In this episode of the I AM CEO Podcast, host Gresham Harkless Jr. interviews Marcio Santos, a marketing coach who helps course creators successfully sell their courses online.
Marcio has coached course creators from various industries and has worked with brands like Boba Guys, Immi Eats, Kettle & Fire, Danone, THE TEN SPOT, Remedy Kombucha, and more to generate millions in online sales using digital marketing.
Throughout the episode, Marcio shares valuable insights on effective marketing strategies, emphasizing the importance of understanding the needs of customers and building a customized plan to reach them. He also discusses his journey in the industry, including his experience working with a variety of businesses and the lessons he has learned along the way.
Additionally, Marcio shares practical tips and advice for entrepreneurs, including the importance of creating a lead magnet to position oneself as an expert and the value of creating courses in groups.
Overall, the episode provides valuable insights and inspiration for anyone looking to improve their marketing efforts and successfully sell their courses online.
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Transcription:
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Marcio Santos Teaser 00:00
Basic lead magnet framework. And what it does is it helps you to package your knowledge, and it does that by taking something that you already know. So if you have a program, I help you to identify inside your program which steps you're gonna take.
Let's say you have three modules, which modules are you gonna take, and then how you would turn that into a lead magnet that positions you as an expert.
Intro 00:22
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?
If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.
This is the I AM CEO podcast.
Gresham Harkless 00:49
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit over 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we are repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are gonna be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call CB Nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.
This month we are focused on the visibility game, a.k.a. marketing, advertising, PR, and sales. I often say the name of the game is being found, and these tools will help you to do that. We have heard the philosophical question, if the tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? If there's a really, really great product or service and no one knows about it, how great is it really? What impact does it ultimately make? This is where we will go into this month. Looking at visibility, branding, marketing, public relations, sales being the lifeblood of businesses, building, meeting companies, and so much more.
This is probably one of the most exciting and probably the most excruciating topics, but we hope this must demystify or maybe even vanquish the fear and hope and arm you with the tools to be able to increase your visibility. So buckle up and sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Marcio Santos of nerddigital.com. Marcio, great to have you on the show.
Marcio Santos 02:19
Thank you, Gresham. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Gresham Harkless 02:21
Yeah, super excited to have you on the show. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Marcio so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's working on.
Marcio coaches course creators like Khe Hy from Radreads, Ted Seides from the Capital Allocators, and Robbie Crabtree from Performative Speaking. He's also the founder of Nerd Digital and he has coached dozens of other course creators as a marketing coach with Maven.
Marcio has worked with brands like Boba Guys, Immi Eats, Kettle and Fire, Danone, THE TEN SPOT, Remedy Kombucha, and more to generate millions in online sales using digital marketing and is excited to work with course creators every single day. He also believes that E-learning marketing is poised for continual growth, and he's excited to help people take advantage of that opportunity.
Marcio, excited again to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
Marcio Santos 03:12
Very ready. Thank you Gresh.
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Gresham Harkless 03:14
Absolutely, definitely excited to have you on. What I want to do to kick everything off was rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
Marcio Santos 03:22
Yeah, so I've been a CEO a few times in this iteration right now with Nerd Digital. I started about six years ago just before my son was born, my first son and my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, and that's when I decided to leave the agency where I was working with brands like BMW, Scotiabank, and BMO. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her. So that's what I did. I left and started doing some freelancing work, and in the process, I ended up taking a lot of courses in SEO, web analytics, content marketing, email marketing, and stuff like that.
Eventually just started doing the consulting and that's where Nerd Digital went. It wasn't until two years ago that I locked into the opportunity to work with the course creator by the name of Khe Hy. It was somebody on my email list who said, Hey, there's this guy who has this blog, he's not one of these big brands they work with, but you know, maybe try him out. The experience was so much fun.
Above everything else, it was just so much fun to work with him and help him go from five figures to six-figure launches. It was like, man, if I could have this much fun, have this much impact with a smaller client, that's what I'm gonna do. So I just decided, this is something I'm gonna focus on and the rest is history.
Gresham Harkless 04:39
Nice. I appreciate, you telling your story, obviously sorry to hear about your mother, but love that you've been able to make that decision so that you can spend more time with her and then the rest of your family as well too, which is so important.
I love that you've been able to have that joy, that experience, and that impact from being able to help out so many other course creators. I think it's such a great lesson for all of us to remember that you can create things in the way that you hope to create and still have the enjoyment and impact and success that you've been able to have.
Marcio Santos 05:05
Amen. Yeah. Couldn't have said it better.
Gresham Harkless 05:07
There you go. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more, and hear a little bit more on how you work with these clients and these brands. Could you take us through a little bit more on what that looks like, how you serve them, and what their process is?
Marcio Santos 05:17
Yeah, so I have two ways that I work with clients. One is in a group coaching style, and so I have a nine-step program. It's called the six-figure Launch. What we do there is, we walk people through the nine different modules that help you to package your product, build a funnel, and get traffic so that you can sell your course online.
And then I have a one-on-one, offer as well. And so I work one on one with people like Khe Hy Robbie and Ted. For those people, usually what they want is more that's really what they're looking for is more one-on-one time for us to go more in-depth into their business, to really provide some customized copy, some customized strategy for how they can really scale and go really fast.
So, Robbie, for example, when he came in, he was doing around 10K a month, and within 90 days we took him to about 40k a month. So, that's usually the type of transformation that our clients are looking for with their course or training program.
Gresham Harkless 06:19
Nice. I love that you used the word transformation because I think, regardless of our products and services and what we might do, sometimes we forget about that human aspect and as you talked about the reason why you started your business, and we can sometimes jump over that transformation.
I can imagine, by having that increase in revenue probably makes a huge impact just not for him, but also for so many other people as well too.
Marcio Santos 06:41
Definitely. Revenue cashflow and revenue are the lifelines of any business and so it definitely helps to change the dimensions of things when you can add an extra zero to the bottom line, especially for a smaller business.
It makes a real impact.
Gresham Harkless 06:56
Absolutely. You get to move the needle forward and I think so many times being able to realize that, one-to-one or group or there's different ways that people can work for you. There are definitely opportunities and sometimes it just takes us looking or having somebody look that we can lean on, look at things from a different perspective and help us to accelerate their growth.
Marcio Santos 07:12
Correct.
Gresham Harkless 07:13
Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?
Marcio Santos 07:22
It's really, I'm obsessed, I think is the word. Like when I work with my clients, I give them in-depth research and I try to be as thoughtful as possible. I think that has to be my secret sauce and I've heard that several times. Just, last week we got a new testimonial from one of our clients. She went through our group program, and that's what she was saying and I was like, wait, that's also what Yana said or Anya said, and what Joy said.
So I think that's really it. It's something fun that we get to do, like in the group coaching when we have different people. So one person has a course about healthcare, one person has one about fitness and one has about business. But I'm able to give each of them something very customized during our group call that helps them to move forward. So I'd say that's my secret sauce.
Gresham Harkless 08:12
Nice. I love that and I think there's a book by Grant Cardone. I think it's Be Obsessed or Be Average. I think that obsession, the thing that is so fascination, what kind of fuels a person is really, manifested in our products and services and things that we do. And as you talked about it, sometimes if you really love what you do and you really are making that impact, you can't help but provide people with that great experience. When you're in that special place and you're able to execute on that, like you mentioned a group coach or being able to one-on-one, whatever that might be.
It really, puts so much I think great energy, but a great opportunity for the people that are going through it and also probably that are even taking the courses at that.
Marcio Santos 08:51
Well Said.
Gresham Harkless 08:52
Nice. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
Marcio Santos 09:04
The thing that comes to mind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari. By the title of Sapiens, and this is my hack because in it he reminds us that people love narratives, people love stories, and it's really through stories and through that, that we connect, that we get organized, and that we move things forward. This book was really important to me. I ended up reading the other two of his books. I read two of them and it really helped me to actually establish more of my conviction to help more course creators. Because he also points out the importance of will the impact that AI will have in the workplace, and how jobs and people will be displaced by machine learning and AI solutions.
Because of this, we will have to learn faster. And learning is challenging if you're doing it on your own, which is again, why I think course creation and doing courses in groups, specifically cohort-based courses is so important. We need this and we're going to need more of them. So that's why I think that's my hack. I have this perspective, this point of view, which I think is an advantage that I have.
Gresham Harkless 10:21
Yeah, absolutely. I definitely appreciate you sharing that book and that hack because I think that's when you really start to understand historically how stories and things were passed along. I really love that aspect. Then just under the reminder that comes from that.
But I also love that you were able to and maybe like even he in his books, were able to take that deeper to not just say, this is how it's happening. So that's the entire story. That's the entire book. But just understanding like this is the ramifications of that and how you can take that and run with that. Then hearing how that has really fueled everything you've been able to build as well too, by giving people that opportunity to be excellent at their craft, to be excellent at being able to communicate that craft to help other people. Just the ramifications of being able to kind of learn on an Impactful and excellent level is so, so huge.
So, what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? This is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It's something you might tell your favorite client or if you have to do a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self?
Marcio Santos 11:17
So the tip that I have for you if you're listening, if you have a course, even if you don't have a course, but you're trying to generate leads usually I come back to the same type of idea and that is to not overcomplicate your lead magnets. We have this, I'll actually share this with you Gresham, with your audience. They can go to nerddigital.com/Gresham and when they do, they'll get access to this tool that I use to teach my clients, is this framework called the Basic Lead Magnet Framework.
What it does is it helps you to package your knowledge, and it does that by taking something that you already know. So if you have a program, I help you to identify inside your program which steps you're gonna take. Let's say you have three modules, which modules are you're gonna take, and then how you would turn that into a lead magnet. So how you can turn that into a lead magnet that positions you as an expert that is helpful and that also doesn't cost you an arm and a leg in terms of money and also time.
I know a lot of people, they could spend a lot of time writing eBooks that nobody really wants and instead, they can do something a lot simpler. So that's the tip that I would give is to download the basic lead magnet tool because that'll be super helpful for you.
Gresham Harkless 12:31
Yeah, absolutely. We'll definitely have that link in information and on the show notes as well too as well as other ways that people can get ahold of you and get attached with you. But I absolutely love that you use that word, basic and what the lead magnet is, but also the simplicity of it. I think so many times we can get obsessed and attracted to the complex and is in alignment with success. But often, as I imagine that you teach and show and help people to understand is that the simplicity of helping people to learn whatever it is actually the way by which they're going to retain it and to probably be able to execute on that.
So I love that, you're taking your own medicine so to speak, and you've been able to create something that can help and empower people to be able to get something there out, out to more people, and be able to see some success.
Marcio Santos 13:16
Yeah, I'm sure they'll enjoy the tool. It's really useful.
Gresham Harkless 13:18
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So thank you so much for sharing that. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote, CEOs on this show.
So, Marcio, what does being a CEO mean to you?
Marcio Santos 13:32
So, being a CEO to me, I think who I wanna speak to is what I call these IP creators. So these intellectual property creators and these intellectual property holders, the way I see it is over time we're consistently developing new IP, whether you're a marketer or whether you have a business. I heard on your show sometimes you have people that are in real estate, some are in consulting, and each of those persons, they have some kind of unique IP. They have some kind of unique idea. One guy is interested in using technology and data for real estate. Another lady is interested in helping entrepreneurs scale to six figures to live that entrepreneur lifestyle.
Whatever it is, having the perspective of creating and packaging, and selling your IP is a really powerful idea. So I would say to the CEOs out there, if you're gonna be an IP CEO that what you want to do is be diligent and be aware. You need to practice a lot of awareness of what is it that you're doing today in your processes, in how you're helping your customers or delivering solutions. How can you turn that into an intellectual property that you can own, that you can sign, that you can name that solves a problem that only your product can solve, and be bullish on the side of different and not on the side of better.
If you can make your IP different than what's out there that is 10 times better and 10 times easier for you to sell, then you're trying to make it better.
Gresham Harkless 15:00
Truly appreciate that definition and of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get ahold of you, find out all of you awesome things that you're working on.
Marcio Santos 15:15
Anybody that's listening that wants help, either packaging their course, that they want help selling their course, or they're just on the fence. Maybe they're not sure if they're ready or not to package something, maybe they've been serving there customers for years, but they wanna speak to somebody.
Head over to nerddigital.com and we'll help you out. Again, the link to the lead magnet for the basic lead magnet to help you package your IP is nerddigital.com/gresham, and you can head over there and download that today.
Gresham Harkless 15:50
Awesome. Awesome. To make it that even easier, we're gonna have the links and information again in the show notes so that people can follow up, get a copy of that lead magnet, and take advantage of all the awesome opportunities and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
Marcio Santos 16:01
Thank you, Gresham. Have a good one.
Outro 16:03
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.
Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harless, Jr. Thank you for listening.
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