Adam - Leads are the lifeblood of your business right if you are, you know if you have an abundance of leads, then you can be picky about who you enroll in who you are and who you don't you know you can have more, you can have more posture with the leads that you do have.

And, you know, let me just create what I, what I mean by posture is like you can, you know when, when you are on the phone with a prospect. It's like you want to kind of interview them, to see if they are going to be someone that you want to invest your time into, and if they have low energy and if they're giving you one word answers to the questions that you're asking, you know, you might want to say like you know what you sound like a great guy, I just don't think that what I have is for you, and then hang up the phone and there is nothing more empowering to a home business owner that doing that because you have enough leads, because it doesn't even matter because, you know that you've got another person to talk to you know right around the corner, like, and that's really the goal is to get to that point where then where, where you're not in a scarcity mentality around your prospects because when you, when you have a scarcity mentality with prospects.

That's when you do things like you bag you chase them you try to convince them, and it doesn't work and it scares off the right prospect, it might actually, you know you might bring in some people, but they're probably going to be the wrong people, the right people, that kind of behavior will send them running in the other direction, I think, didn't we, because I enrolled you in the into my coaching program a couple years back. And didn't you say at the end of the conversation you're like, you're like, I think I'm gonna join with the RFP, I think I'm gonna get started with you, because it doesn't seem like you need to make the sale.

Meredith - It was true, I mean it was true and you know we do teach so much about sales in the EA course and in the client work that we do. And, you know, I heard a saying the other day and when I hear something that I like, I repeat it like I tell it to everybody, which is kind of funny, given that we're talking about network marketing and that's kind of the point but the same was, there's nothing, a new rep will not care for your business well you know what there's nothing that a new sale there's nothing that a new lead, there's nothing that something fresh and exciting won't cure in your business.

And so if your pipeline is looking a little sad if it's looking a little empty if it's looking a little unproductive. There's nothing like just making a commitment to getting some new leads. That will really help you out and we're also big about analogies and telling stories and, you know, using those as ways for you to really understand the mechanics of marketing. And so to kick off this this topic tonight about lead generation I want to set the stage with a couple of ideas for you.

The first is that when we think about marketing anything, not just network marketing but when you think about marketing in general, there's really a warm market, and there's a cold market, warm market would be people that you already have that are within your sphere of influence, not necessarily Aunt Betty and you know Uncle Bob, not just your close families and friends But anybody that you have that you have in your sphere of influence, who you could contact who you could talk to.

So if you were opening a restaurant, you know, maybe your warm market would be people that you knew on your, your kids soccer team and you'd let them all know that you were opening this restaurant right, or maybe the people that work in you're going to leave your job and open the restaurant, they're all your warm market, and traditionally in this industry. The education is really around how to market inside of your warm market. And at some point in time, you will run out of people to talk to, because your, your warm market is finite, it is not infinite, it is finite, and unless you can learn to grow your warm market.

Okay, you can actually grow your warm market with digital marketing, you can also grow your warm market with traditional networking, and we're never going to tell you that traditional networking is bad or that you shouldn't do it, or that you shouldn't market your business or your product or your service to your warm market, you absolutely should, there's a right way to do it. There's a wrong way to do it.

We teach you the right way to do it, but the right way to do it, no matter what you do, you're still gonna run out of people to talk to, because that's a finite number of people. So then you have on the other side of that your cold market, and your cold market is infinite, because it's literally everyone you don't know. It's literally the remainder of the adult population of the world so not technically infinite, but you get the picture right, it's, you're not going to run out of people in the cold market to talk to you.

But you have to figure out a way to take people from the cold market and bring them into your warm market right and you have to figure out a way to do that with automation, so you can decide if you want to take you know imagine all these little individual people sitting in there in the cold market, and you've got your warm market over here you could pluck them out one by one and move them over from the cold market to the warm market.

or you could figure out a way to pour people from the cold market into the warm market, right, like in maybe the shape of a funnel, and that's what we talk about when it comes to digital marketing so lead generation, in essence, is helping you to have more people to talk to you. And there are a lot of different strategies around it. Some of them really old and tried and true some of them completely evolving, that are you know happening right now like I'm seeing a ton of people going crazy on clubhouse, having great success there. But no matter what. As a small business owner as a home business owner, you've got to know how you're going to generate leads, right, you've got to have the strategy to not run out of people to talk to.

So, what I see in this industry is that people will put some people into the funnel, into the conversation, and then they watch them triple all the way through. It's like watching the sand run out of an hourglass and then tipping it back over again, and then watching the sand run out and then tipping it back over again, that's what most people do what you want to do is you want to keep the hourglass upright, you want to take the cap off of it, you want to get yourself a scoop, and you just want to keep pouring sand into that hourglass, so that you're continually feeding it so it never runs out you don't have to wait to watch it to stop and flip it back over again.

You just want to keep filling it and keep filling and keep filling it, and that's what Adam is so passionate about helping people to figure out a way to do so. Adam top tips for people that are just started on you know on this journey and thinking gosh maybe I need to find a way to talk to more people and I need a lead gen strategy, what would be some of your top points for them.

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Adam - Well yeah, so, I mean, you know you, there's like so many things that you can do right you you really have to narrow the focus right, so it's like, you know, we teach all the time, like, you know, pick one or two. Organic marketing, you know platforms and just and just, you know, make a decision that I'm going to get really good at generating leads using LinkedIn, using Facebook, using, you know Instagram now I'm not I'm not big on Instagram but like if you if you kind of gravitate towards it, then you should do it you know because you know it's it's really like the specific platform is less important than like, you know how you behave on that platform.

But it because, on the other end, it's all just people that you know what, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or, you know, or LinkedIn or clubhouse, or anything else, you know, it's like it's your, you've got to get good at communicating to people in a way that pulls them in.

So, using curiosity, right that's it's one of the great, great ways of attracting people to you, you're gonna be employing people either into a funnel, like a lead generation funnel or just, or just putting a post out there and getting them to respond to you if you use if you get good at using curiosity, the human mind hates unanswered questions right so like for you to create a situation where it's like, Hey I just you know I just created this training on the three ways to do X, Y, Z, or the three ways to avoid x y z, you know who wants to see it and you're gonna poke, that's one way of like pulling people in, right, like, now if we want to make that a little bit more technical and a little bit more advanced, we can put that onto like a lead capture funnel, and we can get a little bit more, you know, advanced with it but it doesn't,

it doesn't have to be it really depends on, you know where you're at in the process I mean, you've got to, you've got to walk before or you've got to crawl before you can walk right so it's like, it really depends on, you know, kind of evaluating where you are at, you know, in the, in the process and what you know what resources that you have available to you, you know, in, and then you can kind of develop your marketing gameplan. With that in mind.

Meredith - Yeah absolutely and, you know, that's the thing. I've had people say to me lately oh you know but I just, I don't know anything about this digital marketing thing I just, I don't know how, but my upline is you know, telling me that it's not going to work and that I should go and I should do it this way or that way, but they're they're kind of sitting there on the fence in the middle and it's like they want to jump into this world of digital marketing but there's some significant fear around it because they don't think that they're going to be able to have success they don't think that they're going to be able to do it.

And the analogy that I like to use there is that digital marketing and digital networking, You know, maybe, maybe we should call it digital networking, instead of digital marketing it's an organic marketing, it is no different. It is, it is the networking environment of today, the networking environment of like the 70s was a Rolodex, and business cards, and you know going to like, I don't know. Here in my town, they have this thing called the Spokane club I live in Washington, and it's like this old bull club that people would belong to and like anybody that was anybody that's where you went, that that was networking back in the day, well then it transitioned into more formal things like BMI and, you know, in person networking groups, all that stuff has changed and we don't really know when it's coming back.

And that's why I think there's an added pressure around this idea of becoming a digital marketer, because nearly every home based business person on earth has been like, oh my gosh what am I gonna do no more in person meetings, no more coffee meetings, no more homes and people's shows in people's homes, no more big, you know, events for me to promote in my community, and all of that changed overnight in the last year, and it's slowly coming back but it's never going to look exactly the same in my mind.

So you've got to figure this piece out. Well what if you just said to yourself, you know what, I'm gonna learn how to network using this other tool. That's all it is, that's all organic marketing is is networking, using another tool and a system and a strategy to do it.

And so once you generate those leads, you're gonna have a conversation with them just like you would with anybody you met anywhere else, but you've got to keep track of them, you've got to be able to follow up with them, you've got to be able to continue to message them, you've got to have some systems around it, otherwise you're going to be you know, tracking things on post it notes and index cards and it's only going to get you so far. So, with lead gen, you know, there are levels of it.

Think of it like, like a staircase, you're going to learn a little bit and then you're going to put it in place, then you're going to learn a little bit, then you're going to fit in place and organic marketing is a great place to start. That's my coffee, but it's a great it's a great, great place to start. So, if that's where you're at, that's okay, if you've already been doing some organic marketing and you're saying to yourself, Okay, I want more results faster I can only myself get so much of this done. There are ways that you can scale that.

And then if you're saying okay, I want to step fully into automated lead generation, meaning Facebook advertising Instagram advertising, you know create funnels that drop into systems with automated emails and all of that that's kind of the third phase. So figure out which phase you're in, and embrace some learning where you're at, but don't let this timeframe that we're in right now, slide by without figuring out how to generate leads online and use this time to your advantage, because not everybody's doing it, guys.

Everybody wants to be doing it but not everybody is and you will set yourself apart by figuring this out and learning how to do it so we've got a few people watching this live, I don't know if we want to see if we've got any questions tonight about Legion, but if anybody has a question they'd love to ask Go ahead and post it in the chat. We'd love to answer a couple of for you tonight.

Adam - You know I love that distinction. It's like, it's like you're just, it's all just networking, right, it's like, it's a you're always, you know, if you're digital, if you're, you know, putting people into a funnel is like, that's how you are expanding your warm market you're bringing new people into your warm market like you know I generated, you know, 10s of 1000s of leads through an affiliate marketing system that you know I would use their lead capture pages, you know, build my own list and then promote one of their offers, which was like it was like a 10th was like $1 trial, so I was generating like dollar customers into somebody else's system.

And it's like, whenever somebody, you know, came through as like a new dollar trial, it's like, you know now I had like the, the, the interested leads but then I had like the, you know, the buyer leads like the quality leads right, so it's like, those were the people that I, that I wanted to like build the relationship with, because if I called them and just said, Hey, you know, I just want to introduce myself make myself available to you. It's like, you know, now.

Now they have like an outline and they have like, you know, it's like it's like you're not calling them to like pitch them on something you're calling them to, you know, to have a conversation with them and in doing so, you're expanding your warm market, but but you're doing it in a very leveraged way because you're generating all these very high quality leads, and that was how I got results in the beginning but it was like, and I was.

I would get a lot of leads that would leave their phone number, regardless of if they purchased or not I would just give them a call and just you know have a really laid back, you know conversation with them, because I wasn't, I wasn't afraid of like, Oh, what are they going to think or like, well they might not want my thing. I wasn't even concerned. A lot of times I didn't even offer, you know, my thing, whatever it was like it was like I'm just I'm just calling them just to talk business and see what they're up to, and see if we might be a fit for each other.

Meredith - Exactly, I mean some of it is really understanding that it's an exploration right. And there, there are people out there that are going to tell you, oh you know implement this system put it in place and you can have people automatically rolling in your business, enrolling in your business without ever talking to them I mean I've seen that advertised so many times. and, you know, maybe it works, maybe, maybe that does work but I think you need to ask yourself, what is it also that you're looking for are you looking for some fun with full automation where people are going to be doing that, or are you wanting to actually be selective about who it is that's working with you and what they're all about making sure that you're a good fit for one another, making sure that they're a good fit for whatever it is you're doing.

And so then at some point it is going to get to a personal conversation and be around the relationship that you're going to build with them, but wouldn't it be great if there was an automated way for those people to get into your calendar to get exposure to a little bit of information about you and about your offer.

That's what the automation can do when you're, when you're talking about lead generation so you know we're not getting any questions here in the chat, we'll give you one more chance to see if you got anything you want to ask I mean you've got two people that are working this day in and day out that are basically willing to answer any question that you've thought about Legion. So, think of a couple really quick because we might have some good answers for you. Otherwise, ad have any other thoughts on Legion for tonight?

Adam - Well, I mean, you know the the last thing that I'll leave you with is just like make a decision to get good at it, like that's that's, that that is really the starting point is like, and that's what what you mentioned a minute ago is like, you know there's there's a lot of people want to do it but like there's, there's, there's not. There's a much smaller group of people who are actually going to do it, like be in that smaller group, and just, and just draw a line in the sand and just say like, I'm making the decision right now that I'm going to get good at lead generation.

Right, I'm, or you could be even, even better than that would be, I'm going to get really good at LinkedIn lead generation or YouTube link lead generation like, you know, it really all starts with a decision.

Don't, don't be that person that is just constantly operating your business with one foot in and one foot out, because those people do not get the results that they that they want like the people that get the results are the ones that that commit, and that jump and then go all in, and that invests heavily in both time and money into these skill sets, and these are the skill sets that have made people like me and Meredith and a lot of people that travel in our circles, a lot of money and there's no reason why you could not be one of them, but it does start with making that firm decision backing that up with a commitment of consistent action.

Meredith - Yeah, and then also understanding that you're going to need to invest into the concept of continual learning because the platforms you're working with are always evolving. So, somebody is asking, I think it's maybe one of our clients David's asking so what's up, why do you guys prefer LinkedIn, and here's my answer to that we'll both answer the question but here's my answer to that. It's not a it's not that we prefer LinkedIn over Facebook or over anything else.

Here's my recommendation, figure out who it is you're marketing to and then figure out where they're at, where they spend their time, and then that's where you need to go spend your time. So, is Facebook a great place to generate leads, absolutely is Instagram, you bet is tick tock. Yeah, probably, if that's the audience that you want to go to any of these platforms can be great for you, but you've got to match it up if you're looking for professionals, go to LinkedIn. If you're looking for stay at home moms go to Facebook, if you're looking for singles in their late 20s and early 30s Go to tick tock and Instagram right go where your people are and figure out how to get good at generating leads there. Adam anymore on that?

Adam - Well I mean yeah, I would just say, you know, I would just reiterate that I mean, you know, I like I like marketing to professionals, people that are on LinkedIn, are there because they want to grow their business. And I think that for that reason alone, it's a phenomenal place to, You know to put content out there and to grow an audience, and a presence.

Meredith - So we got another question too, so what about time management tips for full time workers, right. So many people in this industry. This is something that they start on the side. And so, you also have to make the decision that that's going to be a priority for you. So here's some of the first things that I would do, I would, I would turn off my TV. I would cancel my Netflix subscription my Hulu subscription my Disney Plus subscription. I'm kind of kidding but you see what I'm saying, Get really disciplined and organized about how you spend your time.

We teach our clients something that's called time blocking, where we actually go through and we help you from the time that you get up until the time that you go to bed. Plan your day every day any 30 minute increments, where each 30 minutes is dedicated to whatever task it is you're going to do. You would be shocked if you actually went through that process and wrote down all the things that you needed to do and where you're spending your time.

There are pockets of time for you to get really good at this and so let's say that you have six to eight hours a week, to invest in time in your network marketing business and learning to generate leads, start breaking that time out and saying, Okay, I'm going to spend two hours of the eight learning. I'm going to spend one hour of the eight on systems, and I'm going to spend five hours of the eight actually doing the work to generate leads.

Right, so break something out like that and then say okay, I'm going to concentrate on learning at this time and this time, like literally slot it into your day just like you would an appointment to go to the dentist or to get your hair done. You've got to treat it that seriously and prioritize it and then track your results. that's the other thing, track your results so you know what you're putting in and what you're getting out.

Thank you for listening to the digital upline show. Adam and the D U team are committed to leveling up the network marketing profession by equipping distributors with 21st century systems and skill sets that decrease resistance and increase cooperation with prospects and team members, visit Digitalupline.com/subscribe to get notified when we release new podcast episodes and to get exclusive access to our weekly live trainings.