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Forget Funnel Hacking with Shawn Lynam, Ep. 57

Aug 2, 2018

On today’s episode of Just the Tips, Dean grants me a new nickname that I actually earned back in the day when I worked in London, The Loud American, but I quiet down a bit to listen to a good friend of mine, Shawn Lynam, tell his story of how he went from the corporate world, to the real estate world, to internet marketing. Shawn really knows his stuff, and in this episode we talk about how to not complicate matters, how to model your success on others, and how to position your offer to make it really sing. This is a great episode of Just the Tips that you won’t want to miss.

Jack of all trades, master of all trades

Shawn’s story of how he got into entrepreneurship generally and internet marketing specifically may be one that’s familiar to you. He took a job out of college with Lockheed Martin, working up the corporate ladder. But when his sister handed him a book (no spoilers) that also changed my perspective at a similar point in my life, Shawn started getting into real estate. He eventually became so skilled at real estate investing that he quit his job, and then after 10 years of doing that, with a family on the way, he decided to switch it up and start down the path of internet marketing. Since then, he’s killed it in yet another industry. If you’re interested in getting into internet marketing, or looking to step up your business’s online effort, you have to listen to this episode of Just the Tips.

Sell what’s already selling

Sometimes someone says something so simple, you smack your head for not coming up with it first. But when I asked Shawn how to make a great offer, he said: “Sell what’s already selling.” And what he means by that is do your research: Know the market for what you’re selling, and analyze the demand for what you’re selling. You can’t come up with a successful product out of thin air and make people suddenly want it. Now, what exactly does that mean? Sell what someone else is already selling, or sell something slightly different? You’ll have to listen to this week’s Just the Tips to find out.

Don’t use your cell

Shawn and I actually conducted a really interesting experiment a couple years ago, right before the election, where we started selling election-related hats. We built a funnel and decided to see if anyone would buy, and then suddenly there was a deluge of sales. It was such an enormous rush that we actually had our account frozen for processing too many sales. So I had to open up a new account, and I made one rookie mistake that I’ll never make again: I put my cell phone number down as the contact info. It’s a funny story, but as Shawn says, it’s a legitimate problem that a lot of people run into. Find out how he gets around it on this week’s episode of Just the Tips.

It’s funnel modeling, not funnel hacking

Shawn says something so smart about halfway through this episode, during a discussion about not reinventing the wheel. As he says, “funnel hacking” isn’t really hacking at all, it’s funnel modeling. So you take something that works, and you take those fundamentals, and you apply them to what you want to do. You don’t have to dream up a new way to do it, you just have to model your success on others. We also dive into the importance of positioning and how that communicates the value of your offer to your customers. Listen to the episode!

Outline of This Episode

  • [4:00] Shawn’s entrepreneurial origin story
  • [6:13] Sell what’s already selling
  • [10:33] Case study of what went wrong in a funnel
  • [14:45] Don’t reinvent the wheel
  • [18:00] Positioning is so important
  • [24:00] The red rose guarantee
  • [27:00] Do your homework
  • [31:30] Always be learning

Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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