39 Derek Halpern: Simple (Yet Powerful) Strategies to Rapidly Grow Your Online Business

We're looking for results in our businesses here at the School of Greatness. In this episode we bring on a man who was able to grow a authority blog of more than 30,000 subscribers in less than 13 months. Get out your pencil and paper while you're listening to this episode because it is packet full of actionable, common sense strategies that anyone can implement. This is episode 39 with founder of Social Triggers, Derek Halpern. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is episode number 39 with Derek Halpern.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  What is up, greats? Thanks so much for tuning in today. Super pumped about this episode because I've got my good friend Derek Halpern in the house. Now Derek has been a friend for a number of years and he's one of the go-to guys that I lean on when I want to learn about how to really build traffic and subscribers online on my website. So I'm very pumped to introduce him today. But I just got back from a week-long trip to Guatemala, had the most amazing adventurous, inspiring, emotional time. Because I was spending my time with a nonprofit called Pencils of Promise. And I built a couple of schools

• 1:14Speaker 00

  that probably some of you actually helped donate for in the last couple of years on my birthday. Each year on my birthday in the last couple of years, I've requested donations to build schools. And I know there's a bunch of you who have been following me from Facebook and Twitter and my email list for a while. And have probably donated to that. So I thank you for your donations. And I really got to go and see what they did the entire week in Guatemala. It was amazing to hang out with all the kids, to travel around Guatemala and to see what we're all creating for better education throughout the world. So very pumped about that trip. My voice is still a little gone. I apologize, but it was an amazing trip. I lost my voice a little bit.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  But I'm good to be back and I'm pumped to be back on the show and introducing to you Derek Halpern. Today's episode is all about the secret to getting more traffic.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  To your website. And I know that there are a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to this show. And as entrepreneurs, it's a big deal to have a big web presence. And Derek Halpern is the founder of social triggers.com. This guy is a machine when it comes to getting traffic and really leveraging online marketing to generate more traffic and leads. And in this episode, we're talking about turning random traffic into loyal subscribers. Also, how to persuade people to buy your products once they come to your website. And then also how to encourage people to share your content and website. So it's one thing to create a website and put all this energy and passion and money behind building a site. But if

• 2:55Speaker 00

  no one's ever looking at it, if no one's ever subscribing to it, if no one's ever buying what you're selling, then it's kind of a waste of time. So you are going to have an amazing access to one of the top guys that I lean on in the world to getting more traffic and more subscribers and people that buy your products and share your content. So make sure to take lots of notes on this episode. And also head back to school of greatness calm for all the show notes and additional info about my man Derek Halpern. And with that, guys, I hope you guys enjoy this session.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  What is up everyone? Thanks so much for tuning back into the school of greatness. And I've got a very special guest on today. It's one of my best friends in the world. His name is Derek Halpern. What's up, brother? How are you doing?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  What's up, dude? Thanks for having me. I'm pumped to be doing this.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Dude, I'm so pumped. And we could talk a lot about a lot today. You know, I'm inspired by you constantly. You start a podcast before I did. And it's a social triggers is the same thing it's called, same as your blog. And it's an amazing podcast. And you inspired me to actually launch this, you and Pat Flynn and a few other guys. But there's a lot of things that you're extremely smart at, very wise and intelligent. And I'm excited to pick your brain. I get to pick it all the time. So I feel like I'm blessed to have like a human encyclopedia on call. But I'm very excited to learn about.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  What makes people tick online? And this is what you've been teaching for the last two and a half, three years now with your site, social triggers and also with your podcast and with your products, blog that converts and everything else you've got going on. So I want to dive deep into the brain of the mighty Derek Halpern and learn about all the social triggers about how people can really build a blog and a business and make money online and figure out what makes people tick. So, you ready?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  I'm ready, man. Let's do this.

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  Now, before we actually share with everyone the secrets about how to make tons of money online and how to influence people to take action and convert leads and traffic and sales and all that. I want to take a step back and figure out why did you become so interested in this topic in the first place? And how did your life path take a turn into really diving into this information? What made it so intriguing for you?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  It's very interesting that you asked this question because I kind of got my start in an unusual way. And it was with playing poker.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Back in college, I loved to play poker and I noticed that it had nothing to do with the cards that you were holding. Yeah, if you got some good cards, it was great, but you could never control your cards. So in the end, it was always about trying to figure out how to make people think you had something that you didn't, or know what people had before you saw what they had. And when I was playing poker, I started to notice that the psychology of how people would play would impact their play style. So here's one example. I noticed something very strange about people when I played cards. And I noticed that when people were, if they bought in for, let's say $500, right? At the poker table.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And if they started earning more money, like they were at $1,000, let's say. If they were a new poker player, they would almost always have the $500 that they were, that they bought in with. Towards the edge of the table. And then they had the money that they were above their buy-in, let's say the other $500, in front of their money. And people would play with this other new money as if it wasn't real money, which meant that they were more aggressive with it and they were more likely to risk that money on bad draws. So when I noticed that, you started to see this little tell as they would say,

• 7:14Speaker 02

  and it makes, it gives you the ability to make people put their money in bad positions. Now, what's interesting about this, that was my first foray into the world of psychology or what makes people tick, but I can't say that I was the smartest person in the world and I realized that psychology was the secret to everything. Because at that point, after I quit poker, I promptly forgot about psychology. Until about two years later, when I read a book by Claude Hopkins called My Life in Advertising. And I believe it was chapter four, right in the beginning of chapter four, he was like, "The competent advertising man must understand psychology. The more he knows about it, the better."

• 7:58Speaker 02

  When I read that quote, I remember thinking to myself, "Oh my God. Psychology worked for poker, psychology worked for ads, psychology must work for everything." And that's kind of how I got started with wanting to learn how to do it.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. And your first experience with online, creating a site and online marketing was what?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  My first ever blog was actually a blog where I talked about the dumb things I did in college.

• 8:26Lewis Howes?

  What inspired you to do that? That was Tucker Maxx inspired you, right?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I stumbled on Tucker Maxx's website and it was like the early 2005. And I was like, I was reading, I was like reading his site, his site was hilarious to me because I was in college or whatever. And I accidentally clicked on his advertise link. And I saw he was getting like $500 a week or something stupid for ads and he had five ads. And I'm just like, "Oh my God, this guy writes about all the dumb things he does in college and he's making money. I do plenty of dumb stuff every day." So let me start a blog. And what was very interesting about that, that blog was a complete disaster. Nobody read it, thank God, because I talked about things I probably should have never have published, but whatever the case, that was my first ever website online.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  But I went back to Tucker Maxx, the source, as I would call it, and I noticed he linked to a celebrity gossip blog. At which point I was like, oh, I'm not funny enough to be talking about the dumb stuff I do. But celebrities are idiots at this point is what I thought to myself. I could do that and that gossip blog was getting like a thousand dollars a week for ads. So I was like, I'm launching a gossip blog and I launched that. And that was my first successful website.

• 9:42Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. How much traffic did that eventually get every month? It was getting a ton of traffic, wasn't it?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, uh, the first year it was, it was, it took off fast. But by the 11th month, so I launched in March 2006, by February 2007, it did more than $20,000 in ad revenue. So 11 months later, the whole year of 2007, I did almost 30 million visitors.

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Talking about makeup and hair and celebrities.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Makeup, hair, celebrities. I wrote a review for this lush lipstick. I'll never forget this. I wrote a makeup review for lush purse. I wrote this review. I didn't even own lush lipstick.

• 10:23Lewis Howes?

  Were you testing it out yourself?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was actually slapping on a little rouge in the bathroom.

• 10:28Lewis Howes?

  It's Mel Gibson up in here.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yep, exactly. But no, I actually just Googled other people's reviews and I kind of synthesized those reviews into an article.

• 10:37Lewis Howes?

  Ah, so you're just like a copycat, but then wrote it better.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't copy them. I quoted them. It's like, oh, so and so based out of Oklahoma said X, Y, and Z. I just turned it into an article.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. And you built, how much traffic, 3 million a month? Is that what you said?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  No, I did 30 million visits in 2007. So 30 million. There's one month did 6 million, other month did 3 million.

• 11:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay, now, and you were, were building a pretty profitable blog off that. You started to make a lot of money off it. You had writers, full-time writers, correct? You had a whole staff.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Well, I had freelance writers, not full-time, like they weren't full-time employees, but I were paying them per article. Because I realized over the course of the years, like, how many lipstick reviews can I honestly write? Right? I, you know, I don't wear lipstick. I don't wear dresses. I wore a dress once in college, but I wasn't really in the position to express review.

• 11:30Lewis Howes?

  It's Halloween.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  It was Halloween. Yeah, exactly.

• 11:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you created this site, we were getting all these content created, you were writing reviews, you're writing articles, gossip. Now, how did you get traffic? How did you get all that 30 million views in a year? How'd you do that?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  So that's a good question. Back then, I focused on three different ways of getting traffic. The first way, I wanted to get my website featured on websites that had the ability to send me traffic. And I know that sounds really simple, and it sounds like, well, how'd you do it? But that was one of my main strategies. I wanted to get featured on like the tabloid websites, I wanted to get featured on other blogs, and I did everything that I could to try and get featured on those websites. I would reach out to people who owned those websites and build my network. I know you're a networker, so you know all about this. I'd build my, I'd build my network with the right people to get featured on other websites. I would also try to break news, or if I wasn't gonna break news,

• 12:32Speaker 02

  I would try to be the first synthesis of news. What do I mean by that? You might remember that time when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift during those awards. Remember that?

• 12:43Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  So what did I do? Everyone, every article on earth was talking about how Kanye interrupted Taylor. And I'm, I took a step back, I was like, alright, Kanye interrupted Taylor, this is hot news right now. What can I do so I can get featured? And at that point, Twitter was kind of new. So I wrote an article about what celebrities on Twitter think about Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift.

• 13:09Lewis Howes?

  Uh, genius.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And I synthesized that, and that article went viral, right? So that was an example. So that was a way to create the content first, and then figure out how to get the hook, and then I would promote it, and I would try and get that featured other places. That was one of the main ways I got traffic. The second way I got traffic was SEO. At that point, search engine optimization in 2007 was a much different beast than it is right now, it was much easier back then. So I would focus on doing that to get rankings. And I kinda did some things back then I wasn't really proud of, like it wasn't necessarily what they call white hat SEO, it was more gray hat, which is more of stuff you're not really supposed to be doing.

• 13:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  But I'm a reformed person, I don't do that stuff anymore.

• 13:52Lewis Howes?

  And that's why you don't get as much traffic anymore.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Well, maybe.

• 13:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that was the second thing you did. What was the third thing you did?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  At that point, it's like I had a super successful website. By the end of 2007, I did the only logical thing.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  I quit and I got a job in corporate America.

• 14:13Lewis Howes?

  Now, why did you do that? There are some personal reasons you did that, correct?

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, some personal reasons, but also it just got down to the bottom line was here I was writing celebrity gossip, women's fashion, makeup, and I hated all of it. So it's like you could only really work on stuff that you hate for so long before you have to quit.

• 14:33Lewis Howes?

  You were making good money, but you just weren't fulfilled.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, actually, the job that I got, my, my starting salary was like 50 grand a year. And at that point, I was doing that like every couple of months on the internet. So it's like I had no reason to get a job. Like, it wasn't like I needed money as I did it because I had to get the hell out of what I was doing.

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. And there were some other reasons. You wanted some structure. You wanted some balance, all sorts of stuff, right?

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Exactly. I mean, I was 22. I graduated college with more money than I knew what to do with. And what did I do as a new college graduate that partied all the time? I partied all the time.

• 15:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. You needed to have some excuse to get up early as opposed to sleep until two. And you made a lot of money through poker, but you also made some money through another game. Isn't that right?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, that's funny you bring that up. In 2007, there's a, there's a card game, like a, a real nerd card game.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  And this card game was, wasn't like a poker game. It was like a collectible card game. So it really is nerdy as it comes. And they had this thing where if you won the tournament on Saturday, you would win some money. And you got to stay on this tour bus for a week. Where you would go to the next tournament where you can win some money. And at that point, I remember I won the first week. The second week I didn't win it, but my friend won it and they were able to bring me on the bus. The third week I stayed on the bus. The fourth week it was all in this one Indianapolis at a conference called Gen Con, which is like nerd paradise for card games. And I won the tournament again there, so I got to live on the bus again.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  I was on this bus for like six weeks in the end. Where I was just hanging out on the bus, playing card games and making money and travel the United States. I probably went to like 40 states or something stupid like that.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Now, what did you learn about psychology with that game compared to playing poker?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Now, I realized that when you're playing games, when you're living life, there's this idea of what you have and what people think you have, right?

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  Just like in poker.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Just like in poker. And I started to realize that once you can master the perception of what you have, it's actually better than actually having it. And a perfect example is if you know someone, you know, for anyone who might be listening, but if you know someone that is an expert at what they do, a real expert, just because they're an expert doesn't mean people respect them as an expert and want to pay them money.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't mean they have money.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Doesn't mean they have money. And it's because being perceived as an expert is probably just as important as being an expert. Right? So I learned that from card games, that having cards was not nearly as important as letting people think that you had cards. Good cards that would beat them, basically. And I kind of let that happen and bleed through in all of my entrepreneurial endeavors, where not only am I trying to be the best at what I do, I'm trying to make sure that people know that I am the best at what I do. And the quote that really nails that home comes from Rockefeller. He's like, this is John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  He said, "Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let everyone know you're doing the right thing." And I kind of live by that phrase.

• 18:18Lewis Howes?

  Now, can you do the wrong thing, but convince people that you're doing the right thing?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  For the short term.

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, but eventually it will come up.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  The world has a funny way of exposing frauds, especially in the days of internet.

• 18:34Lewis Howes?

  That is true.

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  Very true. Okay, so you learned some interesting things from poker, from this card game, traveling around the country, and from your own blog, your gossip blog, about what you have and what people think you have. Is that how you say it, or how did you say it specifically?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so being an expert or being perceived as an expert, or basically managing perception.

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  Managing perception. And would you say that is the key to building an online business and generating sales and traffic is managing perception, or is there something else?

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Oh, it's definitely part of it. I mean, if you're getting into the business of building, let's say, a blog, you want to start a blog? You have to give people a reason to read your blog. And that reason has less to do with how good you are and more to do with how good people think you are. So even down to when I launched Social Triggers in March of 2011, and I grew Social Triggers fast. I knew that if I was going to get in the expert space, the space where I was going to share my advice with people, people would have to view me as an expert first, right? So what did I do? I engineered perception. I actually knew what I was talking about, so I wasn't making anything up. I really was good at what I did. But I engineered perception by

• 19:55Speaker 02

  finding people that I personally knew that people respected, like people who are already experts in the eyes of the public.

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  And I had them interview me for advice about conversions. Now, think about that for a second. I had an expert that people respected interview me for my advice on conversions. What does that mean? That means if this person who people respect is asking me for advice, I must be an expert too.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  You see how you could kind of stack the perception of expert? Mind you, I really did know what to do when it came to conversions. However, I made sure to make, to put my expertise in line with the perception of my expertise. So I wasn't overlooked.

• 20:42Lewis Howes?

  Right. I mean, you could trick people for a sure term, but you've really got to be an expert at something. You got to at least know more than the average person and what you're talking about. And then, you know, you'll be able to build that perception, but if you're just faking it, it may be a little trickier.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 20:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Very interesting. So. It's all about perception is part of it and understanding what makes people tick. And on your site, you talk about turning random traffic into loyal subscribers, persuading people to buy products and encouraging people to share your content and website. And I think that's kind of like the, the three things that people really want the most. They want qualified leads. They want people to buy products or buy what you have, your services, your software. And they want you to share your information. They want you to promote it for you.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  And if every site could achieve that, those three things, then you could build a, a pretty successful business. If you knew what you were talking about, if you're an expert or had content worthy or product or service worthy of solving a problem for someone.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 21:45Lewis Howes?

  And all of your content talks about basically those three things in some fashion.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  And let's get into a little bit. Let's talk about why are some blogs that get traffic, lots of traffic? Let's say you got a lot of traffic. How come some of them don't make money?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  So how come, so just because you have traffic doesn't mean you're going to make money, right? Just because you have people visiting your website doesn't mean it's going to earn revenue because there's two types of visitors. There are people that are going to buy what you sell and there's people who are not going to buy what you sell. And as a perfect example. At Social Triggers, for months, I ranked in the top like five articles on Google search for the term "white iPhone." This sent me a ton of traffic. White iPhones sent me a ton of traffic. But guess what? That traffic did not convert worth anything. And the reason why it didn't convert is because they were looking for white iPhones,

• 22:47Speaker 02

  and I'm talking about marketing psychology. So, you can have the traffic, but it could be the wrong traffic. That's one example. That's what you call untargeted traffic. But then, on the other example, is...I always think about this...I had a conversation with a lawyer a couple of years ago, and he's telling me, he's like, "Derek, you know, I've been running my blog, and it's really doing nothing for my business. I'm getting visitors, but it's not growing my lawyer business. What the hell?" And I'm like, "All right, let me, you know, pull up your blog. Let me take a look." And I'm looking at his blog, and it's like the new art...it's like this article's like, "Oh, new legal change to, you know, whatever the hell legal term it is that he said. New legal change this, and then new law implicates this."

• 23:31Speaker 02

  And I'm like, "Hey, man, can I ask you a question? Who reads your blog? Lawyers?" He goes, "Yeah, I have a lot of lawyers reading my blog." I was like, "Yeah, because you're writing content that is attracting your colleagues. You're not writing con...not your customers, right?" Exactly. So if you have untargeted traffic that comes from white iPhone, that's never going to convert into sales for you. On the other hand, you could be writing something that attracts colleagues, not customers. Another good example is a photographer that writes an article about how to take the perfect picture. If people are Googling how to take pictures, they're not trying to hire photographers. You see what I'm saying? They're trying to be...they're trying to learn how to take pictures themselves. So that's the other mistake. You can have traffic of colleagues that won't convert to sales.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  You can have traffic that's untargeted that won't convert to sales. The sweet spot, as you said, is writing content that attracts potential customers. And then, people always ask, "How do you do that?" And let's use the photographer example. What if you wrote an article that said, what shooting more than 100 weddings taught me about good wedding food? Now you've got someone who's looking for wedding food through the, and they're going to find this article about wedding food and they're going to see that here's this photographer who shot more than 100 weddings talking about wedding food. Wait a second, I'm Googling wedding food right now, but I also need a photographer. Let me, let me check him out.

• 24:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Customers.

• 24:55Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Now, here's the thing. There's a lot of people that we both know who are experts, who have good content, who are credible, who've been knowledgeable for years, have great case studies, all these things. And they have the traffic, but they don't have any sales, or they have very little sales. And they're always asking, you know, you, how do I increase my sales? I get, you know, I have 10,000 people coming a month or 20,000 people coming a month and it's more of an expertise, business, coaching type of a website or something where they're offering a service. And they've got the right audience, but they are not getting any sales. What's up with that? And how can someone like that increase sales?

• 25:40Speaker 02

  So if you're in a situation where you have the right people visiting your site and you're still not selling, it means you have to learn how to sell. There's a lot of people out there that have this, this belief that their product is going to sell itself. And guess what? Unless you're making Apple products, it's not going to sell itself. Everybody's got to sell it. And if you're in that situation, you should learn how to be someone who can sell. Now, I always give this one quote because there's a lot of people out there that have visitors that do not sell well, and it's usually solved by one simple sentence.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  And I tell them, I don't sell that often, but when I do, I sell hard. And I say this because a lot of people who aren't selling well, that have audiences are not really selling at all. They're writing a blog post and doing PS, hey guys, I have a customer, I have an opening for a client. They're not actually writing an article that sells their services. They're doing it as an afterthought or as a PS, or they're waiting for people to reach out to them. Because they're scared of selling, they're scared that people are going to judge them. They're scared that selling is going to make them look smarmy. But if you truly believe in what you do, and you believe in your product, as we talked about.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  The trick is, don't sell often, but when you do sell, sell hard.

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  I love that quote, that's great.

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  Now, what's often and what is there too hard?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Well, often is when the customers stop buying. And too hard is when the customers stop buying.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I actually did a test where I did a sequence where I was like, oh, let me try three emails, five emails, and seven emails. I found that the seven emails sold more than the three emails. But in all scenarios, right, three, five, and seven emails. If it started with, let's say, just 10,000 people, 10,000 people, and 10,000 people. I lost 2% of my subscriber base in all situations. Didn't matter how many times I emailed them for the sale, I lost 2% of the total, no matter what.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  So, more emails meant more sales and the same amount of unsubscribes. So why not do that?

• 28:00Lewis Howes?

  So sell hard.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Sell hard, baby.

• 28:02Lewis Howes?

  Don't always sell often, but sell hard what you do. I like it.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 28:05Lewis Howes?

  Nice. Okay, so how do people learn how to sell then? It's really marketing and sales combined, I think. But how does someone learn how to sell? And I know you've got a course coming out about sales at some point, I believe. I don't know if that's public yet, but you're an expert at sales and effective selling. So what are some things people can do to learn how to be a better salesman online?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So first thing to do is to one, get out of your own way. And realize that you do have to sell your products. All right, you could have the best product in the world and you gotta sell it. So that's a first step is understanding that you have to sell your stuff. Doesn't mean you have to be sleazy, it just means that you have to sell. The second thing you can do after you realize that you have to sell is study some of the best salespeople. And by studying some of the best salespeople, I suggest you look at some of these sales books that talk about sleazy sales tactics. And the reason why I say to look at the sleazy sales tactics is not because I want you to use them,

• 29:12Speaker 02

  but because I want you to find your line that you will not cross in your selling. Once you know the line, where that line is that you will not cross, then you can sit back and think, all right, I'm not gonna cross that line, but I'm comfortable with this. And once you know what you're comfortable with, now you can start to understand how to start crafting sequences. And to learn how to craft those sequences, I always suggest you should study psychology or understand what makes people take action, what, understand what makes people not take action. Know that, the rest kind of falls into place.

• 29:48Lewis Howes?

  One book or resource that you would recommend to teach people the best about psychology or what gets people to take action?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  I hate that question.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Well, I was thinking, well, if someone wanted to get started, get started. And they're like, all right, I'm just gonna start with one thing. Would you recommend Influence or would you recommend something else?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you're gonna just start with one book about selling, I wouldn't recommend, I would recommend a book called Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joseph Sugarman. This is a book about how to write words that sell. It's about copywriting. And I suggest this book over a traditional psychology book because I imagine a lot of people here might be running websites. A lot of people might be trying to write words that get, you know, that get results. And if that's the case, a book like Advertising Secrets of the Written Word is a good first start for those people.

• 30:49Lewis Howes?

  Nice. Okay, I like it. Now...

• 30:55Lewis Howes?

  So we're going to get people to learn how to sell and marketing and which is going to help persuade people to buy your products. Now, what's going to get people to encourage others to share their content and their website? What does that take?

• 31:09Speaker 02

  It's actually funny that you ask that because a lot of people try to overthink this, but in my experience, if you want someone to share your stuff and you want it to start working right now, ask them to share it. And it's funny because it's like, really, ask them to share it. That's all you gotta do. Yes, there's other advanced stuff that you can leverage to try and get people to share it, but step one is ask people to share your stuff. Let me give you an example. A lot of people say, if you do a video, let's say, I did a video about dumb pricing mistakes on social triggers, talking about the psychology of pricing. At the end of it, I could have said, hey, if you like this video, tweet

• 31:54Speaker 02

  it out. No, that's not asking for, that's not asking for a share. Twitter doesn't send traffic. What I mean by asking people to share it, I mean sending them a targeted call to action, asking them to share it. And what I did with that video, the pricing mistakes video, I said very clearly, all right, do you have a friend that's making this same pricing mistake? I just showed you how to fix it. Why don't you help your friend out by sending them this video? Now, here's what's key about this. I had them think about a friend of theirs first. And let's say a name, John makes this mistake. At this point, once I had them think about their friend, they say, John makes this mistake. If he doesn't

• 32:39Speaker 02

  send it to John, he's going to feel guilty.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  So I make them think of who to share it to first and then ask them to share it.

• 32:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So you almost tell them to don't think of a pink elephant and then they start thinking of it. And then you tell them to do something with it.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. You're just adding psychology all over the place. I love it.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do that even like you'll see my Facebook updates sometimes.

• 33:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  I'll be like, I wrote that same article, that same video about the dumb pricing mistake. That pricing video applies to information marketers, that video applies to services, service of entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, that pricing video applies to everybody. I did a Facebook update that, and I said, there's a big mistake freelancers make when they price their services.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  And what happened? People saw that Facebook update and sent that video to their freelancer friends. Another article, I said, the other day I walked into a spa and I realized that small businesses know nothing about email marketing. In reality, the article's about email marketing for small business. But I said, the other day I walked into a spa and I realized they know nothing. At that point, people saw it like, oh, my friend Mary's a massage therapist and then sent that to her. I basically make them think about who to send it to before asking them to send it.

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 34:03Lewis Howes?

  Now let's dive into leads.

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  For me, quality leads is the most powerful part of having an online business or having a website without an opportunity to collect information, leads from people. Then really, it's a lot harder to sell, in my mind. Or I would just say it's a lot easier to sell when you do have leads.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  So what are some strategies, maybe just share a few, on how to increase leads? Maybe you're only getting a couple a day right now, five to 10, maybe. What are some ways to double, triple that in the next month? And then continue to increase it?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. I always tell this one expression. If you write an article, let's say you do a podcast. And that podcast gets 100,000 downloads, right? Good podcast.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Do you know what that means to me? When you get a podcast that does 100,000 downloads?

• 34:57Lewis Howes?

  It means nothing.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  No, it does mean something. But it means that there's probably 2 million more people in the world that could download that same podcast. So why create another podcast? Why keep creating more content? When you've already got content that has potential readership? So I always tell people, if you want to increase your lead gen, stop putting content on your own website. Because yeah, you're gonna put content there. You're gonna get 10,000 downloads, 10,000 downloads, 10,000 downloads. And you're gonna incrementally increase your traffic, right? You get 10,000 downloads this week. 10,100 downloads next week. 10,200 downloads next week. And you're gonna slowly grow. Great. I don't know about you, I hate slow growth. Okay? So instead of doing this slow growth,

• 35:43Speaker 02

  where you're just creating your way into success, which is okay. I think if you're doing 10,000 downloads, before you create another podcast that will do 10,100 downloads, try to get that one podcast in the hands of more people and get that podcast 20,000 downloads. Because that's how you can have this huge jump in readership. That's why I did Social Triggers. For the first 13 months of Social Triggers, I updated my blog 2.5 times per month. Not even once a week. 2.5, 3 times per month. And I got my first 26,778 subscribers in the first 13 months by getting the content that I had already created into the hands of more people. It's not about creation, it's about promotion. So if you want to get more leads,

• 36:28Speaker 02

  promote what you've already got to people who haven't heard of it yet.

• 36:32Lewis Howes?

  So where are some places that you can promote?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yes. So the best way to get people to your website is to find people who have the audience you want to reach and convince them to send you some of that audience.

• 36:46Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  You can, you can do this through networking, like we talked about earlier.

• 36:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  You could also do this by writing an article that you think they would appreciate. As an example of this, uh, I wrote an article called "The Content Is King Myth Debunked." There was an article that talked about how design is king, based on some research out of the University of London. So what did I do? I reached out to web designers, cause I knew web designers would love this article. If I found an article that's saying design is king, web designers would love it. So I would reach out to every web designer I could find, saying, "Hey, you're right. I found an article that said design is king. Check it out."

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Or, "I found an article that said design is king. If you want me to forward you over the research, it's based out of a university in London. I will, I'll send it to you if you want, let me know." And every web designer said yes, because who doesn't like to be told that they're doing the right thing? And I was able to email that article to all these different people. And at that point, Social Triggers was a brand new blog, I did thirty thousand visitors to that article.

• 37:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Cause you wrote, cause it was "The Content Is King Debunked," right? Or what did you say it was?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Myth debunked. The article is just about how design, basically if you Google "The Content Is King Myth Debunked," that's the article, but the article is about design is king.

• 38:05Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, that makes sense. Wow, so you got thirty thousand hits from that article, is that what you said in that month?

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I reached out to web designers, cause I knew web designers would like that article.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  And they were sharing it, they were promoting it, they were doing whatever.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  That's how you do it.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  So it takes some time and some energy, you gotta put some grit into this, and you gotta contact people, you gotta research, you gotta reach out, you gotta build the relationships, but that's the secret sauce.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  But know that the best part about that secret sauce?

• 38:33Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Is everybody knows the recipe and nobody does it.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Everyone wants the simple software that's gonna get them traffic.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no push button, anything, I mean, I've never built a website. Even when I first started, I didn't push no, I, I tried that game, like, you know, I was like, I was a newbie, so I was trying that push button stuff, and it never worked. It always worked where if I got other people to send me visitors, it worked a lot better.

• 38:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. And what about guest posting? What do you think about that?

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Eh, I've never been a fan of guest posting because...

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Back five, six years ago, when nobody was guest posting, it was a, it was a good way to build your blog. However, nowadays, everybody does it. So people have become blind to guest posts. I'd much rather have someone write an article and say, "Go visit my article," than me write an article for them. Because if I write an article for someone else, I'm not the center of attention. The article is the center of attention. And you want to be the center of attention to get traffic.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  So you want to get featured on other sites.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:35Lewis Howes?

  Written about you, but not writing the articles.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  That's great. That's great. Now, what's next for you then? You've mastered creating the right amount of content. You've mastered promoting content so that it gets shared to the most amount of people. You've mastered getting sales, marketing, persuasion, uh, having something, and building the perception of what you actually do have. So what's next for you?

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Dude, I am pumped to announce that I'm about to do my last speaking engagement for 2013.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  And I'm probably not going to speak that much anymore. Like, I was speaking a ton over the course of two and a half years, and I'm quitting speaking. I might do one or two speaking engagements a year. And the reason why is because I want to be able to refocus on everything we just talked about. Managing perceptions, creating content, promoting content. Because I feel like if I put all my effort in all of that that we just talked about, I'm going to be able to take social triggers from my 130,000 subscribers to 500,000 subscribers. And if I do that, that means I'm helping more people.

• 40:48Lewis Howes?

  So what do you think it's going to take for you to get,

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  uh, four times more subscribers, or five times more subscribers in the next couple of years? What's, just the same thing of everything you've been talking about?

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, just keep, I'm just going to keep doing what I say, create content and promote that content.

• 41:03Lewis Howes?

  That's it. Simple.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  Simple. Why do people complicate it?

• 41:07Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. It's like, it's almost never as complicated as people want it to be. And it's actually easier than you think it is if you just realize that it's easier than you think it is.

• 41:18Lewis Howes?

  Now, what do you think is going to be the trend going into 2014 for building an online business? Do you feel like people are going to be creating more of their own products? Do you feel like affiliate marketing is going to be big? Do you feel like it's software game, service world? What do you think is going to be happening, the app game? What's going to happen?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  It's not about, so I don't predict the future. I don't believe in trying to predict where the market's going, but I will say this. For hundreds of years, commerce has been based off of one simple thing. If you could sell something that solves someone's problem, you will be profitable. So whether it's with an app, whether it's software, whether it's information, whether it's a blog, doesn't matter what you're doing, as long as you're solving someone's problem, a real problem, not a problem you think people have, but a problem that people really have, there'll be no way you'll fail at what you're doing.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  What do you think are the main problems people have? That people could...

• 42:13Speaker 02

  They want... overwhelmed. So people are overwhelmed, so they need more time, they need to be more organized. People need more money. People want to be happier. People want to be fitter and healthier. People want to live longer. People want to have love and relationships. This is like the universal desires of humans. If you can tap in your business into a universal desire, there's no way to fail, essentially, right? I mean, there's a lot of people out there that are like, "Oh, I'm going to create this great product. It's going to, it's going to help you type with one hand while standing on two feet upside down," or something like that. It's like, well, nobody wants to do that, right?

• 42:52Speaker 02

  The best way to make a business is to satisfy a demand that already exists, not to try and create the demand for something that doesn't exist. So as long as you're solving a problem that people actually want to solve, there's no way you can fail.

• 43:09Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that.

• 43:13Lewis Howes?

  I liked that a lot. What's in store for you next year then with product wise?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Well, I currently have one flagship course called Blog That Converges. You mentioned that and that's, I mean, that's been going great more than, uh, I think I'm at more than 1,400 students now in the last year or so, year and a half. Uh, the next goal is to just continue to create high-quality, great products that solve people's problems. And I'm hoping to launch at least a handful more next year.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  Now, we used to talk a few years ago that you despised educational courses or info products online and now you're creating a handful of these. Why did that change for you?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I'll tell you why. I, it's not that I despised information products. It's that I personally never learned from information products. As you know, and as I know, I mean, I do a lot. I, I read more books every week than most people read, you know, every year. So I read a lot. I, I, I learn, my learning.

• 44:17Lewis Howes?

  Your library is huge and you have books every, all the time.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my, I learned from books. I learned from books and then experimenting on, on my own businesses and stuff. That's how I learned. So I never understood why anyone would learn from an information product. It didn't make sense to me because I wasn't that person. However, you were one of the people that helped me realize that I am not my market, right? My market doesn't read three books every week. My market doesn't have the time to read three books and then experiment with everything you learn in the books to figure out what works. My market is trying to save time and grow their business. Keeping that in mind, they want to buy information that

• 45:01Speaker 02

  one comes from my own personal experience, but also information that I synthesized. So they don't have to dig through the crap. They just find what works. So I disliked information marketing originally because I wasn't the type of person who bought information.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  However, now I see the benefit. It's because you're buying information that is synthesized by someone else. So you don't have to dig through the crap. And actually now, I have since realized that I sometimes buy information products. If I think they're solving a problem that I want, but I wasn't always that way. That's the bottom line and you helped me realize that.

• 45:37Lewis Howes?

  Right. It's interesting. Yeah, you know, I don't really read many books. I'd rather just ask you what it tells me, but I still buy them. And I'll still like get them just because, you know, I want to buy, I want to read it, but I never read it. Cause it seems like too much work. And, uh, but we consume information in different ways. So a book is an information product in my mind.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  It is.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  It's a physical information product and we just create different products that are online, that are digital. Video based and, and, and written online, but you can also package it up in physical DVD or a physical book. So it's basically the same thing as reading a book, but it's, uh, laid out differently and delivered differently. So.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  I'm grateful that you've seen the light and, uh, it's been a benefit to you, right?

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Things are great.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  Now, people that have a service, do you think that's, uh, not wise on their part? Do you feel like they should be turning that service into a product so that they can leverage their time? As opposed to trading time for dollars?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think if you have a service-based business, I think it works. Honestly, I mean, I could see the allure for creating an information product because you're not trading time for money, as they would say. But if you have a service-based business, you could build a very big substantial business. Doing services. You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna crap on service-based business. I think that's a great way to make money. I personally don't do services because it's just not my preferred way of doing it, but I do know some people that have service-based businesses. That are doing multiple seven figures a year, doing multiple service-based businesses.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Nice. I love it, man. I feel like I could talk all day with you. Um, and I'm grateful that. I get to, whenever I go to New York City, I get to hang out with Derek all the time and pick his brain about the latest 20 books he's read. So. We're gonna have to bring you back on sometime soon, specifically when you launch your next product. So you can talk more about the inside. Triggers or whatever that product is. But in the meantime, I want to finish with, uh, the last question, which I ask everyone, and it's, what is your definition of greatness?

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Being the best.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  Boom.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  That's, that's it.

• 47:54Lewis Howes?

  Being the best. There you go. So where can we find you online, Derek?

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Uh, you can find me at socialtriggers.com.

• 48:05Lewis Howes?

  Socialtriggers.com and at Derek Halpern everywhere else, right?

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's socialtriggers.com, at Derek Halpern on Twitter, or the Social Triggers Insider Podcast on iTunes.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, make sure to subscribe to that podcast because he brings on a lot of really smart people, mostly, what'd you say, mostly professors, researchers, psychologists, things like that, who have really

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  done the research, scientists, people that are like deep into this information, and then Derek breaks it down for you and brings it into practical terms on how to leverage it for your business, for your life, and really how to make money online. So definitely check it out. Derek's like the bridge between the brains in the world and everyone else who just wants to make money online. And he's extremely smart and intelligent in how he breaks it down. All of his articles on his site, Social Triggers, get like 7,000 comments each. It's unbelievable. I don't know how he gets that much engagement, but somehow he does it. And it's extremely inspiring content, useful content, and if you apply it, you will get results. That's the key.

• 49:13Lewis Howes?

  So it's one thing to just read it. The other thing is to apply it to your own business and to your own needs. So I encourage you all to check out the podcast, Social Triggers Insider. Also check out socialtriggers.com, blog that converts. If you want to learn how to build a profitable blog, go ahead and check that out. I'm sure there's somewhere on your site that they can search and find it, or if they just check out blog that converts on Google, they'll find that. And also just get on Derek's list. He's, uh, you know, there's only a few people's emails that I actually read. Derek is one of them, and he's always got useful content, great videos that are hilarious on his YouTube channel. I believe that's every couple of weeks you come out with a video. And, um, he's just an awesome guy.

• 49:57Lewis Howes?

  He's got a great personality as well. If you want to laugh, watch his videos. So with that, Derek, I appreciate you, brother.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks, bro.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  And there you have it, my man Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com. Big ups to him and thanks to him for coming on the School of Greatness today. Again, go ahead over to the show notes at SchoolOfGreatness.com to learn more about Derek. Check him out over at SocialTriggers.com as well. And he's all over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You can check out him with his little fluffy white dog on Instagram, the pictures he posts on there. So, check him out, subscribe to his site, and anything that he says, I pretty much follow because it works. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Boom! You guys know what time it is? It's time to go out there and make sure to do something great.