Todd Tresidder’s background includes:

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• B.A. in Economics from University of California at Davis
  
• Member of Economics Honors Society and Deans List
  
• A serial entrepreneur since childhood building many businesses and retiring at age 35 from his position as a Hedge Fund Investment Manager responsible for a 20+ million dollar portfolio.
  
• Todd’s portfolio management for the Hedge Fund produced 100% winning years except one which was less than a 5% loss.
  
• Raised net worth from less than zero at age 23 to self-made millionaire 12 years later by “walking the talk” using the same personal finance and investment strategies taught on this web site.
  
• An early pioneer and expert in statistical and mathematical risk management systems for investing.
  
• Financially independent from age 35 through investing – not marketing – unlike many other financial gurus who made their money through marketing courses and books.
  
• Still an active investor who earns consistent investment returns in both up and down markets.
  

The point of these factoids is to demonstrate that I teach personal finance and investing based on real experience. I walk the talk and have the results to prove it. I do not teach ivory tower theories or inaccurate conventional wisdom: instead, I show you what works, what doesn’t, and why – all based on actual, provable, experience.

With that said, there is a serious limitation to the financial and professional data cited above. It tells you about my financial and investment expertise, but it doesn’t tell you anything about me as a person. In other words, there are many self-proclaimed financial experts with impressive resumes so what is different about Todd?

The most obvious difference is I made my money investing in publicly traded markets just like you can do; whereas, many financial experts made their money through becoming best-selling authors and marketing financial advice to you. Unless you plan on writing a best-selling book and building a marketing empire you may find difficulty duplicating their success.

More at https://financialmentor.com

Here's the Transcript

Hugh: Hey, this is Hugh Ballou. Welcome to this episode of Orchestrating Success. I got a guy today that I’m going to interview that knows how to convert passion to profit. Todd, tell us a little bit about you. How do you say your last name?

Todd: Tresidder.

Hugh: I have a Southern focus on pronunciation, so I want to make sure I got it right. Todd, I’ve read a little bit about you and I’m really impressed. We’re talking about how to get more clients than you really need today. Talk about your background and what brought you to being able to do this for yourself and for others.

Todd: My background is in hedge fund investing. That’s where I learned the investment skills that ultimately I market through my coaching services and books and courses and things like that. That’s where I learned it: practical school hard knocks. I spent about 12 years doing research in computerized trading algorithms and risk management systems, things like that. I ran the fund for all those years. We had only one losing year for the investors. The portfolio actually won money, even in that losing year, but it was such a small win that with the net of expenses and fees, investors lost a little bit. We now have 100% winning years.

I went on to build this financial education company. I sold the hedge fund back when I was 35, which anybody looking at this feed can see that was a long time ago. I’ve been building out a financial education business, trying to give back the knowledge I created. It’s different; my viewpoints are sometimes unorthodox, but they are always supported by math and research and proof. They violate a lot of commonly held ideas in the financial planning area.

Hugh: Love it. I like to violate all the standard leadership rules because they don’t work.

Todd: Make hamburger out of sacred cows.

Hugh: That’s right. One of the people I interviewed was Gary Gunderson, who wrote the book Killing Sacred Cows.

For your business, who’s your ideal client?

Todd: Depends on what part of the business you’re talking about. There is various parts of the business: online advertising, the books, the courses, and the coaching services. I think what you’re referring to is the coaching services. When you look at the ideal target client, there is several. The reason for that is there is several problems that the coaching service solves. One of the keys in getting more clients than you can handle is you have to be clear on what problem you solve. People pay for solutions to problems. You have to look at what the high value solution you have that other people will gladly pay for. That’s your starting point. It’s not so much like, women over 35 with a net worth of blah blah blah. It doesn’t work that way. It’s a psychographic, not a demographic.

Hugh: Say a little more about that. That’s fascinating. What problem do you solve? Let’s go after it that way.

Todd: One of the problems that I solve is people who achieve very-near financial independence. A lot of people don’t understand this, but as you approach financial independence, it’s a very unleveling experience, if you will. It typically takes people by surprise. The reason for that is as you approach financial independence, what happens is your life up to that point was very well prescribed. It’s standard stuff. You go to work five days a week. You have your job. Your focus is making more money. Your focus is spending less, saving money, trying to achieve some modicum of financial security. Everything is pretty well set. Once you achieve financial independence, all that grounding is removed because you no longer have to report to the man, you no longer have a daily routine that is required of you. Everything is up to you. You can choose. You no longer have any excuses for your unhappiness. Before when you were unhappy, you could always blame it on your crappy boss or your lousy job or the fact that you work all day when you really want to be doing X or Y.

Once you’re financially independent, you have no excuses. Your happiness is entirely up to you. Your day is entirely up to you. That is what I call a burden of responsibility. Most people sitting on the other side of this will be like, “Yeah, Todd, gee, big burden. I’ll take it any day.” It’s true. For most people, it’s a privilege to get to that position in life. But don’t kid yourself. It’s very disconcerting. When people experience it, they’re thrown off. They seek out guidance, and I’m one of the only people who has been through it and is willing to mentor others through it. I have been through it a lot, both with myself and clients.

That’s one target profile client. They have a lot of money, they are very concerned, they are right at the edge of financial independence but don’t know if they are financially independent or not. They’re not sure. The numbers are marginal. Right when you hit that point, your whole life changes. Before that, everything was pre-prescribed. After that, you’re going according to what your values are. All kinds of stuff that you could tolerate before, like going to work and putting up with people’s crap and all kinds of things like that, you won’t tolerate it anymore. It’s very unsettling. It’s a huge change in a person’s life. That’s one target client.

Another target client is somebody who wants to build wealth. For example, an entrepreneur who has success, but he is not converting it into wealth. He is building a successful business. It’s not translating over into wealth into his personal balance sheet. He’s not sure what he’s doing wrong. He needs help. That’s another target client where I help them solve a problem. There is a variety of target clients.

Hugh: Those are the people listening to this podcast. That’s how we position ourselves. There are people- 31 years working with solopreneurs and early-stage businesses. People are stuck. They are on a treadmill, and they are too busy. They don’t have a life. They haven’t done this kind of planning or reframing.

Let’s go back to the expertise.

Todd: Most people I see are too busy making a living to develop wealth.

Hugh: Absolutely. Sometimes they’re too busy making a living to make a living.

Todd: To live.

Hugh: Amen. To the bottom line. We’re talking about how to have more clients than you can handle. I’m at a place in my career where, like you are, I screen clients and I don’t want to work with everybody. I only take a certain number. I try to automate the others or put them into groups. What are the problems? I’m in a service business. A lot of people I work with are in a service business. We are selling what might be called invisible at some point. Leadership is invisible until you’re bad at it. Financial planning is invisible until you’re bad at it. Service businesses -

Todd: I call it selling pink fog.

Hugh: Pink fog. I love that. What are some of the problems in approaching marketing for this kind of business?

Todd: First of all, as I said, you have to be clear on what problem you solve that people will pay for. A lot of people have a lot of problems. For example, early on in the business, I used to help people get out of debt. I don’t do that anymore. That’s a problem people won’t pay for a solution for; they don’t have the money. They may really need help. They have a huge problem. But they don’t have money and they can’t really pay for a solution. You have to find problems that you are the single best solution to that people will gladly pay for that solution. Then you have to position yourself in their buying process. You have to understand where they look and what they’re looking for in order to solve that problem. It’s got to be a burning enough problem that they wake up in the morning and it bothers them. They care about it enough to research it. Those I call money key words. You’re looking for those money key words, or finding a buying process. The buying process might exist somewhere else other than the Internet, but you have to identify their buying process. Then you have to map yourself right into that buying process. You have to show up at the point they’re looking for that solution.

As an example, on my site, if you look up terms like “money coach,” “financial coach,” “investment coach,” all those terms with coaching and finance, I will rank pretty highly. The way a buying process works for a coaching service is people will look for those money terms like “money coach” or “financial coach” or “financial coaching.” It’s a trust relationship. The buying process is you don’t have to be number one. It’s like a retirement calculator where somebody comes in, they will use the top result, they have their answer, and they’re out. With coaching, it’s a personal service, it’s a trusted relationship. People will go through the first couple pages of results, at least the first page. They will try to find somebody that they resonate with. They are trying to find somebody they can trust and connect with, somebody whose message they resonate with. They will go through the first couple pages of coaches in search of a coach. If you are looking for a financial coach, you have a financial problem you are trying to solve. You don’t want a traditional financial advisor; otherwise you would search for those terms. The site then has to position itself as a trusted authority in that field to where they feel compelled to connect with you.

You also want to write your message in a way that it’s unique and stands for what you provide and only you can provide. For example, my message connects a lot of personal growth issues with wealth-building. In other words, the way I like to say it is that building wealth is the ultimate path to personal growth because of everything you have to go through in order to get there. The real gold is in who you become on the journey, not in the destination itself. That’s a very different positioning statement, but it’s true. It’s been true in my life and in my clients’ lives. It’s not some cutesy thing; it’s what I truly believe. But that’s unique in my message. Everybody else is about the money. They will all position themselves next to a Lamborghini or a fancy mansion. I’m sitting by a stream and talking about how life is about experiences, not stuff. Nobody wants more money; they want what they think money will get them. For the most part, people don’t want more stuff; they want a more fulfilling life. People connect with that. My target client does.

That’s the point. Your message won’t relate to everybody, but it will relate to your target client, who you will want to attract. It will stand out from the crowd. If you go through the first couple pages of search results for things like “money coach” or “financial coaching” and look at those, I’m clearly a trusted authority in the field. That’s where I rank.

People then contact you because that’s the buying process for a coach. Nearly every coach gives away a free strategy session. That’s where you get to know the client. You talk over stuff with them. All you have to do, the whole purpose of that content marketing is to get you to the strategy session. The strategy session is where the close takes place. Again, it’s just positioning yourself in the buying process. You have to have enough flow in clients in that buying process to have a full practice or a full business.

In my case, back when I did it, I have grown since then. I don’t know what the numbers are now, but there was something like 25,000 searches for “money coach” if I am recalling right. You apply the 1% rule to it on the Internet. Of 25,000 searches, 1% of those click through, that is 250. 1% of that is 2.5 clients that will actually contact you and possibly convert. That’s 2.5 clients. That is only one term, right? There are a whole bunch of these terms I would rank for. If you take 2.5 clients for the one term and you say, “Okay, my average retention on a client is two years,” that would mean you could carry a constant practice of roughly 50 people, which is way more than I could ever fulfill. Just that one strategy alone right there more than filled my practice.

One other thing we want to go through is one more step that I want to make sure we get in before we move. That is the actual conversion process. It’s traffic times conversion equals profit. That’s the formula.

Hugh: Traffic x conversion = profit. Really good formula. Thank you.

Todd: Very straightforward. That’s the way business works. So far, I have been showing the traffic, and I have been showing the first step to conversion. The actual conversion to a coaching relationship is a trust relationship. It’s going to be different for your business. You have to relate what I am saying to your business. The key is understanding the buying process of a client. I am relating the buying process of a coaching client to illustrate the point. You’re going to have to figure out the buying process for your clients.

In my case, they all get a free strategy session. You have two conversions that have to take place. You have to convert them from cold traffic to somebody who wants a strategy session. You then have to convert the strategy session to a paying client. In the strategy session, I had a system set up where the person would have to first prequalify themselves. A prequalification is genuine, yet it also creates the bit of exclusivity. What I found in doing coaching was that it’s really a selection process. It’s not a marketing or sales process. For the right client, coaching was a no-brainer thing. It would definitely put more money in their pocket than it costs them. The key was finding the right client. So I gave away an article that everybody had to pre-read to qualify themselves. They had to say where they fit into the process when they applied for a strategy session. They would have to read the article to tell me where they fit in as a target client who is going to get more value than they paid for.

In that essay, if you will, or article, it would go through and explain everybody that shouldn’t do coaching; they should instead learn the stuff over here and over here because it has a higher value relative to their need. It’s a more efficient way to get the information. The coaching is properly used in a very specific way for a very specific client, and either they qualify or they don’t. I just laid it out right up front, right? Those are the clients that are going to be great clients for me. Then they would write in and say, “I qualified under blah blah blah,” and they would pre-qualify themselves. That sorts out the strategy session. Very high percentages of the strategy sessions would close. It would be like 70-80% of the strategy sessions would actually result in a paying client. What it is is a prequalification system that keeps me from wasting my time on my phone. It sorts people. The key to that is the top of the funnel.

We are explaining a funnel here. The top of the funnel has to be large enough that you can afford to be picky like that. You have to get that traffic coming in, and then you have to have the conversion process. By the time they come to me, they are definitely pre-sold. They have read my material. Most of my coaching clients would come to me and say, “Todd, I listened to all your podcasts.”

One guy told me that he and his wife listened to each one of my podcasts three times before they called me. Three times. He and his wife. This guy made $600,000 a year. His time is very valuable. That is how much time he put into researching me: he researched my name, my business. He read a bunch of my articles, and then he contacted me. By the time he contacted me, he was pre-sold. That is the beauty. Once you go into a strategy session with this much pre-qual, the only thing you have to do is help him.

Hugh: You have given us a whole lot of data here. It is a brilliant process. There is a couple of places I want to go back and clarify. I sound like I cut you off. This guy made $600,000 because he has the due diligence to do research before he jumps into something, like before he talked to you.

Todd: Very high-quality clients. You are not dealing with college kids kicking the tires or people who can’t pay your bills or wannabes. You are only paying for people who are serious.

Hugh: Your website is financialmentor.com. You got at least five books. How Much Money Do I Need to Retire? Those can be found on financialmentor.com?

Todd: Yeah, and also on Amazon. Look up my name, or look up Financial Mentor on Amazon or Todd Tresidder. Go to my website, and you will see the books in the sidebar.

Hugh: How long have you been doing this particular program?

Todd: I got the website back in 1998 after I sold the hedge fund. I really didn’t do anything with it. I made tons of mistakes. It was a brochureware website. It was good enough back then because there wasn’t much competition on the Internet. It was good enough back then to bring clients into the coaching practice. But it was basically brochureware. It had tons of mistakes in it.

We went into the top of the real estate market, so around 2006 or 2007, I got really uncomfortable. I was mostly focused on my real estate business back then. By real estate business, I mean personal ownership of a bunch of apartment buildings. I got uncomfortable with the financial leverage in real estate as the credit bubble bloomed. I sold everything, and I finished selling by 2007. At that point, all I had left was the house I live in. Once the downturn had really developed in full force and I saw how the government was going with it, I really wasn’t comfortable bringing financial leverage back in, and I am still not comfortable with it. I think things are too unstable. I decided to pursue time leverage, knowledge leverage, and technology leverage to build out this business finally. Also, along that time, I was introduced to Wordpress around 2008/2009.

To make a short story long, I got the URL back in 1998, developed a junkie site that sat there for about ten years, got ahold of Wordpress, and the site has been through about three evolutions since then to the form you see now. I have only really taken it seriously since about 2009 or so.

Hugh: You spoke early on in this interview about you not looking at a demographic, but a psychographic. There may be people listening to this that aren’t really familiar with that term. How do you sort out your psychographic? What does that mean?

Todd: Let’s use my course as an example. What I’m doing in the business right now, we’ll get to it or not, is I am moving from coaching services. as you directly alluded to, those more than sold out. Couldn’t take new clients. I have been sold out for years. If you go on my website now, you will see I am not accepting new clients. I am moving the whole business to putting Todd in a box through courses. I coached for fifteen years. More than that now because I am still coaching, just the old clients that are still with me. I guess it’s 20 years I have been coaching now. I am dating myself here. I have been coaching 20 years.

What I learned is what people go through to achieve financial freedom. The big solution I provide is financial freedom, like serious education for financial freedom, not get-rich-quick garbage, like serious education. How do you engineer your life to develop financial freedom with reliability and security? That is the solution I provide on the website. The moniker is Financial Freedom for Smart People. I am moving everything to courses because what I learned through coaching over those years is my clients slowly showed me it’s a step-by-step math they follow. Everybody comes to me at a different step in the process, but they all follow the same seven steps. I am formulating Seven Steps to Seven Figures. All the courses are already formulated. They are in drawers; I am just making them manifest if you will by formally putting them in courses. The first one available now is Step 3. That is how to design your life to result in wealth. It’s a wealth-planning course, but it is totally different from traditional financial planning or investment planning. We can go into that if you want.

The point being, there is a psychographic for that course. It took me a while to figure that out. I was very confused. At first, I was like, It’s going to be people over 50, and thy are trying to retire. This, that, and the other thing. I was wrong. People who were college kids who were just getting out of school and getting started with a career. I had stay-at-home moms. I had men at 70 who were multi-millionaires. I couldn’t figure it out. It took me forever. I was interviewing my clients in the course trying to find out a commonality. It was obvious, but I didn’t get it at first. It was anybody who was serious enough about their financial freedom to study the subject and do something about it. That was the common psychographic. It was people who were serious about it. They weren’t just wannabes. They weren’t thinking it would be nice to have it. They were actively doing something about it. That’s why they were willing to pay some money for a course that gave them a complete soup-to-nuts solution. My target client is hanging out on other financial independence blogs. They are reading this stuff. Most of what you find on the subject is somewhat limited; it’s mostly about extreme frugality and how you achieve financial independence at an early age. My target client is studying it, and they say, “I want more.” They run across my course and buy it. Does that make sense to you, Hugh?

Hugh: It makes a huge amount of sense. Todd, it’s probably 3% of the population that has been able to figure that out for their own benefit.

Todd: I am just following standard business practices. When a course is new and the size of the people coming in is small enough that you can have personal interaction, I am having it. I am calling them up. I am getting on the phone with them. I am talking about the course. I am asking them how it’s working for them. What are their interests? What are their dreams? Where do they come from? How did they find me? How did they buy the course? How often do you get to talk to the course creator? Who cares enough to do that? You go in there and start seeing it. They will hand it to you if you ask the right questions.

Hugh: Thank you for that. That is so helpful. It is so helpful. You did a lot of trial and error. I don’t call those mistakes; I call them learning opportunities.

Todd: The way I approach it is everything is figure-out-able. You have to apply good business practices and step forward and apply risk management every step of the way. Eventually you will get there. I never knew courses when I started, and the course came out great. I didn’t know Internet marketing when I started. I was the first financial coach on the Internet when I started. Didn’t even exist as a business model. I had this harebrained crazy idea that I wanted to separate financial advice and financial education from investment product sales. Back in the 1990s, where did you get your financial information? It was from a broker, which is inherent conflict of interest. Now it doesn’t sound so revolutionary, but it is 20 years later.

Hugh: I had a broker once. I kept getting broker and broker. We won’t go there. You figured out who needs you. You talk about getting the funnel. Here is the funnel. You need enough people in the funnel to be able to sort out those numbers you were talking about. How do you get people into that funnel?

Todd: That’s what I was explaining earlier. I gave that content marketing example. I’m sorry, I didn’t explain in detail though. If you go on my site, you will see an entire area under Financial Coaching. There is a library of articles in there that are all connected into a silo of content.

Hugh: Back up from that. How do you get them to come there? How do you drive traffic there?

Todd: I am not driving traffic. They are searching for a solution, and I am becoming the authority in it. The key is you have to find out their buying process. It goes back to the beginning of the conversation. It’s about their buying process; it’s not about me. This is the thing that almost everybody misses in marketing. Nobody gives a damn about you. All they care about is themselves and their problems and what solution you can provide. The only thing they want from you is the solution. That may sound harsh, but isn’t it real? You’re laughing because it’s real.

Hugh: I’m laughing because so few people have been able to figure that out. Here I am. Just being on social media, people hit me all the time, “Here I am, I’m great, buy my stuff.” Wait a minute. We haven’t had a conversation. I don’t know you. How do you know what I need?

Todd: People think it’s about building up- You need to be authoritative, but you need to be authoritative in the way you give. When you’re giving to your customer, you have to come from the customer’s viewpoint. What are they looking for? What will convert them? They will convert when you give them so much value for free. The beauty of the Internet and content marketing is you can give unbelievable amounts of value for free, and it still makes good business sense because you can deliver videos and e-books and audio downloads and podcasts. You can deliver unbelievable solutions at almost no cost to yourself, just the cost of time of producing the media. When you do an authoritative body of work, Google will figure it out. If you structure it properly, Google will see that you’re an authority. But you have to build that authoritative body of work. I built an authoritative body of work in financial coaching quite a few years ago. It’s been top-ranked in Google ever since.

Hugh: That’s the secret there. When I work with clients that are solopreneurs, we work on creating their position of influence. That is precisely what you are describing. Why do people need you? Who do you want to influence first? How do you want to influence them? What do you want them to do about it? There is figuring that dynamic out. You have given us a whole lot of data. I am just trying to go back and capture some of the significant sound bites here and some of the steps in the process because you figured out a very good process. People can go to your website and learn some things or buy some of your books. In the front end, creating that position of influence, you’re an expert at things. That is so key. You created the body of information. Go back to that part again. How did you start creating this expert position?

Todd: For the terms “financial coaching,” all that, I did curated research around those terms. I saw all the searches people were using. How do you become a money coach? What is a money coach? How is financial coaching different from financial advice? Then what I did was I turned it into- I am very much about the consumer. I am a consumer advocate. That is how I got into this business. I got tired of all the- Where there is money, there is power. If you are in the money business, there are a lot of corrupt people who are trying to exploit people.

If you read my book Don’t Hire a Financial Coach… Until After You Read This Book, that book was directly targeted at all the clients who were coming to me from the back-end coaching programs off of New York Times best-selling authors. What they were doing was they were getting a book that establishes them as an authority. Most people don’t know this, but there are floors of coaches off in Utah in high-rise buildings with headsets on in cubicles. They market these back-end coaching services to New York Times bestsellers. They create this curriculum. But it’s not real coaching. It’s not how coaching is best applied. It is very expensive content delivery, and it’s overpriced. But because it’s labeled as coaching, people can upsell it as a back-end sell off of their NYT bestselling books. So I’m not going to name names, but you can probably guess the people in my business who did this.

I wrote a book as a consumer protection device so that consumers could recognize a genuine financial coach who is genuinely providing coaching in the way that it works and adds value versus somebody who is using it as a renaming metaphor for content delivery done in a very expensive, lazy way. That is an example of a consumer advocate book.

The books are another thing, though. What they do is establish authority. They are another source of what you call high-relationship conversions. After people read my books or listen to my podcasts, they have an experience of me. There is trust involved. When they come over to the site, they are a different class of client than somebody who just did a Google search. I should say prospect, not client, a whole different class of prospect because you have to convert people from prospect to client. There is a consistent conversion process.

Hugh: Absolutely. A lot of people that I know and that I talk to and that I see some dialogue on social media have a lot of traffic. A lot of people come to their website. They are not really converting. Is part of it that they haven’t really established the value and relationship with the client? Or is there some other secret for conversion?

Todd: Let me put it this way. Hugh, do you like to be converted?

Hugh: No.

Todd: No, of course not. None of us do. That is why “Subscribe to my newsletter” is a losing proposition. Nobody wants another newsletter. Nobody needs more information. As I said before, they need solutions. They need value. You have to figure out how you can deliver value as part of the conversion. What is it that you can give that people will want enough to convert? I.e. become a subscriber on your list. It’s always about giving. That is the beauty of content marketing. That is what makes it fun. It’s a giving business. I don’t like to pitch, but I am more than happy to give and in the process have a smart business model behind it. Then my profits become a measure of how many people I’ve helped as opposed to how much I extracted from people or something. As long as you are always giving more value than you take, it’s a fun business. It’s hard work, but it’s fun.

Hugh: Well, I do detect a bit of passion in your voice. You have excitement when you talk about what you do and a passion for it. That is underlying. You really have to want to do what you’re doing. What did you say about this is a giving business? Would you go back to that? You slipped that one in there.

Todd: Think about it. If you go on my website, what do you get when you subscribe? You can get a free e-book and a free course called 52 Weeks to Financial Freedom. I am changing that up by the way, but the course as it exists right now as we record this is 52 Weeks to Financial Freedom. It maps up the entire financial freedom process step by step. You can see all the steps. It gives you the overview framework. If that is your goal, which is my target client again, if that is your goal, then that is a high value proposition. The free book I give away is 18 Essential Lessons of a Self-Made Millionaire. That goes through and shares all kinds of valuable ideas I learned along the journey. I give away transcripts to podcasts for opting in.

I give away a free PDF of any article. I am known for extremely long-body content. I write articles that are almost as long as e-books. I did a whole expose on Whole Life insurance and how it is sold incorrectly and how it should be sold correctly and who is in it for and who gets ripped off by it. I give common business sense principles around Whole Life. 12,000 words. It’s almost an e-book length article. A lot of people don’t want to read that much online so I give away a free PDF of every article. There is no ads on it. It’s all beautifully formatted. All you have to do is opt in. You can get a free PDF of any article on the site.

Also, my calculators. I have one of the largest collections of financial calculators on the Internet. I give them away for free. You can use them all you want, no opt-in required. However, if you would like a screen print of all your calculated results with all the tables and charts and everything cool with it, then when you opt in, I will send it to you.

What I am pointing out is there is giving at every step. I will give you the article, and if you want the PDF, just opt in. I will give you the calculator for free, and if you want the printed results sent to you in a nice format, opt in and I will send it to you for free. I will give you the free book and the free course. I give, give, give. Always a value. Something that is relevant and valuable to where you are anywhere on my site at that point.

The giveaways are so consistent throughout the site that I actually tested what most marketers do, which is pop-up boxes, or interstitials in the business. In the old advertising business, it was called interruption marketing, where you just interrupt them personally over their screen until you irritate them so much they opt in, or some crazy idea. I actually tried them one time. I did an experiment for a month, and my opt-in rate dropped. My time on my site dropped. All the quality standards of the site dropped. Like time on site, page views per visitor, all those numbers dropped, and my opt-in dropped. That stuff only works when your site doesn’t have proper opt-in bonuses. If you have proper incentives for people to opt in, they will opt in. If you chase them around with all these interstitials, you will chase them away. Let people choose to opt in. That’s your quality subscriber. Give them something worth subscribing for.

Hugh: If you have a big list, it’s actually meaningless. The free e-book that they get, would you give us that title again?

Todd: 18 Essential Lessons of a Self-Made Millionaire.

Hugh: That is worth going right there. Wow.

Todd: It’s free, and it’s a short read that is packed with value. If you delivered a junk e-book on the back end of it, what did you accomplish? It’s got to be good. If they come in and trusted you enough to give you their name, and you deliver a piece of junk e-book that is two pages long and says nothing or is a bullet point list, that didn’t build trust or relationship. The whole point of this is to build trust and relationship for the high-value conversion. In a dating analogy, it’s the equivalent of saying, “Do you want to go for a cup of coffee?” That is the opt-in. If you immediately say, “Come home with me. Let’s have sex,” it’s not going to be a conversion. There has to be trust and relationship built. The desire has to exist before the conversion takes place.

Hugh: Such wise words. We’ve had a lot of information in the last 30-40 minutes here. This will be transcribed, and it will be on the podcast and on my website. Your links will be there. I would encourage people- What is the name of your podcast by the way?

Todd: Financial Mentor. Very original. Everything is Financial Mentor. Facebook, Twitter. It’s Financial Mentor everywhere. I have the branding across the board.

Hugh: That explains itself. It explains itself.

Todd: Yeah. Again, I was lucky. I got it back in ’98. I started the business early on that you could get a decent URL that matches the business. It’s a financial education business. I am mentoring people on how to build wealth.

Hugh: You make it sound easy, but you have worked hard to make it sound easy.

Todd: Very much so. That is the mark of- You know somebody understands it when they can explain it in a way that simplifies it and makes it actionable. You only get to that point by walking the talk. If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have fumbled this thing left and right. It’s only because I have now done it. Once you really know it at a deep level, it’s pretty simple stuff. It’s not complex. But it’s a lot of work to do. To do well, it takes some effort. You don’t just throw it up there.

Hugh: I find a lot of people make it harder than it already is. It’s already hard. When I try to simplify it, I liked-

Todd: Let’s clarify. I want to clarify something. It’s not hard; it’s a lot of work. It’s relatively simple to do. You just have to be committed to do the work to create all the value for people. If you’re willing to do the work to create value because you care enough to give that value, it’s not hard. It’s just a lot of work.

Hugh: If people are tired of their subsistence, getting along with what they’re making, they can go to http://FinancialMentor.com or listen to your podcast. It’s on iTunes, I’m sure. Financial Mentor. And your Facebook page is Financial Mentor. Going to your website, there is a lot of free stuff. Todd, you’ve given us a huge amount.

Todd: I guess I wasn’t lying, huh?

Hugh: That doesn’t do any good, does it? It’s the antithesis of those people saying, “Come to my webinar, and you will make a lot of money.” They give you a couple of tips and they tell you you should buy something to get the rest. What you are doing is giving people a large body of information and saying, “If you like that, there’s more.” You have really given people something of value. That is so key today because there are so many people trying to trick us. You’re giving people really solid information.

We found each other on LinkedIn, and I was looking for credible people to do an interview for my podcast and vice versa to exchange with credible people and grow my network and help you grow your network. I am really glad that you and your team responded. You have a high-functioning team that responded on your behalf.

My area is leadership and organizational development. Our work is very similar. Somewhere in here, you had a quote that was very similar to what Jim Rohn used to teach. It’s not making your goal that is the most important thing; it’s what happens to you and your business in achieving the goal. I wanted to highlight that.

Todd: Think about it. Business is just one of the stages on which you play out your stuff in life. You have various stages you play out on. You have relationship, money, business, spirituality. There are all these different stages on which you are playing out your stuff. This is just one of them. Ultimately, what is life? I like to think of life as becoming the best version of yourself. Treading a path of personal growth. You are growing and moving into whatever you can become. It’s a never-ending journey, and that’s what makes it fun and exciting.

Hugh: It is. We have had some interesting people. I like to record these live on Facebook and see who shows up. It is totally unannounced. We randomly picked up some interesting people. As we do the wrap here, Todd, this is incredibly important information. People will get to track it by looking at the transcript. What would you leave us with? What closing thought or challenge would you like to leave the listener with today?

Todd: Just do the work. To quote Steven Pressfield, Do the work. Overcome your resistance, and move your life forward.” Guess what? This isn’t a trial run. You can look at Hugh and me here. We are older dudes now. We’ve been down the road. You’re going to get to our spot really fast. Surprisingly fast. It’s not a trial run. Don’t waste your days. Get out there and make it happen. Just do it, to quote Nike. Why else would you live? What else is the point of your day? Don’t waste time. Get out and make it happen.

Hugh: Todd Tresidder, you made my day. This was certainly not a waste of time. It was very important. Thank you for giving such value to me and my listeners.

Todd: Thanks, Hugh for having me on your show.