Replicate that.
Oh, you can't, you can't anymore.
Huh?
That's crazy.
Yeah.
You know, I, I used to meet all my,uh, I used to meet everyone at Kaldor.
Oh, Kaldor's closed.
Amanda Abella (25:44):
Yeah, and also to your point, one of the things that we've
noticed, because a part of what weteach our clients now is how to sell
one to many instead of one to one,because once you nail it one to one,
now we got to start talking one tomany, or there's only so many hours in
a day and you only have so much energy.
Yep.
So we have to start having thatconversation and 1 of the things that
we've realized we have sent over 100,000 emails this year between ourselves,
(26:07):
our referral partners and for clientsand we've noticed right that when it
comes to the referral partner thing, uh,people tend to screw up in a few ways.
Right?
So number 1, your copy soundslike freaking everybody else.
There's nothing special about this.
There's nothing that exciting.
You sound like every other JV.
I've had.
You need to go repack these emails.
(26:28):
That's number one.
Number two, there's no personal story.
There's no personal likeconnection really with the people.
So we've noticed that's a problem.
Um, and we've also noticed that thesystems on the backend just kind of
suck and no one knows what's going on.
No one's tracking anything.
Um, and also just like the maintainingof the relationship, people
are generally not very good at.
So one of the things that I love todo, um, and this is something we're
(26:51):
taking more seriously now in 2024is having JB partners on my podcast.
And then they can promote me totheir list that way and drive traffic
to a podcast and I can promotethem to my list that way, right?
And then they get oddeyeballs and things like that.
And then number one, it's alittle bit more evergreen.
(27:11):
And number two, it's not as assaulting.
Yeah.
Michael Whitehouse (27:17):
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Um, and, and yeah, those are definitelyvery real, real challenge with the, with
the tracking and the, I mean, I'm alwaysamazed by when I have to chase people
down, um, for, for copy, for links, for.
Amanda Abella (27:32):
It's amazing how often you have to chase people down for copy, right?
And then they get mad at you when, youknow, it's like insane how like not
organized people are on the backend,but that's why I created that guide.
Because that people can get for free bylistening to this because those were all
the problems that I kept running into.
Well,
Michael Whitehouse (27:49):
and even if you have all that getting data, so
I'll vote someone and did it work?
I don't know.
Did anyone look on it?
I've, I've started using pretty linksfor all of my affiliate partners,
so I can check my own data andsay, how many clicks did I get?
But that doesn't tell me how manyopt ins or, or anything else.
Yeah.
So
Amanda Abella (28:07):
we can help you with that.
Yeah.
So one of the things we've evenstarted suggesting to our podcast
guests is like, Hey, we suggest havinglike a specific link just for us.
Here's some tools you can use,and then you can track what's
working and what's not working.
And then you can.
Double and triple down on what's working.
So one of the things I've had to learnhow to do, cause I'm definitely more
(28:27):
of a creative person is to get moreinto the data and the analytics and
then learning how to combine the two.
Michael Whitehouse (28:33):
Yep.
But even if I can track the clicks,that doesn't tell me what converted.
So they may click on it cause Itold them to, but that doesn't
mean they signed up for it.
Cause that's one.
Amanda Abella (28:42):
I've got you at the end of this.
There's there's tools for that.
I got you.
Michael Whitehouse (28:47):
So when I promote a summit or when I, when
I run a summit, I should say.
Uh, I send updates to my speakers everyday for the 14 days leading up to it, and
every one of them contains a link to thedocument with the swipe copy and their
affiliate links, because I used to dolike, I don't want to send it every day.
So I'll send it every few days,invariably, if I sent every three
(29:08):
days on one of the two off days,like, what's my affiliate link again?
I sent it Monday.
I sent it Saturday.
I sent it Thursday, but nowI said it every single day.
Because I understand, when I speakon a summit, the summit's one of the
things I'm doing, it's not a priority,it's not a main focus, it's one of the
things I'm doing, and I understand thatmy speakers, they're not living for my
(29:29):
summit, they're, they are, I'm givingthem exposure, they're certainly an equal
exchange, but it is barely on their listof priorities, because it's one of the
things they're doing, and so I need tosend them 17 emails, To say, Hey, 17 days
of the summit, 16 days of the summit,15 days of the summit as my job to keep
them engaged and keep them informed.
(29:50):
And yeah, most when I promote people,I regularly, I will get to a day before
the thing's supposed to happen and getthat even be like, so how are you doing?
Like.
Who are you?
What are we talking about?
Amanda Abella (30:01):
Yeah, exactly.
You've already forgotten who they are.
You've moved on.
It's like a whole thing.
And you could do the best that youcan to get them on the calendar.
And even still, you got to gofollow up with people, right?
Because they're not.
And that was one of the bigissues, um, I would run into
with promoting other people.
And again, it's why Iput this guy together.
So people don't run into those problems.
Michael Whitehouse (30:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to remember yourpartner, your people promoting
you, it's not their business.
It's your business.
You care about your business everyday, all the time, day and night.
They care about your business when youremind them for a few minutes afterwards.
Like, I'm happy to promote partners, butI got a lot of people to keep in my head.
Amanda Abella (30:39):
Exactly, right?
There's a lot of things goingon, and there's just, with life,
with business, with everything.
Right?
So, yeah, you know, it is alittle complicated sometimes
to keep it all organized.
But, you know, if you know how todo it for sales, and you know how
to stay organized with leads forsales and CRMs and things like
that, JB's is not much different.
Michael Whitehouse (30:57):
Yep.
That's if you know how to do that,of course, and that's that's a
big if yes, but but you mentionedorganization and we mentioned the
frail limitations of the human brain.
Um, one thing we haven't talkedmuch about is automation.
Modern technology.
And, uh, and you know,we have robots for this.
So talk a little bit about how you useautomation to, um, see, I believe in the
(31:19):
notes, you said you cut 84 percent ofyour workload by automating sales tasks.
Amanda Abella (31:23):
I did.
So yes, I'm a big, I'ma big fan of the robots.
So, um, when I hit my big burnout, um,after my business started skyrocketing,
doing the sales training, Um, you know,it was, my business was exploding.
My dad was in and out of the hospital.
Like it just wasn't a sustainable model.
I had not built in a lot ofthe systems and automations and
support that I really needed.
So of course, Amanda crashed and burned,um, after a six figure sales month.
(31:46):
And, um, what I realizedI had this idea, right.
And I was like, well, what if I couldjust create an automated salesperson?
Right, like, what would it look likeif I just took these 15 years of sales
experience where I know how to pickup the phone where I know how to have
a conversation where I know how totalk to someone in the DMS qualify
them and get them booked on a call.
(32:07):
I know all this stuff like the back ofmy hand because I've done so much of it.
But what if I could do that?
Right.
And somehow automate most of it, becauseone of the things that I started to
realize in teaching a lot of my clientsales is that most people just don't
do enough to get the sale, right?
So they'll get an email fromsomebody, a bunch of automated emails,
but you should be calling them.
(32:27):
You should be texting them, right?
You should be doing a lot morethan just sending a generic email
campaign that everybody has.
Right?
So that's what I would do.
I would send a DM, right?
I would make a phone call.
I would do a text, but Istarted running into a problem.
And the problem is if you get 300leads in a day, you're not about to
bang out 300 phone calls the next day.
So I started running into a capacityagain, story of my life, so I had
(32:54):
been in this process where I wastrying to figure out how to create
this automated salesperson, right?
Where I was like, here's all themanual stuff that I know how to do in
sales that a good salesperson would.
So worth their salt should be doing to geta deal across the table, which most people
don't in the online marketing space.
But I'm going to figure out a wayto automate as much of this as I
(33:14):
can and make it sound like a person.
Now, it was easier for me to make itsound like a person because I've done
so many sales calls for a decade.
So I want to be clear.
Do not skip that part of business.
I see so many people skippingthat and then when they try to
automate and scale, it doesn't work.
You don't have enough data.
I had a decade of data to make this work.
(33:36):
So, um, I'd kind of tried tofigure this out on my own.
And then a year ago, I met my nowpartner who I'm with in Mexico
through one of those 400 JV calls.
Right, and we started off as, youknow, work colleagues and it turned
into friends, then it turned into morebecause, well, that's a whole other story.
Right?
But 1 of the things thatI had said to him, right?
(33:59):
Was like, I'm really trying to build,like, this automated salesperson
and nobody seems to understand whatthe hell I'm trying to do because.
Online marketers don't knowsales and I come from a sales
background for crying out loud.
I came from finance, very traditionalsales background, and he did exactly what
I was trying to do because he used tobuild out CRMs as a software engineer.
(34:21):
So I was like, um, okay, well,there needs to be emails.
And so it was acollaborative effort, right?
Where he's like, all right, well, here arethe kinds of emails that work really well.
They are me, you know, 10xingthe businesses of people with
100, 000 people on an email list.
Here's what works really well.
Let's create that.
Then I was like, okay, but wegot to add in a text message, or
we have to add in some sort of avoicemail or something like that.
(34:43):
And the beauty is that now in 2023,we have tools to automate all of that.
So the robots are doing thework, but people think it's you.
So if I get 300 leads in one day overthe course of the next week, they're
going to get an email campaign.
They will get a textmessage within two hours.
They will get a voicemaildrop to call us back.
(35:05):
We can now do campaigns with text messagesand voicemail drops to, for example, get
people, um, A conversion event, uh, ourcurrent effortless sales engine program,
which is where we teach all of thesethings got filled up because of all the
automations where people maybe found uson YouTube four months ago and have been
going through all these automations.
Then they saw us with allthese JVs and then they were
(35:28):
like, here's my credit card.
Michael Whitehouse (35:29):
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And, and, well, like one thing youmentioned there sort of almost in
passing, um, is one of the thingsI really believe is integrity.
The fact that you use the systemto sell the system that you're,
you're, you know, nowadays peopleDM me and say, I'm going to teach
you an amazing Facebook ad method.
Amanda Abella (35:47):
We eat our own dog food around here.
Huh?
That's what we call it.
We call it eating our own dog food.
Yes.
Yep.
Around here.
Yeah.
Michael Whitehouse (35:54):
Yep.
Yep.
The best ones is the people who DM meto tell me that they have an amazing
methods you never need to DM again.
Like, yeah, can't work that well.
Amanda Abella (36:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Can't work that well.
But you know, this current, I mean,to give you an idea of how effective
this system is behind the scenes,we're about to sell this thing out.
And in the last three months, I moved toanother country was traveling because we
didn't know where we were going to live.
Then we had to find a house.
Then we find a house.
Then we have to renovate the house.
We've barely been able to work.
In the last three months and this thing,I've barely been on social media and
(36:27):
definitely not in a strategic way.
And this thing is still about to sell out.
And that's because of the JB partners.
Like I mentioned, we're sendingtraffic our way and we plan that
ahead of time and the YouTube.
So being very strategic with searchengine optimization and things like that
and all the automations on the backend.
Wow.
Michael Whitehouse (36:45):
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
The, the army of robotsare marching along for you.
Amanda Abella (36:49):
Yeah, and that's the goal, right?
Um, a lot of people talk aboutease and flow in business and, you
know, just being able to relax.
Well, you, it doesn't mean you got tobuild the thing first and put the work
up front and it's hard and it sucks.
I mean, there were some momentswhere we were up until, I don't know.
14, 15, 16 hours trying to figure thisthing out with all the tech issues or just
(37:09):
me experimenting with 400 calls, right?
So I did all the experimenting.
So our clients wouldn't have to, tofind what works and what doesn't.
We have the data to prove thatthis business, we're eating our
own dog food has doubled monthover month in the last quarter.
And we've only been able to workat 10 percent capacity while
we moved to another country.
Michael Whitehouse (37:30):
That is a pretty good, uh, pretty good case study.
Amanda Abella (37:34):
Yeah.
And, you know, now we're ready tostart sharing that stuff on social
because now is when we have the time.
Yep.
We don't have to rewire a whole house now.
It's all good.
We can get back to social media.
Michael Whitehouse (37:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What else?
I liked, um, one thing youmentioned about talking about
the copy, uh, was Was a personalstories that, yeah, a lot of copy.
Um, and I, I never know exactly whatI figure on exactly what is, but it's
like the, the, the sales story, ifyou know what I mean, it happened to
someone at some time, but it could beanyone, but it's really no one, you
(38:10):
know, where they say, you know, when Iwas younger, this challenge happened.
And then I overcame the challengewith this amazing solution.
And now you should come to my program.
Like younger, like.
Last week, last month,last year, last century?
I don't know.
As opposed to when I see a storythat says, Last Tuesday, I was
out with my dog, and, like, that'ssomething I try to do on my emails.
(38:33):
Is I'll be like, here's a picture ofmy dog and this thing happened with
the dog and people like, oh my God,he's a real person with a real dog.
Look at that.
Amanda Abella (38:40):
Yeah, a real person with a real dog, like literally one
of our biggest irritations this year.
And again, we've tested this with overhere's we go with the data and eating our
own dog food tested over 100, 000 emails.
This year alone.
And that was the common issue iseverybody sounds like everybody else.
And before we started recording,you had mentioned that, um,
what was it that you said?
(39:01):
You'd mentioned that being authenticis, um, it's like the most valuable
thing people can do, but it'snot an easy, what was it that
you said about being authentic?
Michael Whitehouse (39:10):
Yeah.
So, so it was really good.
Yeah.
Cause you were talking about howmarketers have ruined everything.
They ruined SEO and then theyruined blogging and they ruined,
and, and that's why authenticityis becoming more and more powerful.
Cause as you have more and more toolsto help you find, especially things
like Tik TOK, there, there's no, youcan't game the Tik TOK algorithm cause
it's AI based and it keeps moving.
So it's built around.
(39:31):
If you're authentically sharing amessage, it will find your audience.
Um, and so more and more peopleare sniffing through all the,
all the BS and all the copyand all the, the, the formulas.
And once they see the same formulafor the third time, it's like if they
went to, you know, if they went toone Burger King and didn't like it.
And they see a second Burger King, they'relike, no, I don't like Burger King.
(39:53):
They, they read the same type of copy.
They're like, Oh, I'veseen this kind of copy.
I don't like that.
And so, but if you're you, there's onlyone of you that ever seen you before.
And then back, Oh, this is new.
This is interesting.
Amanda Abella (40:04):
It's interesting that you bring that up because
I'm like hacking Instagram rightnow, because this is my, my fun.
I used to be a blogger.
Now I get to do this again, era.
And it's interesting that you say thatbecause I was doing some research, right?
I'm like, Hey, what's performingwell on Instagram reels.
What's working, what'strending that just studying.
Right.
And I saw like in threedifferent instances, right?
(40:28):
So with three different kindsof reels, I saw the same exact
thing, seven or eight times fromseven or eight different people.
Where were they performing?
I mean, it seems that theywere performing, right?
Because that's something that wastrending and it was really valuable
content, but I would go to the caption.
(40:49):
Like, this caption is literally exactlylike the caption I just read from this
other person, like, five minutes ago.
Michael Whitehouse (40:58):
Yep.
Yeah.
And then it fails to, well, so that, thatthing, that's part of why people do it.
Like if it's working, if, if a platformrewards inauthenticity, which is,
that's why I've, I've leaned towardsa tick tock over Instagram because
Instagram rewards, um, you know,paying the praying to the Zuckerberg
God and tick tock rewards, unique,nothing uniqueness and authenticity.
Amanda Abella (41:23):
Yeah, I mean I haven't like so i've been on instagram for
a while So i'm testing that one.
I seem to have a rhythm going onyoutube Right, and then now, you know
tiktok will be the next foray Yeah,but to your point like literally
this week while i'm creating themarketing calendar for the next month.
I ran into that very problem on instagram
Michael Whitehouse (41:43):
Interesting, but I think especially with emails.
Um, you know if when I open my my emailbox I mean I end up on all kinds of
people's lists because I meet all kindsof people and I'm like, yeah, sure.
I'll get a new list.
Let's see what you're up to.
And then I discovered their listis nothing but generic, bland,
sanitized marketing content.
(42:03):
And you know, they have no opinions.
They have no story.
I don't learn anything about them.
Um, I I've encountered partners whoyou could get on this for six months
and learn nothing about them becauseall they did was promote partners.
Because they're entirely in thisreciprocity like other people
promoted them and they promoteout so there was no value content.
It was just by this, by this,by this, by this, by this.
Amanda Abella (42:23):
And again, that goes back to that lack of creativity.
So I'll give a little behindthe scenes if you're up for it.
Sure.
Of the conversation we had before we evengot here because of course you're going to
be one of our referral partners in 2024.
We already talked about that, but whatdid I say before we started recording?
I said, Hey, and this is a verysimple thing people can do and
they do not do, but I learned thisback from my blogging media days.
(42:46):
I was like, Hey, is it okay if Irecord this locally on my end and I can
turn this into a bunch of short formvideos and we'll promote it for you.
I'll send you the folder.
You can do whatever you wantwith the short form videos.
I'm promoting you to my peoplewithout necessarily, you know,
burning through my email list.
Yep.
Michael Whitehouse (43:05):
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing isit doesn't burn your list.
You can provide value.
I promote I promote, uh, anaverage of seven partners a day.
So there are, I send daily emails andin almost every one of them, there's
at least seven links you could clickon that would go to some kind of opt
in page, sales page, registration page.
Amanda Abella (43:24):
That's another way you can do it.
Right.
And if that works for you, cool, becausethere's a lot of email marketers out
here who will say, don't do that.
Don't send seven links in an email.
And I'm like, do you whateverexperiment testing, whatever works
for you is what works for you.
Michael Whitehouse (43:37):
The crazy thing is that.
One offer is a pitch,seven offers is a catalog.
So if I have seven offers there, you know,if I come to you and I say, Hey, I've
got a shirt, do you want to buy a shirt?
You're like, why areyou selling me a shirt?
But if I put a thousand shirts ina building and I put a sign on the
front of the building, you walkin and say, show me your shirts.
Amanda Abella (43:56):
Oh, that's really smart.
That's very creative.
I like that.
Michael Whitehouse (44:00):
I learned it from Ellen Finkelstein.
So it's not original, but Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Nothing's original.
Everything's learned from someone else.
Um, but yeah, that's what I discovered.
And so she teaches that method.
And when I started doing it,I called the resource letter.
I can't remember if she calls itthat or something else, but when I
started doing that, um, I'd send outan email and like, Hey, let's try it.
I'm promoting seven partners at once.
(44:20):
And I got emails back saying, thankyou for providing all this value.
And I'm thinking theseare all affiliate links.
I'm not doing anything generous here.
I'm promoting seven partners.
You know, they're seeing it as thisis on seven things that might interest
me, seven things that might benefit me.
And also it's because it's, it's value.
(44:42):
If you send that generic email,that's, uh, that's, you know,
You know, George had a problem.
George doesn't exist, of course.
George had a problem, and that problem wasreally bad, but he used our system, and
now he doesn't have the problem anymore.
Amanda Abella (44:55):
Tom makes six figures your first year.
Okay, well, that's overdone.
Michael Whitehouse (44:58):
Like, there's no value in that.
That's completely overdone.
Yeah, that's, even when I proposesomething directly, I'll share a story.
I'll be like, you know, um, lastTuesday, I was talking to Amanda,
and she was telling me about herprogram, and what I liked about it
was, And then we talked in the podcast.
There's a link to the podcast.
And now there's a masterclasscoming up next week.
And you should check it out.
(45:19):
So it feels like you under
Amanda Abella (45:21):
you understand how to people though.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
People who understand how topeople know how to do this.
They think of those little details inorder to maintain the relationship,
not in a way you're trying totake from me by no means, right.
Or exploit me or anything.
Cause I know people are afraid of that.
It's just very simple, basic things.
The same way that I was like,Hey, my team and I can turn
(45:43):
this into short form videos.
You can use it on your social media.
Here you go.
Have fun.
Right.
But it's these little things thatpeople do not think about because
they do not know how to people.
Yep.
Michael Whitehouse (45:55):
Yeah, that was the first thing I learned of the first thing,
but the thing that changed everythingwith email was a shift from I'm emailing a
market to I'm emailing a list of friends.
And the fact that I built my listthrough networking, like most of
those people I'd done one to ones withwho opted in that also affect like,
I don't want to burn these people.
I've met them.
Like these are real people.
(46:16):
So I thought, okay, I'm sendingan email to hundreds of people.
I know it's not an audience.
It's a community.
It's like, I'm sending it out tohundreds or thousands of my friends.
How am I going to talk to them?
Well, I'm not going tosend them generic content.
I'm not going to cut and paste.
I'd never use swipe copybecause it feels plagiarism.
If I copy your text and put myname under it, that's plagiarism.
(46:39):
Right?
Like it's inauthentic.
And if it's a launch and sevenother people do the same thing,
now we all look like schmucks.
Um, but even if it's by itself, youstill like, that's not what you say.
Is that what you sound like?
So now they're thinking that's my writing.
And that's how I'm talking to them.
And I'm like, that's not my writing.
Now, what I will do is that what I calla JV guest letter, I will sometimes
(47:00):
take, I will quote it and I'll, I'll puttheir headshot next to it and their copy.
And I'll say, you know, letme share with you what, what
Amanda's doing in her own words.
And then there's four paragraphsnext to your headshot.
And then afterwards I'd be like, andnow you'll see why I'm so excited
about sharing this, go check it out.
So
Amanda Abella (47:18):
yeah, see, but that's, that makes sense.
That's creative.
There's some sort of personal story.
Most people are copying pasting.
Granted, I will call myself out.
I did it in the beginning of 2023,but I was also experimenting.
Remember I had no data, right?
So I was like, let me experiment.
So maybe it works.
Right.
I was like, I have no data, soI'm going to test this and see
what works and what doesn't.
And after sending thosehundred thousand emails, now
(47:40):
we have some pretty solid data.
That we can teach to our clientsbased on us experimenting and being
the guinea pig and eating our own dogfood as we like to say around here.
But, um, to your point, yes, thosepersonal stories are everything.
I mean, 1 of the reasons we're startinganother brand called entrepreneur expat is
because when I started sharing that I hadmoved to Mexico, I haven't even shared the
(48:03):
full on house renovation yet, but I will,um, I will because it's a story, right?
It's a story and I can, and I can turnthat life story into marketing and that's
a whole other skill that requires a lotof creativity and every, I feel like
everything that we've talked about inthis podcast episode are just skills and
it's skills that people need to practice.
(48:24):
It's skills that peopleneed to invest in learning.
It's skills people need toexperiment with and they just,
they just got to put in the reps.
Michael Whitehouse (48:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so I think we've been talkingfor like three and a half hours.
Uh, so feels like it.
We should probably wrapup but but in a good way.
Um, we can certainly talk longer.
But as we record this, it's Halloweenand my daughter wants to go trick
or treating as people listen to it.
It's not Halloween.
So they'll be all confused.
Amanda Abella (48:47):
But it's the mortals here.
They don't do Halloween.
They do the other.
Well, they kind of sortof do Halloween in Mexico.
But the other was more thoseis more of a thing here.
Michael Whitehouse (48:54):
Okay, go to Mexico someday for it.
Anyway, but yeah.
No time for that now.
Um, so you said, so I believe that youhave a link, which is definitely in the
description, although I don't have it inmy hands at this second, but it will be
by the time someone's listening to this.
Amanda Abella (49:09):
And it will be a referral partner link, so
you can track all the data.
Michael Whitehouse (49:14):
So what will people get if they go to that
link down in the description?
Amanda Abella (49:17):
So, you're going to get my free guide that explains the 8
steps that I use to not just find a 100referral partners, but also manage them
on the back end, which has led to dayswhere we get up to 300 leads in a day.
And it's a big part of the reason whythis business is doubled month over month,
even while we've been barely able to work.
(49:39):
While we're in the middle of a houserenovation, so it's the 8 step process.
I did the 400 horrible calls.
So you don't have to andgathered all the data for you.
So you don't have to gothrough the torture that I did.
Michael Whitehouse (49:51):
That's awesome.
And that's the freebie you're offering.
Amanda Abella (49:54):
That's the freebie I'm offering, yes.
Michael Whitehouse (49:56):
Your program must be amazing.
I assume it's taking that to the nextlevel and going through it with people.
Amanda Abella (50:02):
Yeah, actually, the woman who built Deepak Chopra's
sales team got her hands on it.
And she's like, if people followed thisguide, they would never have a lead
flow problem ever in their business.
Michael Whitehouse (50:12):
Awesome.
Well, so definitely, and I'll probablybe sharing that out to my list as
well because that seems like somethingmy community might be interested in.
So
Amanda Abella (50:20):
yeah, you do a lot of JVs.
They might want it.
Michael Whitehouse (50:23):
So that's, that is awesome.
So thank you very much to go.
So you listeners go look in the, thedescription down below or wherever it is
on whatever platform you're watching on.
And if you're somehow watching this in aplatform that doesn't have it, then just.
comment or email me andI'll make sure you get it.
So thank you so muchfor being on the show.
(50:43):
Any final comments?
Amanda Abella (50:46):
Just have fun with it.
I think people just take themselvestoo damn seriously and then that's
where you have the lit lack ofcreativity and the lack of people
and just like have some freaking fun.
It's not that serious.
Michael Whitehouse (50:57):
Have fun.
That is a, if it's not fun, why do it?
Exactly.
Well, thanks for being on.
This has been fun.
Amanda Abella (51:04):
It definitely has.
I look forward to your event, uh,in December and also where this
partnership goes and having youon my podcast for the part too.
Oh,
Michael Whitehouse (51:13):
I love being on podcasts.
That way I can talk a lot.
Exactly.
I'll see you there.
for joining us for the guywho knows a guy podcast.
I'm Michael Whitehouse, the guywho knows the guy, and I hope
you'll join us in December for the12th and the 14th for JV Connect.
Go to guy who knows a guy.
For more details now, if it's afterDecember 2023 and you're listening to
(51:33):
this, it's okay, because we're goingto be doing this event every quarter
to go to guy knows a guy dot com.
See what's new.
See what's happening.
And of course, check the shownotes, learn about our guests and
how you get in touch with them.
Check out our next episode formore great training, information
and networking tips from MichaelWhitehouse, the guy who knows a guy.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.