April 5, 2025 • 40 mins
Mark Stern journey is a blend of national brand marketing experience and out-of-the-box innovation. After a bold corporate exit into entrepreneurship, Mark Stern is the founder of the Custom Box Agency, an experience design agency that specializes in optimizing the customer journey and enhancing customer experience through direct mail. Mark's website: https://customboxagency.com/ SuccessGrid Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/successgridofficial/ Show notes: https://successgrid.net/sg248/ If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to https://ratethispodcast.com/successgrid
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hipishode of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the ressons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development. Whether you are inspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned
business profession, or just someone looking to improve your life,
(00:41):
the Success Great Podcast is for you. My goal is
to bring you valuable insights and inspiration that will help
you achieve your own success in business and life. So
get ready to learn and be inspired. The Success Great
Podcast starts now.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I haven't me.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
In this episode, Mark Stern to talk about out how
to optimize the customer experience to increase revenue and extend
the lifetime value of the customer. And we are in
business and you want to serve your people. You want
to give them the help that they need, and also
you want them to stick as much as possible with
your business. From consulting national brands to pioneering the future
(01:22):
of digital meats physical marketing. Mark's journey is a blend
of national brand marketing experience and out of the box innovation.
After a bold corporate exit into entrepreneurship, Markstare is the
founder of the custom Box Agency, an experience design agency
(01:42):
that specializes in optimizing a customer journey and enhancing customer
experience through the direct mail.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Mark will come to this episode of the Success a Great.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Podcast World to be here, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Awesome to have you here. Mark.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
So, first of all goes this is doesn't accessity podcast.
I want to start off by asking you. You are entrepreneur,
you are in business. You took her, so I would
say a huge leap going from corporate to entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So what does success means to you?
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Yeah, it's such a good question. It's funny if you
had asked me this when I was back in corporate
America would have been such a different definition. But I
was wired growing up that there's a natural progression to
life that you graduate high school and you go to college,
and you graduate college and then you get the job.
Then you go back to grad school, and then you
get the job after grad school and it's you know,
(02:39):
happy life, picket fences. This is what success looks like.
And you know that that lens kind of shattered for me.
In twenty twelve, I got my NBA at Duke Duke
University in North Carolina. I had this job at Deloitte Consulting.
It's a big consulting firm doing strategy insulting for them,
(03:01):
and I was one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars
in student loan debt and I had this entrepreneurial spirit
but like by the book, people would have said, oh,
you're on this path of success, but it felt heavy.
And when you have that much student loan, you know
you kind of questions say, is this is this what
this was? Is this the pathway? And you know, now
(03:24):
flash forward. You know it took me till twenty eighteen
to leave corporate America. But I would look at success
more so is have you created something that fuels your
soul in a way that you are excited every day
and inspired every day by what you get to do
or who you get to collaborate with. And that is
(03:44):
for me, like when I say, like, like what we're
building with Custom Box Agency, my team is everything. We
look at team as family. Every client project we take
on is a new challenge, and it's just it's just exciting.
It's something fresh and so in my mind, that's kind
of where that if I can wake up and just
be very excited about what's ahead of me, I feel like,
(04:06):
you know, that's my definition. It's not the Lamborghinis, it's
not the fancy houses and vacation homes. I don't need
a lot of money to live. I just want to
wake up happy.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
M hm.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
That's very important. Like you need to feel that you
are basically alive and you are helping yourself with people
around you and serving some kind of community around you. Also, Oh, no,
for you, what exactly triggered you to to to make
this jump? Because you work for big companies. They are
(04:41):
like these companies are not small companies, Like generally only
dream of working for these businesses, right, So, so what
what what happened at a certain moment, at a certain
time in your life or at a certain point when
you are sitting in the desk at that time in
the job that you thought you want to start this thing.
(05:03):
And did you work in a customer let's say customer
service area of these businesses or how was it exactly
the atmosphere of things that I'll do.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
So, if you know me, I'm such a loyalist that
if I do something, I go so all in. So
I had one job before business school and one job
after business school until like leaving that job and starting
a business. And what it was was twenty twelve started
working at de Late Consulting. It's an amazing company. My
role was a strategy consultant. So I was a road warrior.
(05:35):
What I did was every Monday at four forty five am,
I'd get in a cab to go to the airport
and fly out to wherever my client was. And then
Thursday or Friday of that week, I'd fly back to
Austin and then do it again the next Monday. So
we're talking for six years straight, I was a road warrior,
waking up every single Monday, living out of airports and
(05:56):
hotels weekly. It sounds crazy, but that was my life.
And you go to the client because like, in that
line of business, it's important to have the FaceTime. I
went to a conference. This was back in twenty thirteen,
a conference that I had no business being at. I
don't know if you've heard of the company mind Valley,
Have you ever heard of Mine Valley, Dish and Lachiani.
He had a conference that I came across, like on
(06:18):
a YouTube recommended video, a conference called a Fest. It's
called AFEs today. Back then, it was known as Awesomeness Fest,
and then they eventually changed the name. But it was
just a point in my career that I like, I
was like, I need something to look forward to in
my life because I'm working so much. And when I
went to this conference, that's where I was introduced to
(06:39):
the world of online marketing, digital marketing, traffic and conversion.
If you've heard of that event, Digital Marketer, dot com,
click funnels, all of these digital marketing assets. And it
kind of broke me a little bit because I thought
that the path I was on, you know, the natural
path to life, as like I grew up with with
high school, college, grad school, work, work, work, work, work,
(07:04):
that was it. And to go to this conference and
meet these people who are digital marketers, creating their own product,
living life on their own terms. It was like a
world that I did not know existed at all, and
so it was like such a high, But then it
was such an emotional load to then go back into
the corporate American realm after being exposed to a different
(07:25):
way to be fulfilled. And that kind of stuck with
me for about six years from twenty twelve to twenty eighteen.
And essentially what happened was I started going to any
conference I could go to, Funnel Hacking Live for the
click funnels world trafficking conversion. I started buying courses and
consuming them. But the reality is, as long as I
(07:46):
was at Deloitte, Deloitte owns everything you produce in the
firm and outside the firm. So this idea of having
a side hustle could not happen with a job that
I was employed in. And it all came to a
head when back into the seventeen I realized, I'm spending
all this money on these products and coaching programs because
it's kind of a panacea, a medicine that's like I'm
(08:09):
not addressing the underlining issue. And the big event that
happened for me was this was Christmas of twenty seventeen.
Between Christmas in the years, I went to bed one night.
This was on December twenty seventh. I remember it vividly
and had this like crazy premonition that if I don't
(08:30):
leave this job, it would kill me because there's the
lifestyle of living in the air as much as I was,
and the high stress and high pressure, and that was
ultimately what pushed me over the edge to say I
came back. It was January third, twenty eighteen. Told the partner,
I reported to it Deloitte. I love it here, but
(08:51):
I gotta go. And I had no idea what that
backup plan would be. But all I knew was if
I released the pressure of this corporate job, it will
at least like provide the capacity to start to get
more creative and think about what do I want to do.
So that was the biggest thing for me, was it
was a it was a scary moment because there was
a lot of what ifs, and you have you're going
(09:14):
against everything that you've known at that time. But like,
looking back, I'm so grateful I did that because I
don't think I would have been able to build a
side hustle even if I was allowed to, just because
I just couldn't focus the right attention and energy to it.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
So you mentioned it was scary, because scary because you
thought yourself.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
What if it doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I'm jumping into something I don't know if it will work.
You didn't have the belief at the beginning.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
I had the belief that if I released like the
gunk in my head that was my corporate job, if
I could release all the like how much that job
was occupying in my head space, that I could figure
it out. But you never know, Like I think that
the biggest realization that I had was if you're familiar
(10:06):
with like the game of checkers and the game of chess,
Like the way I describe corporate versus becoming an entrepreneur
is like checkers versus chess, like the game board, the
game board to play checkers and the game board to
play chess. It's the same game board, and so like
when I left corporate America to become an entrepreneur, I
kept on trying to force I'm a high performer in
corporate America, but why am I not figuring out this
(10:29):
game of entrepreneurship and that was a struggle for the
first year, and it took me to realize, am I
playing like chess with checkers rules? Meaning if I try
to play chess with checkers rules, I will fail. If
I try to play chess checkers with chess rules, I'm
going to fail. Am I playing the right game? And
that was the biggest thing to say. Okay, Mark learned
(10:50):
how to play the game of entrepreneurship. And oh, by
the way, all these years of corporate America, once you
figure out how to play the new game, those are
what make you unique because those are the experiences that
you had to get to here. So that's like your
own strategic advantage. So once I had that lens and
was like, this is a different game, then the belief
started to really pile on to say, Okay, I can
(11:13):
figure this out. And that's when the game started changing
for me in a big way, definitely.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So you talked about going to multiple events because when
you changed to something, usually I would assume like certain
work would do certain things, but when you are an entrepreneur,
you would think you want different things for the business.
I would I get to say, what should I do?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Get traffic?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I do?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Would I do to get the generation like multiple things
at the same time you start to like move, lift
and right. So a lot of things to think about
at the beginning. But now what made you mentioned it now?
So what is the point on the time frame exactly
that you thought to yourself, Now, this is where I
(11:58):
want to be and I want to build this business
to a place where it has well effect on people
alarmed you, on.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
People that you work with.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
So Custom Box Agency definitely was not the first business
when I left Corporate America, but it was one of
those things that I don't think I would have ever
if you told me years ago the custom Box Agency
would be my business, I would have probably said you
lost your mind, because it was never on the forefront
of my mind. It was an afterthought for the other
products and services we were building. And so essentially the
(12:34):
core of our business of what we do, and you
can see these tiles behind me, is we'll build these
custom box experiences based on how you're operating your business
and the products and services that you have, and we
can build boxes and stories of any shapes and size.
It didn't start with saying we're gonna I'm gonna build
this business and like how do we really define your
(12:56):
customer journey and support it with a box that we
send them to help them along the way to get
results faster. What ended up happening was I did a
if you've ever heard of a virtual summit, this virtual conference.
This is like the first thing I did out of
the gates, because someone told me this is a great
way to get leads and generate content. And I was
just brand new, asking these people who had been in
(13:18):
the game, hey, can I interview you? And when I
did this, I had someone told me I needed to
interview like thirty to forty people, So of course I
interviewed over forty, which is nuts and I don't recommend
that to anyone to interview that many people out of
the gates for the first event that you do. But
what we did was after I interviewed everyone these forty
(13:38):
different influencers, we transcribed and then I built this resource
called entrepreneur Elements. It's a publication trying to see if
I have one on me nearby. It's somewhere and somewhere
in the office, but it spotlighted every speaker. And one
of the things that was really cool is when I
printed this like physical publication and shipped it out to
(14:01):
all the speakers and then sold it for anyone who
attended the conference. People did something that I did not expect,
which was speakers started doing Facebook lives or taking pictures
showing off their spread where they were featured in this
publication I had put together. Recipients who bought the program
started sharing it with their Facebook groups, and so this
(14:23):
ripple effect was happening because I sent them something physical
and it was just a simple publication. Imagine taking a
lead magnet, a trip wire, a fraction of one of
your products and services and creating something physical and tangible
around it. The organic traffic that started to happen as
a result of just complimenting something physical with this digital
experience instantly was a key point of differentiation that people
(14:46):
were like, how did you do that? And so the
next time we did a summit, this is a few
months later, I wanted to learn more about high ticket sales,
but I didn't want to interview forty people. I only
interviewed ten. And I actually have the tile right here
because this was box one for Custom Box Agency, this
high ticket online one right here, and we built a
box experience around it and the same thing happened. People
(15:09):
who attended the event and got the box started doing
these videos and we're getting all this organic traffic because
of the box. And that was kind of where it
was like, Okay, I've already tested this a few times.
Tying something physical to something digital is a new opportunity
that people aren't really tapping into. And to start thinking
about it beyond a swag box. We say swag is
(15:31):
stuff without a goal. That's what swag means. Stop sending
people swag, give them the tools they need. All of
a sudden, people just started asking me again and again,
how are you doing these box experiences? And you know,
I launched a mini product that was the Custom Box Challenge,
teaching people how to do this and then and I
(15:51):
did that because I was like, hey, just buy the challenge,
but look at this business I have over here. That
was my core business at the time. It was a
virtual event business. And everyone kept on going back to
the boxes, and the challenge took off in a way
that I was like, Okay, maybe I need to pay
more attention and build a business around this. Because people
would go through the challenge and then ask me to
(16:12):
build a box, which was a complete opposite reason why
I built the challenge and built Challenge to build back
by back my time, not to launch another business off
of it. And then that was twenty nineteen. At the
beginning of twenty twenty, the world was in quarantine because
of COVID, and I had this virtual event business, in
this box business, and a mentor of mine gave me
(16:32):
the best feedback I could have ever received at that point.
He's like, I ask people, who is Mark Stern. Half
of them say Mark is the virtual event guy. Half
of them say Mark is the custom box guy. He's like,
you're confusing people because you're leading with two separate things.
Which one are you? And you would think at the
beginning of COVID, when everyone's trying to figure out this
(16:54):
virtual event game, it would have made more sense to
continue on the business that was building in virtual events,
and instead I killed that business and went all in
on custom Box Agency in twenty twenty, and that one
pivot took all of these virtual experts that were popping
up overnight from being competitors to all of a sudden
(17:14):
being people that I could collaborate with because now I
could partner with them with my box services. And you
know that year alone, we took this brand new business
from zero to over a million dollars just by the
nature of the product that we had. And we did
that with no marketing. It was word of mouth and
just having a good quality product and a good quality
(17:37):
perspective in terms of how we thought about that customer
journey and customer experience.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, definitely, that's very important.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
But the switch that you made speaking of virtual sum
is like, I have them too, and they so it
requires a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Oh my goodness, Yes.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I'm planning another one, but in May probably because it
it needs a lot of fool So now, the most
important thing for a business, not only like acquire a
new client, which is I believe it could be more
important for businesses, is to actually retain the clients that
(18:16):
we already have, right because this is the thing.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
The more you have the client with.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
You, whether it's a subscription model, whatever it is, the
model of the business is you will have revenue from
that customer or client for the time a longer time
to come.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So, now, from your experience, doing these two made you
transition from corporate to business, from business to business. So
the most important things that any client do you think
is looking.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
For Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, at the
end of the day, there's a couple of things that
when someone is buying your products and services, they're buying
two things. They're buying the desired outcome that you're selling.
So if you're selling you know, how to start a
business online, or if you're selling like teaching people, Facebook
ads or whatever the thing is, you could be a
(19:08):
professional service provider, get well, lose weight, whatever the thing is.
People are buying the outcome that you're promising, but they're
also buying you as their trusted mentor So you have
to understand that you and your role is that there
are so many people on this earth that do exactly
what you and I do. The thing that makes you
(19:29):
unique is you, So don't under value you and like
how you do things and how you show up. It's
part of what they're buying when they're buying it, and
what do people want? They want results? And so this
is why I love that you framed it because I
could not agree more to say, I really think custom
Box Agency is in the business of retention, and so
(19:49):
many people are chasing after the next customer, the next customer. Well,
the good news is you don't need to have this
big acquisition fee and constantly have a new customer when
you start to think about how else can I serve people.
I've heard Russell say this. I don't know if Russell
got this, and when I say Russell, I me and
Russell Brunson. But he's used the example that you know,
why do people stop buying from you? They stop buying
(20:10):
from you for like two main reasons. One is you
anger them. They no longer align with you because you
said or did something that falls out of line of
their own values. Or number two is you stop selling
to them. And that's a big thing that I see
it happens is that when we think about your people,
it's not your decision. If your customers buy from you,
(20:33):
that's their decision. And people get so in their head
about pricing and their product. It's not your decision. If
someone buys from you, it's theirs. So knowing that, I
can't tell you how many times I've delved into businesses
and they've only like spotlighted one of their products in
their total offer suite of things that they could do
to serve these people. And so when people get done
(20:55):
with the products one, they may not know there's other
products exist. Therefore you're like reducing lifetime value too. You.
They may provide you the pathway for what the next
steps should be for the product or service you should sell,
or the more higher ticket product you should sell, because
if you get them results, the next question they're going
(21:17):
to ask you is what's next. They're gonna want to
give you more money because you are a trusted mentor.
And the last thing I'll say on this is, you know,
when I started this game and started like delving deep
in the online space, I was like following probably I
don't know, six to eight different big digital marketing influencers
and consuming everything they were putting out there. And the
(21:39):
reality is some of their thought leadership it, you know,
contradicted one another. And so you're trying to force, all
of a sudden, with your own marketing strategy a square
peg to fit into a round hole when it really
didn't make sense. I truly believe that people don't want
multiple multiple mentors. I think people are just trying to
business owners are just trying to find one trusted mentor
(21:59):
that going to move the needle in their business. And
I think that that's important. That's part of the retention
game is understanding that they may be leaning on you
as their trusted mentor because they've tried other things and
it just didn't work for them. So this is kind
of why it's like we as business owners sometimes need
to get out of our own way because like creating
products and having that natural segue could give you so
(22:22):
much more predictability in your business because you're able to
continue to serve the same people who are already bought
into you as their trusted mentor and you as that
guide to help take them to the next level.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Definitely, you mentioned a lot of points here, so looking
for mentors, this is what we do because we think
the next one is maybe better than the previous one
a lot of things. But actually you have to take
from my opinion, it's like you have to take what
you learn into action, and when you do that, you
would know if it's a good fit, it will work
(22:56):
or not. But ALSOO talked about values and suppricing, So
how did you like pricing your services?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
How did you look at it?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Did you look into the market and see, for example,
some competition and how would they do that? Did you
applies higher lower on what basis Did you have this
idea of your own pricing and look into things?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Did you think that I.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Will provide better value for the clients and the price
does not matter even if it's higher.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
So there's a couple of things that are really important
to note that I had to learn the hard way
about pricing is that one it starts with really understanding
who your avatar is. If you know your customer who
you're serving and know a little bit about their story,
then like it makes it so much easier to start
to engineer an offer for them. Everyone assumes that, oh,
(23:49):
I need to be competitive, I need to have a
low price. Low price is not necessarily the best thing,
depending on whatever industry you're in. So one of the
things I'll tell you is that there have been products
and services that I was like, this is exactly what
I need, this is what I want to buy, and
then they revealed the price, and the price was so
far below what I valued it. They may have said
(24:09):
this is a five hundred dollars program and I was like, oh,
that's a five thousand dollars program. Instantly they disqualified me
because the pricing was too low and I saw that
pricing and I'm like, if it's that low, it's going
to cater to a different individual that they may or
may not be trying for, and that may not be me.
When I got started, and it was like fresh out
of the gates, not knowing how to price my services.
(24:30):
This is pre custom box agency. And I think this
is a really cool story because I launched my first
virtual summit. It was called the click Perneur Summit. This
was back in twenty eighteen. It's so funny because I
don't know that was like, that was I need to
build a YouTube show that is like interviewing entrepreneurs with
(24:51):
all the logos they've had throughout the course of being
an entrepreneur, because I think we all have tons of
logos and probably tons of domains. But what was really
cool was at the end of the clickprinter Or Summit,
this virtual summit, I wanted to launch a little coaching
program and for the first class, I wanted five to
eight people, somewhere in that range. I didn't know what
to price my program, and so I priced it it
(25:15):
five ninety seven, so six hundred dollars for this like
eight week program that I'd put together, and then at
the last second, I was like, you know what, I'm
going to add an option that if you want two
to one on ones with me, it's going to be
nine ninety seven. So you had a five ninety seven
and a nine ninety seven option, so six hundred or
one thousand if we just rounded up, and I just
(25:37):
put it out there, thinking like I don't know who's
going to take what. We had six people join. All
six took the thousand dollar offer, which instantly told me
that I undervalued my services. And the next time that
we did it, I bumped it up and said, like,
you get two one on ones with me in addition
to this coaching program for two thousand dollars. Otherwise it's
(25:59):
a thousand for the program, so increase the price. And
still the vast majority took the two thousand dollars price point.
So that's kind of where like price testing is very important,
because had I not done that, I would have just
assumed the five ninety seven one option price point. You know,
I would never had data to say that's too low.
That one little like last minute addition, and especially with
(26:22):
a beta like I sold two one on ones with me.
If you were in a beta with me, and I
launched a beta product, I would have probably done it
for free just because I want the insights to make
my product better. So whether or not they bought it
like it wouldn't have made a difference. I still would
have probably met with them, But just to see how
they valued me more than I valued myself was really telling.
(26:42):
And then with Custom Box Agency, you know, we to
like put our pricing and get it to where it is.
It has been a multi year effort of testing and testing,
and one of the realizations early on was we had
a much lower price point when Custom Box Agency was
getting started because when we build out these box experiences,
we used to let our clients if they wanted to
(27:04):
contribute and do some of the design themselves and like
save a little money with us, that they could create
their own assets to stick inside the box and we'd
handle the fulfillment part of it. And that model quickly
demonstrated that it just didn't work. It added so much
more work to us that I remember taking our product
(27:25):
pricing and we three x did I think it was
at the time, you know, a build out for us,
we PRICEDD five k. We increased our price to fifteen
thousand and I was really nervous about that. This was
years ago that we did this. But the reason that
we did that was because we wanted to make sure
that we weren't attracting clients that were like, wouldn't let
(27:45):
us take full control over the buildout experience. Because we're
able to move faster, We're able to deliver high quality.
It's a more cohesive experience inside the box. We're not
babysitting the clients to try and get these assets in
time to make it for a launch. And that one
little pivot was such a big shift that we attracted
(28:06):
our right fit clients. They were no longer looking to
They wanted us to design all the assets in the box.
They wanted us to control the experience, and that's why
they were willing to pay that higher price point. So
that little shift completely changed the dynamic of the types
of clients that we were getting just because of pricing
and also making sure that what we were delivering as
(28:26):
a result of that price fell in line with what
we were trying to achieve and the clients that we
were trying to attract. Pricing's fascinating, Yeah, blessing is like
it's about testing, so you have to do that.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
You wouldn't know that like in my two summits, you
call them that much of a success, but you have
to test.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And then when it would be different.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Because you would learn even if it's not success, you
would have certain angers that you would learn from. You
would have set in perspective that you can learn from
the experience. This is why it's important to take into
action and put it into play. Now speaking of play,
like what kind of advice that was a bad advice
or the worst advice that someone told you?
Speaker 4 (29:13):
I do have an answer for this one. So I
think the worst advice that I received, and I get
the merit of why this influencer said this, But when
I was first getting starting the online marketing game, I
don't want to drop who the influencer is. But what
I will say is what he was pushing was this
(29:34):
idea of before starting the business, you want to start
start a practice business and put yourself out there with
a practice business so you can learn like email marketing,
you can learn how to build a funnel. You can
build all these fundamentals, but not burn out like the
industry you actually want to work in. And so I
remember starting off building a practice business. I think I
(29:56):
built a practice business. I am a dog owner. I
don't know if you have any pets, but I have
a little quirky at home, little little dog, And because
I had just gotten her, I did this practice business
on like how to go about finding and seeking, you know,
the perfect dog for you. But I had no passion
(30:18):
or interest in it. And so that's kind of why
it was, like, you know what I learned when I
joined like Russell Brunson's world and got a little bit
deeper into kind of that that community was like, build
a business and the thing that really excites and fuels you.
And it doesn't matter if it's a what Russell would
call a bloody red market, if you know red ocean
(30:40):
versus blue ocean concepts. If it's a bloody red ocean,
meaning there's so much competition there, If that's an industry
that fuels your soul and excites you, you can always
carve off your own niche off of that. That can
be like your own blue ocean off of a red oce.
(31:00):
There's always a way to spin it that makes it
a new opportunity for your people. And I wish I
had just jumped in and like focused on the thing
that I was most excited about. And even if like
those first videos were super awkward, we're messy, we're you know,
just not how i'd necessarily want to represent myself. Leave
them out there, because as you continue to grow and
(31:24):
master and get better, you become more relatable because people
can go find your earlier videos and realize, oh, this
this person is just like me. They got started someday,
they were rough at the beginning. No one just wakes
up and is just perfect online. Like speaking on Zoom
and doing my first Zoom interview back in twenty eighteen
(31:44):
was the most awkward thing because I wasn't used to
leveraging the Zoom platform to interview someone talking to a
camera into a screen. I always met in person. It
was corporate America. We meet face to face. So that's
kind of what I would say is that this whole
idea of practice business, I mean, I'm not a believer
in it. Go after the thing that excites you, because
(32:04):
you're gonna show up differently, and like, like the energy
you put into it is gonna just represent itself so
differently because it's something that you're truly excited about and
you can worry about getting finessed and like finding your voice.
That takes time. Give yourself permission to take time to
do that.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
So definitely can we do that some things like we
need time to develop ourselves and though myself, you have
to push yourself in every way. So this is one
of the reasons, like I concourage you one like to
go life like this one now. So now if someone
asks you, like the basic fundamentals someone is starting their business,
(32:45):
what of the basic fundamentals to have this customer retention
as one two, three points as I take away.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
So if it's so, there's a couple different angles we
could take here. If we're talking about your starting in business,
what are the things that I think are critical. That's
one way. If we're going to leverage it from a
customer retention space, if you want to go in, that's
a different angle that I can take. But what I
what I will say is from a business I'll do
a hybrid if that works for you.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, from a.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
Business standpoint, I can't stress the importance of finding some
degree of a support community or a mentor. And the
reason I think that this is something that's really important
is because we are so limited by ourselves, like we
hold ourselves back so much more than someone else would
hold us back. And part of it is that we're
(33:38):
limited between you know, what's between our ears, our own mindset.
And one of my inherent beliefs is I believe that
it's part of the role of the entrepreneur to hold
a bigger vision for your clients and customers than they
hold for themselves. And what I mean by that is
like for me right now, one of my mentors is
I'm trying to get back in shape. I've been so
(34:00):
out of shape since COVID and I used to do
these spartan mud runs and all these things and really
get out. And you know, this year is a pivotal year,
since I'm turning forty this year that as I turned
into my forties, I want to make sure that you
know I'm as in the best shape possible. I found
a mentor whose vision for me was for me to
lean down to have a six pack. For me, I
(34:22):
just wanted to be healthy, but I didn't ever think
of myself as being capable of having that. So to
have a mentor that holds that vision for me has
been game changing. I can't tell you how many times
in my business with launching custom Box Agency, a mentor
stepping in and providing me the belief when I doubted myself.
So that is one thing that I can't stress enough
when we're talking about business and things in your business
(34:44):
that I think are really critical. Yes, it is critical
to know who your avatar is and don't be afraid
to have a conversation with them, reach out to them,
engage them. They're like, don't lock yourself in a room
and build it a product. I can't tell you how
many online marketers or online business owners that they think
they know what their people want and they lock themselves
in a room and film an entire course or product
(35:06):
or whatever it may be, and then they put it
out there. And I'm just like, like, your people will
give you the breadcrumbs for exactly what they need. So
make sure you're engaging them because that's the best intel,
not you being stuck in your head talking with other people.
And that being the case, if I said what is
the most pivotal thing, especially when we're talking about customer retention,
(35:28):
it's understanding the customer journey. And what I mean by
that is when you're selling a product or service, you're
selling a desired outcome. Whatever that desired outcome may be.
I will help you get in the best shape of
your life. I will help you grow your business to
six figures or seven figures, whatever that desired outcome is.
You now have your back anchor on the customer journey,
because if that's what success is after someone has navigated,
(35:50):
and when we say customer journey, what we mean by
this is how people navigate through your products and services
from onboarding, which we give the name start here, from
start here to the desired outcome, and when we work
with clients, the reason that that's the first thing that
we do is the second that you know how to
guide your customers from start here onboarding and how to
(36:12):
navigate your products and services all the way through getting
them that result. If you have that pathway designed, and
it can be as simple as phase one, phase two,
phase three, phase four, a simple structure. Now I can
show you as you progress through that journey with working
with me, that you are no longer at the beginning
you're in phase one. You're no longer in phase one,
(36:34):
you're in phase two. So I get to celebrate the
micro steps to getting to the desired outcome, and that
to me is so critical because the second that that's defined,
not only do I see the pathway or can I
see where people are getting stuck, I can introduce new
ways to monetize the business because I can see things
that I can create to support them along the way,
I can find ways to serve them at a higher
(36:55):
level because once they get that result, you're probably going
to create a new problem for their bi business. And
that's another way to retain them because you know it
like the back of your hand, how they're going to
navigate and get a result. You have confidence as a
business owner because you can see, like if you just
trust the pathway, you'll get the outcome. So that's why
for me, customer journey and understanding that piece is so
(37:16):
critical is that we try to overcomplicate it and then
we engineer something that every single customer we get has
a different experience, and all of a sudden, it creates
this internal business chaos that is not scalable and sometimes
people like people don't want more, people want less, and
people value their time. So getting them results faster and
giving them what they need, you know they're looking for
(37:38):
that mentor that's going to guide them through to their
to the alchemists, to why they're working with you in
the first place. So that journey, to me is every
I can't build a box experience without it.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Definitely, people at the end of the day, they want
the resolution, like they want the fixed first, like we
should know it is in general everyone everything like yesterday.
So you want to provide help or service or whatever
it is the solution for them as quickly as humanly
(38:10):
possible with this. With the more the less steps there is,
the better.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And what I will say is if you're trying to
visualize how to lay out a journey map, think about
any board game. You may have ever played a board game, board,
a Monopoly board, Shoots and Ladders, Candy Land, I don't know.
If I don't know, are these do? You all have
these games in Jordan as well, And so it's like
(38:37):
all of these are a pathway from beginning to end.
So just think about it. That way is you can
build a one pager that says, here's the process that
you're about to go through. First, we're going to start
with on boarding. Then you're going to learn in phase
one the fundamentals of how to if we're in the
digital marketing space fundamentals to understand the realm of digital
marketing space, and then we can choose our channels or whatnot,
(38:58):
and then it give you visibility. But to show them
that pathway is it's it's not only a pathway that
is showing them how to get to the result faster.
You could take that same pathway and put it in
your sales materials to say, hey, listen, we have our
own methodology to guide you to the result. So not
only is the journey map something that guides them as
you're as they're into your program, it also can become
(39:21):
a really cool sales piece to showcase like how you're
going to get people that desired outcome.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Definitely, well Mark, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
I really enjoyed this US with great stories to your
transformation from corporate to business to business and how you
find this solution for the correct business so where people
can learn more about you and get in touch with you.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, thank you. By the way, this was a lot
of fun, so thank you. You can go to our website.
There's tons of examples of our work on our website
that's Customboxagency dot com or you can always hit me
up on Facebook. I'm pretty approachable, so if you don't
hear from me, you'll hear from you or remember my team.
But those are probably the two easiest ways. But we're friendly,
(40:09):
we're happy to help.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
We thank you very much Mark for being with me
on this episode of Success Again.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
It podcast awesome.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Thank you,
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hipishode of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the ressons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development. Whether you are inspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned
business profession, or just someone looking to improve your life,
(00:41):
the Success Great Podcast is for you. My goal is
to bring you valuable insights and inspiration that will help
you achieve your own success in business and life. So
get ready to learn and be inspired. The Success Great
Podcast starts now.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I haven't me.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
In this episode, Mark Stern to talk about out how
to optimize the customer experience to increase revenue and extend
the lifetime value of the customer. And we are in
business and you want to serve your people. You want
to give them the help that they need, and also
you want them to stick as much as possible with
your business. From consulting national brands to pioneering the future
(01:22):
of digital meats physical marketing. Mark's journey is a blend
of national brand marketing experience and out of the box innovation.
After a bold corporate exit into entrepreneurship, Markstare is the
founder of the custom Box Agency, an experience design agency
(01:42):
that specializes in optimizing a customer journey and enhancing customer
experience through the direct mail.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Mark will come to this episode of the Success a Great.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Podcast World to be here, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Awesome to have you here. Mark.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
So, first of all goes this is doesn't accessity podcast.
I want to start off by asking you. You are entrepreneur,
you are in business. You took her, so I would
say a huge leap going from corporate to entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So what does success means to you?
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Yeah, it's such a good question. It's funny if you
had asked me this when I was back in corporate
America would have been such a different definition. But I
was wired growing up that there's a natural progression to
life that you graduate high school and you go to college,
and you graduate college and then you get the job.
Then you go back to grad school, and then you
get the job after grad school and it's you know,
(02:39):
happy life, picket fences. This is what success looks like.
And you know that that lens kind of shattered for me.
In twenty twelve, I got my NBA at Duke Duke
University in North Carolina. I had this job at Deloitte Consulting.
It's a big consulting firm doing strategy insulting for them,
(03:01):
and I was one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars
in student loan debt and I had this entrepreneurial spirit
but like by the book, people would have said, oh,
you're on this path of success, but it felt heavy.
And when you have that much student loan, you know
you kind of questions say, is this is this what
this was? Is this the pathway? And you know, now
(03:24):
flash forward. You know it took me till twenty eighteen
to leave corporate America. But I would look at success
more so is have you created something that fuels your
soul in a way that you are excited every day
and inspired every day by what you get to do
or who you get to collaborate with. And that is
(03:44):
for me, like when I say, like, like what we're
building with Custom Box Agency, my team is everything. We
look at team as family. Every client project we take
on is a new challenge, and it's just it's just exciting.
It's something fresh and so in my mind, that's kind
of where that if I can wake up and just
be very excited about what's ahead of me, I feel like,
(04:06):
you know, that's my definition. It's not the Lamborghinis, it's
not the fancy houses and vacation homes. I don't need
a lot of money to live. I just want to
wake up happy.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
M hm.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
That's very important. Like you need to feel that you
are basically alive and you are helping yourself with people
around you and serving some kind of community around you. Also, Oh, no,
for you, what exactly triggered you to to to make
this jump? Because you work for big companies. They are
(04:41):
like these companies are not small companies, Like generally only
dream of working for these businesses, right, So, so what
what what happened at a certain moment, at a certain
time in your life or at a certain point when
you are sitting in the desk at that time in
the job that you thought you want to start this thing.
(05:03):
And did you work in a customer let's say customer
service area of these businesses or how was it exactly
the atmosphere of things that I'll do.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
So, if you know me, I'm such a loyalist that
if I do something, I go so all in. So
I had one job before business school and one job
after business school until like leaving that job and starting
a business. And what it was was twenty twelve started
working at de Late Consulting. It's an amazing company. My
role was a strategy consultant. So I was a road warrior.
(05:35):
What I did was every Monday at four forty five am,
I'd get in a cab to go to the airport
and fly out to wherever my client was. And then
Thursday or Friday of that week, I'd fly back to
Austin and then do it again the next Monday. So
we're talking for six years straight, I was a road warrior,
waking up every single Monday, living out of airports and
(05:56):
hotels weekly. It sounds crazy, but that was my life.
And you go to the client because like, in that
line of business, it's important to have the FaceTime. I
went to a conference. This was back in twenty thirteen,
a conference that I had no business being at. I
don't know if you've heard of the company mind Valley,
Have you ever heard of Mine Valley, Dish and Lachiani.
He had a conference that I came across, like on
(06:18):
a YouTube recommended video, a conference called a Fest. It's
called AFEs today. Back then, it was known as Awesomeness Fest,
and then they eventually changed the name. But it was
just a point in my career that I like, I
was like, I need something to look forward to in
my life because I'm working so much. And when I
went to this conference, that's where I was introduced to
(06:39):
the world of online marketing, digital marketing, traffic and conversion.
If you've heard of that event, Digital Marketer, dot com,
click funnels, all of these digital marketing assets. And it
kind of broke me a little bit because I thought
that the path I was on, you know, the natural
path to life, as like I grew up with with
high school, college, grad school, work, work, work, work, work,
(07:04):
that was it. And to go to this conference and
meet these people who are digital marketers, creating their own product,
living life on their own terms. It was like a
world that I did not know existed at all, and
so it was like such a high, But then it
was such an emotional load to then go back into
the corporate American realm after being exposed to a different
(07:25):
way to be fulfilled. And that kind of stuck with
me for about six years from twenty twelve to twenty eighteen.
And essentially what happened was I started going to any
conference I could go to, Funnel Hacking Live for the
click funnels world trafficking conversion. I started buying courses and
consuming them. But the reality is, as long as I
(07:46):
was at Deloitte, Deloitte owns everything you produce in the
firm and outside the firm. So this idea of having
a side hustle could not happen with a job that
I was employed in. And it all came to a
head when back into the seventeen I realized, I'm spending
all this money on these products and coaching programs because
it's kind of a panacea, a medicine that's like I'm
(08:09):
not addressing the underlining issue. And the big event that
happened for me was this was Christmas of twenty seventeen.
Between Christmas in the years, I went to bed one night.
This was on December twenty seventh. I remember it vividly
and had this like crazy premonition that if I don't
(08:30):
leave this job, it would kill me because there's the
lifestyle of living in the air as much as I was,
and the high stress and high pressure, and that was
ultimately what pushed me over the edge to say I
came back. It was January third, twenty eighteen. Told the partner,
I reported to it Deloitte. I love it here, but
(08:51):
I gotta go. And I had no idea what that
backup plan would be. But all I knew was if
I released the pressure of this corporate job, it will
at least like provide the capacity to start to get
more creative and think about what do I want to do.
So that was the biggest thing for me, was it
was a it was a scary moment because there was
a lot of what ifs, and you have you're going
(09:14):
against everything that you've known at that time. But like,
looking back, I'm so grateful I did that because I
don't think I would have been able to build a
side hustle even if I was allowed to, just because
I just couldn't focus the right attention and energy to it.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
So you mentioned it was scary, because scary because you
thought yourself.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
What if it doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I'm jumping into something I don't know if it will work.
You didn't have the belief at the beginning.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
I had the belief that if I released like the
gunk in my head that was my corporate job, if
I could release all the like how much that job
was occupying in my head space, that I could figure
it out. But you never know, Like I think that
the biggest realization that I had was if you're familiar
(10:06):
with like the game of checkers and the game of chess,
Like the way I describe corporate versus becoming an entrepreneur
is like checkers versus chess, like the game board, the
game board to play checkers and the game board to
play chess. It's the same game board, and so like
when I left corporate America to become an entrepreneur, I
kept on trying to force I'm a high performer in
corporate America, but why am I not figuring out this
(10:29):
game of entrepreneurship and that was a struggle for the
first year, and it took me to realize, am I
playing like chess with checkers rules? Meaning if I try
to play chess with checkers rules, I will fail. If
I try to play chess checkers with chess rules, I'm
going to fail. Am I playing the right game? And
that was the biggest thing to say. Okay, Mark learned
(10:50):
how to play the game of entrepreneurship. And oh, by
the way, all these years of corporate America, once you
figure out how to play the new game, those are
what make you unique because those are the experiences that
you had to get to here. So that's like your
own strategic advantage. So once I had that lens and
was like, this is a different game, then the belief
started to really pile on to say, Okay, I can
(11:13):
figure this out. And that's when the game started changing
for me in a big way, definitely.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So you talked about going to multiple events because when
you changed to something, usually I would assume like certain
work would do certain things, but when you are an entrepreneur,
you would think you want different things for the business.
I would I get to say, what should I do?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Get traffic?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I do?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Would I do to get the generation like multiple things
at the same time you start to like move, lift
and right. So a lot of things to think about
at the beginning. But now what made you mentioned it now?
So what is the point on the time frame exactly
that you thought to yourself, Now, this is where I
(11:58):
want to be and I want to build this business
to a place where it has well effect on people
alarmed you, on.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
People that you work with.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
So Custom Box Agency definitely was not the first business
when I left Corporate America, but it was one of
those things that I don't think I would have ever
if you told me years ago the custom Box Agency
would be my business, I would have probably said you
lost your mind, because it was never on the forefront
of my mind. It was an afterthought for the other
products and services we were building. And so essentially the
(12:34):
core of our business of what we do, and you
can see these tiles behind me, is we'll build these
custom box experiences based on how you're operating your business
and the products and services that you have, and we
can build boxes and stories of any shapes and size.
It didn't start with saying we're gonna I'm gonna build
this business and like how do we really define your
(12:56):
customer journey and support it with a box that we
send them to help them along the way to get
results faster. What ended up happening was I did a
if you've ever heard of a virtual summit, this virtual conference.
This is like the first thing I did out of
the gates, because someone told me this is a great
way to get leads and generate content. And I was
just brand new, asking these people who had been in
(13:18):
the game, hey, can I interview you? And when I
did this, I had someone told me I needed to
interview like thirty to forty people, So of course I
interviewed over forty, which is nuts and I don't recommend
that to anyone to interview that many people out of
the gates for the first event that you do. But
what we did was after I interviewed everyone these forty
(13:38):
different influencers, we transcribed and then I built this resource
called entrepreneur Elements. It's a publication trying to see if
I have one on me nearby. It's somewhere and somewhere
in the office, but it spotlighted every speaker. And one
of the things that was really cool is when I
printed this like physical publication and shipped it out to
(14:01):
all the speakers and then sold it for anyone who
attended the conference. People did something that I did not expect,
which was speakers started doing Facebook lives or taking pictures
showing off their spread where they were featured in this
publication I had put together. Recipients who bought the program
started sharing it with their Facebook groups, and so this
(14:23):
ripple effect was happening because I sent them something physical
and it was just a simple publication. Imagine taking a
lead magnet, a trip wire, a fraction of one of
your products and services and creating something physical and tangible
around it. The organic traffic that started to happen as
a result of just complimenting something physical with this digital
experience instantly was a key point of differentiation that people
(14:46):
were like, how did you do that? And so the
next time we did a summit, this is a few
months later, I wanted to learn more about high ticket sales,
but I didn't want to interview forty people. I only
interviewed ten. And I actually have the tile right here
because this was box one for Custom Box Agency, this
high ticket online one right here, and we built a
box experience around it and the same thing happened. People
(15:09):
who attended the event and got the box started doing
these videos and we're getting all this organic traffic because
of the box. And that was kind of where it
was like, Okay, I've already tested this a few times.
Tying something physical to something digital is a new opportunity
that people aren't really tapping into. And to start thinking
about it beyond a swag box. We say swag is
(15:31):
stuff without a goal. That's what swag means. Stop sending
people swag, give them the tools they need. All of
a sudden, people just started asking me again and again,
how are you doing these box experiences? And you know,
I launched a mini product that was the Custom Box Challenge,
teaching people how to do this and then and I
(15:51):
did that because I was like, hey, just buy the challenge,
but look at this business I have over here. That
was my core business at the time. It was a
virtual event business. And everyone kept on going back to
the boxes, and the challenge took off in a way
that I was like, Okay, maybe I need to pay
more attention and build a business around this. Because people
would go through the challenge and then ask me to
(16:12):
build a box, which was a complete opposite reason why
I built the challenge and built Challenge to build back
by back my time, not to launch another business off
of it. And then that was twenty nineteen. At the
beginning of twenty twenty, the world was in quarantine because
of COVID, and I had this virtual event business, in
this box business, and a mentor of mine gave me
(16:32):
the best feedback I could have ever received at that point.
He's like, I ask people, who is Mark Stern. Half
of them say Mark is the virtual event guy. Half
of them say Mark is the custom box guy. He's like,
you're confusing people because you're leading with two separate things.
Which one are you? And you would think at the
beginning of COVID, when everyone's trying to figure out this
(16:54):
virtual event game, it would have made more sense to
continue on the business that was building in virtual events,
and instead I killed that business and went all in
on custom Box Agency in twenty twenty, and that one
pivot took all of these virtual experts that were popping
up overnight from being competitors to all of a sudden
(17:14):
being people that I could collaborate with because now I
could partner with them with my box services. And you
know that year alone, we took this brand new business
from zero to over a million dollars just by the
nature of the product that we had. And we did
that with no marketing. It was word of mouth and
just having a good quality product and a good quality
(17:37):
perspective in terms of how we thought about that customer
journey and customer experience.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, definitely, that's very important.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
But the switch that you made speaking of virtual sum
is like, I have them too, and they so it
requires a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Oh my goodness, Yes.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I'm planning another one, but in May probably because it
it needs a lot of fool So now, the most
important thing for a business, not only like acquire a
new client, which is I believe it could be more
important for businesses, is to actually retain the clients that
(18:16):
we already have, right because this is the thing.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
The more you have the client with.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
You, whether it's a subscription model, whatever it is, the
model of the business is you will have revenue from
that customer or client for the time a longer time
to come.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So, now, from your experience, doing these two made you
transition from corporate to business, from business to business. So
the most important things that any client do you think
is looking.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
For Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, at the
end of the day, there's a couple of things that
when someone is buying your products and services, they're buying
two things. They're buying the desired outcome that you're selling.
So if you're selling you know, how to start a
business online, or if you're selling like teaching people, Facebook
ads or whatever the thing is, you could be a
(19:08):
professional service provider, get well, lose weight, whatever the thing is.
People are buying the outcome that you're promising, but they're
also buying you as their trusted mentor So you have
to understand that you and your role is that there
are so many people on this earth that do exactly
what you and I do. The thing that makes you
(19:29):
unique is you, So don't under value you and like
how you do things and how you show up. It's
part of what they're buying when they're buying it, and
what do people want? They want results? And so this
is why I love that you framed it because I
could not agree more to say, I really think custom
Box Agency is in the business of retention, and so
(19:49):
many people are chasing after the next customer, the next customer. Well,
the good news is you don't need to have this
big acquisition fee and constantly have a new customer when
you start to think about how else can I serve people.
I've heard Russell say this. I don't know if Russell
got this, and when I say Russell, I me and
Russell Brunson. But he's used the example that you know,
why do people stop buying from you? They stop buying
(20:10):
from you for like two main reasons. One is you
anger them. They no longer align with you because you
said or did something that falls out of line of
their own values. Or number two is you stop selling
to them. And that's a big thing that I see
it happens is that when we think about your people,
it's not your decision. If your customers buy from you,
(20:33):
that's their decision. And people get so in their head
about pricing and their product. It's not your decision. If
someone buys from you, it's theirs. So knowing that, I
can't tell you how many times I've delved into businesses
and they've only like spotlighted one of their products in
their total offer suite of things that they could do
to serve these people. And so when people get done
(20:55):
with the products one, they may not know there's other
products exist. Therefore you're like reducing lifetime value too. You.
They may provide you the pathway for what the next
steps should be for the product or service you should sell,
or the more higher ticket product you should sell, because
if you get them results, the next question they're going
(21:17):
to ask you is what's next. They're gonna want to
give you more money because you are a trusted mentor.
And the last thing I'll say on this is, you know,
when I started this game and started like delving deep
in the online space, I was like following probably I
don't know, six to eight different big digital marketing influencers
and consuming everything they were putting out there. And the
(21:39):
reality is some of their thought leadership it, you know,
contradicted one another. And so you're trying to force, all
of a sudden, with your own marketing strategy a square
peg to fit into a round hole when it really
didn't make sense. I truly believe that people don't want
multiple multiple mentors. I think people are just trying to
business owners are just trying to find one trusted mentor
(21:59):
that going to move the needle in their business. And
I think that that's important. That's part of the retention
game is understanding that they may be leaning on you
as their trusted mentor because they've tried other things and
it just didn't work for them. So this is kind
of why it's like we as business owners sometimes need
to get out of our own way because like creating
products and having that natural segue could give you so
(22:22):
much more predictability in your business because you're able to
continue to serve the same people who are already bought
into you as their trusted mentor and you as that
guide to help take them to the next level.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Definitely, you mentioned a lot of points here, so looking
for mentors, this is what we do because we think
the next one is maybe better than the previous one
a lot of things. But actually you have to take
from my opinion, it's like you have to take what
you learn into action, and when you do that, you
would know if it's a good fit, it will work
(22:56):
or not. But ALSOO talked about values and suppricing, So
how did you like pricing your services?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
How did you look at it?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Did you look into the market and see, for example,
some competition and how would they do that? Did you
applies higher lower on what basis Did you have this
idea of your own pricing and look into things?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Did you think that I.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Will provide better value for the clients and the price
does not matter even if it's higher.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
So there's a couple of things that are really important
to note that I had to learn the hard way
about pricing is that one it starts with really understanding
who your avatar is. If you know your customer who
you're serving and know a little bit about their story,
then like it makes it so much easier to start
to engineer an offer for them. Everyone assumes that, oh,
(23:49):
I need to be competitive, I need to have a
low price. Low price is not necessarily the best thing,
depending on whatever industry you're in. So one of the
things I'll tell you is that there have been products
and services that I was like, this is exactly what
I need, this is what I want to buy, and
then they revealed the price, and the price was so
far below what I valued it. They may have said
(24:09):
this is a five hundred dollars program and I was like, oh,
that's a five thousand dollars program. Instantly they disqualified me
because the pricing was too low and I saw that
pricing and I'm like, if it's that low, it's going
to cater to a different individual that they may or
may not be trying for, and that may not be me.
When I got started, and it was like fresh out
of the gates, not knowing how to price my services.
(24:30):
This is pre custom box agency. And I think this
is a really cool story because I launched my first
virtual summit. It was called the click Perneur Summit. This
was back in twenty eighteen. It's so funny because I
don't know that was like, that was I need to
build a YouTube show that is like interviewing entrepreneurs with
(24:51):
all the logos they've had throughout the course of being
an entrepreneur, because I think we all have tons of
logos and probably tons of domains. But what was really
cool was at the end of the clickprinter Or Summit,
this virtual summit, I wanted to launch a little coaching
program and for the first class, I wanted five to
eight people, somewhere in that range. I didn't know what
to price my program, and so I priced it it
(25:15):
five ninety seven, so six hundred dollars for this like
eight week program that I'd put together, and then at
the last second, I was like, you know what, I'm
going to add an option that if you want two
to one on ones with me, it's going to be
nine ninety seven. So you had a five ninety seven
and a nine ninety seven option, so six hundred or
one thousand if we just rounded up, and I just
(25:37):
put it out there, thinking like I don't know who's
going to take what. We had six people join. All
six took the thousand dollar offer, which instantly told me
that I undervalued my services. And the next time that
we did it, I bumped it up and said, like,
you get two one on ones with me in addition
to this coaching program for two thousand dollars. Otherwise it's
(25:59):
a thousand for the program, so increase the price. And
still the vast majority took the two thousand dollars price point.
So that's kind of where like price testing is very important,
because had I not done that, I would have just
assumed the five ninety seven one option price point. You know,
I would never had data to say that's too low.
That one little like last minute addition, and especially with
(26:22):
a beta like I sold two one on ones with me.
If you were in a beta with me, and I
launched a beta product, I would have probably done it
for free just because I want the insights to make
my product better. So whether or not they bought it
like it wouldn't have made a difference. I still would
have probably met with them, But just to see how
they valued me more than I valued myself was really telling.
(26:42):
And then with Custom Box Agency, you know, we to
like put our pricing and get it to where it is.
It has been a multi year effort of testing and testing,
and one of the realizations early on was we had
a much lower price point when Custom Box Agency was
getting started because when we build out these box experiences,
we used to let our clients if they wanted to
(27:04):
contribute and do some of the design themselves and like
save a little money with us, that they could create
their own assets to stick inside the box and we'd
handle the fulfillment part of it. And that model quickly
demonstrated that it just didn't work. It added so much
more work to us that I remember taking our product
(27:25):
pricing and we three x did I think it was
at the time, you know, a build out for us,
we PRICEDD five k. We increased our price to fifteen
thousand and I was really nervous about that. This was
years ago that we did this. But the reason that
we did that was because we wanted to make sure
that we weren't attracting clients that were like, wouldn't let
(27:45):
us take full control over the buildout experience. Because we're
able to move faster, We're able to deliver high quality.
It's a more cohesive experience inside the box. We're not
babysitting the clients to try and get these assets in
time to make it for a launch. And that one
little pivot was such a big shift that we attracted
(28:06):
our right fit clients. They were no longer looking to
They wanted us to design all the assets in the box.
They wanted us to control the experience, and that's why
they were willing to pay that higher price point. So
that little shift completely changed the dynamic of the types
of clients that we were getting just because of pricing
and also making sure that what we were delivering as
(28:26):
a result of that price fell in line with what
we were trying to achieve and the clients that we
were trying to attract. Pricing's fascinating, Yeah, blessing is like
it's about testing, so you have to do that.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
You wouldn't know that like in my two summits, you
call them that much of a success, but you have
to test.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And then when it would be different.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Because you would learn even if it's not success, you
would have certain angers that you would learn from. You
would have set in perspective that you can learn from
the experience. This is why it's important to take into
action and put it into play. Now speaking of play,
like what kind of advice that was a bad advice
or the worst advice that someone told you?
Speaker 4 (29:13):
I do have an answer for this one. So I
think the worst advice that I received, and I get
the merit of why this influencer said this, But when
I was first getting starting the online marketing game, I
don't want to drop who the influencer is. But what
I will say is what he was pushing was this
(29:34):
idea of before starting the business, you want to start
start a practice business and put yourself out there with
a practice business so you can learn like email marketing,
you can learn how to build a funnel. You can
build all these fundamentals, but not burn out like the
industry you actually want to work in. And so I
remember starting off building a practice business. I think I
(29:56):
built a practice business. I am a dog owner. I
don't know if you have any pets, but I have
a little quirky at home, little little dog, And because
I had just gotten her, I did this practice business
on like how to go about finding and seeking, you know,
the perfect dog for you. But I had no passion
(30:18):
or interest in it. And so that's kind of why
it was, like, you know what I learned when I
joined like Russell Brunson's world and got a little bit
deeper into kind of that that community was like, build
a business and the thing that really excites and fuels you.
And it doesn't matter if it's a what Russell would
call a bloody red market, if you know red ocean
(30:40):
versus blue ocean concepts. If it's a bloody red ocean,
meaning there's so much competition there, If that's an industry
that fuels your soul and excites you, you can always
carve off your own niche off of that. That can
be like your own blue ocean off of a red oce.
(31:00):
There's always a way to spin it that makes it
a new opportunity for your people. And I wish I
had just jumped in and like focused on the thing
that I was most excited about. And even if like
those first videos were super awkward, we're messy, we're you know,
just not how i'd necessarily want to represent myself. Leave
them out there, because as you continue to grow and
(31:24):
master and get better, you become more relatable because people
can go find your earlier videos and realize, oh, this
this person is just like me. They got started someday,
they were rough at the beginning. No one just wakes
up and is just perfect online. Like speaking on Zoom
and doing my first Zoom interview back in twenty eighteen
(31:44):
was the most awkward thing because I wasn't used to
leveraging the Zoom platform to interview someone talking to a
camera into a screen. I always met in person. It
was corporate America. We meet face to face. So that's
kind of what I would say is that this whole
idea of practice business, I mean, I'm not a believer
in it. Go after the thing that excites you, because
(32:04):
you're gonna show up differently, and like, like the energy
you put into it is gonna just represent itself so
differently because it's something that you're truly excited about and
you can worry about getting finessed and like finding your voice.
That takes time. Give yourself permission to take time to
do that.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
So definitely can we do that some things like we
need time to develop ourselves and though myself, you have
to push yourself in every way. So this is one
of the reasons, like I concourage you one like to
go life like this one now. So now if someone
asks you, like the basic fundamentals someone is starting their business,
(32:45):
what of the basic fundamentals to have this customer retention
as one two, three points as I take away.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
So if it's so, there's a couple different angles we
could take here. If we're talking about your starting in business,
what are the things that I think are critical. That's
one way. If we're going to leverage it from a
customer retention space, if you want to go in, that's
a different angle that I can take. But what I
what I will say is from a business I'll do
a hybrid if that works for you.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, from a.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
Business standpoint, I can't stress the importance of finding some
degree of a support community or a mentor. And the
reason I think that this is something that's really important
is because we are so limited by ourselves, like we
hold ourselves back so much more than someone else would
hold us back. And part of it is that we're
(33:38):
limited between you know, what's between our ears, our own mindset.
And one of my inherent beliefs is I believe that
it's part of the role of the entrepreneur to hold
a bigger vision for your clients and customers than they
hold for themselves. And what I mean by that is
like for me right now, one of my mentors is
I'm trying to get back in shape. I've been so
(34:00):
out of shape since COVID and I used to do
these spartan mud runs and all these things and really
get out. And you know, this year is a pivotal year,
since I'm turning forty this year that as I turned
into my forties, I want to make sure that you
know I'm as in the best shape possible. I found
a mentor whose vision for me was for me to
lean down to have a six pack. For me, I
(34:22):
just wanted to be healthy, but I didn't ever think
of myself as being capable of having that. So to
have a mentor that holds that vision for me has
been game changing. I can't tell you how many times
in my business with launching custom Box Agency, a mentor
stepping in and providing me the belief when I doubted myself.
So that is one thing that I can't stress enough
when we're talking about business and things in your business
(34:44):
that I think are really critical. Yes, it is critical
to know who your avatar is and don't be afraid
to have a conversation with them, reach out to them,
engage them. They're like, don't lock yourself in a room
and build it a product. I can't tell you how
many online marketers or online business owners that they think
they know what their people want and they lock themselves
in a room and film an entire course or product
(35:06):
or whatever it may be, and then they put it
out there. And I'm just like, like, your people will
give you the breadcrumbs for exactly what they need. So
make sure you're engaging them because that's the best intel,
not you being stuck in your head talking with other people.
And that being the case, if I said what is
the most pivotal thing, especially when we're talking about customer retention,
(35:28):
it's understanding the customer journey. And what I mean by
that is when you're selling a product or service, you're
selling a desired outcome. Whatever that desired outcome may be.
I will help you get in the best shape of
your life. I will help you grow your business to
six figures or seven figures, whatever that desired outcome is.
You now have your back anchor on the customer journey,
because if that's what success is after someone has navigated,
(35:50):
and when we say customer journey, what we mean by
this is how people navigate through your products and services
from onboarding, which we give the name start here, from
start here to the desired outcome, and when we work
with clients, the reason that that's the first thing that
we do is the second that you know how to
guide your customers from start here onboarding and how to
(36:12):
navigate your products and services all the way through getting
them that result. If you have that pathway designed, and
it can be as simple as phase one, phase two,
phase three, phase four, a simple structure. Now I can
show you as you progress through that journey with working
with me, that you are no longer at the beginning
you're in phase one. You're no longer in phase one,
(36:34):
you're in phase two. So I get to celebrate the
micro steps to getting to the desired outcome, and that
to me is so critical because the second that that's defined,
not only do I see the pathway or can I
see where people are getting stuck, I can introduce new
ways to monetize the business because I can see things
that I can create to support them along the way,
I can find ways to serve them at a higher
(36:55):
level because once they get that result, you're probably going
to create a new problem for their bi business. And
that's another way to retain them because you know it
like the back of your hand, how they're going to
navigate and get a result. You have confidence as a
business owner because you can see, like if you just
trust the pathway, you'll get the outcome. So that's why
for me, customer journey and understanding that piece is so
(37:16):
critical is that we try to overcomplicate it and then
we engineer something that every single customer we get has
a different experience, and all of a sudden, it creates
this internal business chaos that is not scalable and sometimes
people like people don't want more, people want less, and
people value their time. So getting them results faster and
giving them what they need, you know they're looking for
(37:38):
that mentor that's going to guide them through to their
to the alchemists, to why they're working with you in
the first place. So that journey, to me is every
I can't build a box experience without it.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Definitely, people at the end of the day, they want
the resolution, like they want the fixed first, like we
should know it is in general everyone everything like yesterday.
So you want to provide help or service or whatever
it is the solution for them as quickly as humanly
(38:10):
possible with this. With the more the less steps there is,
the better.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And what I will say is if you're trying to
visualize how to lay out a journey map, think about
any board game. You may have ever played a board game, board,
a Monopoly board, Shoots and Ladders, Candy Land, I don't know.
If I don't know, are these do? You all have
these games in Jordan as well, And so it's like
(38:37):
all of these are a pathway from beginning to end.
So just think about it. That way is you can
build a one pager that says, here's the process that
you're about to go through. First, we're going to start
with on boarding. Then you're going to learn in phase
one the fundamentals of how to if we're in the
digital marketing space fundamentals to understand the realm of digital
marketing space, and then we can choose our channels or whatnot,
(38:58):
and then it give you visibility. But to show them
that pathway is it's it's not only a pathway that
is showing them how to get to the result faster.
You could take that same pathway and put it in
your sales materials to say, hey, listen, we have our
own methodology to guide you to the result. So not
only is the journey map something that guides them as
you're as they're into your program, it also can become
(39:21):
a really cool sales piece to showcase like how you're
going to get people that desired outcome.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Definitely, well Mark, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
I really enjoyed this US with great stories to your
transformation from corporate to business to business and how you
find this solution for the correct business so where people
can learn more about you and get in touch with you.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, thank you. By the way, this was a lot
of fun, so thank you. You can go to our website.
There's tons of examples of our work on our website
that's Customboxagency dot com or you can always hit me
up on Facebook. I'm pretty approachable, so if you don't
hear from me, you'll hear from you or remember my team.
But those are probably the two easiest ways. But we're friendly,
(40:09):
we're happy to help.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
We thank you very much Mark for being with me
on this episode of Success Again.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
It podcast awesome.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Thank you,
Popular Podcasts
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.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Kingdom of Fraud
It’s the unlikeliest of criminal partnerships: a devout polygamist from an insular Utah sect joining forces with a shadowy Armenian tycoon from LA. The result - a billion dollar fraud conspiracy. In Kingdom of Fraud, investigative reporter Michele McPhee traces the origins of the extraordinary alliance between Jacob Kingston and Levon Termendzhyan. Together, the two men trigger the largest tax investigation in American history and weave around themselves a web of dirty cops, influential political relationships and transnational money laundering. All this is set against the backdrop of Jacob Kingston’s clan – The Order. A powerful and secretive polygamist organization in Salt Lake City. To whom Jacob is desperate to prove his worth. Kingdom of Fraud is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/. You can listen to new episodes of Kingdom of Fraud completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “iHeart True Crime+, and subscribe today!