453 – He helps you blow past 7 figures: Tom interviews Paul Ace

Episode 453 – Paul Ace
Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode four hundred and fifty three of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Paul Ace and he's going to tell you his method to grow your business past seven figures. So buckle up. He'll be on in a minute or so. Episode 452. That was Maxwell Ivey. He's the blind blogger and he is totally blind. Not from birth, but very young boy. He started going blind. He's totally blind, but it's not stopped him from being a publicity expert. And he's a he'll help you get on podcasts. And he's just quite an inspirational story. He sings, too. I think he went out for America's Got Talent or something. Hey, if you like money, which you probably do if you're listen to this show, I'd be glad to send you a lot of it for referrals. We have a great referral, an affiliate program. The commissions can go anywhere from eight dollars and fifty cents to more than 5000 just for one referral. Check it out. You can email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. If you want more details now, pick up a copy of our podcast app while you're over at Screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone tablet. It has all kinds of cool features. You can take us with you on the road and while you're there, pick up another super duper thing we give away for listening to the show. It's my automation ebook. Just one of the tips in this book has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. And that's not an exaggeration. We actually estimate it and it's got all kinds of tips on cell phone automation and things that are cheap and free that just make you go lightning fast so you can steal customers ethically from schmucks that won't get back to people in a hurry. It cracks me up. I hear voicemails that say, yeah, we'll get back to you within 48 hours. He could be dead within 48 hours, you jerk. You got to take care of customers. So pick that up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And I usually tell you about my school, but I'm going to tell you about something way bigger than my school right now. It has to do with my school is the program we're right in the middle of to train five people or persons with disabilities in my school. So not only can they learn from home without all the burdens they suffer when they have to go somewhere and they can legitimately be hired from home and or start their own business or both.

So we're doing a go fund me thing. Please support it just even if a couple of bucks. But some people are thrown in thousands, whatever you're comfortable with. And you can be anonymous if you want. But we're going to put these people through the program and you're going to do a job service for them to get them hired or assist them in starting their own business. So check the show notes for the Go Fund Me account, although you can find it at IMTCVA.org/disabilities.

All right. Let's get to the main event. Paul Ace is here, and he is popularizing the concept of CCom, and I'm not going to pretend to explain it. I'm going to let him explain it to you. But it's the science of conversion and conversation and automation all put together. He founded Amplify CCom, which helps grow businesses past seven figures through eighty percent. Listen to this human like. I've met a lot of people that were, I don't know, maybe kind of human, but maybe I'll see what he means by that. And and twenty percent human experience. Now Amplify combines human psychology and automation to create more products in their customer's pockets. So Paul, are you ready to screw? The commute?

Certainly.

Good to talk to you, man. So explain this CCom concept to me, because I want to make sure that everybody gets it from the horse's mouth, not from me trying to tell him what you're you're doing.

Yes, you're so CCom is it's all about conversational commerce. So you may have noticed over the last few years people want this personalized service, but they also want instant answers. Right. Because we've we've grown up in this world of. Well, I certainly grew up in this world of social media.

So I had to say that because he knows I'm an old fart. That is so sad.

So if you think if you think about it like we're always looking for these. Dopamine hits all the time, all the time, all the time, so so what happens is, is over time, those expectations get higher and higher. But people still want to feel like people. They don't want to feel like they're just another number. So so we we look at how do we use conversational commerce? So how do we automate the first part of the communication that feels and as we say, human like and I'm not talking about like something out of the Terminator or something like that, we're talking about like, how would I naturally have a conversation with someone? Now we're talking

About chatbots,

So and it's beyond chatbot, you know, like messenger and things like that is a piece of it. So it's like this omnichannel approach. So it's like messenger. We're talking SMS emails, even direct mail, personal video messaging, voicemail drops like anything where you can have a communication platform. But then it's treating it like you were having a conversation rather than you probably had one of those spam text messages where it's like, hey, get 50 percent off today.

Yeah, sure.

Click here. Right. There's loads of people use SMS for that or it's just like alert and we believe using SMS or Messenger or whatever it is or even email, it should be conversational. So if I'm going to reach out to you with an abandoned call message, for example, instead of just going, hey, you left things in your car,

You big dumb.

It's like, well, yeah, it's like more of a hey, it's Paul from Privacy.com, just wanted to reach out, see if something went wrong or something broken. No, you didn't finish your off. You just let me know ice up and I'll get it fixed.

Yeah. Nice.

Right. It's so casual and that email gets about a twenty percent response rate. So we use that and we also use it on SMS, but the great thing about that is that people tell you all the reasons they didn't buy on that first message. So then what you do is then go, well, let's take that conversation and turn that into more backend email so then we can answer all those objections with extra emails. We can answer them over potential SMS messages that say, hey, I've just sent you a really important email or hey, I'm just saying people are asking questions about this this week just to email over with it. Right. So bridging the gap to the next stage, or you could even record videos and send people through that for retargeting on Facebook or YouTube. So you actually find out exactly the language that people are using and then you can parrot that back to him and match mirror what what they use in. So naturally then takes people to the next stage of the buying journey because they feel understood to first. If you want to if you want to be understood, you need to first seek to understand. And that's how we apply that to conversational commerce.

Now, did you invent software for this or are you just teaching people how to use Off-The-Shelf stuff?

So where more about like building the systems and processes and leveraging existing technology, but also going how far can we take that technology? Right. Yeah, it's like, well, what else could we do with it? So, for example, even last week we were setting up a we've got some people are going through a challenge and because they've already paid for the challenge and they bought the evergreen and we're like, we're doing a new live one, so we don't want to charge for it again. We said you get a free pass. But it was like, well, how can we make it a great experience? So we said, well, go ahead, click this button will open up messenger. And then it says, right, play me free pass. As soon as a kind of free pass, it created a personalized image with a ticket, with their name on the ticket and then their own ticket ID. Right. And we automated that process. But now they start. And then what we did is ten minutes later, it was like, hey, thanks for downloading the ticket. Would you like to win some great prizes as well? And then we created this viral give-away off the back of that that got them to go and share it with the friends. And then and then share was a screenshot that they'd done a messenger completely automated. And then we're getting like, you know, in the first couple of hours, like 16 different people to chat it. So then you start to believe the organic share environment and at the same time as actually building conversation and report and meeting people like that and the biogenic.

Yeah, it's beautifully targeted stuff, and I love that part about you said that people are a number because I heard this this joke from the Spankin says we don't treat our customers like numbers. We throw in some letters and symbols to do so. I like it now. So we'll get back to that later. But I'm still dying about this 75 day challenge you took. Are you are you literally crazy? Are you in therapy because of this or how to.

I just when we're talking about 75 not sure why the 75 comes from.

Well I thought it was a long term challenge that you personally took.

Oh, no. So we've done a lot of challenges for clients, and so quite often it's not a seventy five, it's usually a seven day.

Oh, I was wondering if

Maybe there was a typo there, right?

Yeah, I was thinking, wow, that's that's a of challenge there. So seven day challenge. So tell me about those.

Yeah. So we, we had a client come to us recently and they said, hey, we've been doing these live challenges that they've been doing pretty well, but we want to automate it, we want to make it evergreen. But we also don't want to lose that connection with the audience. Right. Because what happens sometimes when you make things evergreen, you lose all that human touch. So we looked at it and said, what can we do to create a human like customer experience at the same time as like making sure that the sales are still there and it's still profitable. So we we looked and was like, what? What do we need? We need to create touch points at each stage of the journey. So we take each day the challenge and they get a text message each day of the challenge, not like an alert next days live like, you know, like, hey, hey, Tom. Today we're going to be discussing this. I'm excited for you to check it out. Here's a link, say a conversation with that. And then on top of that, we'd also add in voice mail drops. So each day the challenge to get a message from the owner to say, hey, just wanted to let you know this is what's cracking, cracking off today and really excited for you to jump into it. So they're going through the seven day challenge. And at the same time, we also use deadline fondles for anyone who is not aware. It basically creates deadlines that stops things and things depending on what times issues. So you can say, OK, after three days, that offer will no longer be available because I don't believe in these fake scarcity and it's not. I can't stand that.

Yeah. So we will use deadline funnels where there is real scarcity, you know, they can't get back in it because you won't get to see it. So we said you've got you'll have access to the videos for fourteen days, so we'll give you seven days to catch up afterwards. Right. If you're a little bit behind. But after that fourteen days that set your access or disappear. So it created a natural challenge with this accountability and integration at the same time. Then we're saying, hey, on each day of the challenge, what are you going for today? And then you want to post that in the Facebook community with the hashtag whatever the day is to guide. So then everyone starts to post in there every day going, oh, I'm on day number one and number two, and starts to build even more community. And it's already like over ten thousand people in that group. So it just starts to cement. And as as you start building it up and we've taken that from zero to over one hundred thousand dollars a month within what we did that in the first eight weeks. So it's now it's just a case of scaling that up and that here's the great thing about it. It doesn't stop you going to do a life challenge after that. So then you just built this massive lead list and everyone that you maybe they bought the Evergreen Challenge but didn't go and buy the high ticket products afterwards. We can say, hey, come and run through this challenge again on the live version and then offer that to them again at the end. So then you end up picking up a lot more sales than you usually what.

All right. Now, one thing that I heard you say a minute ago was about the voicemail you sent, but I've done some voicemail marketing, but I had to change it in the. It was ringing the person's phone, but now the technology is available, the word goes straight to voicemail because I had a guy complain, says I was just getting on a plane. And here's your promotion, you know, interrupted me and stuff like that. So are using direct to voicemail or you're still letting the phone ring?

Yes, I quite often it does. And it seems to depend on the carrier sometimes, but most of the time it will do, let's say, one ring and then and then go to the voicemail. However, the way we tend to use voice when our drop is a little bit less of. We've never really his voice drops to say, hey, I've got this promotion, this is this is going to happen. So we use it more as a hybrid to get people to consume more of the content because we know if someone's engaged enough, you know, and have already signed up for a thing and ideally they've already paid for that thing because then the mobile and not Tom's. Right. I mean, I have someone today email me and say, what did I sign up for? Why am I getting emails from you? And I was like, you signed up to give away like three days ago. So, yeah.

I know, that's right, so you get you get those things sometimes, so if someone's bought something and actually got out the credit card, they're like, oh, you're just helping me consume that content that people say, like, they're OK with that. And they know

They know in advance that it's coming.

Yes. So we'll we'll frame that out, like in the fulfillment email and just say, hey, we're going to be with you every step of way, every step of the way. And so we'll check in with you each day of the challenge. Make sure that you keep it up so you can almost frame it is like a virtual accountability partner, right?

Yeah. And so they're expecting it, which is a big difference. And just doing the broadcast

For sure is it's a difference between like going, hey, let's go for dinner and I'm walking into a room with a shot and saying, hey, buy my stuff.

All right, let's take you back. Everybody likes to hear the stories of people came up. So did you ever have the dreaded job?

Yes. Yes, I did. I did have a job. I think they say that stands for what, just over broke?

Yep. Just over broken up.

Yeah. So I actually my my first full time job was working at Subway and I was on for the last 17 hour and the parking was for that was necessary. Four pound seventy and I'm in the parking lot with five pounds. So what the first hour for free. And I was doing like three hour shifts a lot of the time I basically by the type of pay for my patrol, I think it worked. I was making about three 300 pound a month stay there for three months. And then I ended up getting hired by a big bakery chain and became a manager, running twenty stuff at twenty years old. Did the whole corporate thing, got stressed out, stressed out, burnt out, working crazy hours. And then I became a wedding singer, as you do. Right, because that's the court system.

Everybody does.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they go OK. Yeah. I don't wanna be in corporate management, I'll be wedding singer. So, so I end up doing that for like four years. I was actually a drummer since I was 11 years old and went through all the instruments, drums, bass guitar, learnt to sing, couldn't sing a note in tune like when I first started it had singing lessons and then I was like singing. I was the only one that I could actually make any money out of. Right. You go out for a night and I in a band, in a pub and you make like sixty dollars as a drummer, but like you could go out as a singer and you could make one hundred and fifty dollars in the pubs. And then then I started to learn about marketing and positioning and branding and I went from I think I remember go into this showcase if you know, I mean like well all these pubs and clubs in the local area and they all watch you for ten minutes. And then they decided that they decide he wants to book it. Right. This guy says to me, he said. How much do you charge, I said hundred and fifty pounds and you'll never get more than 130 pounds. I know. Is that OK? If that's what you think.

Within two years, I was charged in two thousand pound a day and I was doing private weddings. And because I positioned it and learnt how to value stock, you know, for anyone who doesn't know how to value stocks, like creating a really resistible office. So everyone else just going, yeah, well, do you want to in for the day? I was going, here's what you're going to get. It was like you're going to get a Bose speaker system, right? This is state of the art top notch. So you call it. It's going to be amazing throughout the whole day of the wedding. We're going to do all your music throughout the whole day. You give us all the songs you want to play. We're going to give you the mikes for the speeches. We're going to learn your first song. We're going to provide all the lighting. We'll do the wedding. Breakfast will do the ceremony. So you're not going to have to worry about a thing. And they were like, oh, wow, this sounds amazing. And so then I was like, and it's true, it's usually like that adds up to like five and a half thousand pounds, but you can get it today for two thousand pounds here at this event and like. Yeah, great. Let's do it.

Well, it's a little bit more than one hundred thirty.

Yeah, exactly. And just for anyone listening to is like, wow, that sounds like quite a jump. I didn't go from 150 to 20 overnight. It was a. OK, let's go from 150. And then my first wedding was like three hundred fifty pounds. I think I travelled three hours each way to get there, paid for the hotel out of that and sang for over three hours. So by the end of it I think I made about 100 pounds. But then over time, you know, you just keep putting prices up and up and up and up until people start saying no. And then you go, OK, oh, that's probably where the level is.

Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So then. Then what.

Then then it turned into I was like, OK,

We got to tell everybody, if they hear any dogs, they got to a new rescue dog. So she's a little bit antsy, but we're going to leave her on here so she can be famous on screw the commute.

That's so good. So after that, like as we were doing the wedding singing and I was like, I still need to market this business. I start learning about online marketing and create this thing called a dream magic secrets box. And what was a dream wedding secret spot? Oh, what does what does every bride want? The everybody wants a dream wedding. Right. So we create this info product. It was like a twelve ninety five product, spicy, like a self-liquidating offer. So as long as we cover the cost of the ad spend, we were happy and then we took those people, put them into a Facebook group and built a group of three and a half thousand brides. So then we did the whole ask them what they want and give it to him. So we said, what do you want? And they said, we want bridesmaids dresses at a reasonable price. We can do that. So when Ali Xpress found some bridesmaids dresses that were about 10 pounds and sold them for 40, OK, and then started an eCom store which opened at about one hundred thousand pounds in sales, didn't calculate my return level. Right. And that's when it all went to crap.

So but I have I have an idea to save it. I have an idea to save it for after six months you follow up with a divorce product. That's a good sales divorce secret.

Yeah. So, yeah, we we didn't work out the return policy. Right. Because we do a nine to day returns. And basically I was based on the month of that sale of the sales that we were at that month, not on the month when the actual sale happened. So I was thinking my return right rates like 12 percent and it was like 30 percent. So then what was happening is I was scaling the ads every month, but basically I would just create in the making the problem worse and worse and worse. Twenty twenty five thousand pounds came back in two months.

Oh yeah. Everyone is everyone you sell, you lose money.

So yeah. So I the business

I got postmanophobia which I created that one person had a phobia, the postman maternal. I could probably call a mailman if I was in America. So he turned up in the morning and you know, you have those little scanners where they throw in a barcode. Every time I heard that scanner I was like two hundred and fifty pounds, five hundred pounds, seven. And like, I would literally I feel it in the pit of my stomach every morning when I heard that as soon as I heard that van open and shot on the slider, I was like, he's got returns and it was terrible. And we couldn't even switch the ads off because we had to reduce the ads down over a period of time because I didn't have the cash flow to cover the returns. So I took out loans, loans from family while we took out two decent sized loans from the bank. We had money from friends and family to help us out and supporters. And it was a massive strain on our our own relationship as well, because it was me and my wife for a minute. We even had to come up with a workable wet socks. So we said any time someone had an idea, the one mistake, wet socks, and then they'd know that they'd been annoyed because if we've got wet socks on you're really uncomfortable.

Oh, so. All right. So what happened then?

So what happened next? Well, so I went through this exercise and said, what do I enjoy and what am I good at? Right. So I was I can't do this anymore. What do I do? And at the time that was messenger box and then started because we've done a lot of that stuff to market in bridesmaid's dress business. I created like a bot that told you who to invite to your wedding or spin the wheel, but that basically this spun the wheel to win prizes and all those kind of things. So I was getting really creative with that kind of stuff. And then that kind of morphed into this thing called Seacom. I was like, Do you know what? I think this is where online business is heading, where people want to have conversations with people, but you can't do all of it at scale. So then I started like everyone in the bridesmaids dress business. They ordered a free sample of the dress. I would send them a personal video message or every abandoned car. I would call them up, every single one. And I created Automation's to make that as easy as possible for me to do so. Then I started applying all these different principles to other businesses and I soon started to realize, wow, this works, this works really well. And then, like, we we did some six figure launches and then we worked with some clients and then started doing seven figures on webinars and applying all this same kind of principles. So when we were double in show rates for webinars because we were adding in text messages, voice mail drops, you know, having more email reminders that are actually building rapport and building story.

When you're saying you're saying we quite a bit. So did you build up a team at this point?

Sure, yeah. So the prize money stress business, it was literally me and my wife and then the business that we've got now. So we've got four like internal team members. And then we then we use some freelancers and strategic partners for other things as well to to expand the out. Yes, so I say, wait, because what you realize over time is you can't do what you want to do with our ability, right? That's for sure. And that they're the most. Like realize you start treating them like family, right as well, and you care for them, not much the. Yeah, I mean, I have weekly daily photos with the whole team and also I have weekly check ins.

Yeah. So not only do you not treat your customers like numbers, you don't treat your employees like them either.

So, yeah, well, to be honest, Tom our number one value. Right. So we have we are values called we ripen and that stands for the number one. On top of that the W is is wow. So how can we create custom customer while every day whether that be for a client, whether that be internally for each other, whether that be for our own customers, for any low ticket products, or how can we even create a while for our clients customers? So, like when you start focusing on customer, where everything else naturally follows because people naturally want to talk about it.

Yeah, that's for sure. All right, so we've got to take a response sponsor break, when we come back, we'll ask Paul what's a typical day look like for him and and how we get a hold of him to check out because everybody wants to go past seven figure, that's for sure. So folks usually tell you about my mentor program at this point. But like I said, I'm totally passionate about this project we're doing with the school to help people with disabilities, physical disabilities. I have one guy that's got 2500 vision has to stick his nose right in right in the keyboard and right in the monitor. Most upbeat guy I ever met. We have another lady that's got ankylosing spondylitis, ankylosing spondylitis, just hunched over. She's a schoolteacher and knee problems. Sometimes she gets up and she can't stand up and falls down to the floor. So a lot of a lot of people suffering from things that I know that my school can help. And then I'm taking a grant writing course so that once this program is successful, I can go for big companies, foundations and and really roll this out big and help a lot more people. So really need your help on this. So if you could check out the Internet Marketing Training Center in Virginia, MTC veiga disabilities and click on our Go Fund Me campaign supported however you can. You could share it. That would be great. Any any amount, small or large is appreciated because part of crowdfunding is the more people who participate, the better it looks to the crowdfunding platforms and then they raise you up higher so that lots of other people see that. Never heard it. So that's what we're and we're shooting for. So check that out. Really appreciate it. And you'll be helping to change these people's lives forever.

Let's get back to the main event. Paul Ace is here and he has a really cool concept of conversational commerce. So, Paul, what's a typical day look like for you?

Yeah, a typical day really starts the night before, to be honest. One of the one of the books first books I've read like Self Development was The Miracle Morning by Road. And I kind of took those principles and then apply them to to the evening before instead. So basically, I lay out my top three outputs for the next day, what my intention is today from a left brain perspective. So from the factual perspective, also from my feeling, right brain perspective, what what I'm declaring to be true today and then also all the things I'm declaring to burn energy on. And then so when I start the next day, I already know what my focus is and where I'm headed. Then from there, we I also I just started doing a mind movie, which is pretty cool. Some of the people on our amplified seven figures podcast, they they were telling me they do this in my movie, where basically all the things that you want in life, like from an emotional perspective to physical things, all those things. And you watch that movie every morning at six. Forty five a.m. Monday to Friday, that movie comes on my screen automatically and I watch that two minute video.

Oh, OK.

Which is pretty cool. And then as we go through the day, we do a daily huddle at nine a.m. where we just make sure we go through. We always start with wins every time. Right. So like, what's your biggest win from yesterday? And it's always like a ten second when we go round the team to make sure everyone's always focused on the wins, not just on the problems. Yeah. Because of Whedon's breed culture of wins, then we go wins critical numbers, make sure we get you to the important KPIs, then we go to roadblocks and then weekly commitment. So we'll go around the room and then basically from there, the morning is all about deep work because because I'm in the UK, pretty much everyone I speak to is in the US. So then when I'm so if I need to write copy, if I need to create any systems, processes, do any work stuff, I do all that in the morning and then the afternoon is just pretty much colds, Tuesdays and Thursdays, a lot of podcasts, both being on and host of my own and then landline interviews later on in the day, usually like six, seven o'clock time,

Besides watching the movie in the morning. Do you have any type of exercise or or nutritional routine?

Yes, very well, actually. Just a little bit more cleanly. Erm my wife's got me as well and she's something she wanted to focus on, is doing a lot more clean eating just to help her own health. So I've been doing more of that where we will have a lot more salads, I mean a more meal prep as well. So I'll just go and buy like ten chicken breasts, cut them all up and then do it for like five days and lunches. Also, exercise wise, I'm a bit of an old man that apply crying green bowls. Ajita, I don't know. Do you guys have cranberry bowls in the US? No.

I was like, did you say something about green balls? I mean,

Do you have flat green bowls now?

And just being so English,

It sounds so funny because we do have I did do a joke on the Instagram real. But what do you have if you have a great big green ball in your left hand and a great big green ball in your right hand? It's a heck of a good hold on the jolly green giant. So, no, I never heard of what you just said.

What is it? Yeah, it's basically you roll to two bowls and you have to get them closest to that yellow jack. Sounds quite simple, but yeah, it's nice to be out in the fresh air in general. And then the other thing I play a lot as well is badminton because I'm beby. Yeah. A fiercely competitive. Wow.

Yeah. I mean we have that here but you don't hear a lot about it or see it much. Yeah.

It's the second most popular sport in the UK like social sport. Wow.

No, we used to have this thing called your darts until people started getting killed with them. It's like three pound projectiles that you throw up in the air.

I do love cornhole when I go over to America as well.

Oh, that's another thing. When I first came to this area, Cornhole was never I mean, cornhole meant something really different where I came from. All right. I thought I came here. I thought this has to be a joke, a sick joke. I mean, Jesus, little kids are, you know, standing next to these boards. It says cornhole. And it's a very dirty, you know, filthy thing where I come from. So. So, yeah. Let's play play some. Kornel, you're crazy. So so anyway, tell them how they get a hold of you before the dog comes and pees all over. Tom here bites me.

Yeah. So if you want to go and check out more about what we do and you're looking to amplify business to seven figures plus then go to amplifyccom.com. There's also a ton of resources that we're adding to that. We just started a blog and there's also the podcast on that where you can listen to the seven figure entrepreneurs as well.

Yeah, yeah. And it was great. I was on there was a lot of fun and a lot of listen to other episodes, a lot of lot of inspiration there for you entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs. So so thanks, Paul, for coming on. I really appreciate it

Being a absolute pleasure. Tom always, always a pleasure talking to you anyway. So yeah. Fun stuff.

Ok, so get over to amplifyccom.com and check out all the great stuff Paul has and there's a lot of those things he was talking about are very advanced things that you can take advantage of using technology and he can show you how to do it.

All right. Catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.

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