30. From Amateur Bodybuilder to Entrepreneur with Tom Jackobs

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:00]Welcome to the marketing stack podcast. My name is Burhaan and this on thispodcast, we talk about all things, marketing, all things digital. And intoday's episode, I'm talking to Tom Jackobs. Who's got a very interestingbackstory and we'll get into that in the episode. He hails from the fitnessindustry where he actually competed as a professional bodybuilder. Is thatcorrect Tom?

Tom Jackobs: [00:00:22]Hmm, not professional, but I did do a competition

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:27]competitive by

Tom Jackobs: [00:00:28]amateur amateur competition. Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:29]Amateur competitive bodybuilding. And, has since transitioned into digitalmarketing. all things electronic so that he could build a remote, locationindependent business, and he's done some fancy stuff with Uber and like rentinghis car out in the US and all the rest of it.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:49]He now lives in Taiwan with, a lot of Taiwanese people. And, welcome to theepisode Tom.

]Tom Jackobs: [00:00:54]Thanks for having me glad to be here.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:56]you and I we've got a funny history because we met randomly, I think, on aFacebook group,  that was hosted by a, ,common client. When you arrived or when you were coming to Bangkok, I messagedyou and said, Hey, let's meet up. Like, let's just get together. And that waslike several years

Tom Jackobs: [00:01:15]a burger.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:01:17]Yeah,

Tom Jackobs: [00:01:18]right? Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:01:18]We had coffee or something, and that was three years ago. And believe it ornot, you are the only client that I have met in person out of the 110 or 120clients that have met or work in the last six years.

Tom Jackobs: [00:01:33]That is amazing. Yeah. and that's pretty true for me right now as well. It'slike, I haven't met any of my clients, my current clients face-to-face.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:01:42]Yeah. I remember when you came to Bangkok, you did this digital nomadexperience where you recorded and interviewed a whole bunch of, digital nomads,I guess you were doing research for yourself on how to actually do the thing. Sotell me a little bit of the backstory, how you got here, how you ended up inTaiwan, and then we'll get into some of the marketing stuff.

Tom Jackobs: [00:02:01]Yeah. Okay, cool.  And then if you wantto link that, YouTube experience, that's available on YouTube so people cancheck that out. I think there's what six episodes of, 11 different nomads thatI can had interviews with.

Tom Jackobs: [00:02:15]And of course you were one of them and that was, it was really great experiencejust to,  That was my second kind ofnomad experience coming to Bangkok. My first one was in Mexico City for 30 daysand yeah, and that was kind of the tip, the toe in the water because Mexicocity is a two hour flight from Houston.

Tom Jackobs: [00:02:35]So it wasn't like I was going to too far away. And then I jumped off the deepend and went to Bangkok for.  Close toeight weeks. So, to Thailand for eight weeks. But yeah, I spent a couple ofweeks in Chiang Mai and a couple weeks in, Phuket as well. But, Bangkok wasdefinitely a good experience as well, and, liked to have gone back.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:02:59]Oh yeah,

Tom Jackobs: [00:02:59]Except for the COVID deal, but as things happen, but I, you know, you said thatI came out of the fitness industry and that's. That was really my big, my bigbusiness that really took off. I always had side hustles and side gigs when Iwas working for,  the corporate,  corporate stuff, right out of university.

Tom Jackobs: [00:03:22]And, but once I started the fitness , business, and that was about 15 years ago, I just fell in love with it and I decided to quit my day job and I never beenwithout like that safety net of of, you know, a salary, consistent salary. Andthat was my first time. And I, I almost went broke in the first six months.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:47]As you do as a, as a newly born entrepreneur.

Tom Jackobs: [00:03:51]Right? Well, but see, that was the kind of the conundrum in my head is becauseI wasn't really newly born. I'd been doing all these other side hustles and I'dhad businesses before, but none that relied 100% on me to produce a result. Andwhat I learned from that, it was that sales is what makes every business tick.Yeah. If you don't make a sale, you don't have a business. And I mean, you cando all the marketing in the world, but if you can't sell the people that arecoming to you, it's, it's going failed.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:04:30]And you're going to have the best product in the world too, but if you're notable to get it out into market, to let people know about it, it's not going torun at all.

Tom Jackobs: [00:04:37]So I, I quickly learned how to sell, and that was the turning point in, I thinkthe turning point in my life. And from that moment on.  You know, sales become very, very importantand kind of the self-study,  ofeverything sales. And so that's kind of the basis of what I do now iseverything comes back to conversions.

Tom Jackobs: [00:05:01]It's how do we convert to that next step, to the next step, to the next step?And that's that sales, this is kind of the sales process.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:05:09]Yeah. And, and to translate that into sort of the digital world it's, soeverybody's, especially today, everybody's so focused on growing an audienceand getting followers and getting subscribers, but the only result that reallymatters, the only thing that pays off that helps pay off all the effort is theselling, the conversions.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:05:30]The thing that people do once. They follow once they subscribe to actually buy something.You meant, you mentioned something, something interesting. There was, you know,like in, in learning about the fitness industry and I've done my own researchand try to do the whole exercise, like full body building thing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:05:49]I wasn't successful because I hurt myself. But what I learned in the researchis that there's a very close connection. Or correlation between sort ofhustling yourself or working yourself to death to get your body into peakphysical shape and building a business. So do you wanna, do you wanna talk alittle bit about that?

Tom Jackobs: [00:06:11]Yeah, I'd never really thought about it, but you're absolutely right. There isa very strong correlation between the two , Especially for the, for thebodybuilding.  That was , a challengethat I wanted to put myself through because I had clients and I wanted to do acomplete body transformation, kind of to the extreme in terms of, you know,doing a bodybuilding competition.

Tom Jackobs: [00:06:33]And that is a 24 hour a day, seven day a week, process because you're, you have to really, have to pay attention towhat you're eating. The exercise piece, you know, is about an hour, a day, tobe quite honest, it wasn't a lot of exercise, but the other 23 hours of theday, I was really focused on the food or not the food in some cases in betweenthe meals, because I was having to eat every two hours.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:07:01]Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: [00:07:02]And that's kind of when you correlate that to, business, as well as anentrepreneur and a leader of your business, it's a 24 hour day, seven day aweek deal, right? And people that have that employee mindset that tried to gointo a business, oftentimes fail because they're not thinking about thebusiness 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's not, and I'm not the one,not one to say, just go all in and hustle, hustle, hustle all the time, becauseyou know, I like, I like the time off as well, but there's, but it's always inthe back of your head, like, I'll be on vacation.

Tom Jackobs: [00:07:43]And enjoying myself, but I'm always thinking about kind of what's next. I thinkthat's just the, the entrepreneur , kind the chemistry that we have in ourbrains.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:07:52]Yeah. That's what they call the growth mindset. Apparently I learned that termthe other day.  And I think that thecorrelation, the connection there is the discipline, because if you're sort ofeating junk food sort of too many times a week, or even a couple of times aday, or whatever, the mental side or the other, you know, the commitment thatyou need to actually get into physical shape is similar to the, to the sort ofgrinding you're in your business or on your business to actually make itsuccessful. And that's, I think the, one of the reasons why a lot of businessesfail or why a lot of people don't actually get off the ground is because theyjust don't have that level of commitment.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:08:33]Not to say that it's required. Like there are a lot of businesses that arelucky, but , those are few and far between.

Tom Jackobs: [00:08:39]Yeah, but, and also, if you look at all the successful kind of top CEOs andbusiness owners out there, they all have a very specific exercise regimen inthere. I mean, they're all in shape.

Tom Jackobs: [00:08:55]You don't see an overweight, you know, entrepreneur. You know, leader of, ofmajor business. I mean like Jeff Bezos, Steve jobs, when he was alive, MarkZuckerberg, you mean they're all like in shape because there's a, again, it'sthat discipline. And they realize if I'm not taking care of me and my body,then I'm not going to be able to perform at my best.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:18]Right. And what the exercise also comes that mental. It's that mental shift,because when you're exercising, you need to be in state and ArnoldSchwartzenegger talks about this way in his books where he talks about, well,you're not thinking about sort of. All the other things in your life. If you'refocused on getting your body into shape, you're focusing on that next repbecause, you know, it's the next rep that's actually going to help you lose theweight or build that muscle or, or do the thing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:47]And I've watched tons of videos and interviews by him. Read, read some of hisbooks as well. He's a little bit of a hero in my, in my mind, just in terms ofhim being able to do what he's done in his life.  And yeah, like, like him or not, he's donesome amazing things with literally nothing, almost every time that he's gottengoing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:10:08]So let's, let's move into some of the, marketing stuff. Some of the some of thelearnings that you've seen just in terms of getting your business started, andwhat you're doing, what you're seeing out on the ground or on the inner wires,I guess in the wires,

Tom Jackobs: [00:10:25]sometimes on the ground, on the you know I've spent time in the Philippines andin Thailand and now in Taiwan, but it's, you know, in, in Bangkok, especiallyall the wires are just like this mess. Everywhere and people just tap into it.And that sometimes, you know, I took a picture of that one once and I posted itup on Facebook. I think it was like three years ago. And put the question is,does your business look like this?

Tom Jackobs: [00:10:57]Are there, or does your marketing funnel look like this? Where there's likeeverything it's kind of duct tape and bailing wire put together and for a lotof businesses, And, and, I've been guilty of it as well is you can have piecethings together to get it up and going as quickly as possible, but withoutreally doing the full thought process through it.

Tom Jackobs: [00:11:19]And there's, there's a balance there as well, because, you know, version noneis better than version or version one is better than version none. Freudianslip, but, so you have to get it out there, but at the same time, there has tobe a plan in place and can't be this whole it's jumbled mess. And when I'mlooking at marketing funnels and, how our service kind of dovetails into a lotof our clients, a lot of times there's just not this thought process that'sbeen put through in terms of, Oh, I didn't even think about that. Or it's, it'sbroken in like one little thing. Just kind of slipped it's breaks the entirefunnel,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:05]right? Yeah. And that's okay.

Tom Jackobs: [00:12:10]I was going to say, you know, people are relying so heavily on the automationand on the digital side of it, that they're also forgetting about the humanside of marketing as well.  

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:24]And, and it's so like, it's okay to be like in a sticky tape type of situationin the beginning.  But I think when itcomes to like optimizing and scaling a little bit, like scaling is kind of aninteresting word because it's like, you know, when I think of scaling, I'mthinking like $10 million business, like big, big numbers, but,  it's necessary because.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:47]Like you said the planning and the thought process, but it's really difficult,especially today because there's so many new tools, there's so many new, newthings that are coming out. And so many, like marketers trying to sell thesetools, and top of affiliates and it's like, Oh no, this tool does something alittle better than the other one.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:05]And then. You know, you have clients switching and then it's like, Oh wait,this thing, doesn't do this other thing that we wanted in the old thing did itand this new thing doesn't and it's like, ah, and so I see a lot of that too,instead of, you know, like focusing instead on what is the process. What is thesystem and what is the sales cycle, and then fitting the tools into that.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:31]As I think a lot of people today are focused on tools because the marketers whosell the tools are brilliant and they're very good at what they do. It's thesame as like selling chocolates, right? People want to lose weight, always getinto the chocolate binge or the, or the McDonald's at some point in time.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:47]I'm not saying everybody, but some people do. I know I'm guilty of that.

Tom Jackobs: [00:13:51]Yeah, because the marketing, which has been good for you watching me, you know,like absolutely the marketing, for sure. Like you're, you're absolutely right.Let's, let's fit the hammer to the nail or the nail to the hammer, you know?And it's  yeah, sometimes completelybackwards.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:14:09]Right, right. And it's because, like I said, a lot of people are selling theirsolution while it looks like the solution, but. In isolation, it might not fityour entire business. Like it might not work in the entire site sales cycle. Sothat's another thing that you mentioned is like the physical versus the digitalor the human versus the digital world while hopefully all humans online arehumans.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:14:35]Yes. Well, well, it's not going into the Jordan harbinger show where they weretalking about the Russian stories, but, the human side. And that's what you've done with your service. So, and Ithink this is what you're doing is almost like a lost art or it's , an artthat's slowly withering into the into Neverland if I can say. So

Tom Jackobs: [00:14:58]Like ether.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:14:59]Yeah.that's the words thank you. So tell me, tell me a little bit about thatand why, what you do is so unique and, and why it's, why it's like necessary.

Tom Jackobs: [00:15:11]Yeah, well, I mean, look, your digital marketing is great and has its place,but how many emails do you get today? And I gave you too many and most of themgo right into the bin.

Tom Jackobs: [00:15:23]I don't unsubscribe as much because every once in a while, I'll see a head, atitle or a subject line. That that catches my attention, which subject linesare supposed to do that. And I'm going to click on it and see kind of whatthat's all about. And oftentimes it takes me down a rabbit hole, buyingsomething at the end of it.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:42]Right.

Tom Jackobs: [00:15:44]That's fine. But what about all the other, the emails that, that same marketersent me that were trying to pitch their same service. You, I've been on somelists for a couple of years and never purchased anything from them. And, youknow, I might read a few things go, Oh, that seems interesting. But it just didn'tstrike me at the time.

Tom Jackobs: [00:16:05]And then maybe one day I see something and I'm like, Oh, that I could use thatright now. And then, boom, there's a purchase mate. But what if that samemarketer sees that I'm opening emails and kind of my, my, Interest level isstarting to go up a little bit and, and, you know, there's automation that cantell you all of that.

Tom Jackobs: [00:16:28]And all of a sudden, I get a phone call from them and saying, Oh, you know, wehave X and you know, I wanted to introduce myself, this is what we have. Wehave actually a special webinar coming up and we'd like to invite you to it. Imean, nobody's doing that

Burhaan Pattel: [00:16:45]right. Exhibit is doing phone calls. Well, they are, like I said, it's kind oflike a dying art and it's, there are people who do, there are telemarketers outthere. There are other businesses that do similar to what you do, but it's notas many as, we run your Facebook ads. So we'll, you know, take care of youremail campaigns. You know, it's, it's one of those things that people have, Ithink because of the effort involved in picking up the phone, And also becauseof the rejection that comes with that process, because it's like, you may onlyget two out of the hundred people you call actually answer the phone or, andyou obviously know more numbers than I do, but

Tom Jackobs: [00:17:28]25%,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:17:29]25% of people will answer the phone. Even though you have their real phonenumbers. And they opted in on the landing page, it's kind of like a lot ofbusiness owners and even their employees, if they have people working for them,Don't want to go through that cycle of like, Oh, am I going to get the 25today? And you know, cause there may be days where you hit zero, for days in arow and it's the same with advertising, except with advertising, you can kindof hide behind like, Oh, Facebook is doing its weird thing today.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:18:01]Like you have blame, but when, when you're calling people. It's you doing theaction or your people doing the action. So talk to me a little bit about thatand, and, and how, what you see.

Tom Jackobs: [00:18:12]Yeah, I mean, and that's, that's the value prop of what, what we do is we'retaking that off of their plate. And one of my clients really summed it upreally well. He's like, look, I have the staff that can, can make these phonecalls, but I don't want them to. Because the moment that they get a hang up orsomebody being abusive to them on the phone, now it goes throughout the office.Everybody gets all excited about this one phone call and then I have to getinvolved in the phone call.

Tom Jackobs: [00:18:45]I'm like, Oh my gosh, somebody is upset with us on the phone. We should notcall people anymore. It was like the value of me not even hearing about thatcrap is like, awesome.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:18:56]Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: [00:18:57]So you deal with it and deal with it however you want.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:19:00]Right. Let be

Tom Jackobs: [00:19:02]It's like a virus

Burhaan Pattel: [00:19:04]let your people get it and it we'll just be fine. And it comes down to what yousaid, what we spoke about earlier, about focusing on what is important whilethe calls are important. It's also the culture of the people, because yeah, ifyou're a business, if you see your business as an engine, as a machine, as asystem, as a producing thing, something that, you know, makes, makes good inthe world, then you have that negative. Negativity in the office, or even ifit's remote, like your remote team, it's very easy for us in a Slack thread toget completely sidetracked because of one little persons, one person's problem.

Tom Jackobs: [00:19:46]Yeah,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:19:47]and I think that's also comes down to just managing expectations and managingwhat's most important and giving out to outsourcing the bits that you know areneeded, but.  But you don't need to doyourself.

Tom Jackobs: [00:20:04]Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, and that's part of our businesses is conversionsand it's taking the human conversions. So we do like the webinar,  confirmation. So converting somebody that'sopted in for a webinar, converting them to somebody who shows up for thewebinar and having that live voice call, helps in that. And then converting that person who attended the webinarto actually book a discovery call. And then on the discovery call, which we'redoing sales as well, is converting that person to a paid, you know, as a lowbarrier offer.

Tom Jackobs: [00:20:37]So now our client can have a really good prospect. Who's paid a little bit ofmoney sitting in front of them, ready for the bigger package, right. And readyto go. And they've not done anything. They haven't spent any time doing it.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:20:52]I think one of the barriers for people also not doing the calls is because itcosts money. Right. So if you're paying five, $10 a lead on same from aFacebook ad, I hopefully you're not paying that much, but if you, if you arepaying a certain amount for a Facebook lead, then now adding the phone call,you think, Oh goodness, it's going to cost me like four or five, 10 bucks for aphone call. And then you're only going to hit 25% of them.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:21:17]And then only a couple of them are actually going to attend your webinar. Andonly a couple of them are actually going to book a discovery call. At theoutset, you may think, Oh, the numbers are not going to add up, but if you runthe process and you optimize and tweak things, it does, or it can

Tom Jackobs: [00:21:35]absolutely. Yeah. When you're consistent and persistent and that's, that's mylittle, little tagline. When I talked to the salespeople is you have to beconsistent and you have to be persistent. It's not a Pasch. Either or pesteither, but persistency and consistency with what you're doing and you will besuccessful because there's going to be down days are going to be up days. So ifyou're consistent throughout everything gets, gets leveled out.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:22:02]Right. And one of the things that you've taught me,  as a coach, as well is, is, is that, is thatprocess of like, well, these are the things you need to do daily, whether it'sexercise or whether it's eating or whether it's even business things. There aregoing to be some down days. They are going to be some challenges. They aregoing to be things that break like Zapier or whatever going right nuts, causeto, you know, tools do break.  And it'sjust the remembering the bigger picture and realizing that while it may costyou a lot of money. Upfront, but then the, the, you know, there's always lag ina business.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:22:38]There's always like, like you said, you get emails from people for months oryears, and then you convert later on. And because that person was consistentin, in sending out those emails to you and kept you on their list for God knowshow long eventually when the time was right. It sparked your interest in youand you converted. And I think a lot of people are just too quick to. Throw outa strategy or throw out a tactic or throw out a tool or throw out a process orfire a person because, Oh, the thing didn't do the thing that they expectedtoday.

Tom Jackobs: [00:23:14]Yeah. That one time, right?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:16]Yes.

Tom Jackobs: [00:23:16]Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've, we've booked people. So we, we put them through a 30day process. Not that we call everything every day for 30 days, but there's aprocess over 30 days where we're consistently and persistently following upwith warm leads. And we'll, there's so many that have booked on like day 25 outof 30. And the email that comes back from them is, Oh my gosh, I've been superbusy.

Tom Jackobs: [00:23:47]Who knows what people are doing these days, super busy watching Netflix. And,you know, I totally forgot about this. Thanks for following up. Let's go aheadand book that appointment now. Any of those 25 days after the fact you know,most businesses and there was a franchise or franchisor that did a study and itwas like 70% or 72% of the leads that were coming in were never followed upwith.

Tom Jackobs: [00:24:15]Like zero, a warm lead came into the business and nobody followed up with them.And then of the ones that were followed up, they were followed up maybe once,maybe twice with a phone call. You know, of course every, you know, it's easyjust to send an email, but it's also easy to delete an email or it's easyfor,  just one key stroke,  from not having the right email address.

Tom Jackobs: [00:24:44]So a phone call or a text message, or both goes a long way in terms of gettingpeople excited about taking that next step, because they already took the firststep and saying, I'll, you know what, I'm interested. Tell me more about whatyou do and then, you know, for, for a company to then just like slap them inthe face and say, yeah, I'm not going to call you

Burhaan Pattel: [00:25:07]right. And then there's also something to be said about people who are coldcalling from lists that they buy, because this is not what you're talkingabout. This is

Tom Jackobs: [00:25:17]no no,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:25:18]this is part of the sales process or a part of the leads funnel where, becausethe lead came in and they gave permission to contact them, , via the phonenumber via the email address. This is, this is the process. And so, yeah.Again, like this, like what you did. And I remember you consulting me,  when you were here in Bangkok,  three years ago, when you , we had the ideato start this thing.  And I immediatelysaw the opportunity because yes, in, in the years that I've been working evenbefore phone calls or just the thing, even me, myself, like I, I shy away fromthe phone. Like I have phone numbers,but I don't call

Tom Jackobs: [00:25:55]me too.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:25:56]And I know that it's a necessary skill. But again, it like comes back to, soyou've recognized that sales is important. Like I did too. I went through thisprocess of working for a corporate company. I got some sales training there.Then I went into banking, similar in some of the work, but in a differentniche, and then started my own business and that business, even though it wasscrappy and I started from a garage making custom furniture.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:25]It was the phone calls, like the leads used to come through from sort of littleads that I had out on the internet or, you know, people referring. But if Ididn't call them, if I didn't actually pick up and say, Hey, are you free rightnow? Can we chat about this thing that you wanted? And let's book anappointment to like, come and see you and come and see your place and figureout what type of furniture you wanted me to make for you.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:48]That wouldn't have happened. And that exercise of actually getting used topicking up the phone and going to visit people as I do now, in terms of, youknow, sending WhatsApp messages or sending the emails or immediately whensomebody contacts me, it's like, Hey, do you want to jump on a call? And let's,let's figure this thing out.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:06]Whether it's from LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever they come through, that's inmy opinion, the most important step. And I am so happy that you consulted me.And also that you followed up on, on what you were going to do and you've builtthis. Like, I wouldn't, I don't want to, I, maybe you call it an empire.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:27]I think you've built something really special. And you've taken what I've taught you and, and, and turned it intosomething very, very cool. So I'm very proud of you for that. Hmm.  So talk a little bit about

Tom Jackobs: [00:27:40]Thanks for the help.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:42]Oh yeah. Oh one. It's also why we're friends. Right.  So tell me a little bit about some of the,some of the learnings, some of something that the audience can take away apartfrom just like, Hey, you have to call your people. Like, what else, what arethe tips like while they're on the phone? Or what are the things that peopleshould consider? If you were to list maybe the top three or the top fivethings.

Tom Jackobs: [00:28:05]Yeah. So, first of all, just when, when on the phone and getting ready orwhoever's doing the phone, always, always, always have a script. And, and thatdoesn't mean reading it word for word, because then that's just screamstelemarketer, but there needs to be a script. So they know kind of what to say,what questions to ask and they need to be strategic in that conversation to getthe person excited to take the next step. So, and even if it's just booking anappointment, that's still a sales call in my, in my opinion, because you'reselling the appointment.

Tom Jackobs: [00:28:44]No money is exchanging, but you're selling the appointment at the same time. Sothe script is primary. The first thing to have, and then this, the second isjust the telephone etiquette. I can't tell you how many times I've I've heardother people like answer calling warm leads, but they treat them like coldleads and I go, Oh, hi, Burr Haan. This is, uh, Tom.

Tom Jackobs: [00:29:14]Okay. Yeah. and and, and, you know, there's just like, who's, who's takingcontrol of that conversation. So that's the second thing you have a script. Thesecond is take immediate control of the conversation and kind of learn people'snames too. Yeah. And so it'd be like, Hey Brian, this is Tom from blah, blah,blah.

Tom Jackobs: [00:29:38]You've registered on our website. Do you remember doing that? That's always thefirst thing we started off with a question and we interrupt that pattern.That's in people's heads already by going, Oh, did I do something? Yeah, youdid. You, you entered your, you, you saw a Facebook ad or whatever it happenedto be.

Tom Jackobs: [00:29:59]You enter their name and email address and phone number and a website. I'mresponding to you. And I can't tell you how many times we've had people go. Ohmy gosh, that's so quick because that's the rule. Number three is, you know,you have your scripts. Number one. Number two is you take immediate control ofthe conversation.

Tom Jackobs: [00:30:16]And then the third is that you respond immediately to that lead. If you go morethan 10 minutes, that lead is getting. You know, colder and colder and colder,super ice cold after like an hour. And if you try to call them the next day,forget about it because they've forgotten about it. Even, even when we callpeople within 10 minutes, they're still like, what did I do?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:47]Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: [00:30:48]You filled out a form. I don't remember doing that now. Literally it was 10minutes ago that it's like, Oh yeah, I was in line at the bank and I guess Idid that.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:57]Right.

Tom Jackobs: [00:30:59]Because people are going through their internet trance all day for the mostpart. And they're just like, Oh, that looks like an interesting ad. And yeah,there it goes. But if, if a phone call had not gone out to them, then theywould have forgotten about the webinar that they signed up for or the, whateverit is that they signed up for. And now that memory jogger is like, Oh, do youremember doing that? And then prompting them through the process. And they'relike, Oh yeah, yeah. I do remember. I do remember that.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:26]And Gary V talks about that as well. So he's all about grabbing people'sattention and that's exactly what you're doing is you're breaking that patternof their day to day. Sure. In some instances, maybe you're disturbing thembecause maybe they're on the toilet or whatever, so they don't answer or theydo.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:43]And then it's like, can you call me later, but if they're, if they're politebut

Tom Jackobs: [00:31:48]indisposed,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:50]right. But then, but then there's this, and I'm guessing you're getting to thisnext is. Oh, if, if you don't, I would add this to the list too is

Tom Jackobs: [00:31:58]okay.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:59]Follow up. Cut. Try a couple of times.

Tom Jackobs: [00:32:04]Yeah. Yeah. If you don't get them on the phone, then you have to have a followup process. And what we're seeing at our call center is that the average timeto get somebody on a call. Is a 11 touches, 11 phone calls and text messagesthat go out on average. And that includes the ones that go through the entireprocess of 30 days and expire because they never responded to anything.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:38]Hmm. Yeah. The, the mar in the marketing world or digital marketing world,they'll talk about seven touches. This is what Google has also published isthat it takes seven. Seven touches, but that's all online. These are notformal. So now you're adding those 11 to the seven they're already going outdigitally and, that's insane.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:57]So it's like, Oh, if I need to call somebody, it's like an extra 11 to 12 andmaybe you get the person. So now it's an extra 15. So it's like 20, 25 minutes perlead.

Tom Jackobs: [00:33:08]Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:33:08]But what does that do for your business, Tom?

Tom Jackobs: [00:33:11]Well, it, it exponentially grows the business. I mean, it's, it's incredible.We just got a new new client last, last week. He had his first webinar, and itwas webinar two discovery call to him doing a paid, paid consultation. And. Hehad, he had been doing this for three months on his own, and he's like, I'vehad maybe two discovery calls and I haven't had any paid appointments in, intwo months of doing this on my, on my own.

Tom Jackobs: [00:33:46]Can you help? And I don't want to do any of the discovery calls. I just want tosit down with people and do the paid consultation. So absolutely we can do it,train up the staff. First webinar that we did got a higher show rate than yougot before and had more people booking discovery calls because he had morepeople listening. And then we, book two paid calls for him in the same day,like within like five hours the day after his webinar. And he was like, Oh myGod. How, like, how did you do that?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:34:21]Well, you asked me to,

Tom Jackobs: [00:34:22]we made the phone call. We were persistent and consistent with following up andwe just get, book the call but that's because we have a singular focus. It'sconverting on the phone and if you're running a business, you're payingpayroll, you're doing this, you're doing that. Oh, the phone is the last thingthat you want to pick up and dial. Unless you have a process built into yourown business where you set aside power hour. That's what I call it power houris you dial for dollars or pesos or bought or in T dollars and whatever pounds.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:03]So I think you went through four things there. Three or four things. What's the

Tom Jackobs: [00:35:06]four. Yeah. So the first one is scripting. You have to have a script on thephone. The second one is take immediate charge of the phone call. So you breakthose patterns the third was, what was the third

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:21]follow up?

Tom Jackobs: [00:35:23]no, that's the last one is a follow up being persistent and consistent on the,on the phone. I think.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:33]I'll go through the recording.

Tom Jackobs: [00:35:35]Okay.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:36]I got this piece on

Tom Jackobs: [00:35:37]good those three,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:40]sorry, I put you on the spot there.

Tom Jackobs: [00:35:42]Should've written them down.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:44]Yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah, that was a good video.

Tom Jackobs: [00:35:50]I have done it on, on videos cause yeah. Yeah. But the video or doing it duringa script , doing the , take immediate control. And then the follow-up. Yeah,something in between.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:36:02]So,  so where can people find you if theywant to get in touch, if they want to follow you, if they want to stop you.

Tom Jackobs: [00:36:08]Yeah. Awesome. So most of my handles online are Tom Jackobs. So at Tom Jackobs,T O M J A C K O B S looks like Jackobs, but it's pronounced Jackobs. And thenthe name of the business is business lead, maximizer.com. Cause that's what wedo maximize those leads for the business.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:36:29]And,  if you want to test Tom's service,he's actually got a lead magnet on his website. What is the link to that leadmagnet? So we can actually prove to people that the phone call happens after 10minutes or less in the 10 minutes,

Tom Jackobs: [00:36:43]within 10 minutes of normal call time. So normal call time in the U S is,between 9:00 AM and 8:00 PM. But,  yeah,so they write on the landing page or right on the homepage of the websitebusiness lead maximizer.com.  There's aform to fill out, to test the service.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:37:01]Awesome. Thank you so much, Tom, for being on the episode. I think this wassuper fun and super helpful for the audience as well.

Tom Jackobs: [00:37:08]Awesome.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:37:09]We'll catch you on the next one. And all the links for the episode will be downbelow. If you want to get in touch with Tom, his details will be below theepisode two or in the show notes, wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast. So thank you somuch. Thanks Tom. For having me

Tom Jackobs: [00:37:23]thanks for having me on the show Burhaan

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