Recently I had the opportunity to meet with a phenomenal person: Max Simon. He is phenomenal in so many ways it is hard for me to put my thoughts into words. He helped consult with us on the current business of McLean Masterworks. We spent the better part of a day together and I feel as though I am part of his “tribe.” Before I get into the details below is a bit about Max. Actually – I just borrowed the bio from Max’s website but you get the idea.
Max Simon is the CEO & Founder of Big Vision Business, a cool little company on a mission to train one million entrepreneurs to create thriving businesses that are on-purpose, in-service, and wildly profitable. His signature live event “What’s Working Now LIVE” is widely considered to be THE premier gathering for big-vision entrepreneurs looking to play a bigger game. He believes business is your greatest spiritual practice.
Max Simon is a rock star. We had a VIP day with him and went through all of the questions about what is working and what we should be focusing on. He made us realize at the most basic level that we need to be committed to how many people we can reach instead of what our conversion rate is. Yes – we need to convert people into customers in order to stay in business but our mission is about much more than that. A lot of our focus were in areas that they didn’t need to be.
1. Affiliate Management
This is the most sacred and coveted position in a company. Whoever runs and interacts directly with top affiliates should have a vested interest in the company. Affiliate managers will come and go in most cases, especially if they are rock stars but that should not be a deterrent about hiring the best people available for the position. His point was simple. Help support affiliates as much as you think about your own business. Find out what “lights them up” vs running a contest that will not keep them engaged.
2. Hiring
Hiring can be a seamless and easy process if done correctly. Max taught us an intuitive way to hire great talent and we are walking through that process right now with excellent results. I am going to share a little bit of this now. I have always been a fan of gmail and email filters but this takes it to a new level. Max taught us that it is possible to find great talent from your own mailing list – you just need to make the potential hires jump through hoops and earn the position before it is offered to them. Here is the golden nugget – you can automate the process 80%. Here is how you do it. Set up a new gmail account – something like great jobs@gmail or something that resonates with your business. Step 1: send an email to your list with a clearly defined job description (email me if you want a sample of what I am talking about). Make everyone who applies follow directions to a tee or they are disqualified.
Step 2: in the job description give them a simple task. Email a specific phrase to the email address you just set up. Actually as I am writing this I realize I am getting ahead of myself. Step 2 should actually be setting up filters and auto responders within gmail. Go to labs and enable the “canned response” plugin. From here you can create a filter based on a specific phrase or keyword and then reply with a set auto responder. It works brilliantly and can be duplicated many times. Here are the steps we walked through in the most recent round of hiring. 1. send an email to great jobs@ with the phrase “I love life” and a paragraph about why you would be great for the job. The filter is looking for the key phrase – if people did not put that they don’t make it to the next round. If they do put the phrase it triggers a filter to label the email and send a specific auto responder or canned response. Congratulations – you made it to round 2 – please do XYZ and respond with the new phrase “XYZ” in your email. You can’t imagine how many people don’t make it to the next round.
At this point it is not necessary to worry about the responses until all of the steps have been completed. Once candidates are successful in making it through a couple of rounds it is time for a group interview and one last task. At this point when narrowing down the candidates go back through the initial responses to see who did the best work. You will be amazed at how many people are not able to follow simple instructions.
Step 3: Hire someone and get excited – they are going to do amazing things.
3. Affilate Launch Strategy/ JV management
Your affiliates are your best friends. Do whatever is possible to keep them happy and keep them supporting you. I wrote an article a bit ago from another guru in the field who coined the term JV crack. Yes you are paying your affiliates good money but the opt in rates and sales are easy. They are established lists with great customers and leads and they are hungry for great content – as long as you can provide it.
For the first time we are putting together a few amazing contests and I can’t wait to see the results. It won’t be about winning iPods as that doesn’t get people excited, it will be about an amazing experience for our top affiliates and partners. If you are sending to your list and sending quality leads you will be rewarded with not only monetary compensation but also an amazing experience. Details are TBD but will be pretty awesome.
We went through so much with Max Simon in 5 hours it is hard to comprehend. What I can say is his guidance is phenomenal and he is direct. He is humble beyond his own being and a great guy. I am grateful to have been able to work with him and am excited to work with him on future projects.
