How to Earn $100,000+ working 3 hours per day (Episode 119)

Jeff Bullas

00:00:05 - 00:01:08

Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas show. Today. I have with me Luke Charlton. Now, Luke is known as the Client Attraction Specialist, business coach, expert marketer and very much an email sales authority. In 2013 Luke also known as The Aussie Hermit. That's what he calls himself now because he's hiding in Mullumbimby. Don't say that after you've had a couple of drinks and near Byron Bay. He was so bored, he was on the treadmill of corporate life and he decided to quit his comfortable government job, he’s working for the Australian Federal police, to move halfway around the world and start an online business as a coach. Through years of trial and error, Luke finally discovered the formula for online success now helping over 4000 coaches grow their business online. Now he spends his days as a hermit. That's why he's got a beard because he can't find the tap water near Byron Bay, teaching others how to get more clients by sending just one 15-minute email every day.

Welcome to the show, Luke.

Luke Charlton

00:01:08 - 00:01:14

Thanks mate. Thanks for the introduction. I appreciate that. And always nice for my beard to get a mention as well.

Jeff Bullas

00:01:17 - 00:01:47

I grew a mustache once and I had it for a while and it just didn't agree with me. I, because I've got quite a lot of skin. I've got cold. What we use terms for Italian slang in Australia. And I won't use those because of the derogatory. That's what happened for 30, 40 years ago at school. We weren't very politically correct.

Luke Charlton

00:01:47 - 00:02:42

Actually I've had one mustache in my life and I don't know why I did it on this day but I did it for my best mate's wedding where I was his main groomsmen. And yeah I decided you know what like on his wedding day, I'm just gonna shave my beard, it was like this and I'm gonna have a mustache. I don't know why. So every time I go to his place I see photos of me with that really similar. I can't grow a good mustache. It's quite like small and thin. It's getting a bit long but it wasn't like this over like, remember 12 years ago, so it wasn't as may be thick as what it was, but it didn't look good. So yeah that was the first and last time I grew a mustache.

Jeff Bullas

00:02:42 - 00:03:19

One of the reasons I decided to remove mine after I think I had persisted with it. I think I got it during the 70s, 80s, late 70s, early 80s and Magnum, P.I. was on Tom Selleck, right? So I decided to do my best Tom Selleck impersonation, you know the guy that drove the red Ferrari in Hawaii. Yeah, but I discovered there was a downside to the mustache. This conversation has got nothing to do with marketing, but we'll get to that.

Luke Charlton

00:03:19 - 00:03:24

It was an interesting. Yeah I didn't know it was going to go in this direction.

Jeff Bullas

00:03:24 - 00:03:36

So what's great about the mustache is that you can eat some food and then even no matter how much you clean it you can enjoy the smell of that food for the next 24 hours.

Luke Charlton

00:03:36 - 00:03:39

Yeah. That's why I have to keep this trend otherwise.

Jeff Bullas

00:03:39 - 00:04:13

Yeah. I suppose I have a little bit of a clean gene that sort of just didn't sit with me. So I've been clean shaven mostly since but enough about mustaches. Let's hear about how you got into being a marketing specialist funnel builder and what pain point, which I think I detected in our conversation. How did this journey started becoming a marketing specialist and builder of businesses?

Luke Charlton

00:04:14 - 00:11:03

Yeah. So I left the uni about 2007. Yeah, I think I was about 23 or so and I didn't really know what I want to do. So I thought you know I just get a 9-5 and like we're actually working at customs like there for a couple of years and then got very repetitive. So then I moved to AFP. And the same thing like it was great in the first six months, I think like most corporate jobs where you're learning a lot and you're growing so it's kind of fulfilling, but then like most jobs after you finish that learning phase, it's just very repetitive and not growing. For me, that was really depressing and I started to realize that maybe like doing this for the rest of my life would not be a great idea because like with government, where I'm from in Canberra, everything is a government job. The only way to move up is if someone dies or retires right? So you have to wait a long time in other words and I'm like I'm not gonna wait here for the, like the pay was really good but like I can't. So the pain of being in a 9-5 where I wasn't growing was worse than what they were paying me. So I decided, look, in mid-2013, I'm gonna quit my job and try build up my coaching business and I decided along with that I've moved to London halfway around the world and live there. And I thought, one of my reasoning was, you know, there's more people in London than there is in Canberra so that means it's going to be easier to get clients, but it didn't really work out that way. So the first four month, hasn't got one new client in 12 months so I failed miserably. I tried a lot of different things, I went networking five nights per week because with London there's that many networking events that you could go. So I've been networking five nights per week. I had my Google hangout show, what else did I do? I went, you know, LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups. I did cold calling. So there's a website called International Coaches Federation. They have a list of what they did back then of all the coaches that are like certified. So I downloaded that list and like call people off that list to try and turn them into clients. I got so desperate that I went door knocking on restaurant doors to try and sell like mobile apps for their restaurant like so people could eat more easily, order like food and stuff because this was before the time of mobile apps, it's like a responsive website and I've got no clients from that, but this is how desperate I got, right. I actually went, I started, I wish I had it upstairs, my partner Alana, she, I went and started selling for an MLM pain patches for an MLM. Again, this is how desperate I was for money because I was very opportunity minded kind of like how we business owners, we chased different kind of funnels, right. Well this one, this one that was, that was me And I still have the pain patches, like one of them, I ended up not selling any of them, I actually gave them away to the family that was a waste of like over $1,000 of product and actually have them, there's one left upstairs and I've still got, I wish I had it here to show you, but yeah, I was selling pain patches and so anyway, I failed miserably and ran out of money, even I borrowed money off our family, but they would, they stopped lending to me, so I had to come back to Australia and end up living with my nan in her home in one of the spare bedrooms because she was the only one that would let me live with her rent free and yes, so I that was good because it gave me a bit of a, I got a side job in a bar working like in a cocktail bar, so I worked in the evenings there and I worked during the day on my business and it was good, it was a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to take a breather and start paying off my debts and figure out okay what I'm doing is obviously not working like throwing spaghetti at the wall and just you know, chasing all these different strategies, like one guru says, you got to do this next time, so you gotta be this. So I'm just gonna kind of need to pick one and it needs to be like simple and straightforward, so I'm not sure how I ended up on this guy's list, but I ended up on this guy's list, his name is Ben Settle and Ben is an email guy and basically his stick was like, hey, if you want to grow your business, just send one email per day.

And that's all I needed at the time and just send one in per day. And I thought, you know what, this sounds pretty simple, sounds pretty straightforward. I'm gonna give this a try and I'm actually gonna stick to it. I'm not going to continue to chase all these other bright shiny funnel objects and so that's what I did. I just focused on building my list, which at the time I was using kind of organic strategies, had one particular LinkedIn strategy that was working really well, you can't really do it anymore. I actually wrote a book about it and then LinkedIn changed the whole platform so it didn't work anymore, but that's what I was using to build my list and then I was just emailing, you know, consistently up to one email per day and then I started actually getting appointments and that's when I realized, okay, this is actually something that works. This is what works for me. And what I was blown away with is it's really simple, right? You just build your list with the right people with quality leads, the people that have the problem that you solve and then you email them consistently and so by email them consistently, you demonstrate your expertise, you build that all important model I can trust. And the great thing with email is that, you know, you can end with the pitch that doesn't have to be overt or in your face. It's just a soft call to action. Like hey, if you need help getting more clients, that's what I help within my XYZ program, whatever it is. Now go ahead and book a spot on my calendar. So I just kept being consistent and then that's when I started to teach other service professionals, mainly other coaches. That's kind of my main market is, there's other coaches. So I teach them, look just building lists of quality leads the way that I do that is with paid advertising now. So I've spent over $16 million on paid ads and so I just show them, hey, here's a really simple way to build your list with paid ads. It's all on autopilot and then you just focus on sending one email per day. And that's, that's where we start for them to start getting them, you know, consistent appointments. And that's how simple, you know, getting clients can be when you keep it simple, you don't need a complex funnel. So that's my message. You don't need complex funnels to get high paying clients. It can be that simple.

Jeff Bullas

00:11:04 - 00:11:18

So one love is your, the simplicity of the approach. And a lot of people heard about Russell Brunson's ClickFunnels and his books.

Luke Charlton

00:11:18 - 00:11:29

Yeah, I’ve got all these books, I can do all the final, I can do all the finals, I've done them for clients and I respect him highly, but for coaches under and experts under six figures, that's not what I recommend.

Jeff Bullas

00:11:29 - 00:11:34

So yeah, essentially in a digital world, you got to start with the website.

Luke Charlton

00:11:35 - 00:12:20

Well, hey, here's the funny thing. I didn't have to build my, this is my whole business. I didn't have a traditional website like I do now. So my LukeCharleton.com website that only came about at the end of 2020. So when I started this strategy, my whole business was literally an opt in page, like a page to give away a free guide and a thank you page. Well, yeah, but not like when people say website, those typically mean traditional, like about page, blog, contact. I didn't have any of that. It was just an opt in page and the thank you page. So, that's really all you need to get clients and then you can add in the website like a traditional website later if you want.

Jeff Bullas

00:12:21 - 00:12:30

So yeah, I've heard that strategy before, which is actually, I love the simplicity of it is just a landing page effectively. So it's essentially a one page website.

Luke Charlton

00:12:32 - 00:12:41

That's it. Yeah. Well, two page if you want to get like, but yeah, it is like what, what the prospect seizes is one-page. That's correct. The one page website. Yeah,

Jeff Bullas

00:12:41 - 00:12:44

Yeah. I'm not trying to be pedantic, Luke, but

Luke Charlton

00:12:44 - 00:12:47

I understand, I understand.

Jeff Bullas

00:12:47 - 00:13:34

But I love the simplicity and this is one of the things we try to cover on the podcast here, Jeff Bullas show and also our new product side hustle strategies that it don't overcomplicate it, launch a minimal viable product. And there's another term I've come across called a minimal lovable product and it's true and what you are the exponent, which is revealing that it is, doesn't need to be complicated and you did all the complicated stuff in London and you went, I want to keep it simple. And I think that's fantastic. So, okay, you got your landing page website, and, but you do something, which is very simple again. So what do you do next to actually start collecting emails and subscribers?

Luke Charlton

00:13:36 - 00:13:39

What did I do? Or what do I do now?

Jeff Bullas

00:13:39 - 00:13:41

Both. That's where did you start first?

Luke Charlton

00:13:42 - 00:17:53

To collect the email subscribers, so as I mentioned, I had this kind of LinkedIn strategy where I would invite people to a LinkedIn group and one of the features that you could have back then, I think they may have brought it back in now, but it doesn't work as well. Anyone who's in your LinkedIn group, you can email them once per week, at least you could back then. And that email would go straight to their main inbox. Now, it goes to the little social inbox and no one sees that. So basically there's a dead email. So all I do is I connect with coaches, I invite them to my LinkedIn group and then I email them once per week, you know, to get on my list and then I would email them, that was the whole strategy. But then LinkedIn changed the whole platform. That didn't work anymore. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back because I wrote a whole whole book about this strategy. I actually destroyed it the other day. I might buried in my hard drive and I had to laugh. But yeah, I literally took months to write this book and another joke the day before I was about to go live on Amazon, LinkedIn changed their whole platform and you could no longer do, you could no longer email them anymore. So I'm like, I can't, you know, I can't do these organic strategies anymore. I need to learn paid ads. I'm tired of chasing these organic strategies and they change and then they don't work and these platforms reduce the reach and then yeah, so that's when I started, that's when that's what pushed me into learning paid advertising and Facebook ads. And I bought this guy's course and it was amazing. It was amazing. He's an email guy, this guy's name is Jason Hornung. So Jason still has a great course on Facebook ads and I bought his course, went through it and actually started to get some better results with my ads. And then he put up a post in his private community of people who bought his course saying that he was hiring for his agency and I thought you know what, this is a great opportunity to be able to work as a like part time contractor, learning from Jason and him paying me for the privilege because if you get coaching from him it's very expensive. So out of 50 people, I applied, I got the gig and worked with him for a couple of years learning how to scale advertising. So I basically went from spending $20 a day on my ads to over $100,000 a month.

And I've been at that level since 2016. So I don't work with Jason anymore, but I have my own clients that I run ads for. So that's where I've gone is with paid advertising. So that's why I recommend even coaches and experts under six figures. I love paid advertising because it allows you to have one of the biggest benefits. It allows you to test your message very quickly. So if I spend a $100, I can within $100 we'll know whether your lead magnet, whatever it is, free guide. It could be a webinar, whatever it is, is it whether people want it or not? And that's very, very valuable. Like if you do organic strategies where you're in Facebook groups or you're doing like a blog or something, it's kind of hard to test when things are working in the beginning, when you don't have much of an audience because you're not getting much traffic. So it's like people actually want this opt in. So, I paid a large intestine message very quickly. The other great thing that saves you a lot of time obviously because it's automated. Like right now while we're interviewing, I'm generating leads in the background. While I'm sleeping, I'm generating leads. So valuable now. Obviously the downside is you've got to pay for it. Bbut that's where you start low, you start whatever you can afford 20 bucks a day, $30 a day. And then you scale, right, once you start getting sales coming in, then you add more to the budget, then you wait for more sales to come in and then you so you kind of snowball scale. That's the safe way to scale your advertising and just go to $1000 a day, you know, from day one. So that's what I do now. I just teach coaches. Just use a simple lead magnet to build your list and make sure it's the right lead magnet to attract who you want on your list. And yes, they still work, they still work very well as long as you've got the right lead magnet and that's where obviously where I see a lot of the professionals go wrong as they don't have the right lead magnet, they just had a lead on it. That kind of attracts a broad audience that's not really motivated to spend on the high ticket service.

Jeff Bullas

00:17:53 - 00:18:58

Yeah. So what you talked about to in terms of what you've been through is that LinkedIn and other platforms are very organic in the beginning. And the trouble is they keep changing the algorithms and how the platform works. Attack that you're using one week, won't work the next week, just like you discover when you went to launch on Amazon. I also love, you know, the next part of this. Okay, so how you really look, talking about launching or creating a minimal viable product in other words are going to test and then test it with ads so to see what works without, you know, and then once you've got that sort of robustness and see what works, then you also got a decent system and processes. And I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs don't get is that they've got a great idea but they don't double down on their systems and processes to help them scale to the next level. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your processes that you've implemented that help your scales. Is there anything?

Luke Charlton

00:18:58 - 00:21:42

Well the first one is, well, the kind of system is, is a system that scales, right? So the first one is deciding to use paid advertising because if I want to scale there, I literally just go in and I go, okay, I want to go from spending $30 a day, $200 a day or $100 to $1000 a day. So I can scale like that as long as I have my numbers correct obviously, you want obviously to make sure before you scale that you know that whatever you spend you're gonna be making back and more, you've got to know your numbers. But that's scalable. So that's the first part when you with your traffic paid advertising is very scalable. Organic strategies are not, so not as scalable, not to that same control and extent as paid advertising. So that's number one. Number two is just by the fact that you're, you know, building a list. You know, your list is very leveraged, right. So I can have 100 people on my list. I can have 1000, I can have 10,000, I can have 100,000, but I still need to only send one email per day. That's it. Right? So there's a lot of leverage there. One email can speak to a small audience or a big audience, there's no extra work for me to speak to an audience of a million people versus an audience of 100 people. So that, yeah, so that is the marketing and sales, that strategy that I teach is scalable. So you can build a seven figure business just off that, you don't need a complex funnel to have a very successful business and you can do your marketing as you know, sending one in on today, which could take 15-20 minutes or so. So there's, that's the marketing and and south side of things. Now in terms of how do I scale like the delivery side. I do group coaching. So that's, I don't do one-on-one coaching. I did a tiny bit of that when I was kind of getting going, but I don't do that anymore. So I do a call once per week for up to two hours. Then I have a group of people in Facebook group basically. So I answer questions maybe depending on the day, 15-30 minutes a day and then the call is a couple of a couple of hours a week. So that model, that group coaching model is very scalable as well.

And I don't desire to have a, like a company with employees. So if I were, I mean if I wanted to then you go along the lines, the one person I might hire, I've got a VA in Philippines that does stuff for me for my ads, but would be a sales person is probably someone that I would eventually hired just to do the sales course, but that's about it. That's how I would say the scale.

Jeff Bullas

00:21:42 - 00:21:55

Yeah. So this is what I think people need to understand as entrepreneurs is that you don't need to follow the models of everyone else. In other words, you design a business and a life for yourself that you want. It sounds like you've done that.

Luke Charlton

00:21:56 - 00:22:12

Yeah, I work about maybe three hours a day or so and I really love what I do. Like I could, I could work longer, but I've got the two year old and a four year old and they take up a lot of time at the moment.

Jeff Bullas

00:22:12 - 00:22:13

You’ve got to fix their toys.

Luke Charlton

00:22:13 - 00:22:40

No, no, no. Yeah, this is for everyone that's watching. I have a doll here that I have to fix that. All the stuff I have to fix is left actually here. Look at this, this is on the back of her boot. It's like a unicorn gum boots that needs to be glued back on as well. So yeah, I get anything that has to be glued to get to put on my desk to take it.

Jeff Bullas

00:22:40 - 00:22:43

You become a glue specialist as well. What glues work?

Luke Charlton

00:22:43 - 00:22:49

Yeah, I have actually, yeah, I've got so many things of superglue. It's crazy, constant gluing.

Jeff Bullas

00:22:50 - 00:22:53

Like super glue is the go to glue, is it?

Luke Charlton

00:22:53 - 00:22:56

Yeah, very much.

Jeff Bullas

00:22:56 - 00:23:23

All right. So, I love the simplicity number one. So you use a free offer for yourself, which I've actually downloaded. So tell me more about your free offer that you offer and how it works. Maybe the journey on how did you discovered that. And also that gets into what you said is you need to get clients that you want and also and reject. Be able to drive away the ones you don't want.

Luke Charlton

00:23:24 - 00:28:58

Yeah. Yeah. So that's okay. So yeah, my lead magnet. So I had a lead magnet called the rapid rush of clients email scripts. So that was like, I had to use that for like five years and it was just like, it's fill in the blank email templates and I ran that for a long time with ads and then it kind of died. So I'm gonna create a new lead magnet. And then I came up with the 9 email offers and these are literally just offers that I've used in emails over the years. It was actually from my course, right? So I compiled them and actually taught them in my course and I was trying to think of like what's a good lead magnet and I just went to my course and I picked that out, so it's actually directly from my course. But yeah, it's literally just over the years of different offers that I've used to myself and in client campaigns as well that have been very successful to help you generate more appointments. So I just give that, I give that away to attract coaches to me. So it's like, well yeah, it works for any type of service, professional selling, high ticket. But it's the, what advertisers called the nine email office that get coaching clients for free. That's what I advertise. Okay, now, back then, that leads into your second question is how do you attract people and repel everyone else? So you want to do that with the title of the lead magnet. So the title should really ideally to attract your dream client, which is someone that is going to be motivated to pay for high ticket, if that's what you sell and also has the money obviously. So my lead name, it speaks to people in business. So coaches, it speaks to my target market, which is coaches, it speaks to my target market earning under six figures because they, because it helps them get more clients and generally coaches that want more clients, they're earning under six figures. So that's, that's kind of like my target market. So it's the nine email offers that get coaching clients for free. So it's worded very specifically to speak to my target market and to attract them and by calling out coaches in the title, I'm hopefully repelling other people as well by saying, hey, this is not for, you know, e-commerce stores as an example. Like this is for coaches to help them get clients. And so, so that's an example. So another example would be, so I have a client in my program at the moment and she's a nurse and when she came into the program, she wanted to help people with just anxiety. Now I told her if you help me with anxiety, just you have a lead magnet that says like, you know, five mobile apps to help you with anxiety or you know, here are these free meditations to help you with your anxiety that will attract your very low quality lead. I don't mean to say they're low quality people, I mean to say that most of the people that opt in for that lead magnet won't be ready to invest or have the desire to invest in a $3000-$5000 service. And the reason why is a big broad market like that is usually made up with people that aren't very, don't have a mindset for investing that never really invest in a high ticket service and they're usually not that much, most people aren't in that much pain. So a good example of this is the weight loss industry, right. If you just have a lead magnet that says, you know, didn't help losing weight, most people will desire to lose maybe 5 to 10 lbs and it won't be like a serious thing, but there will be a segment of these markets, the anxiety market, the weight loss market, where people are very, very motivated to lose weight. The anxiety one is a really great example. So with her, what we did is like, okay, who in that market has a more serious form of anxiety that you know, is in more pain basically. And she actually told me her story and she said, well I you know, I had panic attacks and like, well that's perfect, right? So someone with panic attacks is much more serious than someone who just kind of has a general low level form of anxiety and so that's that her lead magnet is something like 11 little known panic attack triggers, something along those lines.

And so obviously the name of the lead magnet 11 panic attack triggers, it's speaking to someone that has panic attacks. And so by doing that, it's attracting them and repelling other people. So it's very specific with who it's targeted at. So that's what you want to have with the lead magnet is to attract people, repel others, but also make sure the people you're attracting are going to be invested in a high priced service. Someone who experiences panic attacks is a lot more pain. So they're much more motivated to spend $2, 3, $4, $5,000. So these are just some of the things that I kind of educate my clients on and helping them think deeper about their market because it's all about the market, it's all about who yeah, because at the end of the day they're the ones giving you the money, right? So we need to understand them very deeply, we need to make sure we're choosing the right market and then everything else from there is very, very formulaic, it's very easy from there once you know your market and who you're going after, like you'll know the type of lead magnet they want like just from their frustrations, right? Like what do people with panic attacks suffer from panic attacks? And you know, but you know like how it affects their life, you know their desires, what the results they want with their panic attacks, right? They want them to stop obviously. So that's what you want to promise in your program, going to help you reduce or eliminate your panic attacks. So everything becomes quite easy. And formulate once you know your market from crafting your offer to your lead magnet to writing emails, you just start with the market and they'll let you know everything. But you really have to do pick the right market in the beginning.

Jeff Bullas

00:28:58 - 00:29:54

Right. I love that. I do like the fact of attract and repel because like you said, you can get a lot of people that get an email list, but it's not the people that motivated enough and if they're not motivated not they're gonna do the work and they're not going to actually pay money either. So yeah, that's right. And I love the example of either weight loss or especially panic attacks. I suppose my brother actually suffers from panic attacks and so and I understand the pain that he goes through as opposed to we all have anxiety of some level. I think being human. Yeah, but panic attacks are serious pain. Yeah, totally. Great. So do you do more than coaching and attracting high paying clients or do you work on low ticket items as well? Because I noticed that one of your offers was about low ticket items as well.

Luke Charlton

00:29:55 - 00:31:59

I don't sell any low ticket items at the moment, if that's what you mean. But I run ads for clients that yeah, we do low ticket funnels. So there's a client that I'm running a campaign for now. She sells authors and screenwriters and basically she has a $37 product that we run cold, like just advertising cold ads to, we're spending maybe about $1,300 a day on that at the moment. And that sells a product just to help them create better stories. So publishers will actually want to buy their books, basically get them published. So yeah, so I can do all the complex funnels. And I've had a very successful that successful campaigns with with all of them with something like that, that's the most difficult type of funnel to run ads to, I would say is a low ticket information product. You have to be very good. It would be kind of on your game, then you have to know because again, you're selling a product to a cold audience, I have no idea who you are. So the offer has to be on point and has to be positioned correctly. The copy has to be really good. Usually your copy has to be a bit more emotional than a just a regular regular email like it's literally for me, but it's just a couple of lines like, hey, do you want these nine email? Obviously get coaching clients are free, go here, like that's a very easy sell. The name of the lead magnet, but if I all of a sudden change that to $10 versus free. Now I have to sell it a bit more. Right now, I have to use a bit more copy and so that is, you know, for someone that's not a professional marketer, you know, it can be done. But what happens is if it's not done and they get discovered like they spend, you know, all these months putting together all these products and funnels and then they launch, it doesn't convert and then they don't have the perseverance to then continue to test and tweak and get better at copying. So they just onto the next kind of bright shiny funnel. And so that's why again, I know the process, I see it over and over again. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it probable? From my experience, it's not probable.

Jeff Bullas

00:31:59 - 00:32:09

But one thing you mentioned there, which I think is really important is persistence and you could be playing the long game and keep testing, keep testing and to see what works.

Luke Charlton

00:32:09 - 00:33:02

If you play the long game, absolutely, like that's the most important thing. Like I was thinking about this the other day, like what's one of, what separates, like why am I at this level where other coaches are and I think one of the big things is it's here all the time, it's mindset, but specifically patience, I think I'm, you know, I'm more patient than most other coaches and so I've just simply outlasted them because I'm more patient to wait for those results. I had that long game and persistence. Part of assistance obviously is testing and tweaking and trying different things. If you have those two things, you can make any funnel work, you can make any funnel work. If you've got patience and persistence, you can be successful with any funnel. Yeah, it just, it just is the question is, do you have that, how motivated are you to keep pestering, you know, with the funnel when it doesn't work first go is the question.

Jeff Bullas

00:33:02 - 00:33:19

Yeah, I love that patience and persistence of two pieces. If you're prepared to do that and you can last the distance, there's no guarantees that you win or be successful, but you can be pretty close to almost guaranteeing because it just,

Luke Charlton

00:33:19 - 00:34:12

I think most people will be a lot further ahead than what they never dreamed they would if they were patient and persistent, you know? For me like a goal was like 10 grand a month when I first go, that was a big goal for me. When I was in London struggling all those years, that was so like 10 grand a month, felt like so far away and being, you know, way past that at the moment. Again, I never thought like that was again just a goal for me to get to 10 grand. I thought I would be happy with that. But, you know, it's so, it's, I think, you know, now I'm still not like I still want to grow, I still want to move forward. Like, you know, that's what we actually do want to do as humans, but I think that if you're a patient persistent, you may not become like a billionaire or like, you know, 100 millionaire, but you will be shocked at where you are and you know, many years time from where you started. I think most people would.

Jeff Bullas

00:34:13 - 00:34:24

Yeah. Well, it's a great quote from Bill Gates said a lot of people overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in 10 years.

Luke Charlton

00:34:24 - 00:34:26

Yeah, 10 years is a long time.

Jeff Bullas

00:34:26 - 00:34:31

Yeah. People quite often can't see that far ahead.

Luke Charlton

00:34:31 - 00:36:36

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't even 10 years ago that I was, like 10 years ago, I was still working for AFP. Yeah. Which is why that just blows like that. Like the stories I could tell you about what's happened over the last, like, I mean I'm a dad of like a two year old and a four year old to start off with, you know, and that's not even including the whole journey in London and I lived in the US for like three months trying to get my business going there are, you know, so many, like so many things have happened and it's not, it's like, it was nine years and so 10 years is a really long time in business, but really it's, you know, in the grand scheme of things. It's not, it's not that long as well in other ways, but yeah, a lot can happen in 10 years. What I would say is if you want to get into like, if you're not in business and you want and an easy way to have the patience and perseverance is to have something else that brings in cash along on the side while you run your business if your business is not profitable, it's like one of my biggest mistakes was moving to London with no other cash flow other than my savings and I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that again. I mean, knowing what I know now, I could do it, fine, because I have the skills, but I wish I had just got that side gig, like in a in a bar or whatever and worked for a few hours a day and then build my business, you know, outside of those hours. I think that's good advice because it allows, it takes the pressure off having to pay the bills and whatnot. And allows you to look at this in terms of the long game like, hey, this is going to be my new career, I'm gonna be in this for like the rest of my life or at least the next 20 years or so. And so what have I got to do to help set me up for success? I'm gonna do this temporarily, this side gig, work in a bar or whatever. It may not be what I want to do, but I can still work on my business during the day and then when I get to a point where it's paying the bills and then I can quit, quit this side. I think that's what I would do if I had my time over again, that's what I would do.

Jeff Bullas

00:36:37 - 00:37:11

I think that's great advice and in other words, take away the risk of failure because you've actually got the side hustle and that way then you can have a full time job and that's exactly what I did with the blog. I had a full time job at a digital agency and the blog was a side hustle. And for me that makes it, not simpler I suppose, but easier and less stressful because you can pay the rent and you can put food on the table.

Luke Charlton

00:37:11 - 00:37:16

Yeah. I've been in that place where you can have, don't have, when you have money, it's, you can't think straight, you know, it's very hard.

Jeff Bullas

00:37:16 - 00:37:29

It's very stressful. So look, thanks for sharing. I think there's some great advice in there. And I think what of what I've observed in talking to you too is that you've learned by doing, you did not do a marketing degree at university.

Luke Charlton

00:37:29 - 00:39:47

Actually. I did that. Yeah, I did it for a year. So that was so funny. That probably makes my story like that thing if I can be successful, you know, so everything I learned in university. I used none of it today. Just as, so that's another regret. I would never go back to university, but I did commute. So my first, my major and minor was communications and film study. That's where I originally wanted to go, was into film. And then I'm like, no, I don't want to do this. And so I did another year of marketing. That was in 2007, I think it was 2007. I did the marketing side of things. So I did that for a whole year and I realized like this is, this really sucks. I don't like, I don't do things like economics like in market like I'm, and I did not study for like the last three months of economics and to pass that that program you had to get a 70%, over 70% on the last test I just did not study and I just literally this multiple choice, I got over 70 like 71% or something, winged it and passed. I don't know how I did that. But yeah, so I did actually do marketing, but none of what I learned in that marketing was what I told you here today. Like that's all. If you want to be like a marketing executive and some big corporation, then that's the type of marketing you do like what we do as entrepreneurs. We do direct marketing and they don't teach that in universities, unfortunately, because that's the marketing that actually makes you money. Sorry, direct response marketing is what I should have said, direct responses is where your marketing is designed to get a response, right. So you put out a lead magnet and offer. In other words, you put out an offer and you gauge how well that campaign is performing by how well people respond to that offer. Are they opted into my list? Are they buying this book? That's direct response. But everyone thinks of marketing is, not everyone but most general population, think marketing is like branding, right. You see Coca Cola and Mcdonald's and whatnot. So that's the type of marketing that I learned in the university and it's not what I apply here in business. So I did marketing but not really helpful for us, business owners.

Jeff Bullas

00:39:47 - 00:40:04

But what you said was really quite insightful in that you haven't applied anything of your marketing degree to what you do today to be a successful marketer and entrepreneur. So there's just so much power and powerful way to learn is just by doing, isn't it?

Luke Charlton

00:40:05 - 00:41:06

Exactly right. Yeah, it's, I will, so doing number one and finding the right mentor. So like I've picked some really bad mentors in the beginning, like kind of fake gurus that we're all talk and very, very good at talking, but very bad, it's delivering and that set me back a lot. So not only in time but in finances, but then I found some really amazing ones I mentioned. Like Ben Settle and Jason Hornung, like just those two guys just following them and have transformed me in my business and yes, you have to, you have to act on that as well, but finding mentors that have done what you want to do is so, so so critical like that will, that will accelerate your success, like nothing else. So you do those two things, mentor and you take action and for me, as long as you apply, you know, your model, then you can't, you persevere, like what we're saying, persevere your patience, you will be successful. Yeah, that's my belief anyway.

Jeff Bullas

00:41:07 - 00:41:30

So it almost sounds like you've summed up what you've learned along the way, frankly. Yeah, if I could maybe sum it up in terms of your top tips for our audience is number one, find a good mentor, act on it and then persist. There may be your top three. Is that, would you agree?

Luke Charlton

00:41:30 - 00:41:34

Be patient would be number four.

Jeff Bullas

00:41:34 - 00:42:03

Alright, that's awesome. Thanks, Luke, for sharing your wisdom mate. I love these conversations to learn from people that have been there, done that. And I love also the value that you've kept true to yourself is the simplicity. I think we don't, we need, we'll try and complicate things, but you've kept it simple, but you went the route of complexity until you dragged.

Luke Charlton

00:42:03 - 00:42:15

Because I'm a tech guy. So I loved all that. I love all the technology that kind of grew up with tech. So I love, that's why I think what drew me to it, but I realized that was getting the way. Yeah, the client attraction.

Jeff Bullas

00:42:16 - 00:42:47

So thank you very much for sharing your wisdom, Luke. It has been an absolute pleasure and all the best with Mullumbimby near Byron Bay. The hermit known as Luke Charlton. You’re in a beautiful part of the world and maybe look forward to catching up when I'm up that way. But, and I hope the gluing gets keeps the girls happy.

Thanks for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Luke Charlton

00:42:47 - 00:42:48

Thank you. Thanks having me on.