Tony Shepherd here…
So this publication is primarily based around a number of coaching/consulting
sessions I did with a client to turn his business (which wasn’t earning more
than a few hundred dollars a month) into a $2,000 income stream which he
them went on to scale.
Now he already had an existing business, although as I said above it was
making very little money
But then I wondered if I could tweak the system to suit potential
marketers who have no existing business?
So I tweaked it, and tried it with a few clients and it also works pretty well,
which is why there are two approaches to this system included in this
publication.
2

RatRuns…
I’ve also included several strategies/lessons that came out of these coaching
sessions so I’ve included these at the end of the publication too.
I called the publication ‘RatRuns’ because I liked the title AND because where
I was born in the UK a rat run is a faster way of getting to your destination
If you look at that in terms of online business, it’s what I’ve been doing all my
life 😉
Yorkshire, UK
3
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
RATRUNS
The $2,000 a Month Strategy
So a small percentage of my clients are still looking for the ‘secret’ or ‘brandnew method’ that I can show them, that they can make money online with.
And it’s my job to shatter their dreams 🙁
Because the only actual ‘new’ methods of making money online are the ones
that are new to YOU or the cons, the hacks and the loopholes which just don’t
work long-term
So it’s important to dump that thinking if you want to take your place amongst
the marketers who actually earn tens or hundreds of thousands long term.
4
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Anyway, with the few clients I get who are still looking for a magic bullet, I use
a technique to illustrate how ‘shiny objects’ aren’t a long-term solution.
I get the client to name me their top five favourite marketers (hopefully I’m in
there somewhere and even if I’m not they feel obliged to mention me because
I’m the one coaching them 🙂
So they shout out the names, and my reply is usually something like:
He’s a product creator
He’s an affiliate marketer
He does coaching
She’s an affiliate marketer
He sells his own courses
He sells his own products
She sells PLR that her team creates.
Sometimes they go back years and mention old-school marketers, but the
fact is they made their millions either creating and selling their own products,
coaching or being an affiliate marketer.
So after a while it usually dawns on my client that pretty much every
marketer makes money in the same OVERALL way.
The difference of course – the real money – is in the DETAIL – the strategy –
the shortcuts – the RatRuns.
And that’s what I’m about to share ..
5
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
A Quick Note About
Tech Basics…
(Buzz Kill Dude!…But Essential)
If you know what you’re doing with the technical basics when it comes to
building an online business – creating simple funnels, payment pages, opt-in
pages and taking payments then skip this section…
You probably don’t need it.
6
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But if you don’t know how to do the above then you need to learn the
basics first.
Because you’re gonna need this tech knowledge to do anything online that
relates to running a digital business and making money from the process.
The good news is that you can find out how to do the basics entirely online
and for free by taking a bit of time to research it.
AND you only need to know a tiny part of ‘the basics’ too.
Look – I only know how to build a simple funnel in ClickFunnels.
I have no idea how to do it in Builderall or Leadpages,
I used to know how to do it using WordPress but it’s been so long that I’ve
forgotten.
So just go out and ONLY learn the stuff that is relevant to YOUR
business, your platforms and your particular needs.
This narrows what you need to learn HUGELY!
You don’t need to know how to play the drums if you’re the lead guitarist
right?
Here’s why you need to know YOUR basics:
This strategy is all about using current (simple) technology to automate tasks
that put money into your back account
This works because most wannabe marketers lack the focus, and the
automation will do it FOR you
This is a strategy I’ve used with private clients who (like me) lack discipline
and structure and who need things to run in the background for them
7
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
In short, RatRuns is purely about automating what you do manually, creating
a single income stream based around that, and then replicating that
(simple) model FOUR times with different offers (they can be your own or
affiliate offers) so you can assess which income streams to go forward with.
It’s much simpler than it sounds.
The hard part is training your psyche not to get hung up on ‘traditional’
internet marketing problems such as traffic, building, linking or learning new
skills, and focus on the actual income stream OFFER itself.
I can’t say this enough – , and I’m sorry it’s brutal but it’s the truth – if you don’t
have the ability to use Google, or your platform’s help section or YouTube to
learn how to build the infra structure you need to sell stuff online
…or to hire someone to build it for you…
You’re probably not cut out to have an online business.
The building is not the business. The business starts AFTER you’ve
built the infrastructure.
I’m not going to labour this point because I’ve written about it a lot.
But it’s one of the biggest reasons why many newcomers don’t ever get
anything up and running.
Likewise traffic – traffic is not the business.
Buy solo ads, or learn about Facebook ads, or learn how to get clicks from
your Instagram account to your main page.
(I have absolutely no idea how to get traffic from Insta, but because I buy my
traffic I don’t need to. I’d learn it tomorrow if I needed to)
So knowing what you DON’T need to know is just as important.
8
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But as I said, I don’t teach tech.
I don’t teach how to actually build a funnel or add follow-up messages to your
autoresponder. That’s why you pay a monthly fee to USE those platforms.
I teach strategies.
So if you can’t yet build a really simple funnel or a squeeze page, stop
reading, go and learn how to do it (it should only take a few days) then come
back and I’ll show you how to make money from it in the rest of this
publication.
Sorry to be harsh…but it’s the truth.
The building isn’t the business.
And there’s another thing…
The chances are that if you’re turned on by the thought of having an online
business you have at least some entrepreneurial spirit in you.
And often that means that you’re not too conscientious or organised 🙂
I’m lazy, disorganised, not disciplined to follow up and I’m turned on by ideas
and concepts rather than organisation, routine, orderliness and function.
Which is why I NEED automation and procedures to do the earning for me.
Because this means I can write an email full of weird thoughts, funny ideas
and bung a sales link at the end.
Then put it into a pre-set template in Aweber, send it out and make $400
without even knowing what day it is.
That’s why you need the basics, and what the available tech DOES.
It’ll allow you to make money…
9
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
The Thinking Behind
This Strategy
This strategy sometimes makes me look like superman when I introduce it to
my clients (as long as they actually implement it!) because it usually
impresses them in a big way.
(Especially when they see the results)
The real truth is it’s all about RatRuns – a ‘shortcut and focus selling strategy’
that anyone can implement in their own business if they’re aware of it.
It involves focusing on marketing each individual offer in your business
(whether that’s your own product or service, or one you promote as an
affiliate – both work equally well), and then replicating and automating the
process so it happens in the background.
10
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
If you’re trying to visualise this, think about someone who opens an ice
cream, shop, then hires a manager to run the place so he doesn’t have to be
directly involved on a day to day basis…
…and once it’s in profit he opens another, uses the exact same strategy and
so on until he has FOUR shops.
The he assess the numbers, sees which one works, what parts of the
business works and concentrates on scaling the successful ones and
dumping the ones that aren’t in profit.
Why is FOUR so important?
Well because we’re going to be building four separate (simple) automated
online funnels selling various products, services and affiliate products.
And because I’ve actually DONE this with clients, I know that in the real
world, not all four will succeed, which is why we need four to assess the
results.
(Think of it like needing at least 100 clicks to your sales page before you can
accurately track results)
These ‘micro-funnels’ are very easy to replicate as you’ll soon find out – but
there’s no point in putting the work in to build MORE than four until we sit
back and assess the figures, find out what is working and what isn’t.
Then (just like the ice cream dude) we dump the ones that don’t work, or
don’t cover costs and concentrate on scaling the ones that DO.
We do this in ONE niche, and there are two techniques I use with my clients
to do this – one works if all the products being sold are highly related,
and the other works better if the products being sold are NOT highly
related.
But there’s much more built into this system,
11
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
For a start it lets us know what products (affiliate or original) sell the
best to our audience.
And even better it provides us with the information that lets us know
exactly which products we need to create in the future, or source as
affiliates to promote.
How does it do this?
Because of how the customer behaves…
This is basically about continual communication with the customer to find out
what he or she is willing to buy NEXT……then creating it yourself or
supplying it (as an affiliate)
Don’t worry this doesn’t involve surveys or emailing them to ask, and it’s not
personal or face to face communication either.
It’s about watching behaviour, tracking some simple metrics, and plain old
seeing what sells best and makes the most money for us.
Our ice cream dude again – If mint chocolate chip ice cream brings in $1.25 a
day but pistachio ice cream brings in $775 a day guess which one we’re
going to focus on when we open our other shops?
It’s about watching the customer and the sales. But don’t worry, as I said
earlier it’s MUCH simpler than it sounds and I’ll show you how to automate
the process, analyse what they do, and then give them more of it.
(Then bank the money)
As I’ll show you later – I’ve made a fair chunk of money for myself and my
clients by seeing what our customers have bought, and then giving them
MORE of it to buy.
(It also involves NOT trying to give them more of something they don’t want
because that just wastes everyone’s time)
12
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Getting Started
Basically you’re going to set up FOUR different, extremely simple
income streams in your business, automate them and then use the
results to dump the weak earning ones, scale the most profitable
ones… AND use the metrics to know exactly what type of products you
should create to make the most sales time after time.
(There’s more to it of course, as I’ll explain later)
I use this RatRuns strategy with my clients who feel ‘lost’ and lack focus
because it’s a fast and simple to way to make them concentrate on what is
working for them AND because they know exactly what to do – which products
to promote or create and be almost guaranteed to profit with
Below is a case study of how I used the system in this publication with
a client:
13
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
So a while back I used this RatRuns $2k month strategy with a client who is
in the health-related niche.
When we started working together he already had a central ‘hub’ page which
had various products on offer – reviews for exercise equipment for his niche
(via his affiliate link), selling his own course, advertising affiliate products, and
offering supplements, also on an affiliate basis.
And it wasn’t doing too great…
He’d made some sales (nowhere near the amount he needed to make) from
his site and also ran a Facebook group and had some other social media stuff
going on, again all to promote his ‘hub’ site.
His hub site looked good but from a sales point of view it was a nightmare,
not least because he was trying to sell directly from it.
Everything was available, which is NOT a great way to sell online if you’re
selling info products, because it makes for a difficult buying decision.
To actually buy something, visitors would have to navigate a menu, find the
product that they wanted (without knowing it was on the site), get through a
number of articles, posts and pages (all of which were distracting) so they
could finally make it to what they wanted to buy.
He was also getting very little organic traffic because the site just didn’t rank
high enough in Google to found easily in what is a very competitive niche
So speaking plainly I didn’t see the point of the hub site.
It wasn’t working for him and took a lot of upkeep in terms of time adding
posts and articles.
14
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
I wasn’t about to suggest he dumped the hub site (and he wouldn’t have done
so anyway) so I suggested using the RatRuns strategy I’m about to
share with you.
I suggested we leave the site alone for a couple of weeks and instead, break
down his existing content and offers into FOUR separate self-contained direct
selling funnels.
Each runnel would be aimed at directly selling to everyone who entered
them.
Not hoping someone who was wandering around his site would find the right
section and come across something that they liked – but actual SELLING!
So we’d still be selling his SAME products but in four separate funnels:
Funnel 1 – Selling his course
Funnel 2 – Reviewing equipment (Amazon affiliate links)
Funnel 3 – Selling niche supplement (Supplement affiliate program)
Funnel 4 – Other (mostly Clickbank) affiliate courses and info products
These would be simple funnels with lead capture up front, an initial offer and
(key) a follow-up sequence of emails.
Now funnels like this are nothing new, but using them individually to sell
each one of your productions or affiliate promotions is something very
few people do.
It’s is a HUGELY effective strategy I use with my lost and frustrated consulting
clients who feel they have tried ‘everything’ with our success
We take the products/services/affiliate products that
they are currently trying to sell (usually with little
success) and turn it into a highly-targeted SALES
funnel, with follow-ups and focus.
15
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Imagine you sell diet books online.
And instead of having a website where prospects could casually browse and
then choose one from your website. You probably would sell some books not
least because most people on diets buy multiple diets books and try different
methods.
Now imagine that every single diet book you sold had a 7 day follow-up
email sequence telling the prospect how it worked, giving examples of some
of the recipes, including reviews from people who it has worked for,
explaining why it was highly likely to work for the client, offering discount
coupons and basically saying what an amazing book it was.
Your sales would increase significantly because you’re proactively
SELLING not letting the browse or half-heartedly sending an email out
every now and then.
Best of all it’s AUTOMATED so it does it while you sleep, or create or source
other products, or do other entrepreneurial stuff in your business.
Only a tiny proportion of marketers work in this way – automating a direct
selling funnel for individual products.
Look at the products you currently sell or promote.
Do you do have individual, automated selling machines for every one of your
products?
Here’s a quick look at what these funnels look like (there are two choices)
16
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
MODEL 1 – Build a SIMPLE funnel like the one below then replicate it
FOUR times with different offers, and content.
OR the one below:
17
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
MODEL 2 – Build a SIMPLE funnel like the one below and have four
separate follow-up email sequences.
18
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
So how do you know which model to use?
Do you use four funnels each with one follow-up sequence, or one funnel with
four follow-up sequences on the back end?
How do you know which one is right for your business?
Well that’s specifically answered in RatRun Component 4 Below.
You’ll come to it soon, but for now here’s how everything works…
The Strategy I Share With
My Private Clients:
19
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Component 1
The RatRun ‘Selling’ Strategy
Turn Your Old, Unfocused ‘Half-Arsed’
Offers Into Automated Selling Machines
Everyone who has been around marketing for any length of time has
products, affiliate offers, services and other offers that they don’t really think
about any more.
If they make an occasional sale, it’s a welcome surprise.
But if you take each of your offers and create a micro-funnel around it,
along with follow-up sequence that actively SELLS it, and then focuses
on selling it again and again AND using it as cross-sells and upsells for
your other half-forgotten products that you can also turn into microfunnels…
…then expect to see you income increase dramatically.
People rarely just buy from online businesses…you have to sell to them
20
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Without making it feel like it’s a hard sell of course 🙂
Imagine if you took that old review article, email or post you wrote to promote
an affiliate product, that perhaps made a couple of sales for you but is now
somewhere lost in your blog, or was an email you sent out 2 or 3 times a year
and a half ago…
…imagine if you took that forgotten content and that offer and created a
micro-funnel around it that would sell for you on a daily basis, fully-automated
and that would actively SELL in the background instead of being forgotten or
lost
Do you think you would make more sales?
Now what if you had multiple micro-funnels doing the same thing?
This is how you can create income streams that easily add together for a six
or seven figure yearly income.
And best of all, it’s easy to create them from scratch too – although as I said,
the vast majority of marketers have SOME things – some old offers, some
content – they tried to sell in the past and then dumped.
And remember the chances are they didn’t sell because you didn’t get
anywhere NEAR enough eyes on them. It’s usually nothing to do with the
quality of the product, the sales page or the content – it’s just because you
didn’t sell them hard enough, consisted enough or AUTOMATED then so you
could basically forget they were selling for you in the background.
(If you’re freaked out by the phrase ‘selling them hard’ don’t be – because
everything will be automated so it will happen without you having to do
anything)
Anyway…so we’re going to give those offers new wings.
BIG flapping INCOME wings 🙂
21
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
So back to the case study – that’s the first thing we did:
Basically we took my client’s existing but unloved and unpolished offers from
his hub page, ripped them from their hard-to-find category pages and made
them into simple, focused micro- funnels which would sell each of his
offers, constantly and on auto-pilot.
All the funnels WERE simple.
And basically it was all about the follow-up sequence.
(I’ll cover the other parts in a second)
For his follow-up email sequence we simply used his
blog posts and articles from his hub site!
There wasn’t much content we needed to create from new.
After all, he hadn’t just been posting for fun – each article and post that he
wrote was aimed at selling a product, whether it was a supplement, a
treadmill or his own course.
(You must have a lot of content just lying around waiting to be re-used, right?)
Those old blog posts, articles, emails, reports, lead magnets?
Why not tweak them and use them as your follow-up sequence?
So that’s exactly what I did with my client.
22
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Component 2
The RatRun ‘Content’ Strategy
Use Your Existing Content
Go through your past content and you’ll find gold.
Remember when you first started out and you were all fired up and trying
your hardest to make sales?
If you were promoting affiliate products, or your own products and services
you almost certainly spent time crafting emails, blog posts, using images or
memes, creating lead magnets, writing sales pages, social media posts, and
maybe even press releases or spun articles…
ALL that content can now be tweaked, updated and re-used in your
follow-up sequences to promote these products or to promote new
(related) products.
What if every one of those pieces of content could be turned into a focused
micro-funnel follow-up email which with one sole intention – to make money
for you?
When you go through your older content you’ll find stuff that is is really
GOOD!
23
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
You’ll be proud of it, you’ll see it with new eyes.
And it’s all there waiting to be re-used.
Leaving you with very little to create from scratch.
Best of all there is no copyright issue – you own it all so you can repurpose it
in any way you wish.
Back to the case study…
Now there were two parts to his business that he DIDN’T write any content
for:
The health supplements he sold as an affiliate
And the ClickBank products he promoted as an affiliate – these were basically
just banner ads he’s put on his site
And for these products we took an approach that worked really well.
We’d use a squeeze page to gather leads, and then once captured, send
those leads directly to the affiliate page of the products he was
promoting.
About 60% of these had pretty good follow-up sequences of their own so we
let THOSE do the work rather than trying to write our own follow-up
messages for these affiliate products.
Again, we were using existing content – except this time it was the follow-up
sequence created by the product vendor.
The 40% of affiliate products that didn’t have follow-up sequences we
dumped, and replaced with niche-relative affiliate products that had welloptimised, already-in-place follow-ups, whether than was by email Facebook,
SMS or whatever.
24
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
(Check Gravity and Sales in the ClickBank Marketplace to see which
products convert well in your niche. Also check out the affiliate/JV pages and
they’ll tell you how they follow up)
So what did we do with the leads we’d captured if we were going to let the
affiliate vendor do the follow-up?
Easy – we ran them through all the other follow-up sequences for the other
three products.
So when you’re using Aweber or Getresponse you can’t really import leads
into another list right?
Well you CAN but they’re not too keen on it, and depending on their rules
(which seem to change daily), they make it difficult.
For example if I wanted to import bob@bobsmith.com (not real so don’t email
him) who had subscribed to my supplements list, into my exercise machine
review list I couldn’t do so very easily.
If Aweber or Getresponse allowed it at all, they would probably send Bob a
confirmation email that he’d need to click to join the new list.
Typically 30% of people won’t click (or will miss the email) and Bob would
probably think I was trying to do something dodgy anyway.
So how do I run Bob through my exercise machine review follow-up
sequence WITHOUT needing to add him to my exercise machine list?
I just do it the other way around.
I import my follow up sequence about exercise machine reviews into my
supplement follow-up sequence.
It’s really easy to do (check the FAQ in your autoresponder for instructions)
Once done I either just add them on the end of the existing sequence or add
Bob to the new sequence WITHIN the list he’d signed up for.
25
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
(You might want to read that a couple of times)
This would work well because the niches were related.
So very quickly we realised we didn’t need FOUR
funnels – we just needed ONE FUNNEL with four
FOLLOW-UP sequences (IF they were within the same
niche and highly related)
So why say this strategy needs four funnels?
Because I went on to use this with marketers whose funnels were NOT highly
related, as I’ll show you soon.
So for example if Bob signed up to the exercise machine review list he
wouldn’t be too surprised to get an email suggesting supplements that
worked for that niche
But if he’s signed up (for example) to my list about vintage cars, he might be
surprised to get an email about how to keep ducks. (I’ll show you a case
study about unrelated niches soon)
BUT Here’s the thing…
I’ve worked with clients (and noticed in my own business) that every now and
again I’ll create a product that doesn’t sell well at all.
I used to assume it was just ‘one of those things’
But it wasn’t
It was because I wasn’t paying attention to what my customers were
buying and what they wanted MORE of.
Which is the next RatRun strategy…
26
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Component 3
The RatRun ‘Creation’ Strategy
Once You Know What ProductsYour Buyers
Want, You Can SELL Them More
You ever notice I’m producing more and more products about higher-level
business strategy?
I’ve been moving away from the more basic methods of making money online
or setting up online businesses.
It’s not hard to guess why…
Because I know my numbers, my stats and metrics, and I make more money
creating info products in this ‘strategy’ sub-niche than anything else.
My buyers vote with their wallets, and what sells best for me – by far –
are more advanced business strategies that can be plugged in to
multiple niches and that are (on the whole) a little more advanced than
many marketers teach.
(They’re also strategies that I have personal experience with, either from
using myself or from working with consulting clients)
27
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
And this is why this $2k a month business strategy works.
Because it allows YOU to see what works for you and to scale it up.
If I was to use this strategy right now in my own business, here’s what I would
do:
I’d find four sub-niches within my Make Money Online niche.
For example my sub-niches could be:
1. Adding continuity income to your online business
2. Populating your back-end (yep I know) with evergreen affiliate products
3. How to create a massive following of buyers for your PLR
4. Pricing strategies to differentiate you from your competition
All related to the Make Money Online niche, but all different enough to NOT
have appeal to just ‘everyone’ on your list.
One buyer might be fascinated by creating and selling PLR, but not remotely
interested in pricing strategies. Another interested in affiliate marketing but
not PLR
Then you have the sweet spot where some of your leads are interested in
ALL of them
So you what need to find out is where the real profit lies…
Create multiple funnels (or one funnel and multiple follow-up sequences
depending on your niche – see later) and see which ones work so you can
optimise your profits and create more of the same thing for your buyers.
Think of it like split-testing, except you’re searching for a sub-sub niche that
can then be exploited like crazy.
28
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
So for example if out of all your four funnels or one funnel with four
follow-up sequences you find that How to create a massive following of
buyers for your PLR makes the most money, you simply create more
products that are related to profiting from PLR
For example:
How to make $500 a week selling PLR on Warrior Plus
How to get high-quality PLR created on Fiverr that you can sell for 10x
How to start a PLR micro-membership
You get the idea?
I’ve done this in the past with my product creation themed publications:
How to create impossible to ignore angles
How to create info products that actually SELL
Everything I know about how to start a full-time info product business
Most info product sellers randomly create products without a plan or any
notion whether they will actually sell or not.
But if you create four micro-funnels (or four follow-up sequences) and the top
two earners bring in $1100 and $994 respectively but the bottom two bring in
$123 and $17, which two are you going to spend your time focusing on,
scaling up and and doing MORE of?
Yep. Exactly
And that’s why you need FOUR micro-funnels or FOUR follow-up sequences
in the same funnel. Here’s how to make that decision:
29
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Component 4
The RatRun ‘Decision’ Strategy
Four Separate Micro-Funnels OR Four
Follow-Up Sequences in the Same Funnel?
This sounds confusing but it’s actually very simple.
If your offers are highly related, you can build one funnel and then have four
follow-up sequences in that funnel.
Not four follow-up EMAILS, four follow-up sequences of maybe 10-15 emails.
An example would be a client I worked with who was in the PLR niche.
Case study:
30
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
These were her products:
1. She sold PLR products (created by her small team)
2. She also sold a course showing her readers how to make money using the
PLR
3. She offered a service where her team would create an entire unique
product (an ebook) as a Done For You service.
4. And she offered a coaching service if her readers needed one-to-one help
with setting up their own PLR based business.
So, four products and all highly related.
Perfect for building just one funnel and having four follow-up sequences.
So she created a lead magnet and got her traffic by promoting other PLR
sellers and getting them to mail for her in return.
Once in her funnel she started promoting her own products to her new leads.
She had 28 emails in her sequence in TOTAL across
the four products
The first seven promoted her own PLR products, then the next seven
promoted her course, the next seven her done for you service and the final
seven promoted her one-on-one coaching.
But here’s the thing:
(THIS IS BIG!)
31
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
When each new lead opted-in to her list, she’d immediately take them to
a page that ASKED then what they were interested in – PLR products,
coaching, a Done For You service or learning how to profit from PLR
And the lead could choose.
Now when they chose they were moved onto an email sequence that was
exactly the same as all the others EXCEPT the emails related to the option
they’d chosen arrived FIRST
So if they chose to hear about coaching, they’d get the coaching emails first
followed by all the rest promoting the other products.
If they chose the option about a done for you product THOSE seven emails
would arrive first, followed by the others.
And it worked well.
Her lead magnet was a FREE PLR product, so that covered all the main
categories in terms of niche.
Because they were highly related.
But not all businesses are like this – which is when you would choose the
FOUR SEPARATE FUNNELS OPTION – when your products and services
you offer are NOT highly related.
Because you’d need four different lead magnets, each
with it’s own sub-niche of interest.
Example…
Another client I worked with used this approach with her online shop. I can’t
remember if it was Etsy or Shopify but I was incredibly proud of the results we
got.
32
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Here’s why…
Many people with an online shop just send prospects to their shop and hope
they buy something.
More astute online shopkeepers use Instagram or Facebook to show images
or posts about the things they sell, their latest offers or their shop in general
REALLY SMART online shopkeepers (like my client when we’d finished our
coaching) build an audience and then constantly communicate with them to
build a relationship and present offers of EVERYTHING they sell in their
online shops, over a period of time
My client had four online shops that sold totally unrelated items.
I’m not gong to share exactly what they were because I don’t have permission
but roughly speaking she had a shop (store) that sold antique and collectable
‘finds’ that she found when trawling antique shops.
She had another business that sold coffee, another that sold plant seeds and
another that sold (bloody horrible but they sold well) women’s scarves.
Impossible to create a lead magnet that would cover ALL these different
items.
They were just too diverse.
So she had to create four separate micro-funnels for all her niches.
A couple of these she did using traditional IM type funnels with follow-up
sequences as outlined in this publication and the other two she created lists
using free newsletters.
Her traffic mostly came from the images of her stuff being posted on various
social media platforms, from paid traffic posts from the platform she used and
33
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
from paying influencers (not as expensive as you might think) to feature her
items.
Once on her list, her follow-up sequences lasted about a month, and were
much more image-based than the usual internet marketing emails I’m used to
but it worked for her niche.
We worked on cross-selling and overlap but the niches didn’t have much in
terms of being related so in the end she just stuck with separate email followup sequences and separate funnels.
But the point was, she targeted her goods.
Each email would ‘feature’ a chosen item from her shop and she’d typically
sell multiple items with each mailing.
So for example she’d feature ‘Coffee of the day’ and promote a Columbian
coffee give details about its origin and beans – you know the type of thing I
mean – and would sell multiple bags from that one email.
The she’d just restock from her wholesaler.
The only shop she couldn’t do this with was the ‘antique finds’ shop where
she’d sourced each of the pieces herself. It was her hobby really and
although she did make a nice profit, she just liked trekking through antique
shops in her spare time 🙂
So you see how if YOUR niche isn’t highly relatable you might need to have
four separate funnels with it’s own email follow-up sequence?
This might apply to you if you look back over your past promotions and find
you’ve created products on (for example) ethical marketing for Buddhists,
British Royal Family memorabilia, hamster training and also on how to set up
your own porn site.
Not much crossover there really eh?
(Or maybe there is LOL)
34
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Summary
So this isn’t a catch-all solution
I don’t use it with all my clients, but I usually DO tell all my clients that it
exists.
But it works very well and where I have used it, it’s never failed to bring my
client less than $2,000 per month, which is why I wanted to share it in this
publication.
It’s called ‘RatRuns’ for two reasons.
Firstly because although this probably sounds like a quite complex method
it’s actually not. It’s a shortcut way of finding out what will actually sell in your
business without doing tons of market research or tracking stats.
You just build four funnels (if what you sell or promote is related)
Or one funnel with four follow-up sequences (if what you sell or promote is
NOT highly related)
Then you see what sells best
35
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
And you sell MORE of that, while dumping the worst-sellers and introducing
new products.
I have buyers who have bought every single thing I’ve ever written about
creating info products. And I fully intend to keep on creating these sort of
products because I have buyers who always buy them
Likewise I have buyers who have bought every single White Label product
I’ve ever bought so I know when I choose to create another, I know it’ll
definitely sell.
The other reason it’s called RatRuns (apart from giving a product an unusual
name usually increases sales) is that it’s fast.
You can go from having a wishy-washy, ineffective selling strategy that
doesn’t work, to having four products, each with their own automated followup selling machine working for you as you sleep.
Even better, the content you use for your email follow-up sequence can be
recycled from your past posts, emails, and other content.
And the products you first test (to see if they sell) in your four funnels can be
older products that you’ve possibly really not put much effort into seriously
selling before.
I’ve taken products that the client is convinced are poor sellers, and because
we’ve built automated funnels around them with a solid follow-up sequence in
place, they start selling better than they’ve ever sold before.
I almost guarantee YOU have products or affiliate promotion like that
somewhere your archives or on your hard drive.
And if you don’t it’s easy to do from scratch, especially if you start with affiliate
products.
As for the fine detail?
36
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Well that’s flexible so I’ve deliberately not given much detail about lead
magnets or initial offers. There are too many options and too many niches.
I’ve had clients simply use their product as the initial offer. Nothing wrong with
showing a new lead the sales page for your product and then having the
week long follow-up sequence offer the same product.
Or don’t have am initial offer – take them directly into the email follow-up
sequence.
Nor have I gone into detail about traffic. You already know how traffic works –
you either buy it or you try to get it for free.
Get your funnels optimised and you’ll be able to buy it.
Remember the point is selling ONE product in one funnel (or sequence)
It’s about focusing your selling on one product per funnel (or sequence)
If you find that particular product it doesn’t sell then discard the product and
replace it with another products of affiliate offer
Always have four products on the go.
Nothing wrong with having MORE of course, and in fact I’d recommend it.
But don’t have fewer than four products being actively sold via automated
funnels at any one time.
The chances are a couple won’t work so will need replacing anyway.
The aim is to have every funnel (or sequence) working and bringing in as
much money as possible per month, with $2k being the initial goal.
It simply means that each funnel should bring in $500 per month eventually.
Which for a $97 product means just 1 sale every 6 days or so.
37
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Then you scale.
The OTHER reason this works so well is because it gets my clients focused
on running an actual business.
When you have four products or promotions running, and you’re
tracking your metrics to see which are performing and which aren’t,
you’re behaving like a business person.
You set up the business and let it run, and then make your decisions (scale,
dump, create more) based on actual results.
You’re not just chucking out email promotions based on what the latest
launch on Warrior Plus is, or creating products that you ‘hope’ will sell.
(Which is what causes the feeling of ‘lost’ or having ‘tried everything but
nothing works’)
No, with this strategy you know what is selling, you know your conversion
stats and you’re working to increase your income on a daily business,
knowing exactly what you’re doing and you’re running a REAL business.
That’s possibly why I see clients who use this method increase their income
significantly – because they move away from the frankly amateurish, illthought-out methods that most wannabe marketers operate.
If you’re reading this and you want to hire me to help you build out your
own RatRuns strategy for your own business, drop me a line at
TonyShepherd397@gmail and we’ll chat.
Best Wishes
38
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
P.S. I’ll leave you with a BONUS section…
Certain things came out of the RatRuns coaching sessions
that I think are extremely valuable.
I’ve included them below…
39
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Coaching Session
Rat Run 1
Don’t Use Start-Up Methods When You
Have an Existing Business.
I had a client who was earning about $150k a year
He had a dozen or so products.
And he was broke and in debt.
Not his fault – the real art to making money isn’t making it, it’s controlling it
and keeping it, but that’s another story.
Also he needed to make $100,000 in a lump sum pretty quickly to keep the
wolf from the door – to catch up on some late mortgage payments, settle
40
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
some credit cards, pay off late school fees, and put $50k in the bank to stop
his wife worrying.
He had pretty much decided to sell PLR rights to his entire back catalogue for
around $997 for the entire bundle.
He reckoned he could easily achieve the 100 or so sales needed for this but
he asked me for my opinion on his idea, and whether it would be worth him
hiring me to find an alternative.
I said that unless he was immediately in danger of losing his home (within 14
days) it was a bad move and if he hired me I could outline a better way to go.
I got the job and immediately told him what he already knew – that if he sold
PLR rights to his entire back catalogue he would seriously devalue his
business and his $150k income would reduce dramatically.
Now his financial situation WAS grim, but his solution was flawed.
Offering PLR rights to products is a start-up strategy, because it’s perfect for
anyone with no sales history no reputation and no experience to put into their
products.
It’s easy to write PLR and it’s always a good seller, so it’s a great strategy
when you’re starting up a business and need a fast income stream
But it’s a BAD strategy for an existing business that is already earning
and has assets.
Selling PLR rights to his back catalogue would seriously undermine his
earning power because it would devalue his products in a big way.
So instead I suggested a strategy that was more suited
to an existing business.
41
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
I suggested he go through his metrics and find customers with a lifetime value
of over $500, which basically meant they had purchased more than one
product from him.
The he would email them personally and let them know they were among a
small group of customers who had been specially selected for the opportunity
to get a one-year licensing contract to ALL his products.
So for $997 they could resell all his products (unchanged) as an authorised
reseller and keep 100% of the profits.
After a year the license would end.
The other condition was that our marketer could also continue to sell the
same products.
I thought this was a very attractive offer and wanted to price the license at
$2997 but my client really needed the money and said he couldn’t risk it not
converting at that price point.
At $997 it was a bargain and he started to sell licenses.
There was more to his sales email than this obviously – he talked about the
customer being a VIP, about how few sales would be needed before the
customer had covered the license fee and everything from that point on, for
an entire year would be pure profit.
I helped him craft the email and it was pretty good 🙂
After contacting all his customers who had a lifetime value of $500 and over
(he only had a couple of dozen) he started to contact those with a value of
$400, then $300 and so on.
The emails were ‘personal’ after a fashion – he bundled them in his
autoresponder, personalised them and sent them in batches of maybe 20 at a
time, encouraging questions and feedback then sent them to a private sales
page to buy and access the bundle.
42
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Within a week he’d made his hundred grand.
Now here’s where it gets clever…
He’d told each licensee that he was allowing a limited number of other
licensees but hadn’t specified a number unless pushed to do so.
This was against my recommendation but again he was desperate so he kept
quiet about it and surprisingly few asked how many licenses would be issued.
He’d also specified in the license that this agreement was confidential and the
licensee couldn’t mention they were a licensed reseller so it either looked as
though each license was simply recommending a product or was an affiliate
for my client (he didn’t have an affiliate program at this time)
So if you’re trying to get your head around this, imagine if you had the right to
sell ALL my products and keep 100% of the profits for an entire YEAR.
Yes, there would be other licensees doing the same, but a limited number
and since the IM niche is so HUGE it would make very little (if any) difference.
After a year my client had the option to either renew the licensing deal or not.
A significant number of the licensees did absolutely nothing with their license,
but if you’ve been around IM for any length of time you’ll know it’s not unusual
for people to buy products then not use the information in them – I’ve done it
myself multiple times.
I was only working with my client for a month but in that time his sales didn’t
drop one cent, and he continued selling his products happily.
And best of all, he didn’t ruin his business by selling PLR to his entire back
catalogue
Doing this would certainly have generated the $100,000 he needed but longterm wouldn’t have been great unless he was committed to creating another
batch of product, which to be fair wasn’t out of the question.
43
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
The rat run solution?
If you have existing products you have leverage, so use it.
You can create lump sums in very short time by looking at what you
already have in your business.
As a start-up, constantly create products because they are assets.
Likewise it’s a big mistake to treat your start-up business as though it’s
already established.
44
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Coaching Session
Rat Run 2
Don’t Try To Create What You Already
Have Access To
When you’re starting out you’re very likely to have limited time and money to
work on your business.
So using those resources where they are most effective is vital.
I’ve known newcomer marketers put all their focus into building a blog or
creating a huge course.
45
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
What usually happens is they run out of money or motivation and quit
because they’re focusing on doing things that could work for already up
and running businesses, but are the wrong thing for start-ups.
I create products because they make me thousands of dollars, right?
But i already have a audience, a reputation and an infrastructure t sell these
products,
Not only that but I’m very experienced in creating products for certain niches.
I know what will sell, where to source relevant information, how to angle it,
where to set the price point and how to target it at precisely the right prospect.
(All the above can be learned or taught of course)
But if you try to learn them BEFORE your business is even making any
money you’re going to use up your money and your motivation pretty quickly
as I said above.
Again, it’s the right strategy for an existing business but the wrong
strategy for a start up.
So what IS the right strategy for a start-up?
USE WHAT YOU HAVE ACCESS TO.
First a real-life example:
So this morning I got an email that told me I’d received a $13.50 commission
for recommending a PLR membership.
What do I learn from this commission?
Well, it’ll buy me a bottle of wine.
Or a ‘meal’ for two at McDonalds.
46
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Or even a 1 month PornHub gift voucher for my gran.
But if I look DEEPER at what this $13.50 commission means, it could buy me
a LOT more.
Because I know I spent almost ZERO effort promoting this. I just mention it
occasionally in my emails and products.
Which means that when anyone clicks my link they arrive at a site that
converts reasonably well, thanks to the vendor’s copy, follow-up and sales
page.
Not only that, I also know that it converts CONSISTENTLY because I get
regular commissions from them too.
I also know that it’s a recurring commission because I get recurring
commissions each month.
So I short I know that promoting this product is a valid, proven income
stream, no matter how small, and can probably be scaled.
So what’s my point?
Start with affiliate marketing because everything is already done for you.
Remember you have limited time and money as start-up.
So use your TIME finding affiliate products in your niche that convert well
(look at affiliate tools pages or ClickBank stats to find these)
And use your MONEY to buy traffic to send to these affiliate offers.
It fine to spend a day creating your own opt-in page, but to begin with
sending each lead (after you have captured it) to the already optimised,
tested and tweaked affiliate funnel that the vendor has probably spent
months working on!
47
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
What you’re looking for is a RESULT, no matter how small.
Because if one lead buys, you can very likely scale it up.
AND use the commission to buy more traffic.
The above is start-up strategy NOT an existing business strategy.
I still promote some stuff as an affiliate.
But by FAR most of the time and money I invest in my business goes towards
optimising my own selling processes, because that’s what existing
businesses do to grow and make more profit.
As a start-up, I promoted as much as possible and even until a few years ago
a good third of my income came from affiliate promotions.
The rat run solution?
Optimised, and tested-to-convert affiliate funnels are already created
and just waiting for you to send your leads to (after capturing them
yourself too) while THEY do the work of selling.
You have limited time and money as a start-up so focus it into
something that gets results and you can scale up – more traffic, more
affiliate commissions.
From there you can start building your business and incorporating
existing business strategies into your start-up
48
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Coaching Session
Rat Run 3
Exploit Your Weaknesses as Well as Your
Strengths
I’ve worked with a guy who has a 365 day autoresponder sequence that I’m
madly envious of 🙂
I’m creating my own but it’s time consuming and quite frankly I’m so
comfortable (both financially and in terms of working three hours a day) with
my own setup that it’s not a priority.
Anyway, he promotes products of his own and affiliate products in this
sequence.
49
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
It’s an established business.
All he needs to focus on is making sure his numbers stack, and pouring more
people in the top of the funnel.
It’s mostly automated. I’ve mentioned it before so you can probably see I love
the model right? 😉
But it’s an established business strategy!
To have a follow-up sequence this long he has to have his own products as
well as affiliate products to promote.
It’s not something you can start up in a week.
So what do you do if you’re a start-up? What strategy do you use?
Well you focus on your weaknesses
And in doing so you’ll turn them into strengths (yep sounds like a cheap Kung
Fu movie I know but read on and I’ll explain…)
You probably have very little money to spend.
You probably have some time but it’s limited if you work a 9-5 job too
You probably don’t (yet) have the courage to put yourself out there much
So here’s what to do (here’s what I did)
1. Identify a viable marketplace that you can easily contact
2. Determine what that marketplace is looking for
3. Develop what products or services they will buy
4. Offer it to them
Sounds bloody terrifying right?
50
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But the above instructions are exactly what you’ll find in many, perhaps most
make money online courses, and probably like you when I read them I think
‘Yes I KNOW’ and then go watch YouTube instead because it sounds really
difficult.
Here’s the reality
This is what I did.
My ‘viable marketplace’ was a group in the Warrior Forum that had started the
group because they (seriously) needed help with the technical side of internet
marketing, as it was back in the early 2000’s
So I determined what they were looking for was to simply DO the techy stuff
that they could see gurus doing.
So I read the posts and created (outsourced actually for around $200) a
series of PDF reports that taught:
How To Put An Encrypted PayPal Button On Your Sales Page
How To Install Your Own Support Desk (Using Software that is free on the
internet)
How To Set Up A sales Page in Squidoo (told you it was a lifetime ago)
And more…
Then I sold it to them, along with a upsell option for RESELL rights so they
could sell it to their own contacts.
Yes, offering PLR isn’t a great strategy for an established business but I
wasn’t established and the lump sum was nice.
It cost me nothing to contact the group and the rules of the Warrior Forum
back then was that a link to a product in your signature was fine (might still
be)
51
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
I was helpful and I sold a load of copies.
On top of the affiliate promotions I was doing this meant I was slowly making
the transition from start-up to established.
Not having the money or products to simply go out and buy traffic to put into
my funnel or sales process (as I do today) was a weakness.
But (Grasshopper) it also became a strength because it was one of very few
options I actually had so I was in effect forced to do it.
Forced to create (outsource) my own products.
Which was a hugely positive thing, once they were created and all the hassle
was over – I won’t lie, the first one was a pain in the arse in terms of not
knowing the tech stuff myself and trying to find an honest outsourcer but the
rest went well.
The rat run solution?
Sometimes being a small and nimble start-up can make things easier.
You’re not confused by various options because you have bloody few!
And (most importantly) you can sell on a very personal level to your
audience because there aren’t many of them. You can personally
answer questions, solve any issues and give advice.
Why do you think I still answer my own emails when I could easily
afford a virtual assistant to do all that for me? Because personal is one
of the most powerful sales techniques in existence!
52
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Oh and lastly – don’t be scared of ‘business language’ used by gurus and
experts. They only do that because it makes them feel important 😉
Look behind the meanings and you’ll usually find they use very simple
strategies.
Coaching Session
Rat Run 4
Don’t Be Suckered Into Believing There Is
‘New Information’ Out There That You
Need To Create Products About
Any established info-product seller knows there is no new information out
there.
None.
So why did you pay for this publication if there is no new info out there?
53
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Well because if you’re a fan of the blues you might prefer Robert Johnson
over BB King (I do)
They use the same three or four chords – the difference is with how they
interpret it.
It’s the same reason I prefer Dan Kennedy and Frank Kern over Zig Ziglar
and Rich Schefren (sorry guys nothing personal) and will only buy their stuff.
It’s how they interpret, use and present pretty much the same information.
The other thing to realise is that there is more than one way of being
successful, so you also tend to go with people who teach ways that are
congruent with your own style, approach and comfort zones.
Thinking you can’t create a product on a certain subject because ‘it’s
been done before’ is start-up thinking and very flawed.
A HUGE mistake.
But I also try to encourage my COMPETITION to believe that everything HAS
already been done (yes I’m a sneaky bugger which is why you need to
purchase my products like this one to find out the truth 🙂
Seriously – you have a great advantage if you understand that there is
no new information and not waste time looking for it!
This had made me tens of thousands of dollars.
I’ll say it again – one of the most common obstacles for marketers of all
levels is trying to come up with ideas ‘that haven’t been done before’
Good luck with that one 😉
There isn’t much that hasn’t been done before.
54
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Do you remember Frank Kern’s excellent Mass Control course?
I loved it.
I found it inspiring and motivating.
But you know what it was?
A month long training program that showed you how to:
Determine the best type of lead magnet for attracting ideal customers.
Create lead magnets quickly
Build automated systems to capture leads online and send them follow-up
marketing messages.
Use ‘Ascension’ (other marketers call it the value ladder or the next logical
step offer) to cross-sell and upsell existing customers.
Drive targeted traffic from qualified prospects using advertising.
Nothing really new eh?
But add in Frank’s presentation, case studies, personal stories and personal
observation and it takes on a lifer of its own 😉
Add the title ‘Mass Control’ and suddenly the IM works is excited about a
‘new concept’ in buyer manipulation or mind massaging!
How many products have been based on ‘Think & Grow Rich?’
Howe many launches have taught the same basic method of building a lead
page, adding a back-end funnel and an automated email follow-up
sequence?
Maybe add a simple bit of software or give it a catchy title and yo have a
‘new’ exciting product
55
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But the reality is most things are based on other things.
From rock bands that are based on old blues licks to films that are based on
old movies…there’s nothing new under the sun, right?
WRONG!
Or at least partly wrong…depending on whether you’re a time traveller or not.
As I write this, just a few weeks ago the last episodes of the latest season of
Stranger Things dropped onto the streaming channels.
And it featured Kate Bush’s song Running Up That Hill.
(Cracking song)
In a four week period she made $2.3 million (£1.8 million) in streaming
royalties
New product?
Nope.
Better quality, remastered versions?
Not really no.
So what changed?
NEW AUDIENCE!
Our friend’s 12 year old daughter asked her mum if she had ‘ever heard of
Kate Bush?’
56
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
When you’re new to internet marketing, discovering the concept of a lead
magnet and sales funnel can blow your mind.
It feels like you’ve discovered the secret of the universe.
So as a marketer you need to understand a couple of things:
1. Make your products as unique as possible by including your own voice,
your own options and your own examples if possible but DON’T try to come
up with a new concept or technique because quite honestly you’re gonna
struggle to do so!
2. When you have created your unique-as-possible product don’t shelve it
after the initial launch because you think it’s old hat. Instead build a new
audience and present it to THEM!
3. With any marketer you speak to (unless they’re clients or customers)
encourage them to believe that everything has already been done, because
it’ll demolish your competition and you can launch unique stuff based on
existing ideas while they scrabble around trying to find a totally undiscovered
way of making scratch and sniff Facebook ads or creating a rabid list from
people they see at the bus stop while driving to work.
The rat run solution?
It’s YOUR interpretation and presentation of existing information that
creates a ‘new’ product so don’t waste tine looking for new stuff that
simply doesn’t exist.
YOU bring the unique aspect to your products.
(Please don’t invent scratch and sniff FaceBook ads for all our sake)
57
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Coaching Session
Rat Run 5
Being Aware of the Main
‘Success Definer’ Between Start-Up and
Established Businesses
Success Definer – I kind of wish this was to do with Zodiac signs or not being
ginger (speaking as a former ginger so don’t judge me), or even better,
something that can be changed easily such as not wearing crocs or getting
your mullet shaved off.
58
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But it’s not any of those (although I’ve never met a millionaire with a mullet
yet)
Nope it’s FAR more dangerous and harder to solve.
It’s a sticky honeypot of a trap and for me it is THE defining thing that I see in
clients who are earning tens of thousands and above, and those who are
struggling and still in start-up mode.
What is the thing that contributes hugely to defining whether a persona will be
a successful marketer or not?
It’s simply this:
Not getting distracted by new ideas or chasing every
new opportunity.
I’m not going to mention the ‘shiny’ phrase but yo know what I mean, right?
I’m going to bug you a little more now.
Unless you earned a quarter of a million dollars or more last year, the there IS
a difference between ME and YOU in terms of marketing.
And it’s simply that I focus on what is working for me and do more of it.
I create more of the type of products that sell
I keep and eye on my metrics and tweak things if my sales numbers dip
I DON’T get distracted by new ideas and chase new opportunities
Yeah, not jumping on the latest new thing can be boring sometimes – we all
love a good jump, right?
59
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But if my business has taken me several years to get to the point where
I earn six figures a year and work just three hours a day I’m bloody
unlikely to achieve the same results with a shiny object in two days!
That is start-up thinking.
Established marketers protect their income and focus their attention on
it because it is what provides their lifestyle.
Now having said that…PRIVATELY (outside my business) I dabble in loads of
weird and wonderful stuff – Bitcoin, Forex, buying and selling medieval coins
and am currently exploring the possibility of putting on a book festival.
But that’s not business, that’s speculating.
And it’s great fun but I can only mess around with fun stuff because I wear
BLINKERS when I’m running my business and don’t get distracted by
whatever other products are launched or what other marketers are doing.
And that’s the difference.
When I get a new consulting client one of the first questions I ask is ‘What’s
currently working for you and what’s not?’
With established businesses they’ll typical talk about their business and what
they want to change what they need help with.
With start-ups they’ll usually give me a list of things ‘they’ve tried but haven’t
worked for them’
Now here’s the interesting thing…
Often some of the things that ‘haven’t worked’ actually HAVE worked, but only
to a small degree
60
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
I’ve had clients tell me they tried something but abandoned it because it only
brought in $100 per month and they want $2,000
I have income streams that only bring in $100 a month
I still keep then and try to scale them. If they won’t scale I keep them anyway
if they don’t take up too much of my time.
Because when you’re a start up, that $2,000 that you need will almost always
be made up of smaller income streams.
Small profits MATTER because they show you exactly where to focus
you attention
Even now my income is made up of selling my products, but also from
consulting, affiliate sales and my membership.
But all the above are natural bolt-ons to my existing business.
With my coaching I teach the methods I write about in my products. In my
membership I give access to content that isn’t contained in either of the
others. Both natural bolt-ons.
The rat run solution?
Don’t get distracted and chase even new opportunity. Focus on the
ones that fit alongside your own business or can be bolted on easily.
So if you create info products you can easily add selling PLR to your
products (shod you wish) or bundle your content into a new
membership offer so if you ARE going to buy products and courses,
buy ones that teach methods you can add on to your existing setup, no
matter how small.
61
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
If you sell info products it will probably be a complete change of
direction (not to mention bloody hard work) to suddenly start flipping
real estate or baring your butt on Only Fans.
Coaching Session
Rat Run 6
To Make Big Profit Leaps, You Must Make
Big Changes
This is one of the rare instances that applies to BOTH start-up thinking
and established business thinking…
62
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Unless you have thousands of people a year buying from you, putting your
product prices up by $1 isn’t going to make much difference.
Neither is adding a new profile picture of yourself to your FB page or even
creating a new product every 6 months.
Nope – if you want to make big profit leaps you need to introduce big
changes to your business.
Here’s how I discovered this…
Years ago I suddenly hit a period where for months, if not a year my business
had been rolling along without seeing any significant increase in profit.
That same day I introduced a personal coaching option into my business and
things went crazy.
It was pretty much an afterthought kind of offer, albeit priced higher than
anything I’d priced before (still only around $1,000 although that seemed like
a lot to me back then) because I liked the idea of working on a one to one
basis with a couple of people on the phone.
I’m not even sure where the idea came from – I just wanted to see what
would happen.
And I wasn’t prepared for what followed…
It hadn’t occurred to me to tell my list there were only three slots available
when I emailed for the offer, simply because I hadn’t expected more than two
people at MOST to take up my offer.
But I got the shock of my life when I checked my bank account later that
day to find $10,000 had already arrived!
Don’t get me wrong, it was very welcome but I won’t lie to you – I really
panicked and rushed to close the offer so I had time to work with all the new
clients.
63
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
But that change (I now call it a ‘Push’) took me to a new level.
I’ve never gone back – which is another characteristic of a ‘push’
Once you attain a new level you rarely drop back to where you were before.
And there’s never been a year since when I haven’t had coaching client on
some level, from $497 email coaching to $12,000 VIP clients.
We’re talking significant results from making simple but big changes.
Do you know how LONG it took me to go from making just a few thousand
dollars a month to suddenly exploding through the five figures a month
barrier?
55 minutes.
Seriously – from simply deciding to introduce a coaching option, to getting to
five figures a month took me 55 minutes to get the offer out here and see the
bulk of the results.
Because of the nature of the idea I didn’t need to create a product either – I
just made a sales page where new coaching clients could sign up and pay
me.
That’s how simple it is.
Decide to do it then do it.
I did the same with my membership site.
Decided to launch it, then launched it.
Both the above have added a considerable amount to my early income, and
both have now been with me for over a decade.
64
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
Add options to your business that allow your clients to pay you more.
You don’t need to ‘wait until you have more experience’ or ask anyone’s
permission.
Just do it and bank the profit 🙂
To make big leaps in income – to crash through income barriers or add
another zero to the end of your yearly profit you have do add something that
allows people to pay you more.
Personally I think coaching and continuity are the easiest ways to do this by
far, especially in an IM business
They’re so simple to do yet so rewarding.
Ever wondered why most successful marketers have both coaching and
continuity programs?
Yep – Decide to make the changes, then MAKE ‘em!
So that’s it for RatRuns…
It’s a lot of info to take in, you may need to re-read this publication a couple of
times. I deliberately left the RatRuns Coaching Session 6 above as the last
one, because it’s about how you need to make big changes to make big
profits.
‘BIG’ doesn’t always mean a lot of work though
It can also simply mean a change in direction.
If things haven’t been working for you up to now, or you want to earn more
from your online business than you currently do, you almost need to make a
change.
You won’t suddenly start making sales by doing the same thing, right?
65
RatRuns © Tony Shepherd All Rights Reserved
It’s the change that brings about…well, change 🙂
The money is in the movement, as my gran said in her poledancing days.
Best of luck 🙂