🔑 The Key To Massive Income Minus The Manual Hustle With Karla Silver 💰
Email marketing can be stressful, especially if you have thousands of prospects. But with the power of technology and automation, a good email marketing strategy may be all you need. Join your host Adrienne Hill and her guest Karla Silver on how online marketing works with the rise of automation. Karla is a best-selling author and has been voted into the Top 50 Internet Marketers in the Direct Sales industry. Listen in as Karla paints a crystal clear picture of why email marketing is the key to smart growth and how to do it!
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🔑 The Key To Massive Income Minus The Manual Hustle With Karla Silver 💰
Impactful Entrepreneur Show Guest Interview
I'm here with Karla Silver. She is a Network Marketing Recruiting Expert and master in automation, so we speak the same language. I love her background, knowledge, and story. You guys are going to eat her up. I love this.
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Welcome, Karla.
I’m so excited to be here with you, Adrianne. Thank you so much for having me on. I feel so humbled. We are sisters from another mother because I am all about systems, automation, and leveraging this amazing, easy-to-use technology that we have out there in the world.
Work smarter, not harder. Social media provides that opportunity. It's free funnels everywhere. For those reading who maybe have not met you yet, could you tell us a bit about you and your background and what brought you here with us?
I was in Corporate America for many years, and I found the network marketing industry after I downsized a long time ago in the dot-com bust. I answered an ad that was on CareerBuilder and thought, “I can do this.” I got started in this industry. It wasn't pretty in the beginning. What I did do is I knew how to work hard, and I knew how to work with myself. If you know how to do those two things and you have stuff, you have an opportunity that can nurture you through the beginning stages of becoming an entrepreneur. You can be successful.
To become an entrepreneur, you have to know how to work hard and with yourself.
After I fell on my face for a couple of years, everything turned the corner for us. That was a long time ago. I went through this great growth spurt in my business and then I hit a personal threshold. I realized that I could not do what I was doing for one more minute. I prospected on the phone for 4 to 5 hours a day, 4 to 5 days a week for 10 years. If you do the math, that's 50,000 phone calls taking time off, etc. Everybody has this moment at some point in their business. I was sitting on the floor crying. I was like, “I can do this anymore,” in Oprah’s ugly cry thing. You'd hit your hell-no moment.
You had built a lifestyle that felt like a prison.
Email Marketing: You, as a person, are your own brand. Know that your customers need to be exposed to you over and over again to develop that know, like, and trust factor.
I was all about lifestyle, which is the weirdest thing. Lifestyle design was my thing. My husband and I had not lived anywhere for five years. We lived all over the world, yet I was still on the phone for 4 to 5 hours a day and I couldn't do it. I quit for about ten minutes. It only took that long before I watched this guy get started in a network marketing business. He'd never been a network marketer before. He put almost $1 million in his pocket in his first two months in business. I'm like, “What did he do?” This was quite some time ago.
He was an internet marketer that saw an opportunity. He sent a bunch of emails to his list and made $1 million. That’s when, back in the olden days, I bought things from Frank Kern, Vick Strizheus, and Mike Diller, the OGs in internet marketing. I studied what they did. I devoured information, then I took Internet Marketing Principles and Basic Marketing Principles and applied them to network marketing. Years later, after I started, I can honestly say that I've never done the friends and family thing. I've been to one meeting and I honestly thought I was going to stick a fork in my eye.
I can't believe that so many people recruit that way. It's because it was a completely different animal. It was uncomfortable for me, probably because of my personality. I'm great when I'm here with you on Zoom but I'm pretty introverted. I became super passionate about understanding how to market a business, teach my team, understand the basic principles of marketing, sales funnels, and those things. Automation saved my life. I don't know what I would have done if I had stayed quiet.
I can identify with it so much because that's where I was. I had built this lifestyle. I started in network marketing, too. I realized I hated my day-to-day work. I didn't like it. I was like, “I hate this. What do I do?” I realized there's more than one way to build a business. There's the hardcore prospecting on your phone 24/7. There's all the true internet marketing, like automation stuff that you can layer in.
This is something I am so passionate about, social media and internet marketing. I do pay ads for my network marketing business and social media marketing. If I want an extra 100 leads, I place an ad somewhere. I can spend $5 sometimes and get 100 leads. What I'm passionate about is I am against cold messaging. Don't do it. It gives the network marketing industry a bad rap. Many of you guys probably that are reading don't do that. I'm a big believer in don't try to friend somebody to get them in your business or buy your products. This is something that I think is a bad thing for the industry.
I'm passionate about teaching people simple ways to attract prospects to you and then have your prospects go through their customer journey in a way that makes sense for your prospects. Our prospects are not living on our timeline. They're going to be making their decision about what they want to do or sometimes buy at 2:00 in the morning. They're like, “I need to pay my mortgage. What am I going to do?” You want to be that person that comes top of mind when they get out of bed and get on their computer. That's where true sales funnels and automation comes into play.
Tell me a bit about staying top of mind and having the information available for the people when they're ready for it. How does that work? What does that look like?
Here's the shocking truth. We all know this deep down inside. Our prospects have their timeline. They're not going to do something because we tell them to do something, especially cold prospects. Here are the statistics as far as sales. We're going to use my little screen here. Let's say that my screen is the entire world of sales. These are not network marketing statistics. These are sales statistics whether you're selling a car, face cream, or automation tools.
It doesn't matter. Everything in the world, so let’s look at your prospects. Here's the deal out of all of your prospects. These are prospects that are qualified. They're not people that are not looking for what you have. Fifty percent of them will never buy anything from you, ever. We go into shoe stores, sunglasses stores, and all kinds of stores. We used to go to all these stores, but we didn't buy stuff, and that's okay. The store owner doesn't go, “They didn't buy anything from me.” Get off my list. The great news is 1% of those people will buy soon.
50% of your prospects will never buy anything from you ever.
They're actively looking for what you have. They're typically hot. Out of 100 qualified prospects, no matter what you sell, 1 or 2 of them will buy from you pretty soon after they find you. As long as you provide the solution that you say you're going to provide. About 13% to 14% of those people will buy in the next few months if they're followed up properly. Thirty-five percent of the people coming to your world who are interested in what you have will buy from you sometime within the next few months to years.
Remember in the older days, you got pottery barn catalogs in your mailbox over and over again, Neiman Marcus, or would it fill in the blank. You got those in your mailbox because those companies spent all that money creating those catalogs and sending that information to you in the mail. They knew that if they sent about twelve catalogs, they would develop enough trust with you and you would have looked through it enough times that you would buy something. That number was valid until about 2012 to 2015, and it's now 36 touchpoints.
Thirty-six follow-up conversations, touchpoints of some sort.
It doesn't have to be an email. It can be any number of things. Your brand, as a person because we're all our brands for the most part. We're not big companies. We have to recognize that our customers, to develop that know, like, and trust factor, need to be exposed to us over and over again. There are better ways to do it and not great ways to do it.
Let’s talk about the number one way that's the easiest. The customer expects and trusts it. Therefore, that helps you trust you. It's an old-fashioned way of marketing and it's called email. We don't like it when companies text us over and over again. We don't like it when people Facebook PM us over and over again. Who here wants to do that or call or text somebody 36 times? Your person is never going to get started with you at that point.
If your customer expects it, your customer trusts it, and that helps you trust you.
If I had to keep track of how many dozens or 100 of people for 36 times each, I would be a slave to my phone, I would never get off of it. I would have no life.
I'm probably telling your readers something they don't already know. Email still rocks. Building your list still rocks. As a marketer, business owner, or coach, your primary two jobs, especially when you're first starting out, is to build that list, that number of people that are slowly ripening. I think of my list as people as fruit that is ripening on a tree. They all ripen at different rates. My job is to keep adding fruit to my marketing tree and then going into my marketing tree and shaking it every day.
I shake it by sending an email, video, a reason for us to talk, get on my calendar over and over again, promotion, content, value, follow us on social. There's a gazillion thing that you can do in email and people aren't offended by that. They’re going to stay on your list if they're still interested and will unsubscribe if they're not. At that point, you know.
I'm thinking back to when I was a network marketer. All the people with the company I was with were convinced that your friends list on Facebook or your contact list. That is your list. Can you talk about the dangers of not having a list that's off social?
I'll say the dangers of not having a list are huge. First of all, you do not own Facebook. We all don't think that Facebook is going anywhere, but let me tell you, I've been at one of the top ranks of six companies. Why is that? Company number one, I was there for seven years. That company went out of integrity. We had to leave.
Email Marketing: Generating a lead, following up with the lead, and putting that lead in front of the information are your three jobs as a business owner.
Company two, I was there for five months. I won some award thing and then I found out the number one income earner was making only $50,000 a year. I was out of there fast. I'm like, “Are you kidding me? She's been here for ten years and she's making $50,000 a month.” That is not a lot of money in network marketing.
Company number three stopped paying people in the United States. I had my own network marketing company. That was not bad, but it was a bad partner. That was a different thing. That stuff happens. Again, following up over and over on social makes you into a super salesy weirdo. Having that, your list is the only thing you own. This is all known as an entrepreneur. I want all my stuff.
TikTok came out. It was huge. I went on there and I started growing stuff. All of a sudden, it's about to be banned within a few weeks. Imagine if Facebook or Instagram was suddenly gone.
I invested heavily in Periscope. I know that's still around but twice in 2020, I was erased entirely from Facebook. There were none of my comments on anybody else's posts. They put me right back and apologized, especially in this day and age, when social media platforms are edgy. They're in a lot of trouble. Another member of one of my masterminds, she didn't even do anything. I was playing around in groups and I was doing all kinds of stuff. She is living her life and she never got her account back.
You don't know. As a business owner, you have to insure yourself. It's a good business practice to have all of your leads. Here's the how. A hundred percent of my leads go into what's called an autoresponder. Most of your people at this summit will know what it is. It's a platform where I can send emails out or they can receive emails from me over and over again. That is how I've been able to have that 35% plug. That's a leaky hole in your business that is leaking, depending on how big your business is, millions of dollars out of the bottom of your business.
I know this because it didn't happen ten times. It happened a gazillion times that somebody for years had been receiving our emails and called me up one day and said, “I've been following you. You sent me an email back whenever and I'm ready to get started with you. What do you have? I don't even know what you're doing.”
They liked and trusted you, and they said, “Whatever it is you're doing, I want in.”
I'm not so great. I wasn't like some amazing email writer or anything. This was a couple of years ago when he started following me. I was awful. My emails were like, “Get started with me right now.” You don't even have to be great at it. You just have to do it. It's generating a lead, following up with the lead and putting that lead in front of the information, hopefully, on autopilot. It’s your three jobs as a business owner, other than taking up the trash in the accounting and all the other stuff. Those are your income-producing activities. Nothing more than that.
What's your favorite method to generate those leads to get them on your list in the first place?
Mine is going to be a bit different than what most of your readers do because I generated most of my leads back in the day in my network marketing business simply by being on job boards and platforms where people were looking for a change. I have lots of Facebook Live strategies. Our students do Facebook ads, Facebook Live strategies, social posting strategies, and Insta, especially it's pretty hot. That's a good money maker.
There are so many. What I advise students in our program is a couple of things. First of all, what is your personality like? If you're like me, an introvert, I've gotten over myself mostly, maybe Facebook Live strategy might not be the perfect match for you. Whether you have money or time, it's always a trade-off for that, but we've got some pretty amazing Facebook ad strategies that are inexpensive that we teach. I'm hot for Facebook lead ads in particular. I'm excited about a YouTube ad.
They can work for network marketers.
Marketing works for everybody. Marketing is marketing. That's the beautiful part. You have to be clear about who you are, who you're speaking to, and what your solution is.
I know Facebook particularly has policies against putting out ads specific to a network marketing company. How can our readers put the ad out but yet work with the policy?
Especially in network marketing, you have to be very careful. You do not want to make the gods at Facebook upset of you. If you want to keep your ad account and it's the right thing to do to color within the lines, especially Facebook Live. One of the things that we recommend is you cannot market a business opportunity directly. We've got lots of people that have lead magnets that are five ways to make money online. I'm thinking about one that I was working on.
We're not finished with it yet with a member of our top producer mastermind. She is working on six ways to detox your house. We haven't made a title for it yet. We've got one that we're working on that is Your House Is Toxic and You Don't Even Know It. She’s got a very particular company that she works with that enrolls in that way. There are all kinds of ways that you can stay within the guidelines. You're not going to send somebody to your company website.
They'll pick up on that. Whatever it is that the products that your company sells, whatever benefits they can give, create a lead magnet that speaks to those benefits or pinpoints is a quick ad.
Let's say you're in essential oils. I don't want people generating pure customer leads if they have five ways to kill your kids’ cold in three days. That's a pure customer. It's a bait and switch to take them over to your list and say, “By the way, we want you to get started in our company and making money selling these essential oils.”
You have to be a little clever in your marketing, not manipulative. Just clever and be clear that you're not marketing in a business opportunity. You can market the business opportunity once they're on your list, but you want to have a clear, smooth journey for the customer. You don't want to say, “Here are five ways to market your business and then market your business to somebody.”
Be a little clever in your marketing, not manipulative. You want to have a clear and smooth customer journey for the customer.
There's one other way that's pretty clever. We're testing this and it's starting a conversation in Messenger with your bot. That one is pretty juicy. When you start the conversation in a chat, it starts in a bot and then you take them over to your sales funnel. It's another touch on the front-end. It's very personal. I love the idea of having that front-end touch, where somebody comes to you and says, “I'm interested in what you have,” on a very generic Facebook post.
You mentioned 36 touchpoints. That's a lot of touchpoints. How many of those are coming through a predetermined set of web pages and how many of them are a predetermined email sequences that come to someone's inbox, or is it a mix of both?
It's both. As a matter of fact, in our network marketing funnels that we teach our students to build, it's an opt-in page. We have something called a Bridge Video before the sales page. That's an extra personal touch that tells your prospect what's going to happen, what their expectations are, and what you're going to do because they don't know. We have another touch there, the sales page and the follow-up. We have a lot that we front-load as many touches. You can collapse time on the internet. You can’t do that in real life.
If someone is digging what you're sharing, they could binge-watch through the first 35 touchpoints. You send them an email, and 36 are ready.
It's not a science. It's not exactly 36. Some people need 20 or 120. It's an average of 36 touchpoints. Especially if someone comes to you off of any of the social media channels, they're not warm. They're not cold. They’ve been exposed to you. They're curious enough to get into your funnel. That's 1, 2, at least 5 right there before they get into your funnel, then another five before they get out of your funnel and you've got up emails. We're collapsing time.
For those people who are loving this, they're digging this idea of a bit of automation. A bit of personal touch, but a lot of animation. What about the folks who are worried about what's going on in the world? The economy is not good. “People can't afford my products. People can't afford my business.” What would you say to those folks who maybe are feeling that fear?
Email Marketing: If you switch your focus to the other side of your business and focus on recruiting. You have an opportunity to solve so many people's financial problems.
Business owners and entrepreneurs were problem solvers, especially in the network marketing industry. We have an opportunity to recruit people and help people make money. This is probably the number one problem. We're all worried about our health. Typically, New Year’s Resolutions are three things, I'm going to make more money, I'm going to lose weight, and I'm going to find true love. We can’t help people find true love. I can't help people lose weight. As a network marketer, I can help people make a living.
Here's the deal, if you're in network marketing here and you're reading, you have a unique opportunity. If you're focused on customer acquisition, that's great. Depending on what you sell, you're going to be in serious trouble. Let's say you sell face cream, high-end skincare. Your customers over the next few months, maybe years as the economy contracts, they're going to say, “I'm not going to order that this month. I'm going to go to Sephora and buy something that's a bit cheaper.” Maybe the next month, “I'm not going to go to Sephora. I'm going to go to Ulta.” Maybe the months after that, “I'm not going to go to Ulta. I'm going to go to Target and get my face cream.”
It's already started, on the customer side, with some contraction. If the economy, which it's sadly looking like it's not going to be pretty, that's going to get worse. The best news is if you switch your focus to the other side of your business and focus on recruiting, you have an opportunity to solve so many people's financial problems. Whether it's putting their kids in school, paying their mortgage, maybe it's food on the table, this is an opportunity for us to save lives. I am so passionate about this. People are spending money. My business is going crazy.
All of our students, their network marketing businesses, are going insane because they’ve switched if they hadn't already to a recruiting focus, and that's what's going to keep you in the game. I know this because, in 2008 and 2009, we were close to seven figures. The economy was in the doghouse. It was a network marketing company and our opportunity was $21,500 to get fully started in that business. People pay that over and over again. If you think that people do not have money, they do. There's plenty of people that have money out there.
Do a little internal work because that is a limiting belief that will keep you stuck forever if you don't pluck that weed right out of your head. We have an opportunity to serve. It's not just network marketing. It's all of the coaches and consultants that are on and reading have an opportunity to step up, be leaders and serve in a bigger way, and get compensated for it. There's plenty of people that are looking for what we have.
For anyone who's been feeling like, “My product is too expensive. My kit is too expensive.” It's not $22,000. I'm willing to bet you. You can do this. If people can see the potential of like, “It costs money to get started, but I'm going to be earning more.”
You have to look at any investment of your time or money, “What's my ROI?” If you're only looking to make $200 a month, then maybe $200 for your kit or whatever is a good investment. I'm here to make big changes and help people create income. Maybe not just create an extra income, but create an income that can replace their spouses and their income.
I heard a stat that the majority of people whose houses go into foreclosure if they had an extra $500 a month, that would never have happened. It doesn't take a lot to change someone's life.
$500 is huge. That's food for four. I’m seeing a lot of people. We can make so much difference in the world.
We remember the fact that 50% of those people are never going to join and don't beat yourself up about it. It is what it is. It's just numbers.
Here's the beautiful thing. You have a list. You don't see who's telling you no. There is no rejection. I don't look and see who's unsubscribed. It's a completely rejection-free process filling that with qualified prospects, following up at the other end, and emailing in between.
Clearly, you're not giving attention to the people who are leaving your list. I'm sure you're paying attention to how many are joining it like, “I got 20, 50, or 1,000 leads.” What are the metrics you do pay attention to when it comes to social media? Is it the likes or comments? Are there statistics you're following? Is it more about what's going on in your email? People have a bit of hope here. What should they be paying attention to?
It wasn't until I owned the business that I started to pay more attention to the metrics. What I did for years was first of all, on Sundays, I've learned stuff. That was the day that I would sit down and put a football game on in the fall or whatever and learn something. I paid attention and I had a benchmark. For me, I wanted to generate 100 leads a week.
I wanted to email my list at least 2 or 3 times a week. I did that. I paid attention to the people that were coming out the other side of the funnel. If there weren't enough, I'd run some promotion to kick those people off the fence. As far as social media is concerned, I know that people are worried about engagement. How many people are liking? Likes do not equal cash in the bank. They almost never equate to success.
I was talking to one of my students. She's like, “Karla, when I talk about makeup and stuff, I get hundreds of people commenting and when I talk about our business or something like that, crickets and I don't like that.” I said, “Your perfect prospect, who is that?” She said, “It's probably somebody like me.” I said, “How many times have you commented on stuff?” “I don't have time to do that.”
I said, “Exactly. Your prospects, all of them, are watching you. Your family is watching you. Everybody is watching you. Whether they say anything or not and your perfect prospect probably is somebody just like you. They probably don't have time to go commenting and anything. They're watching to see that you're real. Can they do what you're doing and will you help them?”
Those are the three questions that your prospects are always asking themselves, “Is it real? Can I do it? Is this person going to help me?” The only way you can answer those questions is to keep showing up. I've made tons of sales, but nobody comments on my stuff half the time. I don't worry about it because my perfect prospect is like, “There's Karla.”
It isn't just your prospects. Your family and friends are watching you. The most important person that's watching you is you. That's the person I have to stay true to, that I have to report to in the morning, that I have to look at when I'm brushing my teeth and washing my hair. That's the person that I have to report to and feel good about. I arrange my whole business so that I'm the one that’s in control because I cannot control my prospects.
It gives people hope and a sense of grounding of like, “Stop focusing on all the wrong stuff and get out there. Show up. Send the emails. Build that list. Don't rely only on social.” Social is where you find them. From there, you got to funnel them into something.
They have to be yours, and again, whether it's a Facebook ad or Facebook Live. Facebook Live strategies are fantastic. I'm going to give away a little something here. Everybody thinks they need to teach in Facebook Lives. The answer to that is don't or maybe 10% of what you have is teaching. The rest is you’re talking about stuff that you like.
You must be the person behind the business.
Your brand pillars. We work with our people. If your thing is quilting, you're in the essential oil business, a beach body coach, or Melaleuca, there are all kinds of ways to blend in the things that you love and to blend your business into the same end to that, not being a salesy weirdo and having endless things to talk about. I did some posts. It was all about one person, but I talked about her in a different way over and over again.
It shows people you're real. You're showing up. You can help them. They can do this. I understand that you do have a free gift for our readers. Do you want to tell us about it?
It is the most popular thing that I have ever put out there. I wanted to share it with your readers because everyone struggles with coming up with ideas for content, let alone Facebook Live. I would love to gift everybody 101 Facebook Live Ideas. Again, you can use this for content too, but it's specific for Facebook Live. If you do one Facebook Live a week, you're almost good for two years.
If the one thing holding you back is, “I don't know what to talk about. I don't know what to say.” Take the guesswork out of it. Here's 101. They're for you guys. Thank you so much, Karla. I love it. This has been super helpful. I love that you blend automation, marketing, and prospecting so that you're living a lifestyle you love. You're not in prison and attached to your phone 24/7. You're not a slave to it. I
For those of you reading, if you've been feeling that pain of trying to get in all of those 36 touchpoints or more with people and you're dying here, Karla can help you out. I love the free gift. It can help them to get out there fearlessly. Stop worrying about the vanity metrics, drive people to a list, you guys an email list. If you don't have an email list, you got to go. Please, you guys, take action on that at a minimum. I love it. Thank you so much, Karla, for joining us.
It has been an absolute pleasure. I’m so excited to be here.
I can't wait to return the favor and support you in the next thing you do. For those of you who don't know, we went to a retreat together. It was right before COVID hit.
A couple of days before, we all shut down here in California.
You never know who you're going to meet through your entrepreneurial journey and what new friends you’re going to make. Who knows? Maybe you'll make your next best friend or power partner in the chat string in our Facebook group as we debrief and talk about what we learned from Karla. Join us over there. We'll see you there. I can't wait to dissect everything with you guys and figure out what action are you going to take? Awesome. Bye, guys.
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About Karla Silver
Karla has reached the top ranks of 6 network marketing companies, all without pitching her friends and family, going to meetings, parties, cold messaging people on social, or any of that hoo ha. She’s written two best-selling books (one with Brian Tracy), owned her own network marketing company (she hated that!), and has been voted into the Top 50 Internet Marketers in the Direct Sales industry.
Karla has created some of the most popular digital courses in the network marketing industry, including Top Producer Academy™, Social Automate It, and others, PLUS she runs a high-level coaching program, “Top Producer Mastermind™.” Karla also holds some of the industry’s most attended online livestreams, Top Producer Roadmap™.
When she’s not bossing people around in her business, or taking care of her clients and students, Karla likes traveling, eating in great restaurants, or spending time with her ever-tolerant husband. She speaks English fluently (her first language), and knows how to make reservations and order food in more than 5 other languages. Karla lives in Palm Springs, California, and sometimes, in August, when it’s 118 degrees… wonders why.