Jen DeVore Richter is an outsourced CMO driving millions of dollars in yearly revenue for various brands and clients. As a former Marketing Executive at NASA turned entrepreneur, she placed in the Top 10 for Marketer of the Year and has been featured on top shows and stages for direct response marketers like Russell Brunson and Dan Kennedy. Jen is also the author of Outsource Your Marketing and has created the #1 YouTube channel for magazine publishing and building six-figure businesses.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [4:09] Jen DeVore Richter’s career evolution from NASA marketer to award-winning entrepreneur
- [6:46] The secret to transforming mistakes into business success strategies
- [11:26] How Jen leveraged YouTube as a game-changing marketing strategy
- [17:06] Insights on adapting to modern marketing techniques
- [21:11] Strategically applying AI to your marketing efforts
- [24:49] How to create irresistible offers to elevate your business above the competition
- [32:30] Case studies of businesses that thrived by utilizing digital magazine funnels
- [53:15] The importance of beginning with the end in mind and reverse engineering your business
In this episode…
Is the grind of the corporate world holding you back from what you truly desire? Venturing into entrepreneurship means bridging the gap between financial success and living life on your terms. How can modern digital marketing strategies help you achieve your entrepreneurial dreams?
Having transitioned from corporate confines to business ownership, celebrity-renowned marketer Jen DeVore Richter has gained the insights and strategies for building and growing an entrepreneurial business. She emphasizes identifying and creating an initial offer that outperforms the competition, highlighting your unique value proposition and boosting sales. Employing direct response marketing principles and modern digital strategies like magazine funnels can enhance consumer outreach and position your brand as a prominent industry thought leader.
In the latest Destination Business Freedom episode, Pat Mancuso sits down with outsourced CMO Jen DeVore Richter to talk about leveraging marketing for business growth. She shares how YouTube can be a game-changing marketing strategy, why entrepreneurs should begin with the end in mind, and how to apply AI to your marketing efforts.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Pat Mancuso on LinkedIn | Website
- Recover My Tax Credits
- Mancuso Consulting Group
- The Mancuso Method
- Jen DeVore Richter: Website | LinkedIn | YouTube
- Outsource Your Marketing: Reach More Prospects, Scale Faster, and Work Less by Jen DeVore Richter
Quotable Moments:
- "Every good idea that we have in our life comes from a series of places that we've been."
- "I think every business owner gets in the business in the first place to arrive at their desired destination."
- "The biggest success I just got the award for from Russell and Dan was on my YouTube channel."
- "People could use more effective marketing to create more leads, to do more business."
- "Marketing is the communication that we solve problems for people. It's matchmaking businesses that solve a problem for people that have a problem."
Action Steps:
- Embrace Your Identity as a Marketer: Recognize that being an entrepreneur means being a marketer of your services, not just a provider. This mindset allows business owners to take ownership of their promotional efforts, leading to more precise and effective marketing strategies.
- Collaborate with a Well-Organized Team: Audit your current marketing activities and determine who should handle each task to combat disorganized and siloed efforts. Organized collaborations streamline marketing efforts, allowing each team member to contribute effectively.
- Design Irresistible Offers: Package your products or services to stand out and negate competition through clear, compelling, and high-value offers. Offers that communicate unique benefits encourage customer engagement and can lead to increased conversions.
- Leverage YouTube for Brand Visibility: Overcome camera shyness to create consistent, value-driven content that builds authority and drives leads. Regular video content helps establish expertise and connect with a broader audience, leading to more opportunities.
- Create a Digital Magazine Funnel: Publish a digital magazine that supports your brand's narrative to attract and convert leads. Using a magazine funnel positions a business as an industry authority, creating a rich source of recurring lead generation.
Sponsor for this episode...
This episode is brought to you by the Mancuso Consulting Group, a go-to resource for entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners dedicated to personal and business growth.
Our team of experts has coached, consulted, and trained over 15,000 entrepreneurs, C-suite leaders, and business owners in areas of sales, leadership, organizational development, and personal growth. Additionally, Pat Mancuso has launched multiple multimillion-dollar business ventures, giving him a firsthand understanding of entrepreneurs' daily challenges.
At the Mancuso Consulting Group, we are committed to exploring innovative ways to help businesses and leaders grow their people and improve their bottom lines.
To learn how the Mancuso Consulting Group can help you unlock your full potential, visit www.themancusomethod.com, email us at pat@themancusomethod.com, or call 651-503-7355.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:00
Pat, welcome to Destination Business Freedom, hosted by Pat Mancuso. Join us as we explore success strategies and hacks from leading entrepreneurs helping you bridge the gap between financial success and personal freedom. Your journey starts here. You
Pat Mancuso 0:23
thanks for joining us today on Destination Business Freedom. My name is Pat Mancuso, and I'm the host of our podcast where I interview thought leaders, entrepreneurs and business owners who have either exited their business, are on that journey or who are contributing to others on that journey. My goal is to help small to medium sized businesses close the gap between their finances and their freedom and ultimately arrive at their destination and exit their business, whatever that might look like to them. We've got a very, very special guest today that I'm going to introduce here in just a second, but I do want to bring you a sponsorship message. This episode is brought to you by the Mancuso Consulting Group where we are committed to helping entrepreneurs and business owners close the gap between their finances and their freedom. Mancuso Method was created by Pat Mancuso and encompasses over 30 years as an owner of multiple businesses, and has worked with 1000s of entrepreneurs and business owners, he helps rise above the daily grind and arrive at their desired destination, which is the reason most business owners got in the business in the first place. When you go to www dot the mancusomatho.com and take our short assessment, you receive a powerful report with your personalized roadmap to destination. Additionally, Pat will provide you a 30 minute free consultation and review that roadmap with you, and within that 30 minutes, if he doesn't bring at least $10,000 worth of value to you, he'll write you a check to five for $500 on the spot. So go to www themacusomethod.com Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am very excited about our guest today for a number of reasons. First, I've followed this individual for a number of years and what they've done in the marketplace and in their business, and also, I have the opportunity to be in a business relationship with them right now, where she is helping me in my business. So let me share with you. Our guest today is a former marketing executive, Lord NASA turned entrepreneur. That's an interesting story on the we'll hear a little bit about that. She recently placed in the top 10 for marketer of the Year at the magnetic Marketing Conference, where Russell Brunson and Dan Kennedy awarded her with a brass balls award. That's an interesting one. She works as an outstanding outsource chief marketing officer, and responsible for millions of dollars of revenue each year for various businesses. Sheman wrote a book titled outsource your marketing, which is getting rave reviews for its unique insights. Our guests also created the number one channel on YouTube for magazine publishing and turn traffic into a six figure business. She's been invited to speak about marketing and making big money with a small channel for video marketing world think media and click funnels, radio about her results when not working, she can be found in her painting studio, where she's learning how to master the Bob Ross painting technique and is working towards a teaching certification. Do you remember those little happy trees from TV? Not true that I do, but I'm going to have to ask her about that. So helping us today create more impact with less legwork. Please join me in welcoming Jen. DeVore Richter, Jen, welcome to the show.
Jen DeVore Richter 3:36
Thanks, Pat. Awesome to be here.
Pat Mancuso 3:39
Well, we're very excited. And you know, one of the things that I know is everybody could use more effective marketing to create more leads, to do more business. So I know we're going to jump into that process here in a bit. So I, you know, I was like to start with a little bit of the journey that our entrepreneurs have experienced. And you've got kind of an interesting one, the NASA piece. And so let's just start with that a little bit and talk about like you actually work for NASA.
Jen DeVore Richter 4:09
I did. Yeah. What did you do? I was in charge of, I was a manager of advertising and consumer research, which is basically all of the paid marketing for the Kennedy Space Center. And a lot of people ask me the question, well, why does NASA even need marketing? Everybody knows about NASA. It's like one of the most famous brands around the world, which is true, but it's also one of the top five most visited tourist destinations in Florida, competing with Walt, Disney World, Universal Studios, SeaWorld, all of the other tourist attractions in the state. And so my job was to create paid advertising, commercials, billboards, sales, collateral, radio ads that would bore tourists to basically steal them away from the mouse for a day. I used to say, so that's what I did. Vanessa, yeah, yeah.
Pat Mancuso 4:59
I love it. SO and SO. It was funny when you said, you know, people would ask you, you know, why did need advertising? Best form of advertising is a rocket going up that's covered by the news media, right? I mean, oh my gosh. So so obviously, your background there in marketing, you know, lends itself to to how you got to today and what you're doing. But let me ask you, what was the trigger for the transition to the entrepreneurial world?
Jen DeVore Richter 5:27
And there was a moment where the president of our division said to me one day as I was walking out the front door after working about a 12 hour day, and on my way to night school, I was getting a master's program, and this is before the internet, so you had to actually show up to class live. I after this super long day and all this dedication, he says to me, where are you going? Jen, you work in a half day today. And something viscerally changed for me, my DNA level, where I said, You know what, I really enjoy working here. It was my if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere. Job, you know, fantastic. I have so many cool stories. But the fact that I was sacrificing my personal life and then not really being recognized in return triggered something for me, and I decided to quit corporate work, basically altogether. It was a transition out. It didn't, I didn't, like, leave on the spot, but over a period of, like, I would say, two, three years, I transition, transitioned into entrepreneurship.
Pat Mancuso 6:34
And so, like, had you been mentored by anybody, or followed anybody in that journey at all, or it was just like, Okay, I'm gonna go do it and I'll figure it out as I go.
Jen DeVore Richter 6:46
At the beginning it was, I'm gonna go do it and figure it out as I go, truthfully. And the first thing that I did was what a lot of entrepreneurs do, is I turned my hobby into a business on the weekends. When I had time on the weekends from working, I was learning photography, and I eventually ended up becoming a certified professional photographer, which is like becoming a CPA, or some other certification in your in your in a profession, pick one. So I earned a CPP designation over a period of years, and then I turned that CPP designation and that experience into a very successful wedding photography studio in Jacksonville, Florida, and I was even rated the number two photography studio in the entire Northeast Florida region out of hundreds of photographers. But I made a lot of mistakes just because I was figuring out on my own. I just the the fuel that made it succeed was that I'm a marketer, and I never treated myself as a starving artist. Who would, you know, take pictures of anything for anyone, at any price? I never looked at it that way. I was always at the top of my game, very successful high end photographer. But the problems that I encountered as a first time entrepreneur were in building systems and teams. Everything was basically on me. I had, I had two assistants that were like, we call them second shooters, who would come with me on jobs, but the other aspects of the business were all on me. And so I basically quit. I walked away from the business at the pinnacle, I fulfilled all my contracts and did all that, but I basically walked away from it and took a year long sabbatical to try and figure out a different way of being in business, because I made so many mistakes at the beginning. So
Pat Mancuso 8:32
it actually segues nicely into one of the questions I always ask, you know, entrepreneurs and business owners, you know at this stage in the conversation is so looking back, what are maybe one or two of the biggest mistakes you felt like you made in that journey? We all make them, and they're great learning opportunities, but there's always some commonality, too, to those mistakes for entrepreneurs. And so what do you think those were for you
Jen DeVore Richter 8:58
in the photography studio? It was not having systems and a team in place. Everything was on me, and I had to show up for every job. So then I decided I took about a year long sabbatical, and then I went into business with two business partners, two gentlemen, to open an agency, a marketing agency that was, you know, again, back to my skill set. I didn't want to have to start from scratch and learn another new another trade, so I just getting and started an agency, more like a branding agency, but doing like website design and logo design and things. And that agency still runs today. This was, you know, about, oh gosh, a good 12 years ago, but it still is successful and runs today. But the mistakes that we made there were that we were competing on price. A lot. We were seen as a commodity and and as a like a vendor and I had we hadn't really positioned ourselves. We hadn't we didn't know any better to position ourselves as the authority in our space and to really work on the. Building our personal brand through publishing books and creating magazines and sales funnels and shows and all the things that I know now to do. So at that business venture I left, I bowed out gracefully about four years ago when I moved to Colorado to implement the more of the the strategies around authority, building, having creating a show focusing on self publishing and positioning myself as an expert. And my my mentors, like you mentioned at the beginning in my introduction, are Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson. Those are the people that I follow. I'm on a very strict diet of direct response marketing from from Dan, he insists upon it. But I just basically, just really started implementing everything that I had been studying from Dan and Russell to help me overcome some of the mistakes that I had made about, you know, not having systems, not having teams, being seen as a vendor, competing on price, being a commodity in the marketplace, and it's worked really well for me, you know, now, but, but those were the mistakes that I made at the beginning. So I'm going to
Pat Mancuso 11:07
come back to the the Dan Kennedy and Russell conversation in just a second, but I want to ask you to kind of flip that upside down, and what was your biggest success in that journey, or your journey to date in as a business and entrepreneur and business owner.
Jen DeVore Richter 11:26
Well, the marketing success that I just got the award for from Russell and Dan and top 10 marketer of the year was on my YouTube channel. So in when I moved to Colorado, we moved from Florida, my husband and I from Florida to Colorado in 2019 and we literally left everything behind Pat we I walked away from my business. My husband quit his job, the kids were off to college at their campuses. We left over 20 years of family and friends to start from scratch and when I'm when we moved to Colorado, the first thing that I did was I joined the National Speakers Association. The Colorado in Denver has a really strong chapter. It's one of the elite chapters of the entire national organization. I joined the chapter. I got on the board. I've been the marketing director since 2019 and a really I started positioning myself as a keynote speaker, author coach, and that worked really well. Well. Then everybody knows, lockdowns came in 2020, and my entire business model went like it just blew up because we couldn't do live events. I was hosting own workshops once a month with strategic like doing joint venture relationships in Denver with bigger, like bigger companies that had lists and locations, training locations. Um, so that entire business model broke, like, just went, you know, to dust, and then, right, yeah, I mean, I just overnight, and then conferences got shut down, so I couldn't get paid as a keynoter anymore. And one of my clients at the time is famous on YouTube. He's a famous plumber. His name's Roger Wakefield. And we were, you know, just kind of talking in one of our meetings, and just as friends, actually, it wasn't even like a client meeting at the time. But he said, you know, Jen, what you need to do is you need to get on YouTube. He and I had met on the conference circuit, speaking at a lot of the same entrepreneur conferences and stuff. And he said, you know, what you need to do is just get on YouTube and really take it serious. And he introduced me to his YouTube coach coaches. There's probably about three of them, but one in particular, I just really started implementing on YouTube and took it serious, like it was my job, like, literally, like it was my job. And no other keynoters were doing that. No other speaker, author coaches were really, didn't really understand how to use YouTube in that way, and that really worked for me. And over, you know, over the years, I've turned just the channel into its own six figure business operation, because I have been able to rank my videos in search, right? I'm not necessarily concerned about going viral. This is how we met, actually. Is because you, you found me on YouTube. I believe it's like, you know, I, I'm really good at understanding how to get YouTube videos to rank in search and turn that into a really lucrative business that has its own systems. It has its own team, you know, it has everything. I'm just responsible for showing up, making the videos, and doing sales. I do sales and then, you know, kind of overseeing projects. But that channel in particular has been a huge win for me as a business owner, and awarded, you know, the brass balls award, because it was so different, so you such a unique approach. And it really worked great. My results have been amazing. So I would say in the last couple years, that's probably my biggest win,
Pat Mancuso 14:47
that's your biggest win. So Jim, let me ask you this, this kind of the last question on your journey, what's been the biggest surprise for you as an entrepreneur, like something you weren't expecting in. Journey, what's been that biggest surprise,
Jen DeVore Richter 15:03
the biggest win for me as an entrepreneur, has been the fact that other entrepreneurs want to see me win and succeed. Everybody has been very open and supportive with sharing what's working for them and giving me access to the coaches, the resource, the tools, the conferences, the stages that the shows the insider, the inside track on what to work. And that's just, you wouldn't expect that, I think, from the outside looking in, but it has been my experience, right,
Pat Mancuso 15:33
right? Yeah, and I think that's true. I'm not sure for me if that was true early on in my journey, because I was in real estate. Real estate is super competitive, and, you know, it's, it's a different world. And yet, in the last, you know, 10 years, probably, for me, that has been true is, you know, where people are, are they're they want to, they want to see, see entrepreneurs succeed. They don't want to see him fail, and so they're certainly willing to do that. So I want to make a transition, and you know the first thing I want to get your opinion on, because I feel likely the same way that you do. But let's take Dan Kennedy, and Dan Kennedy has been around forever, right? Like I'm thinking 50 years, 4050, years. Yeah, probably. And I hear people go, well, that stuff doesn't work anymore, and that's old. And and, you know, and I follow Dan, and I follow Russell, and you are absolutely a, I mean, I would guess, I would say, without putting words in your mouth, a disciple of Dan's. And so when you hear people say those things like, like, talk about, you know, let's just make the transition to marketing of today. I think people think sometimes it's gotta be so new, so reinvented, so different. And yet, the fundamentals that, in this case, that you project are coming from, you know, Dan, and you're adding your twist to it, obviously, but when people talk about that, like, give me your perspective on that.
Jen DeVore Richter 17:06
Okay, so before I get into that first, I'll just say, good. Let them continue to think that, because that gives me a competitive advantage if you don't want to learn how to write copy that sells like, Dan's, Dan's a copywriter, right? First off, that's his first primary identity, and then he's a business owner and a teacher, you know, information marketer after that. But you know, good copy sells no matter what platform it's on. And magnetic marketing is super simple to market message media that is a timeless tripod that will remain in understanding your market, having the right message and putting it on the right media is a marketing strategy that is time tested and true. Now, what might change over time is the media. And you might go from, you know, like I went to YouTube, that is a new media might not even be around in five or 10 years. I have no idea what's going to happen with AI, but for now, it's working. So, you know, but, you know, direct mail still works. The, you know, kind of like the old school stuff magazines, they still work. People, if you sell to a high end, affluent market, people love getting stuff in the mail, especially if it's great, if it's really good, high quality stuff. People, I have tons of magazines at my like, you know, Colorado homes and all these, like, really high end magazines from stores or, you know, just marketers that want to get in front of me and get my money out of me. And they send me, they send me print in the mail, and I send them money back. I end up buying stuff. Yeah, no, works. So, yeah, I don't care. People can think whatever they want. I'm I'm just going to go with what's tried and true and then adjust as needed. When it comes to the media for traffic, you know, that's kind of sales funnels, part of it, where, where? Like the Russell Brunson thinking comes in, you know, if you want to automate a business and put it online versus having direct mail, you know, then you need to think about where's your traffic going to come from. And YouTube, for me is where the majority of my automated traffic comes from, you know, for now, right? It's working for me. And then I take the principles of magnetic marketing, and I married them with the principles of modern digital marketing, aka sales funnels, basically sales funnels, and worked it out. And so my YouTube channel is the traffic. I'm using the modern what's working now there to rank the videos, get people to watch them, but then I think about every video on the channel is just fueling traffic to my funnels, to my magazine subscriber page, to my pre recorded webinar, to my action guide that I give away, to my book that I want people to buy on Amazon, and then that traffic going to those funnels has a process. You know, a lot of it is largely automated, but it has a process with modern marketing like email drip campaigns and. And then the other part, I still, I like to sell old, fresh I guess, but with Zoom, I like to have conversations. I don't think anybody's going to hand over 1000s of dollars to you without speaking to a human being. So, so it's kind of like you have to look at your buyer's journey and then figure out what's tried and true. Dan Kennedy style stuff that's just never going to change no matter what, because we're dealing with human beings. And then, how can you integrate the modern marketing aspect of sales funnels? When it makes sense, you don't have to do it, just to do it. But when it makes sense, when do you when do you plug in that modern marketing?
Pat Mancuso 20:36
Yeah, so, so let me ask you this. So somebody, well, let me, I'm going to, we're going to take just two seconds, and I want your perspective on AI, because, you know, AI is the craze everybody's, you know, they, you know, leverage this, do this, do this, do that. So I'm just curious from your perspective, because I know you're cutting edge, and I know you look at things and you do leverage technology. I do know that because of my experience so far in the process with the digital magazine, which we're going to talk about, I know here, but, but give me your perspective on AI.
Jen DeVore Richter 21:11
I was a very early adopter of AI, especially as a as a marketer, and I experimented with a lot of different things, you know, a lot of different platforms, um, and I think it has its place. It's kind of like, I Okay, when I worked at Kennedy Space Center, it was kind of pre internet. It was like, not really pre internet, but like pre internet in terms of marketing, we were still doing sure money on commercials and radio ads and billboards and stuff because it and they still do because it works. But then the internet started real. Everybody, every business, needed a website. Like in 1998 around that time, so then everybody needed a website. We started building a website. And at first at all, the pub about having a website was like, Do we really need that? Like, what's what we're doing now? Actually, is working. It's fine. I don't know if we need to add this new thing. And I'm kind of experiencing AI through that worldview of like it's here and it's not going anywhere. And I don't think, I think it's just like anything, the internet, money, anything can be used for evil, if that's what you use it for, but it can also be used for good, right? It's just, it's just a tool. And as a business owner and as a marketer, we just need to be smart on, you know, where it makes sense for us to use it in an ethical way, and where it doesn't, you know, I'm still a big believer in, you know, like direct response marketing, making sure that the copy is correct. And a lot of that just comes down to being a human being, I don't know, right? AI's just not there yet in terms of really, truly understanding the language that your prospects are using because they're the AI for now, isn't following you around to all of your client meetings and hearing from their heart the pain that they Right, yeah, they're not hearing. It's not hearing so it can, like, regurgitate some cute computerized copy or something for you. But tell. I mean, I can tell when on social media, when people are using AI to create posts. It's, like, pretty obvious, you know, and then so that. But that human aspect of of of really understanding that marketing is just solving it's the communication that we solve problems for people. It's It's matchmaking business that solve a problem to people that have a have a problem, and that human element of it had, I it hasn't been replaced yet. I don't AI, so I think you
Pat Mancuso 23:28
can leverage it, but you got to bring the human, your touch, your part of it, to it. So are, if there were one or two top AI tools that you're using to share with people, what would they be?
Jen DeVore Richter 23:39
I mean, I'm pretty much only on chat. GPT at this okay. I mean, I've tried all of them. A friend of mine named Austin Armstrong has a tool called syllaby. If you're a video content creator, it's silly.ai. And I've been a champion of his from the beginning. I'm not getting paid to say this is not a sponsored post, but it's just hit. The program is pretty cool, and it really helps with coming up with ideas for content. It'll generate scripts for you. He's even got, you know, the AI generated spokesperson, oh yeah, in there, and all that stuff, which, if that's your style, fine, it's not mine, but if it's no but it might be something to check out. So I would say syllaby is really cool, and then just chat GPT, the paid version of it is, right? Is phenomenal. Now,
Pat Mancuso 24:27
okay, not fun, AI. So let's get to the good stuff. So I'm a business owner. I'm hearing you talk. I'm going, Yeah, Jen, you're making a lot of sense. Where do I start? Like, where do you coach somebody that isn't doing any marketing, or is doing marketing and isn't working. Like, where would you coach them to start right now, in today's world,
Jen DeVore Richter 24:49
you need an off you need an irresistible offer, like, what? So first, you need to understand what problem you solve and how you do it in a unique way. And. Then you package that problem, solution, you know, idea, into an irresistible offer. We call it in Click Funnels land, and the irresistible offer is meant to make your competition irrelevant. And I think a lot of marketing problems can be solved by understanding what problem you solve and how you do it in a unique way in creating an experience and a package for your clients, that's a no brainer. So if I had to pick one first step, it would be, let's look at your offers. Let's look at what you sell. And another reason why I say that is because the fastest and easiest way to raise revenue in any business is simply to increase your price. And so you might already have a decent offer where it's like, it's okay, we kind of understand what our problem is. We have a couple solutions. You might have too many solutions, truthfully, but looking at the offer and going, how can we make, you know, how can we make this irresistible and or increase the price, right? Not by just jacking the price up, but by providing more value, which in turn makes it irresistible. So when I work with clients, that's usually the first thing I look at is, what are you selling? Because we can fast path to cash by increasing the price with the leads that you currently have, or just repositioning you with an unique, irresistible offer.
Pat Mancuso 26:16
So you said something, and you said it, and it came so natural, and yet my brain hurt in like I said, Okay, wait, we gotta stop for a second. Macon is irresistible offer, and it was something like so good or so strong that it makes your competition irrelevant. That is like, like, if you just sat and thought about that for a second like every obstacle objection that you get when you're in competition becomes irrelevant if you think in terms of that, that statement, that's such a powerful statement.
Jen DeVore Richter 26:53
Yeah, I think business owners just don't try hard enough. And it doesn't mean you need to give away the farm or right add more hours onto it. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, what do you do in such a unique way, you know, like your market dominating position packaged up in in an offer? I'd like to go with three tier. I still like good, better, best three tier, old fashioned offers work, you know, in a way that makes the competition irrelevant. And if you can just spend a little bit more time on your offer and make really great, because your competition isn't right, petition is going for what's easy, what's always been done in the industry. This is how we do it. This like, this is just how it's done, you know, like in coaching hourly rates? Yeah, you charge $99 an hour for coaching because that's and then they just do that and they sell that because that's how it's done. That's what everybody does. Okay, well, what if you didn't do that? What if you did the exact opposite of the, you know, $99 an hour coaching rate, and put together an offer that was irresistible, that may be included an hour with you on Zoom, a recording of the session, access to your E Learning Marketing Center, access to you know, a private chat messaging board where your clients could send you a short you know message on chat, 24 hours a day, or whatever, You know, whatever or access to a hotline, a tech desk hotline, or something you know, so just by thinking, thinking through, right, you know how you can provide more value to people without giving them more of your time. Could Make Your offer better than your competitions, and will help you close more sales and increase your price and provide and actually give a better outcome and value to your clients, if you just think, think through it a little bit. So obviously,
Pat Mancuso 28:49
YouTube, you're, you're, you're nailing it there. A lot of people struggle with behind the camera or in front of the camera, if you may. They struggle with that. And yet, you know, YouTube is, you know, connected to Google, which means it gets a lot of traffic on search. How do you how do you coach somebody, or what would you say to somebody that struggles with that? I just don't want to be on on camera, like, I just don't want to be in front of the camera. I don't think I look good on the camera. Yeah, I
Jen DeVore Richter 29:19
mean, I hear that a lot. There's a lot of like we everybody has limiting beliefs and self talk that we tell each tell ourselves about things you know, like room to this, room to that. But what do you want more? You know, like for me, what I want in my business is a study stream of new prospects to talk to, um, without having to go to networking meetings, I'm majorly introverted, Pat like big time. I love sitting in my house. I'm a major homebody. When I go to a conference or something, I'm exhausted, you know, by the by the end of the call, It wears me out, but I. If I and I don't like to be the center of attention, like I don't blow up my social media and document my entire life, I'm just That's not me. It's not work. I'm very private person. But with YouTube, what I want, what I want more than putting myself on camera, is freedom in my business. And I want to be able to generate leads. You know, 24/7, 365, without having to do the things that make me uncomfortable. So I want that more, and so it it motivates me to get on camera. Right? The other aspect, I'll say that has worked for me is just being disciplined. When motivation fails, discipline can do a lot for you as an entrepreneur, and I'm not thinking about, I don't feel good today, or I don't like the way my hair looks, or I've got this issue going on in my life, and I don't feel like, you know, being happy, shiny person on camera. But when you don't feel like it, you do it anyways. You embrace the suck, you know, like they say, and you just show up and just remaining disciplined. So I decided in 2020 when lockdowns hit and I didn't have any other way to get in front of people, was that I was going to be disciplined and show up on camera every week, no matter what. And I've maintained that promise over the last four years. I have made a YouTube video every week, no matter what, maybe three or four weeks I've missed in four years. That's amazing, yeah, and I do it no matter what, UPS downs, you know, I'm just always there and
Pat Mancuso 31:36
it's good and it's good, and we'll, we're going to get that information where people can go listen to it and watch it. So, so then what? So, so then let me ask you this. I'm going to transition a little bit because you're doing some great stuff with businesses, and you know, I'm a byproduct of that, if you may, in the digital magazine space. And we're going to talk about that. But you're also, do you also consult with business owners on marketing and so when you, when you do that, like, I've, you know, I'm assuming people are listening and going, Okay, I want to get, you know, I want to get this. I want to, I want to start bringing that stream of business and that stream of revenue. So where do you, you know, you already talked a little bit about this, but let's say that I'm a Marketing client, right? Like, what are the biggest things you see in the beginning that you need to break down from that client to get them out of where they are, to get them to where they need to get to?
Jen DeVore Richter 32:30
Alright? So I actually wrote a book about this, because I saw it over and over again and over again. And the first roadblock that I have to overcome for all of my clients, it that make them a great client is your marketing mindset. You have to adopt a new identity of I am a marketer of these services, not just a provider of the services. So you are not just a chiropractor or just a lawyer. You are a marketer of chiropractic services. You are a marketer of legal services. Now we're not going to put that on your website. That's not what I'm saying, that you need to see yourself as the spokesperson of your business, and you need to see yourselves as the you know this the person in charge of your marketing, even if you're working with a consultant like me, even if you have a social media manager, even if you have a business coach, even if you've got a graphic designer and a web guide, even if you still need to make marketing important, that doesn't work for everybody. And let me tell you, this is a funny story. I think a client of mine referred me to a friend of hers who was struggling with her marketing she will remain. And I she says, my client, my friend, really needs your help. Um, please talk with her. I said, Okay, so I went to her LinkedIn, she set up a call, and then I went to her LinkedIn to try to under, like, just kind of see what I could learn about her business before we jump on the call and in her LinkedIn profile, she literally had the words, I hate marketing, let's just grab coffee instead. Okay? And I was like, yeah, just maybe not a great prospect for me, but I hate marketing, let's grab coffee instead. She was building her business through networking one relationship, right? And didn't want to be seen as a marketer. Some people have these weird like, money blocks about sales and marketing. They think, right, sales is a dirty word, and yeah, they got all this, like, weird hang up. Not me. I'm a capitalist, and I love the free enterprise system. I think it's the best way out of poverty and gives you the most freedom in your life. So and anybody can do it right, and anybody can do it, it's better. That's your mentality. That's not really going to work right, right? Um, anyway, so she says she has, I hate marketing on her LinkedIn. I get her on the call, and I'm like, I get it. I am going to make you love marketing. You've got, you've got to, because if you can't get over. Mindset. Nothing else is going to work. You're not going to want to put in place the strategies. You're not going to want to build a team. You're not going to want to trust your team to choose the right tactics for yourself. You're going to be measuring the wrong stuff. Like the thing that needs to happen first is that you have the right mindset. And so I think that's really key when I'm starting with people, is I do a, you know, thermometer, check on them and say, what temperature are you at? Hot or cold? On marketing, do you hate it? Do you love it? Now, I have learned, after working with her for a couple months, I had to part ways with her because she just what I wasn't going I couldn't force her, Yes, any different she could never let go of, you know, wanting to use technology. She hated it. You know, she never could see herself like as an expert in her field. Even though she was, she had a lot of self talk and limiting beliefs about positioning herself like a lot of Who do I think I am kind of childhood, I don't know, but she could never see herself as someone who had ideas to share and a message worth hearing. And if I can't get people to get that unlocked within like, a couple weeks of working with me, it's never going to work. So yeah, she stuck with me for two weeks, for two months. Sure was like, You know what? This is just not going to work. I feel like I'm pulling you into something that you don't want to do. Let's just part ways as friends. And I saw her actually, like, two months ago at an event, and we were she gives me a big hug, and we're friends, and she's back to doing her business her way, one person at the time going to networking meetings. That's working, but that's usually where I start, is with mindset. Do you see yourselves yourself as an authority? Do you see yourself as an expert? Do you want to share your best ideas on the internet? Do you want to create information that helps people make decisions if you don't, and you want to hold all that too close? This type of marketing that I do isn't really going to be a great fit
Pat Mancuso 36:59
well, and, you know, here's what I find, you know, in my world as a business consultant, is that, and I had this conversation with somebody a while back, is, you know, not everybody is is built made desires to be a big time entrepreneur or have a big business and, and that's okay, and actually it's probably better, because, You know, when you think about somebody who doesn't think that way, then they may not be thinking that way in everything they do, in terms of the service they offer the follow up, they offer the things that are really, you know, required to, to have huge impact on people so that, that that does not surprise me, the mindset piece at all. And so, so, so, so let's, let's, I want to transition in, into the world of the digital magazine. So you've really created a niche there. And we're excited. You know, we're, I don't know, you could probably tell me what. We're probably halfway into our journey of getting our first publication out. We're super excited, and the process has been amazing. But tell me where that came from, and tell me how people could benefit by doing that. It
Jen DeVore Richter 38:08
was back to Dan Kennedy idea. I was sitting at a super conference in 2016 I think it was in Cleveland that year, or maybe it was before, I don't know, somewhere around that time. And there was a panel about building your authority. And there was a gentleman named Frank Miranda. He's like, they call him the Dan Kennedy of Italy guy, but he's like, a major information marketer in Italy, and he was on the panel, and he held up his magazine, and he was telling everybody how he had been using it, leveraging the magazine to grow his coaching and consulting business. The guy's uber successful. And he was just saying, you know, hey, this is, like a really cool thing that I have been doing in my business. And then I was marinating on it. And when I worked at Kennedy Space Center, I actually published a magazine for NASA called the orbiter, which was like a behind the scenes of what's going on at Kennedy Space Center. I used to call them our armchair astronauts for the P it was like membership program. You would pay a little bit of money, and then we'd send you this newsletter every quarter. And I, and I, instead of it just being a newsletter, I had it, you know, full four color design with photos, and it was a magazine. And so I was like, Oh yeah, I used to do that a long time ago. I used to publish a magazine. And then I and then when I decided to, you know, kind of part ways with my business partners, I went to that idea, I went to the Dan Kennedy Library in my mind, and I was like, what are some things that I could do that I already kind of know how to do, because I've done them in the past to help me rebrand myself and, like, relaunch, not as an agency owner, but as a, you know, consultant, speaker, author, kind of a person, and so I published, I decided to publish a magazine, and at first I just did the print version of the magazine, and then at the same time, I'm learning about funnels and, you know, generating leads online. And I said, Oh, you know what, instead of just. Creating a print magazine and having a box full of eight and a half by 1140, page pretty brochure sitting in my office. Why don't I marry that with a funnel and turn the print version into a digital flip book online? You know, a digital flip book operates like a print magazine, but is digitized, and then build a funnel out of it. And so I coined the term magazine funnel and built what I think is the way that magazine funnels should be set up, like I have, I've have, probably we call it funnel hack, but looked at hundreds of ways that magazines, and like celebrities in particular, had been leveraging a magazine people like, you know, Oprah Winfrey has, you know, has ran a magazine for 18 years, and just all the all these different, different celebrity type magazines, and looking at how they were doing their subscription page, and looking at what I think was working well after I would put myself in their funnels, and I would, you know, go through and say, This was working really well. This doesn't work at all. Why are they doing it this way? And I designed a better way, like a new way of doing a magazine funnel. So that was, and then, you know, Click Funnels found out about it and put me on Clickfunnels radio and all that stuff as a as a new, you know, a different type of funnel. So that's kind of where it started, but it all, you know, I think every good idea that we have in our life comes from a series of places that we've been in our life was, you know, it's not just like one thing that is like, Oh, that's it. That's the idea. It's like, usually, it's usually a build up and a, you know, just exposing yourself to a lot of different ideas, a lot of different ways of doing business or marketing yourself. So that's what happened for me, and that's how I came up with the magazine funnel idea.
Pat Mancuso 41:46
Yeah. And you know what? It's kind of interesting, right? Like, magazines have been around forever, and then we go, okay, well, print doesn't really work anymore. And, yeah, I don't know for you, but I'm seeing more and more print now come back as the economy has changed, you know, where it people weren't doing it for a while, and then people who kept doing it stood out because they were the only ones doing it right. So it's kind of interesting. And, you know, so, so let's say again, I want to drill just down a little bit further on this piece, you know, because I think, from my perspective, our goal on this show is to give people strategies that can help them in their business, and the one thing they need to do is drive more leads right. And I certainly have bought into the fact that the magazine will do that. And so in terms of people thinking about like, first thought people to have is, oh, okay, what does it cost? And really, you've created a model where, when executed properly, it really shouldn't cost you anything, right? I mean, you really, you could do what you needed to do to to offset the cost to it.
Jen DeVore Richter 42:56
Yeah, I'll give you a couple, two inspiring stories. All right, so I have one client. They are a metal roofing company out in Colorado Springs. They started out just as a magazine funnel client with me. She saw me speaking at a keynote one year when I first moved here in 2019 and the owner saw me speaking. It's a business that's been around for 68 years. Family owned and operated. Her dad started it, and she was really struggling in the in the economy, and then during lockdowns and covid and all that, restrictions really got hit hard. And so we did the magazine funnel as a way to differentiate herself from all of the other contractors she's and these are Stone Coated Steel, metal roofs. They're really nice, super high end, very, very expensive. So she's not selling, you know, right, right, right. That's not what I'm talking about. Um, and so we created the magazine to help her close more deals. So she started printing them up, putting them in a wow box, taking them with her on the sales calls, and closing business. Like, right away. She closed a deal, like, on the spot, because she the the the woman, the the wife of the house in this transaction, was so impressed with the magazine. She was like, just saw that like female and attention to detail, and was like, blown away. And, um, you know, signed the contract on the spot. So the magazine has helped traditional type businesses just close more deals. You know, better clients sell high ticket, man, if you're selling high ticket, a magazine is a no brainer. Um, super easy. She's been running the same magazine. We changed the cover one time in three years that so the same magazine since 2019 they now have a new owner. His name's Larry, and I'm still I'm their outsourced CMO. Now, when she sold the business to Larry, she insisted that I go with the sale, which is pretty cool, so I remain their outsourced cmo Larry told me that in 2023 they generated 188 leads off of their website from the magazine downloads, 80 some sales appointments and sold 45 Five roofs. I think it is so. And that's all that we do, yeah, like, that is the we do YouTube. We do a YouTube video every week that leads to the magazine. And that's it. And that's all they don't he doesn't go to networking. He's a super just more of, like, an investor business. He just wants it to run, and he doesn't want to be out running around in networking events and
Pat Mancuso 45:20
stuff. Okay, so, so I just do a little bit of math, and we just did a roof on our house because we had hail damage, and it was $65,000 and it was an asphalt shingle roof. Then it's not like, it's huge square footage. I 48 he said, 48 Yeah, 40 something, 40 even if that was at 100,000 a roof. That's 4.8 million.
Jen DeVore Richter 45:42
Yeah, it's a multi million dollar company, and that's what, and that's how, that's primarily how they're marketing. That's it's no and it's running. We haven't touched it. We've updated the cover, because I got new photos of it. So, wait
Pat Mancuso 45:55
a minute, wait a minute. It's three years, and the only thing that's been updated is the cover. All the other content inside there's the content inside, yeah,
Jen DeVore Richter 46:02
because you only need one roof. It's not like, it's not like a business or there's nothing else. Don't sell anything else. That's it. I tried to get them to sell gutters and stuff, and they won't do it. But it's like, you know, they, that's all that they do, is metal period, um, and it's a one time sale. So we don't need to create new content for the magazine all the time. It's sure. Now I have other clients who they're constantly publishing, publishing quarterly. I have a coach. He's like the Tony Robbins of home health care, business coaching, yeah, been with me. We're on issue number 10, going live on Friday, this Friday, I believe issue number 10, he publishes quarterly, and he publishes all the time because he has new client success stories. He has new prospects that he you know, he's got his award winners from his conference that he wants to feature. He has a conference that he sells twice a year, so he promotes that in the magazine. He wants to sell copies of his books. He gives it away for free as a lead magnet on his website. And he's constantly generating business off of it. He told me that, and he actually has a write up in my magazine about it, where when he can see a revenue increase when he publishes the magazine and when he versus when he doesn't. So he will always publish. He loves it. Yeah. And then I have other clients who don't have a business on the back. They're not selling roofs or coaching or consulting or anything else, and they just make money off of their off of their subscriber list, selling ads to advertiser. I have one guy. It's called Cal broker magazine in California. It's for insurance agents in California. There's he's got about 28,000 subscribers. It's a large list. He makes $42,000 a month in advertising revenue publishing his magazine. When he first started working with me, he was making like, 35,000 so I've helped him increase his, you know, his monthly ad revenue. And then we also helped him decrease his costs, because we got rid of the print and went 100% digital. So he's like, his profit margin through the roof too. So there's a lot of different things talking different ways. A magazine, everybody is a little bit different. I have a way that I think the funnel needs to go, but the magazines are all done custom. And then the important part is, what you do with it? On the back, what's your monetization plan? You know, roofs or coaching or advertising. You know, that's it. But if you're selling advertising, shoot 42 grand a month in advertising way 10 times pays for the publishing.
Pat Mancuso 48:27
You know, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, so I'm super pumped about getting mine done now, absolutely. So I want to ask you one other question, and then we're going to kind of put a ribbon on this conversation. So you mentioned that your team, and I think I'm know the answer, but I still want to ask you to bring it out. People think, well, I can't afford a team like I can't afford to hire the marketing this and the this and the this and that and talk talk to that. Because I think people have a mindset around that that is not accurate. I don't need to go hire 12 people. Is what I guess I'm asking is that I probably
Jen DeVore Richter 49:07
already do have 12 people. It's just not, it's probably like a three ring circus at this point. Like, yeah, like, everybody has a website. Guy, um, you know, you everybody probably, like, at this I mean, the clients that I work with, they all have like a virtual assistant. They might have like a social media manager, um, they have a business coach. You know, they've got freelancers that they're hiring. Everybody has a team. It's just a matter of, are you being purposeful with your strategy with them? Is everybody working on the boards the same direction, or are they working in silos, which is the case where it's like, the web guy's like, I don't know why you guys are doing over there with web, you know, with this is just what I do. You know, sure, we're cranking out blogs for SEO, and it's like, was that even working, you know, or your social media managers trying, is just trying to. It, like vanity metrics or something, or your business just helping you with, like, process and system and people problems or something. Usually, the people that I work, they have a team. It's just a little disorganized at that point, but, but also, if you don't, if you just truthfully don't have a team, and you're just, like, starting at square one, I have a resource on my website. I don't know if this is okay to give away. It's absolutely ours for it, but you go to gendervore dot rocks forward slash outsourced, and there's a PDF that you can download for free. It's a companion guide to my book that's on Amazon. It's called delegate to accelerate. It's basically like a self assessment that you can take to figure out it's all of the marketing tasks, not that you're going to be doing all of these tasks. Sure, tried to think of everything that I could think of that everybody normally does. And you take a self assessment and you say, is this something that I need to do? Is this something that someone else needs to do, or is this something that we can quit doing? It's like three and you just go, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, real quick. Down the little self assessment and start with that and figure out what are the things that you're already doing, that you need to keep doing, or the things that you need to outsource, or the things that you need to quit doing. And I would start start with that, and then take an inventory of the things that you should be doing, that you don't want to do or can't do, and outsource those things first, right? And, like, figure out, okay, well, who is going to do that? Not, you know that, who? Not how I think is excellent. But like, you know, who is going to do this? Not, how do I learn how to edit those? But like, who is going to do that? And you know, that's, you know, all business problems are people problems. Really, it's not, it's not unfigureable, you know, yes, but it's like, you know, and they just, and then just figure out who that person is, who needs to be your designer or your email database marketer, or your content creator, your blog person, your website, host, all of those things have to happen, right? It's just a matter of getting a full understanding of where you're at now as the first so that resource would be. I think that makes
Pat Mancuso 52:11
sense. That makes sense. Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna, I mean, you, first of all, oh my gosh, like you've, you've been amazing today. If somebody listens and listens for five minutes, they'll take things away from the conversation today. So I want to give you an opportunity to give us a final thought on whatever you want. To give us a final thought on. However, before I do that, somebody wants to get in touch with you, somebody wants to reach out. Somebody what's the best way for them to do that?
Jen DeVore Richter 52:40
Just go to my website. It's jendevore.rocks and that has connections to my contact form. You can send me a message. It has my YouTube channel. I release a free video training every week, which is super, super high value. I've been told it absolutely is getting contact there. So that would probably be the best place to start. Very
Pat Mancuso 53:04
cool. Okay, so what would you share with an entrepreneur, business owner who's on this journey to close that gap between their finances and their freedom? What would be your final thought to share
Jen DeVore Richter 53:17
with them? My final thought would be to to start with the end in mind and work backwards. You know, for me, I work about 30 hours a week. That's what is important to me. I I only work like nine to four, Monday through Thursday. I do not work on Fridays generally. And I, and I designed my business around that lifestyle. That's it gives me the free time. That's why I'm going through, like Bob Ross painting certification, because I have a paint studio in my basement. Like, I have a I work out five, six days a week, like I have a lot of free time to do what I want to do, because I built my business with that end in mind, maintaining Fridays off working nine to four don't work weekends, all that, you know, and having and having a really great, well rounded life, I'm also happily married. My step kids love me, you know, I'm super women's ministry at my church, like I've got all kinds of free time to work on the things that matter to me, because I started with that end in mind, and then I've reverse engineered the business. And I think that a lot of and I made that mistake at the beginning. Like I told you, I didn't do that at the beginning. I, you know, jammed my life with work, and then the happiness and the joy and the relationships just kind of got what was left over. And so I would say, think about what you really want, not just in your business, but in your life.
Pat Mancuso 54:40
What a great thought, What a great way to end the show. Well, Jen, thank you so much for being here today and listeners and folks who are watching us on YouTube. Thank you so much for your support. Your support allows us and actually adds value to the folks that show up and do our interviews and also. For what they're doing. That's why we have them here. These folks are contributing to entrepreneurs and business owners. That's why we're bringing the show so Jen, thanks so much for being here today. Have an amazing day. Thanks, Pat. My pleasure. Take care everybody.
Outro 55:13
Thank you for joining Destination Business Freedom with Pat Mancuso. may the insights and strategies shared guide you towards financial prosperity and personal freedom. Continue to navigate boldly until next time. Keep transforming challenges into achievements. Farewell and stay the course. You.
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