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.
Transcript
Welcome back to the guy who knows a guy podcast. We're so excited to be back with you. And this season we are counting down to J V connect the first of its kind, December 12th to 14th, 2023. This is going to be an incredible dedicated networking event, and you are going to want to be part of it. And this podcast here to help prepare you to get the most out of this incredible event. I'm Michael Whitehouse, the guy who knows a guy. And over the next few weeks, you're going to 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 December 12th to 14th for JB Connect. And now, let's get to the interview. Welcome once again to the guy who knows a guy podcast. I, as always, I'm your host, Michael Whitehouse, the guy who knows a guy. And our guest today is Amanda Abea. Amanda is an award winning content creator, keynote speaker and business coach who specializes in helping business owners activate their persuasion prowess so they can make more money and live a more affluent life. Her clients go from hating sales and marketing to achieving 90. Is that right? That's not a typo. It's 90%.
Amanda Abella:It's 90%. Yes.
Michael Whitehouse:Wow. 90 percent close rates and closing multiple five figure deals. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Univision, and many more. Prior to teaching marketing and sales, Amanda spent a decade as a financial writer and wrote content for companies like Wells Fargo, Discover, Credit Karma, Santander. It's not Sant Sant Santanday. I think depends on what country you're in. Okay, Santander, you know which bank I'm talking about the red one and more. She's also partnered with companies like Capital One and TransUnion and financial education campaigns. So welcome to the show. Thank you for giving me a bio that gave us something to talk about already. And how are you doing today?
Amanda Abella:I'm doing super well. I mean, I was like, Oh dang, I got to add to the bio, which is now, you know, I'm living in Mexico, which I found the Santander thing funny. Cause that's literally the bank I have to go to, to withdraw cash with the lowest, um, fee for American dollar to pay. So, so I was like, Oh yeah, that bank, I used to write for them and I literally go there every week.
Michael Whitehouse: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, but I've done some networking coaching for them and speaking, uh, and like, I know most of their staff. So I figure I'll bank with the people who I know everyone from the manager up to the CEO. That seems like the, the way a networker should be doing is banking.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, and actually in that 1st business where I was working with a lot of banks, it was mostly networking that got me those deals because none of those banks were going to go through a funnel. You know, now it's a little bit different because I have digital programs. Um, and there was a reason for that because that business model was more scalable. Whereas my 1st business was not, but in my 1st business, when I was doing content marketing for financial companies, or I would get hired as a Spokesperson for campaigns like for trans union, which you could find the videos on YouTube somewhere. Um, then most of that was like, who do you know? Networking. There was a big event. We would go to every year for money and media and I book myself out for a year, but a lot of it was networking cold pitching good old fashioned sales and relationships.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. So, so you didn't start with a network, right? You didn't like go to Harvard and meet everyone you know, and that, that puts you in.
Amanda Abella:No, I went to like some tiny Catholic school in Southwest Florida. No one's ever heard of. There were 80 people in my graduating class.
Michael Whitehouse:Wow. So let's start from there. How did you go from tiny school to networking your way to jobs with Wells Fargo and Discover and Credit Karma and the one I can't pronounce?
Amanda Abella:Yeah, so funny story. I graduated in 2010 and couldn't find a job. So I hear a lot of the people complaining now about all the economic stuff going on in the United States, very different hearing it when you're living in another country, but I digress. But I'm hearing all those stories. I'm like, dang, this sounds like 2008 2009 2010 all over 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 got basically 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. Mm-Hmm. But back then, right, I was like, what the hell am I supposed to do with this Um, so I couldn't find a 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 to make money writing in the summer of 2010. And it was literally just clawing my way and like, 12 hours reading everything on Google. I could get my hands on and I was just so 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. Um, and I figured, well, if I get paid to learn about it, that sounds pretty smart. So why don't I just go do that? Um, and none of us knew at the time that the financial blogging and the financial writing niche was going to like take off. So here's something interesting. Whenever financial issues start happening in the United States, people become a lot more interested in finance. So it was just kind of a good timing thing. That now I can see opportunity, but back then I had no idea how to do that. I just got lucky, I guess. Um, and you know, it was just like one and I started making friends on Twitter. Twitter was like the place to be if you were a financial blogger back in the day. And then, you know, we all started getting together, putting on networking events because geeking out over money and blogging about it. And then that turned into a massive conference that turned into, um, not that I put on, but that the community put on that turned into a lot of us who had started early. Literally banks were our clients. I mean, it was to the point where they would like, throw parties for us once a year and then that we would like, mingle with all the financial companies and then they needed content because people were searching for financial information. And then that's how I kind of also started learning about marketing was. By doing it. And what I didn't realize was that I was doing sales, right? So I was like pitching ideas. I was meeting people at events. I was going to every event. I could get my hands on every Twitter chat. Do you remember Twitter chats? Are they even still a thing? Right? Twitter chats. Back in the day and finance were like, you know, you would follow it. It was like a certain time you would get on Twitter and it was a certain topic and then everyone would follow the hashtag and then you would be able to follow the chat. 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 made a lot of friends, um, many of which are still friends. I just interviewed one of them on my podcast and we've known each other for 10 years since our finance days. Um, and that's how I built my first business. It was, you know, learning content marketing from the ground up. It was sales and not knowing that I was selling and it was networking.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah. And I think there's a couple of things I hear in that. The first is you, you knew what you were trying to do. So you didn't say, Oh, there's no jobs. I'll just go on monster and deed again and send out some more applications.
Amanda Abella:Oh, I tried that, you know, and I did eventually get jobs because I got the typical immigrant to America story, you know, you go to school and you go get a steady job. I didn't know that I could like make a whole business.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. Um, but yeah, obviously that didn't get 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't thinking about, okay, where can I make a million dollars or where can I, it's just, I want to do this thing. You networked, you weren't trying to sell them. You weren't trying to get something from them. You're just, I'm into finance writing. You're into finance, right? And let's hang out and talk about finance and writing.
Amanda Abella:And pretty much that's exactly what it was.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. And that's, and that, that's really powerful networking. Cause you're not, you know, that's where 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 and that in common, you know, the higher levels of networking, which is often those masterminds. That's the, they're not selling to each other and asking each other to promote. They're sharing ideas. They're sharing experience and knowledge. And that's what you were doing. Um, and, and obviously that led to a lot more and a lot more success, but I think that's a great story for anyone listening saying, you know, well, how can I network if I'm not starting with the right, the right thing now, one of the dimensions, you know, Twitter chats, which is no longer a thing. Um, so that's one of the challenges, the, the Internet shifting. So the places where the connections happen. aren't the same. Um, for, for someone up and coming, do you have an idea of where, where they might be able to find connections and opportunity?
Amanda Abella: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 using social media and content has changed dramatically since, you know, I'm talking, I think, seven, eight years ago. Yeah. But the concepts are still the same. Um, in fact, I would venture to say it's probably easier now in a lot of ways, because we have a lot of tools now that can help us that we didn't have back then. Um, my partner and I are in the process. We're starting a 2nd brand called entrepreneur expat. Um, because we are expats and there's been a lot of interest for my community on being an expat, but we're smart business people and we're like, oh, okay. Well, only a small portion of our community. Current community is into that. We're going to make a whole separate brand. For them, that's what we're going to do. Um, so we're in the process of starting the second one and we were both noting because he's been in digital marketing as long as I have, and we were both noting like how much easier it is now in a lot of ways because you have tools that can tell you what keywords to use. There's tons of experts that you can follow on Instagram that tell you how to put together a good performing reel. To get attention. None of that stuff existed back then because it was like the wild, wild West and it was a new thing and no one knew what they were doing. Yes.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. Yeah. And as a, as a thing about it, like you were saying, you're finding these, these interest chats. I feel like some of it now is in the comments of different people's posts. So if you find people or the influencers in the space, you engage in the comments and reply to people's comments in the comments and there's no Twitter chats anymore, but there are. Posts with comment threads where you can connect people there. Uh, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or, uh, TikTok's not quite as good with 80 characters, but LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty good for those, those kinds of exchanges.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, I would, I would absolutely agree. I mean, a lot of the networking I've done, 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 certain degree, it is Facebook. Now that I'm getting back on my content game because I just am able to breathe after this house renovation, um, craziness going on over here. Um, but I'm able to get back into it and I'm focusing really on video. So, you know, Facebook, Instagram. YouTube and TikTok is my main focus right now while we're doing video. And it's to your point now, you know, what used to be a Twitter chat is now going on in comment sections.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah, that's, that's a key thing. And of course you need to, you know, sort of step over the muddy puddles of the social media. Um, because, you know, there's, it's like if you're at a rowdy bar, you know, having a good conversation over here and someone has a fist fight over there and someone's throwing a chair over there, but if you just duck and the chair goes over.
Amanda Abella:That's a really great way of putting it. I've never heard anyone describe it that way, but it's very accurate.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. Um, yeah, something else I wanted to ask you about in the, in the notes you sent ahead of time. Um, when I asked you what's your best networking tip, you said learn sales and communication skills because you talked about doing 400 calls in 2022 and 250 of them needed that advice.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, so one of the things that I decided to do, um, you know, after the first business, I moved into 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 start teaching marketing and, and sales. And I started becoming known as. Teaching actual sales and communication skills. So a lot of people teach online marketing and it's great, but marketers don't know how to sell. Um, they don't know how to have that people conversation part of things, which a lot of people are struggling with now because they're dealing with more challenges in the economy. Or maybe a more jaded marketplace or buyers in general are feeling more apprehensive because they're hearing all the world news and they're realizing, oh, snap. I don't know how to sell. I don't know how to have a conversation with another human being. So, I became known for helping people with that and our clients get insane results, even just in the last group that we ran of that sales training, they generated an extra 6 figures in sales in a few weeks. And it was, and it was from very simple things, right? Like learning how to ask the right questions in a sales conversation. Um, so that business started blowing up like in 2021 and I kind of crashed and burned and realized that I needed to build more leverage. So I had been networking and doing the one on one stuff for a long time. And I realized that it was time to scale and kind of transition out of that, um, you know, number one to have a more sustainable business. I'd gone through a lot of like family 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 using social media more strategically instead of these one on one conversations, but there's a transition period. That occurs when you're going through that. And my transition period was I want to build a network of referral partners. I want to build a network of people who that I can rely on to promote my business to their people. And then it's going to bring business over my way. So, I have these advocates basically, um, and the reason I wanted to do that is number 1, you could have a bunch of people promoting you at the same time. Uh, number 2. You, they can promote you over and over and over again throughout time. Number three, I don't have to pay money in Facebook ads. Number four, those guys can turn into clients based on the conversations. So there were lots of benefits to this. The problem was I had to find them. Um, and, uh, Really funny story. Um, I was going through a challenging time. I went to dinner with a friend and, um, he had mentioned he runs like an eight figure publishing company and he mentioned to me, hey, anything that you need, just shoot me a text and I'll help you. Networking. Right. Like you meet people like that who want to help you. So I had been approached with this idea of doing like a joint venture with somebody from back from my finance days. Like, Hey, if you promote this and 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 of like 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 only do I know how to do that. I built a 20 million company. 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 generosity of his heart in that course, right? He basically said, hey, you know, I was doing, like, 100 meetings a week now. I was like, okay, so I sort of cold. It's like, if you've got a 20Million dollar company, I'm just going to go 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 them and being like, hey, I think we could make good referral partners. I had no freaking idea what I was doing, but I did know how to at least have a conversation with people. And I realized that if other people really had no idea. What they were doing because I would go into these calls. I mean, I was doing up to 10 a day and I would go into these calls and I would ask people like, Hey, you know, I think we can make really great referral partners. Here's what I do in my business. You know, I think this is how we can collaborate. Tell me what you've got going on in your business and they 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 talk about their businesses. They don't know how to talk about what they do. They don't know how to talk about their client results. They don't know how to talk about how they collaborate with others. They literally have no idea. So in realizing that, I ended up doing 400 calls, but that one of those calls led to a group of joint venture partners, and that led to another group, and that led to another group. I just had to go through like 200 to find them first. Um, but I got a lot of data and what I ended up realizing, um, again, to your point is that most people do not know how to have conversations with other human beings about what they do for a living or what they do for work or what makes them stand out or how they collaborate with other people. And I was really flabbergasted because I was like, how do you all make money? I don't understand. Like, I don't understand like how you make, like you must make money by accident because. Like, I'm trying to have a conversation and you can't so what ended up happening was in that process. I ended up creating, like, I started kind of figuring out my own little process for finding referral partners and things like that. And I put that into an 8 step guide, everything from finding them. To how do we do this in a more leveraged way other than DMing people on LinkedIn. To here's how you have that conversation. Here is sentence one. Here is sentence two. Here is sentence three. I mean, I broke it down to that degree. And then here's what you do after the call. Because that was another thing. They sucked at the follow up after. So I ended up putting everything into a guide, which everybody listening can get for free. Um, and I started experimenting and tweaking the guide. And what I ended up, I eventually did end up finding the right people. I built a network of about 100 referral partners, uh, has literally kept my business doubling, uh, between that and the automations we've built while I've been in the process of moving to another country and renovating a house, maybe working at 10 percent capacity. The business has kept going and it's been because of that referral partner process. And also a lot of the marketing and sales automations. We spent a couple of years building on the back end. Thank you. But, you know, once you finally nail it, which my hope with that guide is that people avoid the painful conversations I needed to have first before I found my people, before I found the referral partners. Um, that's my hope is that you avoid all of that and that you actually get results. But once you nail it, I mean, one of our partners sent us 300 leads in a day.
Michael Whitehouse:Wow. So, yeah. So, uh, you said you have, you have over 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'll promote you if you promote me. And, um, I assume you're not promoting back a hundred partners.
Amanda Abella:Yeah. So it's interesting that you bring that up because I had no idea what I was doing. I went, number one, I used sales brain, and number two, I was like, all right, I guess 2023 is gonna be the data collection year. Because I guess because I have a sales background, I just approach everything with sales statistics, right? So I'd already done like 200 calls and most of them sucked. So I just assumed going into these groups that it was going to be the same thing. So what I ended up doing was I booked like 50 calls in two days. Assuming half of them were going to suck. Um, and that's actually not what happened because once you get into the higher level, I was literally shocked within two weeks, I got booked out for like a year, but I was not expecting that to happen. So 2023 was like definitely the experimentation year of what works and what doesn't, which we'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 promoted so many people and I've also, and they've 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 just going to be more scalable about it. We're literally just making the calendar of like, all right, this works. Right. And instead of maybe doing 1 webinar a month for a referral partner or 1 a week for 4 different referral partners. We're going to have 15 people promoting the same event at the same time. Yeah, that and we know exactly who those people are going to be and it just requires more planning ahead of time. I didn't know that going into 2023 because I just didn't have the data, but now going into 2024, I have the data and I can make it more sustainable and scalable over time.
Michael Whitehouse:Okay, so, so do you promote, um, do you promote all your referral partners or is it?
Amanda Abella:We try to, yeah, we, we, Yeah, we try our best. Um, and again, I just use sales brain, right? So I might overbook myself knowing that like half of them are going to fall through because some emergency happens or somebody had to push their launch back or, or something. 1 thing I've noticed about when people try and use referral partners is they don't have enough of them. Right? So they will rearrange their whole schedule for like 1 partner, but then that 1 partner has an emergency and your business is screwed that month. Okay. That's why I wanted over a hundred because that's life and that's what happens. It's the same way that you're in sales, right? You're not going to bank on one deal. You're going to have a hundred people in a pipeline.
Michael Whitehouse:But, but how are you able to, I mean, there's 365 days in a year. So, and you obviously need to promote your own stuff, I assume. Yeah. So how are you promoting just by sheer volume? How are you? Promoting them. Yeah.
Amanda Abella:So we've tested different ways of doing things. One of the things that we've done, for example, is like a joint webinar, right? So, for example, we're promoting each other at the same time, or now going into 2024, we have like a schedule we can follow. We didn't have that in 2023 because again, it was experimentation year. In 2023. So now we have an actual schedule where we can plug people in or another thing that we've tested is maybe we'll mention five different referral partners in a newsletter or we'll have them on the podcast. Like there's so many different ways that we've learned to do this. But that's after, you know, a year, 18 months of experimentation. And then once we experiment, now we can create more of a process to make sure everybody is getting handled to the best of their ability. And again, Knowing that not all 100 of them are going to be able to do their launch next year because life happens.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah, well, and I, I think what you just shared there, some people listening may be like, wait, you can, that's possible. Like you could promote a hundred partners in a year. Cause, cause the, the old, the old model kind of what seems like the tradition, the traditional model. I mean, Nothing in the industry is more than 20 years old, but the traditional model seems to be, you know, this launch, it's 18 days long. It takes up your, your list for a month. And you can't possibly promote more than nine people a year because, um, because, you know, one of the conventional wisdoms I've heard is if you promote someone, you will lose between six and 8 percent of your list on subscribe every time you promote someone.
Amanda Abella:Which it did jack up my list in the first six months of the year until my partner and that's part of what we figured out until we were like, okay, there's got to be other ways that we can do this. So we found those other ways. Right. And I think that goes to your point where people, people suck at networking. They also suck at creativity.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. Yeah. Well, and that's, that's one thing I looked at. I'm like, I, I don't want to lose. A 12th of my list because I promoted someone else. Maybe if someone says I'm leaving your 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 I don't want to hear about Amanda again. I'm out. I'm like, but you see the, uh, my, cause if 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 people and not have them fly out the door because they're tired of all these promotions.
Amanda Abella:Or maybe you put an event together or something. There's so many ways that you can do this, but you know, people, people lack creativity because they're trying to follow like this one set pattern of things. Um, but that's why I'm a big fan 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 drop the ball at some point. I don't just don't make myself feel horrible for it because that's life. Yep.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah. That that's huge. Yeah. I think that's that creativity and experimentation thing is, is key because some people are like, Oh, I'm going to follow them. And especially the way the economy has changed, the way markets changing, the way technology is changing, just because someone has an eight figure business doesn't mean there you can emulate them because you know, maybe they made all their contacts on Twitter chats and yeah. So yeah, let's go out and Twitter 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:Yeah, and also to your point, one of the things that we've noticed, because a part of what we teach 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 to many, or there's only so many hours in a day and you only have so much energy. Yep. So we have to start having that conversation and 1 of the things that we've realized we have sent over 100, 000 emails this year between ourselves, our referral partners and for clients and 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 sounds like 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. That's number one. Number two, there's no personal story. There's no personal like connection really with the people. So we've noticed that's a problem. Um, and we've also noticed that the systems 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 maintaining of the relationship, people are generally not very good at. So one of the things that I love to do, um, and this is something we're taking more seriously now in 2024 is having JB partners on my podcast. And then they can promote me to their list that way and drive traffic to a podcast and I can promote them to my list that way, right? And then they get odd eyeballs and things like that. And then number one, it's a little bit more evergreen. And number two, it's not as assaulting. Yeah.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and, and yeah, those are definitely very real, real challenge with the, with the tracking and the, I mean, I'm always amazed by when I have to chase people down, um, for, for copy, for links, for.
Amanda Abella:It's amazing how often you have to chase people down for copy, right? And then they get mad at you when, you know, 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 by listening to this because those were all the problems that I kept running into. Well,
Michael Whitehouse: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 links for all of my affiliate partners, so I can check my own data and say, how many clicks did I get? But that doesn't tell me how many opt ins or, or anything else. Yeah. So
Amanda Abella:we can help you with that. Yeah. So one of the things we've even started suggesting to our podcast guests is like, Hey, we suggest having like 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 learn how to do, cause I'm definitely more of a creative person is to get more into the data and the analytics and then learning how to combine the two.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. But even if I can track the clicks, that doesn't tell me what converted. So they may click on it cause I told them to, but that doesn't mean they signed up for it. Cause that's one.
Amanda Abella:I've got you at the end of this. There's there's tools for that. I got you.
Michael Whitehouse:So when I promote a summit or when I, when I run a summit, I should say. Uh, I send updates to my speakers every day for the 14 days leading up to it, and every one of them contains a link to the document with the swipe copy and their affiliate links, because I used to do like, I don't want to send it every day. So I'll send it every few days, invariably, if I sent every three 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 now I said it every single day. Because I understand, when I speak on 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 that my speakers, they're not living for my summit, they're, they are, I'm giving them exposure, they're certainly an equal exchange, but it is barely on their list of priorities, because it's one of the things they're doing, and so I need to send 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. And yeah, most when I promote people, I regularly, I will get to a day before the thing's supposed to happen and get that even be like, so how are you doing? Like. Who are you? What are we talking about?
Amanda Abella: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 you can to get them on the calendar. And even still, you got to go follow up with people, right? Because they're not. And that was one of the big issues, um, I would run into with promoting other people. And again, it's why I put this guy together. So people don't run into those problems.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah. Yeah. You got to remember your partner, your people promoting you, it's not their business. It's your business. You care about your business every day, all the time, day and night. They care about your business when you remind them for a few minutes afterwards. Like, I'm happy to promote partners, but I got a lot of people to keep in my head.
Amanda Abella:Exactly, right? There's a lot of things going on, and there's just, with life, with business, with everything. Right? So, yeah, you know, it is a little complicated sometimes to keep it all organized. But, you know, if you know how to do it for sales, and you know how to stay organized with leads for sales and CRMs and things like that, JB's is not much different.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. That's if you know how to do that, of course, and that's that's a big if yes, but but you mentioned organization and we mentioned the frail limitations of the human brain. Um, one thing we haven't talked much about is automation. Modern technology. And, uh, and you know, we have robots for this. So talk a little bit about how you use automation to, um, see, I believe in the notes, you said you cut 84 percent of your workload by automating sales tasks.
Amanda Abella:I did. So yes, I'm a big, I'm a 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 of the systems and automations and support that I really needed. So of course, Amanda crashed and burned, um, after a six figure sales month. And, um, what I realized I had this idea, right. And I was like, well, what if I could just create an automated salesperson? Right, like, what would it look like if I just took these 15 years of sales experience where I know how to pick up the phone where I know how to have a conversation where I know how to talk to someone in the DMS qualify them and get them booked on a call. I know all this stuff like the back of my hand because I've done so much of it. But what if I could do that? Right. And somehow automate most of it, because one of the things that I started to realize in teaching a lot of my client sales is that most people just don't do enough to get the sale, right? So they'll get an email from somebody, a bunch of automated emails, but you should be calling them. You should be texting them, right? You should be doing a lot more than 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 I started running into a problem. And the problem is if you get 300 leads in a day, you're not about to bang out 300 phone calls the next day. So I started running into a capacity again, story of my life, so I had been in this process where I was trying to figure out how to create this automated salesperson, right? Where I was like, here's all the manual stuff that I know how to do in sales that a good salesperson would. So worth their salt should be doing to get a deal across the table, which most people don't in the online marketing space. But I'm going to figure out a way to automate as much of this as I can and make it sound like a person. Now, it was easier for me to make it sound 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 skipping that 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. So, um, I'd kind of tried to figure this out on my own. And then a year ago, I met my now partner who I'm with in Mexico through one of those 400 JV calls. Right, and we started off as, you know, work colleagues and it turned into friends, then it turned into more because, well, that's a whole other story. Right? But 1 of the things that I had said to him, right? Was like, I'm really trying to build, like, this automated salesperson and nobody seems to understand what the hell I'm trying to do because. Online marketers don't know sales and I come from a sales background for crying out loud. I came from finance, very traditional sales background, and he did exactly what I was trying to do because he used to build out CRMs as a software engineer. So I was like, um, okay, well, there needs to be emails. And so it was a collaborative effort, right? Where he's like, all right, well, here are the kinds of emails that work really well. They are me, you know, 10xing the 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 we got to add in a text message, or we have to add in some sort of a voicemail or something like that. And the beauty is that now in 2023, we have tools to automate all of that. So the robots are doing the work, but people think it's you. So if I get 300 leads in one day over the course of the next week, they're going to get an email campaign. They will get a text message within two hours. They will get a voicemail drop to call us back. We can now do campaigns with text messages and voicemail drops to, for example, get people, um, A conversion event, uh, our current effortless sales engine program, which is where we teach all of these things got filled up because of all the automations where people maybe found us on YouTube four months ago and have been going through all these automations. Then they saw us with all these JVs and then they were like, here's my credit card.
Michael Whitehouse:Oh, okay. Yeah. And, and, well, like one thing you mentioned there sort of almost in passing, um, is one of the things I really believe is integrity. The fact that you use the system to sell the system that you're, you're, you know, nowadays people DM me and say, I'm going to teach you an amazing Facebook ad method.
Amanda Abella: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:Yep. Yep. The best ones is the people who DM me to tell me that they have an amazing methods you never need to DM again. Like, yeah, can't work that well.
Amanda Abella: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 to another 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 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 sending traffic our way and we plan that ahead of time and the YouTube. So being very strategic with search engine optimization and things like that and all the automations on the backend. Wow.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The, the army of robots are marching along for you.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, and that's the goal, right? Um, a lot of people talk about ease and flow in business and, you know, just being able to relax. Well, you, it doesn't mean you got to build the thing first and put the work up front and it's hard and it sucks. I mean, there were some moments where we were up until, I don't know. 14, 15, 16 hours trying to figure this thing out with all the tech issues or just me experimenting with 400 calls, right? So I did all the experimenting. So our clients wouldn't have to, to find what works and what doesn't. We have the data to prove that this business, we're eating our own dog food has doubled month over month in the last quarter. And we've only been able to work at 10 percent capacity while we moved to another country.
Michael Whitehouse:That is a pretty good, uh, pretty good case study.
Amanda Abella:Yeah. And, you know, now we're ready to start 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:Yeah, yeah, yeah. What else? I liked, um, one thing you mentioned about talking about the copy, uh, was Was a personal stories that, yeah, a lot of copy. Um, and I, I never know exactly what I figure on exactly what is, but it's like the, the, the sales story, if you know what I mean, it happened to someone at some time, but it could be anyone, but it's really no one, you know, where they say, you know, when I was younger, this challenge happened. And then I overcame the challenge with 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 story that says, Last Tuesday, I was out with my dog, and, like, that's something I try to do on my emails. Is I'll be like, here's a picture of my 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:Yeah, a real person with a real dog, like literally one of our biggest irritations this year. And again, we've tested this with over here'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 is everybody sounds like everybody else. And before we started recording, you had mentioned that, um, what was it that you said? You'd mentioned that being authentic is, um, it's like the most valuable thing people can do, but it's not an easy, what was it that you said about being authentic?
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah. So, so it was really good. Yeah. Cause you were talking about how marketers have ruined everything. They ruined SEO and then they ruined blogging and they ruined, and, and that's why authenticity is becoming more and more powerful. Cause as you have more and more tools to help you find, especially things like Tik TOK, there, there's no, you can't game the Tik TOK algorithm cause it's AI based and it keeps moving. So it's built around. If you're authentically sharing a message, it will find your audience. Um, and so more and more people are sniffing through all the, all the BS and all the copy and all the, the, the formulas. And once they see the same formula for the third time, it's like if they went to, you know, if they went to one Burger King and didn't like it. And they see a second Burger King, they're like, no, I don't like Burger King. They, they read the same type of copy. They're like, Oh, I've seen this kind of copy. I don't like that. And so, but if you're you, there's only one of you that ever seen you before. And then back, Oh, this is new. This is interesting.
Amanda Abella:It's interesting that you bring that up because I'm like hacking Instagram right now, 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 that because I was doing some research, right? I'm like, Hey, what's performing well on Instagram reels. What's working, what's trending that just studying. Right. And I saw like in three different instances, right? So with three different kinds of reels, I saw the same exact thing, seven or eight times from seven or eight different people. Where were they performing? I mean, it seems that they were performing, right? Because that's something that was trending and it was really valuable content, but I would go to the caption. Like, this caption is literally exactly like the caption I just read from this other person, like, five minutes ago.
Michael Whitehouse:Yep. Yeah. And then it fails to, well, so that, that thing, that's part of why people do it. Like if it's working, if, if a platform rewards inauthenticity, which is, that's why I've, I've leaned towards a 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: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 on youtube 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 the marketing calendar for the next month. I ran into that very problem on instagram
Michael Whitehouse:Interesting, but I think especially with emails. Um, you know if when I open my my email box I mean I end up on all kinds of people's lists because I meet all kinds of 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 list is nothing but generic, bland, sanitized marketing content. And you know, they have no opinions. They have no story. I don't learn anything about them. Um, I I've encountered partners who you could get on this for six months and learn nothing about them because all they did was promote partners. Because they're entirely in this reciprocity like other people promoted them and they promote out so there was no value content. It was just by this, by this, by this, by this, by this.
Amanda Abella:And again, that goes back to that lack of creativity. So I'll give a little behind the scenes if you're up for it. Sure. Of the conversation we had before we even got here because of course you're going to be one of our referral partners in 2024. We already talked about that, but what did I say before we started recording? I said, Hey, and this is a very simple thing people can do and they do not do, but I learned this back from my blogging media days. I was like, Hey, is it okay if I record this locally on my end and I can turn this into a bunch of short form videos and we'll promote it for you. I'll send you the folder. You can do whatever you want with the short form videos. I'm promoting you to my people without necessarily, you know, burning through my email list. Yep.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah. Well, that's the thing is it doesn't burn your list. You can provide value. I promote I promote, uh, an average of seven partners a day. So there are, I send daily emails and in almost every one of them, there's at least seven links you could click on that would go to some kind of opt in page, sales page, registration page.
Amanda Abella:That's another way you can do it. Right. And if that works for you, cool, because there'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 whatever experiment testing, whatever works for you is what works for you.
Michael Whitehouse: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 are you selling me a shirt? But if I put a thousand shirts in a building and I put a sign on the front of the building, you walk in and say, show me your shirts.
Amanda Abella:Oh, that's really smart. That's very creative. I like that.
Michael Whitehouse: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 it that or something else, but when I started doing that, um, I'd send out an email and like, Hey, let's try it. I'm promoting seven partners at once. And I got emails back saying, thank you for providing all this value. And I'm thinking these are all affiliate links. I'm not doing anything generous here. I'm promoting seven partners. You know, they're seeing it as this is on seven things that might interest me, seven things that might benefit me. And also it's because it's, it's value. 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 was really bad, but he used our system, and now he doesn't have the problem anymore.
Amanda Abella:Tom makes six figures your first year. Okay, well, that's overdone.
Michael Whitehouse:Like, there's no value in that. That's completely overdone. Yeah, that's, even when I propose something directly, I'll share a story. I'll be like, you know, um, last Tuesday, I was talking to Amanda, and she was telling me about her program, 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 masterclass coming up next week. And you should check it out. So it feels like you under
Amanda Abella:you understand how to people though. Yeah. Right. Right. People who understand how to people know how to do this. They think of those little details in order to maintain the relationship, not in a way you're trying to take 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 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 that people do not think about because they do not know how to people. Yep.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah, that was the first thing I learned of the first thing, but the thing that changed everything with 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 list through networking, like most of those people I'd done one to ones with who opted in that also affect like, I don't want to burn these people. I've met them. Like these are real people. So I thought, okay, I'm sending an email to hundreds of people. I know it's not an audience. It's a community. It's like, I'm sending it out to hundreds or thousands of my friends. How am I going to talk to them? Well, I'm not going to send them generic content. I'm not going to cut and paste. I'd never use swipe copy because it feels plagiarism. If I copy your text and put my name under it, that's plagiarism. Right? Like it's inauthentic. And if it's a launch and seven other people do the same thing, now we all look like schmucks. Um, but even if it's by itself, you still 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 call a JV guest letter, I will sometimes take, I will quote it and I'll, I'll put their headshot next to it and their copy. And I'll say, you know, let me share with you what, what Amanda's doing in her own words. And then there's four paragraphs next to your headshot. And then afterwards I'd be like, and now you'll see why I'm so excited about sharing this, go check it out. So
Amanda Abella: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, so I'm going to test this and see what works and what doesn't. And after sending those hundred thousand emails, now we have some pretty solid data. That we can teach to our clients based on us experimenting and being the guinea pig and eating our own dog food as we like to say around here. But, um, to your point, yes, those personal stories are everything. I mean, 1 of the reasons we're starting another brand called entrepreneur expat is because when I started sharing that I had moved to Mexico, I haven't even shared the 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 turn that life story into marketing and that's a whole other skill that requires a lot of creativity and every, I feel like everything that we've talked about in this podcast episode are just skills and it's skills that people need to practice. It's skills that people need to invest in learning. It's skills people need to experiment with and they just, they just got to put in the reps.
Michael Whitehouse:Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I think we've been talking for like three and a half hours. Uh, so feels like it. We should probably wrap up but but in a good way. Um, we can certainly talk longer. But as we record this, it's Halloween and 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:But it's the mortals here. They don't do Halloween. They do the other. Well, they kind of sort of do Halloween in Mexico. But the other was more those is more of a thing here.
Michael Whitehouse:Okay, go to Mexico someday for it. Anyway, but yeah. No time for that now. Um, so you said, so I believe that you have a link, which is definitely in the description, although I don't have it in my hands at this second, but it will be by the time someone's listening to this.
Amanda Abella:And it will be a referral partner link, so you can track all the data.
Michael Whitehouse:So what will people get if they go to that link down in the description?
Amanda Abella:So, you're going to get my free guide that explains the 8 steps that I use to not just find a 100 referral partners, but also manage them on the back end, which has led to days where we get up to 300 leads in a day. And it's a big part of the reason why this business is doubled month over month, even while we've been barely able to work. While we're in the middle of a house renovation, so it's the 8 step process. I did the 400 horrible calls. So you don't have to and gathered all the data for you. So you don't have to go through the torture that I did.
Michael Whitehouse:That's awesome. And that's the freebie you're offering.
Amanda Abella:That's the freebie I'm offering, yes.
Michael Whitehouse:Your program must be amazing. I assume it's taking that to the next level and going through it with people.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, actually, the woman who built Deepak Chopra's sales team got her hands on it. And she's like, if people followed this guide, they would never have a lead flow problem ever in their business.
Michael Whitehouse:Awesome. Well, so definitely, and I'll probably be sharing that out to my list as well because that seems like something my community might be interested in. So
Amanda Abella:yeah, you do a lot of JVs. They might want it.
Michael Whitehouse:So that's, that is awesome. So thank you very much to go. So you listeners go look in the, the description down below or wherever it is on whatever platform you're watching on. And if you're somehow watching this in a platform that doesn't have it, then just. comment or email me and I'll make sure you get it. So thank you so much for being on the show. Any final comments?
Amanda Abella:Just have fun with it. I think people just take themselves too damn seriously and then that's where you have the lit lack of creativity and the lack of people and just like have some freaking fun. It's not that serious.
Michael Whitehouse: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:It definitely has. I look forward to your event, uh, in December and also where this partnership goes and having you on my podcast for the part too. Oh,
Michael Whitehouse:I love being on podcasts. That way I can talk a lot. Exactly. I'll see you there. for joining us for the guy who knows a guy podcast. I'm Michael Whitehouse, the guy who knows the guy, and I hope you'll join us in December for the 12th and the 14th for JV Connect. Go to guy who knows a guy. For more details now, if it's after December 2023 and you're listening to this, it's okay, because we're going to 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 show notes, learn about our guests and how you get in touch with them. Check out our next episode for more great training, information and networking tips from Michael Whitehouse, the guy who knows a guy.