5 Ways to Multiply Your Business with Partnering with Ellen Finkelstein – ep 55

Mostafa Hosseini  0:02 

And we’re live Welcome to daily confidence for entrepreneurs. My name is Mostafa Hosseini, your host for the show at data confidence we share tips, strategies and actionable advice that you could use to boost your confidence when it comes to running your business on a daily basis.

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Alright, so the details are and if you’re listening, the link is daily confidence dot show forward slash join to join us as a contributor. Now. My guest today is Ellen Finkelstein. Welcome, Ellen.

Ellen Finkelstein  2:00 

Hi. Thanks for having me. Mostafa.

Mostafa Hosseini  2:02 

Great to have you and today we’re talking about five ways to multiply your business with partnering. Right? And a lot of people have questions about that. How do I partner? How do I find a partner? Now she’s not only going to give you just one, she’ll give you five ways to grow your business and multiply your business through your through partnering.

Now, let me do the proper introduction, prayer Island. And we’re gonna dive right into some very interesting conversation. So Ellen Finkelstein teaches experts who want to get their knowledge out to the world who, how to reach more people with profitable online information, products and courses.

With over 20 years online, Elon has created websites with high search engine rankings, and over 30,000 300,000 visitors per month. Did I get that right? Elon 300,000. Yeah, one of my sites 300,000 visitors per month, that’s major, over 22,000 subscribers and many followers on social media.

She’s also an author published with major publishers such as McGraw Hill, and Wiley and Sons with books ranking up to 1200 pages.

Ellen Finkelstein  3:20 

Whoa, that one on the top. There you go.

Mostafa Hosseini  3:23 

She uses her experience to help others turn their knowledge into online products so they can transform others. Welcome, Ellen. Thank you. Great to see you again. How are things?

Ellen Finkelstein  3:40 

Things are going really well. Good fan, I’m really excited about trying to help people figure out how to partner because I think that when people are just starting out, especially if they lack confidence, they feel uncomfortable, not only promoting their own things, but get asking other people to promote for them like am I exactly somebody to promote for me.

And it’s just so crucial. You can’t do it all on your own. If you have one product after a while you promote to your people, and then whoever buys, whoever doesn’t and then you’re done. You know, you have to find other people to promote you as well.

Mostafa Hosseini  4:17 

Beautiful. So again, if you’re watching or listening to this live, if you have questions about ways to multiply your business with partnering, and finding partners, pop them in a comment or in the chat box. And we’ll do our best to answer your questions as we go. So, Ellen, what is your story? Where do you come from? How did you get into what you’re doing these days?

Ellen Finkelstein  4:40 

Well, literally, I come from New York City. Some of you might still recognize I have a little bit of an accent. There’s a saying you can take the girl out of New York but you can’t take the New York out of the girl. But alright.

So when my kids were little, and I needed to work at home, and I started doing first some tech Technical editing. And then that eventually morphed into writing books. And so the one that you see on the top I was pointing to was what kind of ended up to which was ended up being a 1200 page book for Wiley and Sons is called AutoCAD Bible.

I don’t do it anymore. But it went to 17 editions, 14 languages, and all that kind of stuff. And then I started writing books on PowerPoint, that ended up being an area that I really specialized in PowerPoint, which worked into speaking. And then I had my own website and my own online business, I started teaching people how to how to turn their own knowledge into an online business, and that I do a change the old marketing.com.

So that that’s kind of how it morphed.

Mostafa Hosseini  5:45 

Fantastic. So what do you do these days, and who do you serve?

Ellen Finkelstein  5:50 

I serve experts and experts or people who have knowledge, some expertise, some knowledge, some skill that they can teach others. So to give you an idea of who that isn’t, for example, if you are a healer with some special technique that you feel only you have, you can’t take you’re not there to teach other people how to do it, you’re not going to give a class in that you’ve got you want to serve as a service business, based on your own special, whatever ability, I guess.

But if you have knowledge that you can teach others help others with, and convey it, whether you do it through speaking or writing or whatever it is, you can create products and courses, that’s who I serve. And so there are people who do a service based business, maybe they are health practitioners, but they there’s so much knowledge that they have to help other people, let’s say be more healthy, that they want to get out.

And so they can create products and courses. And they can either they can do it use it in a few ways. So either they want to transition to that they don’t want to do one on one anymore, they want to serve more people and make more money, or they want it to be a supplement to what they’re doing what they want it to kind of be like a funnel to lead up to some of their higher end courses.

So what however you gained your knowledge, whether it’s in the corporate world, or as a consultant or practitioner, what however you gained it, you can take that and create products and courses and reach more people make more money and help, you know, help more people. So that’s what I help them to, and who I help.

Mostafa Hosseini  7:25 

Fantastic. Fantastic. Um, what is your definition of partnering? What do you mean by partnering?

Ellen Finkelstein  7:35 

Well, partnering means you don’t do it by yourself, obviously. And that’s a really important thing, as I mentioned earlier that you can’t, you can’t really grow your business significantly on your own.

So I’ve come up with, and these are not the only ways but five ways that I think almost anybody can port. And, you know, they’re just all very different things. And so, can I just go through the five, and then we can go into them as we go.

Mostafa Hosseini  8:02 

Let me ask a couple of clarifying questions, and I’m gonna we’re gonna get into that. Why do we need to find partners? Like, why can I just not do it on my own.

Ellen Finkelstein  8:14 

So as I mentioned, if you have a product or even so if you have a product and an audience, after a certain number of people in your audience, buy your product, you email them and you tell them about it, then you know, maybe a few people later will buy from you.

But after a while the people who are going to buy by now you have two alternatives, you can keep on creating new products. And that just gets a little crazy to create new products over and over. And again, and there are some people who do that, but it’s pretty hard. But you can do a little bit of that. But you could also big make your audience bigger.

So either you need to have more content or more people to promote your content to and when you partner with other people, they bring you a new audience. So I tell my people about my stuff, his product, or his you know, your marketing course, or whatever it is, and all of a sudden you have my audience to promote to and so you can sell to more people.

Mostafa Hosseini  9:12 

Right, so you tap into other people’s resources

Ellen Finkelstein  9:15 

and to their audience, their subscribers specifically, right?

Mostafa Hosseini  9:19 

Absolutely. So when are people ready to partner when is a good time to say you know what I need to go find partners

Ellen Finkelstein  9:28 

as soon as you have your free offer. So when you have your free offer, and you have that whole system set up so you have an opt in page and a thank you page and autoresponders and a delivery page, it’s all kind of set up there, even before you have anything to sell be nice if you had something to sell but even before that, you can partner and this is called a previous swap.

And so you can do this with very few people on your list. And you can start with you know other people who are few people And then listen, you promote that person and they promote you. Usually it’s a swap kind of thing.

And you, you find people who serve the same audiences, you and you say, and you get on a meeting with them on a Zoom meeting and you say, you know, I really love your freebie, this is my freebie, could I promote your freebie? And would you be willing to promote my back? Here it is.

And let’s, let’s look at it and see if it’s a thing that we can do. And you just have to develop these relationships, continually. I think that’s something that people don’t realize is that you have to be building relationships with people all the time. But so yeah, very, very soon, you can start.

Mostafa Hosseini  10:40 

Fantastic. So as soon as you have your freebie, and that’s something that I think you need to create that something that I guess, provides value to your audience, here is maybe a download a checklist of book, training webinar, something of value that people would want to opt in to get access to, and then you do a I like the fact that he said, we cross promote, we do a swap, I promote you, you promote me, and then we go from there. Now what he said to people who say they aren’t ready to partner,

Ellen Finkelstein  11:13 

you already deported. You know, if you have a business at all, then you, you need to be ready to partner. And if you don’t feel you’re ready to partner, then you’re not serious about going your business, I would say.

And yeah, so I just feel like you, there are people who are introverts, and they feel uncomfortable meeting other people. So you have to meet people who you feel comfortable to partner with anybody you don’t want to partner with.

And so you approach people, and you could approach people by, you know, the people who you’re on whose list you’re on. And these are maybe your competitors even, and you like what they have. And you might start one of my little tricks about how to get some of these people to notice you is to do what you’re doing right now, which is to interview people.

And so you say I love your stuff, could I interview you and it doesn’t even have to be an official podcast, it can just be on your blog, or Facebook Live or whatever you’re doing. And you promote that. And that starts the relationship with the person, or you’ve done something for them, you promote that interview, and then they’re likely to want to promote you back, you can talk about further promotions.

Mostafa Hosseini  12:30 

Yeah, I like the fact that you touched on an objection that I hear a lot. And that is, I don’t want to deal with people I don’t like. And the answer is you don’t have to deal with people you don’t like you only deal and make, promote the people that you like the person and what they offer. Obviously, if you don’t like them, you’re not going to promote them.

So if you talk to us, and it starts with, like you said, you have a conversation with someone, if see, if you connect with them, see if they shared the same values, you’ve had the same audience, if you like them and they’re offered, then you will do. So we’re not going to blindfolded li like, promote something you don’t know or you don’t want or you don’t

Ellen Finkelstein  13:12 

support. There’s something else I want to say about that, too. Some people feel uncomfortable about promoting in general. And you have to understand that you cannot provide everything for everybody on your list.

And so it’s a service to your subscribers to find other resources for them. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re doing a freebie swap, for example. So you’re not going to promote something that says exactly the same thing as your freebie but something that provides extra value. It’s like, you know, giving a link to a website.

He has a wonderful website, wonderful information, but you’re doing it instead, as a partnership. And you know, you’re doing this freebie swap. And you just have to realize that there are always going to be people who either will never buy from you or aren’t ready yet, you know, they’re in a different part of their journey, whatever it is.

And so it’s valuable to your audience to promote other people.

Mostafa Hosseini  14:06 

Fantastic. So they’re getting more value. What do you say to people who have this resistance around sending email emails to the list or promoting an offer to the list? What do you what do you how do you overcome that? Fear or resistance or objection?

Ellen Finkelstein  14:23 

So a couple of things. I recently spoke with a client who hadn’t emailed her list in two years. So to some extent, you know, to a large extent, if you’re not emailing your list regularly, you don’t have a business. And so, you know, I just really want to be kind of a little harsh about that.

And to say that that’s part of what you do. And so, there are various reasons why people don’t want to email their list. Number one, I see people who just make a big deal out of every emails, like takes them hours to send out an email. So it shouldn’t, you know, say Just short little emails,

Mostafa Hosseini  15:01 

I want to take you.

Ellen Finkelstein  15:04 

Um, it takes me about 15 to 30 minutes to send. Yeah,

Mostafa Hosseini  15:10 

so you just type it out, take a look at it, press send, done

Ellen Finkelstein  15:14 

well, so I’m sending out emails every day. And they’re easy I am. And there are emails and, and some piece of emails almost always the same as yesterday. So I clone yesterday’s email and then make changes in it. I mean, that’s examples, you see the book behind me.

 So it’s, it’s, at the end started 800 pages ended up 1200 pages, and that program that it’s on AutoCAD updates every year, so I had to do it every year. So you would think like an 800 or 1200 page book every year is like crazy, but I’m only updating the changes in the book.

And so while the first one took me 10 months to write, after that, it only took me three months, you know, even still, that’s a long time. But but it’s the same concept, you’re only you’re making the changes. And so it doesn’t, it doesn’t take that long.

So that’s one thing, don’t make a big project out of it. The second objection I hear is that people say I don’t want to be always promoting. And so the solution for that, from my point of view is to blog. And if you have to use PLR, Private Label Rights content, because you know, it’s gonna take you forever to write it, then do that and edit it and customize it, personalize it.

But you should have something that’s just information for people as well. And so periodically, if you have a blog, then you’re giving them information and you’re not promoting. So that gives you freedom to also promote and other times in between, or in the same newsletter if you want to, I kind of put everything together in one newsletter.

And so people signed up for you because they want to hear from you. And if they’re not hearing from you, and I’m sure if you know, everyone who’s listening has had the experience where you signed up for something and then a month later, you’ve got something from that person.

You know, what, who’s that? I don’t know who that is? How did I get on that person’s list so and so you unsubscribe? Well, you mark it as spam. And so that’s what people do when they don’t hear from you. So if you have a business, you need to be finding a way to email people regularly, make it short, put in, you know, a mix in information with offers. And if you’re not making offers, you don’t have a business.

Mostafa Hosseini  17:19 

I love it. So you so I love the fact that you’re like emailing your list every day. And I hear the same objection. I hear objections about people. When I say to you, you must email your list at least once a month, like the absolute minimum. Right?

Ellen Finkelstein  17:43 

I was just gonna say it depends on your audience. So I have another audience. That’s a corporate audience, I would never email them every day, they would not be happy about that. So it depends on your audience.

Mostafa Hosseini  17:52 

Yeah. And if so the other thing that I that I personally say is, if people join your list, they want to hear from you. If someone gets bothered by hearing from you, they should not be on your list. Right?

If they opted in and you send them an email to provide value to educate them to send them an offer that may help them and they’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t believe you emailed me, Mostafa. They’re not my response is, please click on unsubscribe, so I don’t bother you anymore. Because guess what, when you opt in to my list, chances are you want to hear from me.

Ellen Finkelstein  18:28 

So there are some things you can do to help reduce. So number one, don’t obsess over unsubscribes. I do have some clients who every day they look at their email program and say how many people unsubscribe for each email, just don’t even look at it, you know, just stop looking at that. So that’s number one. But number two is your autoresponders.

So when somebody signs up, you should have a series of autoresponders that introduces them to you so that they know who you are. So they understand where you came from, who you serve, what you can offer people, you can make a do make an offer, or offer some additional things that they didn’t even think they were going to get whatever it is.

And when you do that, then you kind of nurture them a little bit. You get them to know you and they’re less likely to unsubscribe, so you should definitely use the autoresponders are the most open emails you will ever send. So if you’re getting 10% open on your broadcast, you’ll get 50% on your first autoresponder because they want to see get the link to where you signed up. So use those will.

Mostafa Hosseini  19:31 

Fantastic. Fantastic now that we have kind of addressed that objection, because to to do all this partnerships you need to promote and if you have objections about against promoting, then the partnerships thing is not probably going to work.

Now that we have answered that objection. Let’s talk about the five ways that you can grow your business through partnerships. What is it what is the first

Ellen Finkelstein  19:59 

one So the first one I already mentioned, that’s promoting a freebies a freebie swap. So you have a free offer, you get together with somebody and you say, I love your freebie. If you don’t know them very well maybe interview them to get create a relationship. And you know, you should, by the way, you might have to contact five people before you get one good partner.

That’s okay. You know, it doesn’t they don’t always work out. But promoting a freebie cross promoting a freebie can bring you an amazing number of subscribers, especially if you do it regularly. And it could just grow your list, grow your list, grow your list, and of course, you’re doing that back to somebody else. And so it’s just really simple.

There’s, there’s no downside to it or anything like that. There’s nothing else to say about that one, it’s really

Mostafa Hosseini  20:48 

easy. The first one is the freebie swap, what is the second one, the second

Ellen Finkelstein  20:52 

one is writing a guest blog post. And if you’re an expert, and my target market is experts, one of the things that you need to do is show your expertise, you get the authority of by writing about what you do, speaking about what you do, we’ll talk about speaking in a minute, but writing about what you do,

and you should be blogging on your own blog in order to develop that, you know, your thought leadership, you’re showing your opinions and you know that your knowledge about an area, but writing a guest blog post introduces you to that person’s audience.

And so then that person promotes their blog, that blog post on their blog to their audience. And, and then often, this is also a swap, you might accept a guest on your blog as well, which is also nice. And so it’s a little bit less direct than doing email, you know, when you do email, you say,

 I have this great free offer from somebody, click here and get it, it’s a really direct with a guest blog post you, you can say, I have this guest did a really great blog post on my on my blog, and I want you to go read it and comment on it, and she has a free offer for you and go pick it up and your advice vice vice versa. So the people have to read a little bit, you know, but it nurtures people that gives you this opportunity to show them what you know.

And so they get to get a little impressed with what you know. And you’re maybe more likely to actually sign up for so that’s the second one.

Mostafa Hosseini  22:25 

Alright, so the second one was writing a guest blog post? Yep. How do you go about real quick? How do you go about finding opportunities to do a block swap? Or how do you go about that?

Ellen Finkelstein  22:36 

So, again, it’s this process of finding other you know, always being aware of other people around you who are in your field, who are open to partnering. I can talk a little bit later about ways to find people in general, you know, to find partners, because I think it’s a general thing not specific to that.

Certainly, if you notice a blog of somebody that you think you know, you do go look, you see if they take any guests at all, not everybody does.

And then you can approach them. And again, you can approach it. I would I guess I would not I mean there is a way of doing this for like really Asians and so on like that you used to be able to blog on Huffington Post or something like that.

But for most in most cases, you want to create a relationship and meet with the person and suggest a swap of guest blog posts.

Mostafa Hosseini  23:33 

Got it. Alright, so what’s the third way?

Ellen Finkelstein  23:36 

The third way is doing what we’re doing right now, a speaking on a podcast, a webinar or a Web Summit. In this case, it’s a Facebook and LinkedIn live, but whatever it is, is speaking. And it’s kind of similar to a guest blog post, you’re speaking.

And at the end, usually, you have the opportunity to give your free offer. So um, let me just go back to that guest blog post is that they will let you put a link to your free offer there. So people can sign up so you can grow your list. And you know, from your list, you have your autoresponders and then you make offers and that how it grows your business.

I just want to put that all into context of how this goes your business. Yeah, and the same is true on a podcast. So you’ll be able to give them a link usually to a free offer or a webinar or something, whatever you want to be signing people up for. And again, just like writing a guest blog posts, speaking gives you the opportunity to show your expertise. And for people to say this is really interesting to me. So, so um, so you just posted up that link there.

So we just, you know, you and I are in this group together mastermind group together. We recently heard about this example of someone who spoke on a podcast about how he was consulting with businesses to help them I don’t even remember what it was but he spoke on the podcasts.

And like, the next day, he got an email from somebody who was interested in like, within a week, he had like a $60,000 contract to do consulting for this business. And it was just like, whoa. So you know, that can be very lucrative that this whole thing of, of being able to speak about your expertise is really powerful.

Mostafa Hosseini  25:22 

Absolutely. Alright. So the first third one was speaking on someone else’s stage, various kinds, and what’s the fourth way to find a partner and partner.

Ellen Finkelstein  25:33 

So the fourth way is the way that most people think of JV partnering, which is doing affiliate marketing. So I’m in the process now of promoting somebody who teaches a program on how to create online courses, which is, and he is, to some extent, a direct competitor of mine.

And yet, I’m still promoting him. And, and I do want to say that, that you can sometimes not always, but sometimes promote people who are your competitors. And, and by doing that, he’s I know, because I made that as a condition. When we spoke, we spoke, he’s going to promote me back.

And this is somebody who has a list of 50,000 people, it’s a big opportunity for me. And so it’s, it’s a really valuable thing for me to me to do to do that. And plus, you know, maybe I’ll make some Commission’s Yeah, yes, yeah, that’s almost like a secondary thing.

Now, there are people who do affiliate marketing, that’s a big part of their business, I have a colleague who makes 400,000 a year on affiliate marketing, and that’s not like even the major part of our business. You know, that’s not, that’s like, less than half of our business. And so you know, you can do it, obviously, also for the money.

So within affiliate marketing, you do need some tech in place, you know, so when you were asking before, you know, when am I ready to when am I ready to partner, you know, you need the software, most shopping carts have it, there were WordPress plugins there, there are like online programs, that platforms that have it in there. So usually, it’s not a really difficult thing.

But you have to, um, so you have to have that in place, and either know how to give a person their affiliate link, or, you know, tell them how to get it. And then that person uses the affiliate link, to promote whatever you have, and, and vice versa, you know, usually, then you the person promotes you back at least that if they did well. And so I will say that when you promote somebody, as an affiliate, you want to promote them, like Do unto others as just have others do unto you, you promote them as you would like them to promote you.

Yeah. And I’ve used this many times to really good effect to creating these long term permanent relationships. And people know, I can get them fairly large numbers of people. And they appreciate because I really, I really worked. I hustled for them. And so then they hustle for me.

Mostafa Hosseini  28:02 

Love it. Love it. So the fourth way was affiliate marketing and, and, you know, partnering with someone and promoting their offer, what’s the fifth way?

Ellen Finkelstein  28:13 

Having them promote your offers? Well,

Mostafa Hosseini  28:16 

I think that’s an important piece there, where you’re cross promoting. And then you, you do a swap.

Ellen Finkelstein  28:24 

So affiliate marketing, you know, there’s a commission, so I’m not sure how, to me the word swap means for free, you know, you’re just like, you’re just agreeing. And you can do that. So I can promote your product and say, I’m not going to get commissions, and you could promote my products, and I’m going to get commissions. And I’ve actually been doing that with some people for a new product that I have, where I don’t have a conversion rate yet. Because it’s so new.

And so I’m swamped, I’m promoting them and they’re promoting way but with affiliates, you know, I’ll promote this person and get commissions and then afterwards, you know, that person will promote me. So it’s not necessarily a swap, but usually people reciprocate

Mostafa Hosseini  29:08 

reciprocation. It’s not a one way relationship. Right. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. thing like, personally, for me, I really don’t care about the commission. I do not. Personally, I care about the fact that we are promoting each other. If if we feel that it’s a good, good fit. Now, what’s the fifth way?

Ellen Finkelstein  29:31 

The fifth way is giveaways and bundles. And I know you’d like giveaways, you do a giveaway periodically. And a bundle is just a giveaway that’s not free.

So it’s exact same structure, except instead of it all being for free. People have to pay a certain amount to get in and then everything’s for free. It’s like what I call the Disneyland model. You know, you pay one fee up front and then all the rides are free inside. So that’s what a bundle is. But in a giveaway you have contributors who are your partners, so they are all promoting your giveaway.

And all of those people who come in go to you. So the big benefit is to organize your own giveaway, that’s like really where the big benefit is. But the contributors also get a benefit. Because when people come in, they can choose your gift, their gift, and, you know, they’ll get a few some people onto the list from that, from offering that as well.

And there are many kinds of different permutations of giveaways, different, you know, everybody has their own way of doing it, some giveaways, there’s a charge to the contributors, and some there isn’t and someone like that. But it but it’s definitely a partnership. And everybody works together to, you know, the more people partner, promote, the more people come to the giveaway as a whole. And then the more everybody benefits.

Mostafa Hosseini  30:57 

Fantastic. So now that we cover the five ways, tell us about your gift, Allen and what people are going to get out of it.

Ellen Finkelstein  31:05 

Yeah, so my gift is basically much more detail about the five ways to multiply your business with partnering. So I talked about the five methods, and I talk about, you know, how to approach people how to approach partners, how to find your ideal partner how to approach you approach it, and then I go into each one of them in detail.

And you know exactly what to do. For each type of those partnering, I go into some advanced topics, which have to do, one of them is promoting a freebie as an affiliate. So that’s what you’re doing now with that link there is that I have it set up in my shopping cart as a product. So it has an affiliate commission, but even though it’s free, so you know, sometimes you have to do a little manipulation to get that to work.

And the next thing is using tracking links and counting clicks. So for example, when I partner with somebody, like a freebie, I always use a redirect. And pretty links is the most common one, I happen to have a private one. But it’s it does the same thing as pretty links, which is a WordPress plugin. And I need to know, so I don’t use the affiliate link, I use that redirect, which goes to the affiliate link, but then my pretty links or whatever you’re using, keeps track of the clicks.

And so I can say to that person, I got you 200 clicks, can you get me 200 clicks, you know, it’s just a way of putting some subtle pressure on the person to do as good a job because they might not know. So for example, you know, maybe the conversion rate of is only 50%. So maybe they only got 100 new people.

So they don’t really know how many people I sent them, you know how hard I worked for it. So it’s really, really important for you to track your results, what you get for other people and what other people get for you. That kind of thing.

Mostafa Hosseini  32:59 

For sure. So again, if you want to get access to Ellen’s, five ways to multiply your business partnering, and she’s given way more detail and more advanced information in that download, click on the link that I just posted as common as it is in the description of the show. Ellen really knows her stuff. Right?

She is an expert on his topic. So go out there and download and get access to this. Thank you, Ellen, you touched on a very important point, and that is promoting your direct competitor. Can you tell us more about how you overcome the resistance and objection of I’m not going to promote my direct competitor I’m not going to send business their way I want on the business to myself and I’m not going to give it to no one else. What how do you overcome that?

Ellen Finkelstein  33:51 

I’m so different people have different styles. So some people might buy from my competitor who won’t buy from me and vice versa. So I have found that pretty much all the successful people promote their competitors, and they just don’t worry about it.

There’s a lot you basically you’re sharing your list with people. And there’s a lot of overlap. We sometimes call it subscriber incest. Because they’re, you know, they’re all brothers and sisters of everybody.

You know, we all have lots of people in common. And people not only have slightly different approaches, they have different personalities and so on like that. And so I just, you know, it depends what you’re doing. Obviously, if you’re a one on one coach type of person, you know, losing a person to your competitor can be a lot of money and you know, you might not get another person but if you’re doing something like an online course, or an online product that’s easy for you to deliver, you know, it’s pretty much self study kind of thing. I just think that you get more benefit from it.

So the ideal situation Is that the ideal situation is that, you know, they’re serving the same target market but doing something different. They’re not your direct competitor. But I just don’t think that you should shy.

So this example, I was telling you, this person that I’m promoting, who’s my direct competitor? The reason I’m doing so well for him is because we have the same target market. My target market is the exact group of people that he wants. And so that’s why it works so well. And then the fact that he can now promote me, he has the same target market I want.

And not everybody who gets on his list buy from him, either. Yeah. So it’s yeah, I just benefit.

Mostafa Hosseini  35:43 

Absolutely. So the way I look at it is, let’s say you have 10,000 people on your list or 1000 people on your list. Chances are 9950 of those people are not doing business with you, right. And chances are, a good portion of that list will never do business with you.

But there is also a chance that they may do business with someone else, because it’s a better fit. And you can never understand why they don’t do business with you and do business with them. Like you could be offering the exact same thing, the exact same script, the exact same model, they don’t buy from you, but for some weird reason.

They swipe their credit card on someone else’s product. And here’s the here’s the kicker, you might as well make some money on that. Yeah, yeah, you might as well if you Yeah, cuz

Ellen Finkelstein  36:38 

it’s an affiliate, especially if you know, you’re making commissions, you might as well make some money on it. And I think people, I think your list appreciates the fact that you are giving them a resource that you know, that is relevant to them, even if they know that you also offer that and they sometimes they even May, so I will tell you something, this is kind of an interesting thing.

If you go promote somebody else, and they don’t buy from that person, they might come back and buy from you. Because then they appreciate they see the difference. And they kind of trust you a little bit more, because they’ve been on your list for a while and they go, Oh, that person’s charging $2,000 for course, I never occurred to me I would ever pay 2000 view.

But you know what? Okay, maybe I’m willing to do that. Now, now that I see other people charging $2,000 for that product, so, or whatever it is, you know, it’s not necessarily just the price, but what whatever it is people then kind of come back to you a little bit more likely to buy.

Mostafa Hosseini  37:50 

Fantastic. Now, why isn’t affiliate marketing enough?

Ellen Finkelstein  38:01 

Why isn’t affiliate marketing enough? So what else do you need to do? So first of all, you know, the whole thing of growing your list is so important that you want to be swapping freebies, you know, and that’s not really I mean, in a sense, it’s affiliate marketing.

So if you have a back end to your freebie, which this product does, for example, I have a course on a similar topic, and you know, it will end up there. And you would end up getting a commission of people by so that you know, there is some connection to affiliate marketing, but it’s not direct, but you need to be working on growing your list just for the sake of growing your list, your list of some or to your business. And by the way, not only so that they buy from you, but so that you have a big enough list that other people want to partner with you.

So I you know, I’m sure everybody is felt this thing of like, I only have so many people on my list, I wish I had a bigger list. You know, I see all the big people have big lists, and they partner with each other. And so grow your list, you know that that’s the thing.

And so all of these things are the first things I said, you know, which was SWAT freebie swaps, and, and speaking on podcasts, and guest spot posts, you know, all of those things are ways to grow and giveaways being a contributor to a giveaway.

These are all ways to grow your list, and that’s the foundation of your business. So with a strong foundation comes a strong building.

Mostafa Hosseini  39:27 

Yeah, I guess. This is one example where the size of your list is directly proportionate to the size of your bank account. Given that you build

Ellen Finkelstein  39:39 

Yeah, I mean, all you know, you have to have good offers. You know, I like to say one of my principles that three things you need for successful business and one of them is an audience. One of them has a relationship with your audience.

And the third thing is an offer that’s relevant to your audience. So you need all three, but yes, it’s very relevant.

Mostafa Hosseini  39:58 

You got it. What’s your favorite, favorite way to grow your list quickly

Ellen Finkelstein  40:04 

organize a giveaway.

Mostafa Hosseini  40:06 

So you do that yourself as well. Yeah,

Ellen Finkelstein  40:08 

I’ve done all three of them. And the first two, I almost got 1000 People in two weeks added to my list, which is just phenomenal. The last one was kind of funny, because I was doing it as part of a workshop teaching, other people had to create a giveaway.

And so I was trying to like help them grow their list more than I was helping to grow my list. And my list was bigger than everybody else’s. So I promoted a lot to my own list, which is not a good thing to do when you’re doing a giveaway, because you’re not trying to promote it to your own people you’re trying to get other people on.

But even that I got, you know, I don’t know, maybe three or 400 people in the space of a week, I also made it shorter onto my list from those other contributors who were in the course. And so it’s just it’s, you have to herd cats to get contributors. I’m sure you know that by your own experience right now. Yes, you are.

And you have to be willing to reach out to people and tell them what the offer is you are like, extraordinarily organized the way you do. It’s like almost. And you know, like, oh my god, he has like so many things here that I have to do. And it’s so organized. And this is where I go to find this information. So it’s amazing what you do.

I don’t do anything as sophisticated as that. But you do. But you do have to get the people and you have to realize that not every so there are four kinds of this is two very important ship. Okay. So you ask people, so somebody says some people say yes. And they do what you ask them to do. Like they say yes. And they do it like wow, okay.

Some people say no, great, you know, right away that they’re not going to do it. So the problem people are the people who say yes, and don’t do it, and then the people who just don’t answer you, because then you have to keep on asking them over and over again.

So you know, there is that herding cats type of thing. But other than that, the actual structure. So this is, you know, something people don’t realize, it’s just like any free offer. So a giveaway, you know, it a free offer, you have an opt in page and a thank you page and an autoresponder delivery pages.

 That’s how I structure it. And the delivery page is the link to your free offer. So an a giveaway, the delivery page is just the links to all of the free offers that all of those giveaways do it’s the same sex, same thing.

It’s not any, really any work doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. And so it’s not hard. The technology is not hard if you have a free offer. You know, there’s a little bit of organization and during the two weeks, you know, you have to, you have to keep on encouraging the contributors to promote, but it’s just, it’s, you know, 1000 people in two weeks added to your list like wow,

Mostafa Hosseini  42:49 

yeah, yeah. If you bring in quality people, and then you create a quality list, and yeah, like you said, it’s a tough job, to find contributors to organize the whole thing and put it together.

 It’s, it’s, it’s a bit of work but it’s, it’s, it’s worth it to me personally, because like you said, if you grow your list with the work and in our business, having a good list and the size of the list does matter. So yeah, yeah, good.

So where can people find out more about you?

Ellen Finkelstein  43:28 

Well, the general go to change the world marketing.com You know, everything that you need is there. I have a page an item on my website called freebies. I think this is one of them, but I’d rather have you pick it up from have them pick it up from you.

But there are other I have other free things there as well 100 blog posts so I have a lot of free information there for people who want to we’re experts who want to turn their knowledge into a successful product profitable product or course I’m really focusing on people doing this online.

I’ve been online since 1999. That was when I created my first website with Yeah, so yeah, just go there and join the tribe so to speak.

Mostafa Hosseini  44:21 

Beauty so again, the link is in the in the comments and a description of the show and the podcast so to get access to Ellen’s gift go to click on the link or it was changed the world marketing comm

Ellen Finkelstein  44:36 

Yes, change the world. marketing.com beautiful because I like to serve people who have knowledge that can change the world.

Mostafa Hosseini  44:42 

Fantastic. Now, since you’re an author, let me ask you a couple of questions. Yeah,

Ellen Finkelstein  44:47 

my latest two books Wait, wait, what are here’s one. The background is kind of being a bit a with that’s one authors because experts either Right, or they speak.

So they do you take your take your and both of these were written with Conde Regan green co authored with her.

Mostafa Hosseini  45:09 

Yep. Fantastic. What are two or three books that have made a massive impact in your life or business?

Ellen Finkelstein  45:20 

So, one of them is this one, I have it right here is by Tom Poland. And this is not working too well. It’s called inbound marketing book. It’s the funniest name for a book. But he said he did. So he did some keyword research.

And he said, people were people were searching for inbound marketing book. So he put the word book on the title of the book, you know, it’s called book. But anyway, it’s a really comprehensive system of using webinars to bring in clients. Yeah. And by the way, partnering is a big, big part of it.

So he uses partners to do that.

Mostafa Hosseini  46:04 

Um, I’ve been on the show, so yeah, he’s a great, great book and a great system.

Ellen Finkelstein  46:11 

Right, right. I just recently read this. As he has other books as well, it’s such a sweet book, because it’s done is a fiction book, but he does all the principles of creating an online course. But in fiction format, so it’s very, it’s very charming, get very informative, as well.

So there are others, but I would say those are the two, I’m gonna

Mostafa Hosseini  46:37 

fantastic. You know, if you had a Facebook ad, or a Google app, where every person on the internet could see your ad, be your message for the people.

Ellen Finkelstein  46:53 

So it would be something like experts turn your knowledge into online, profitable online products or courses. But that would be the heading. And it might be a picture of like a happy person on a beach with a with an iPad, or you know, like a laptop, you know, typing.

So they take you know, that they’re like typing into it, they’re working, but in a way that brings them more freedom, because you’re creating things that are not that can be sold without your one to one attention, you know, study courses, for example. Yeah.

So something like that.

Mostafa Hosseini  47:30 

Right, caustic. What’s one advice that made a massive difference for you in your life or business?

Ellen Finkelstein  47:41 

I actually think from Tom Poland’s book, there was this idea of swapping partnership swaps, for promoting webinars, because I had always thought of them as having to be done in terms of affiliate marketing.

And, you know, and yet, you can do this swapping. So I’ve just, you know, found, since then, a lot of people who like to do that, do it like that, you know, they like to promote each other’s webinars, and kind of sometimes over and over again, and these are people who have pretty big lists, you know, 10,000 20,000, and up.

And every time they promote you, you can get a couple of 100 people on your list to you know, who signed up, and you can promote them back. And so it’s a kind of ongoing process. And then when you partner with somebody asking them, who else do you know, who else can I you know, would be a good partner, that that kind of thing.

Mostafa Hosseini  48:40 

Fantastic. Love it. Love it. Love it? What advice? Would you give your 20 year old self?

Ellen Finkelstein  48:49 

Oh, my 20 year old self don’t major in History.

Mostafa Hosseini  48:56 

Tell me more. Well, I

Ellen Finkelstein  48:58 

majored in history. And I minored in math, which was a kind of, I have this funny two brain, left, right brain thing like sort of a combination of, of holistic and technical together. So just, you know, for example, the book that I wrote that one on the top on AutoCAD, which is a $4,000 drafting program, and PowerPoint, you know, there’s also some technical aspects of it.

So there was the writing aspect of it. But then there was also the technical, so I’ve kind of combined them and so majoring in history and minoring. And math is a good weird example of that. But you know, the history, the only thing I learned from history is, you know, a couple of funny stories or interesting stories.

You know, this wasn’t

Mostafa Hosseini  49:38 

what would you what would you have majored in if you had to start all over again?

Ellen Finkelstein  49:45 

At that point, I wasn’t interested in business. So I don’t think I would have had that point. But I think I might have majored in something like communication or something like that or public speaking or, or writing you know, that kind of a communication Because that’s really been, you know, a thread throughout my whole life. Definitely love

Mostafa Hosseini  50:05 

1. Love it, love it, love it. Any anything else that you want to talk about or share that we haven’t talked about yet?

Ellen Finkelstein  50:13 

So I’d like to make an offer that anybody who gets that free offer that you you just put the link up there that I’m really to answer any of your questions about it.

So send it, you know, send me an email, when you sign up, you’ll get an email from me, I read through it in detail. And then if you have any questions about it, ask me and I will respond, I’m willing to, you know, to respond to you to help you partner because it’s really important for your business.

Mostafa Hosseini  50:42 

That’s Ellen DeGeneres.

Ellen Finkelstein  50:48 

thought of her name like that, how that’s so funny. So

Mostafa Hosseini  50:52 

Allah knows her stuff. Obviously, she’s an expert in this whole area of marketing, list building affiliate marketing, at building your opt in pages, and the rest of it and the funnel. So do download her gift, called Five Ways To multiply your business with partnering, which is a more detailed download on what we just talked about today.

And do reach out ask her questions. And if she offers anything, just go for it because she knows. Right.

Ellen Finkelstein  51:24 

And I’m also I just want to say that and part of it is that the thing that I really focus on that I’m an expert on is getting to the point where you actually create your product or create your course and how to how to create it, how to plan for it, how to market it, how to you know how to organize it, that book up on the top has like a 30 page table of contents, I really learned how to organize content, so I can help people with that whole process. You know, that’s where I feel like my expertise is,

Mostafa Hosseini  51:52 

I know, you can tell people with a ton of stuff. So again, go reach out to Ellen Frankenstein, and she has lots to offer. And she can help you with a lot of stuff now. Thank you. This was an amazing conversation. I really appreciate your and your expertise. And I do look forward to working with you and partnering with you for years to come and see what will transpire.

Ellen Finkelstein  52:15 

Okay, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

Mostafa Hosseini  52:18 

Thank you. Likewise now. So for those of you who are watching, if you have any questions, comments, feedback about what we talked about popping in the comments below or in the chat box, and we’ll get back to you. And as usual, if you like subscribe and ask questions or tag friends, subscribe to our channel on whichever social media platform or Apple or Spotify or Google podcast, you will go get entered into the draw.

Also, if you write a review about your experience and listening to this episode, or other episodes, you also enter your name into the draw as well. Now, again, just to remind you that the confidence giveaway is also coming up. If you’d like to download a bunch of amazing gifts to boost your confidence. When it comes to running your business.

It is coming up during the week of May 31 to June 6, we already have a light, amazing lineup of heart centered entrepreneurs who are sharing gifts to help you boost or boost your confidence. And we have a few spots left if you want to be a contributor.

And just like Elon talked about build your list. And we have worked in an amazing community building aspect into the giveaway where you get to hang out with contributors like Alan and other great people and get to know them and maybe partner with them moving forward. Okay, so there’s a lot of value there.

And the link is let me just put the link here in the chat box again. It is daily competence dot show, slash forward slash join and you can get the information there. Thank you for joining me. Thank you again, Alan, a great to have you. Looking forward seeing you on the next episode.

Have yourself a great day. Take yourself take care of yourself and stay confident. And we’ll see you in our next episode.

Bye now