Other Peoples Network feat. Tom Poland

Check out episode
  • Gain insights from Tom’s 30 years of experience and 600 OPN partners, learning from his mistakes and understanding why certain OPN promotions work while others don’t
  • Discover the concept of Other People’s Networks (OPN) and how it can be leveraged to get new clients for free in just two hours per week
  • Understand the importance of identifying and qualifying good OPN partners, and how to approach them to set up mutually beneficial partnerships
  • Get practical steps to get started with OPN, including setting up an email list, developing a lead magnet, and outsourcing the identification and qualification process to a freelancer

Resources/Links:

Summary

Are you struggling to generate new clients for your business? Do you want a proven marketing strategy that can bring in leads consistently? Look no further!

Introducing Other People’s Networks (OPN), a revolutionary marketing system that can help you get new clients for free in just two hours per week.

Imagine having other people promote your free offer to their email subscribers, generating a flood of new client inquiries every month.

With OPN, you can tap into the power of other people’s networks and leverage their email lists to reach your ideal clients. By creating a valuable free offer that features your expertise, you can entice potential clients to take action and book a time to chat with you about becoming a client.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to transform your marketing and grow your business.

Get your hands on the book “Other People’s Networks” by Tom Poland, a multiple bestselling author and marketing expert.

In this book, Tom shares his step-by-step system for implementing OPN and provides real-life case studies of its success.

Check out these episode highlights:

  • 00:10 – Discover the power of other people’s networks (OPN) and how it can revolutionize your marketing strategy
  • 00:45 – Learn how OPN can help you get new clients for free in just two hours per week
  • 01:03 – Uncover the secrets of other people’s networks and how they can generate a steady stream of client inquiries
  • 02:32 -Real-life examples of how OPN has worked exceptionally well for businesses in various industries
  • 04:34 – Avoid common mistakes when implementing the OPN system and maximize your results
  • 08:09 – Understand the key differences between OPN and traditional joint ventures and why OPN offers more control and accountability
  • 10:34 – Start now and take advantage of OPN to grow your email list and generate bulk inquiries each month
  • 12:44 – Gain insight into the catalyst that led to the discovery of OPN and the potential it holds for your business
  • 15:29 – Identify good OPN partners and leverage their networks to reach your target market effectively
  • 18:12 – Take a sigh of relief as you realize that you don’t have to initiate anything in the OPN process
  • 19:08 – Get started with OPN by setting up your email list, developing a lead magnet, and enlisting the help of a freelancer
  • 20:00 – Don’t miss out on the launch of “other people’s networks” by Tom Poland and learn the step-by-step system to harness the power of OPN

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“You've got to get yourself an email list, that's your ticket to entry into the OPN game.” -Tom Poland Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Uwe Dockhorn 00:10
Welcome to an interview with my mentor, Tom Poland. Hi, Tom. And it’s a pleasure talking to you today. How you doing

Tom Poland 00:17
Today? It’s a pleasure talking with you as well. I feel like spiritual one. Well, thanks on different ends of the earth, I believe you’re at the top and I’m down the bone.

Uwe Dockhorn 00:25
But technology makes everything possible.

Tom Poland 00:29
So long as the sleep patterns don’t get interrupted, we’re good.

Uwe Dockhorn 00:32
Yes, indeed. So Tom Poland is a multiple best selling marketing author and has worked with clients in 151 cities around the world. He lives and works from his private resort on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. Wow. So Tom, you’re multiple, Best Selling Author of the Leeds ology marketing series. And you’ve got a new book coming out soon. So it’s called other people’s networks get bought new clients for free in just two hours per week. Wow, that sounds very, very great. So my first question is, please give listeners the helicopter view, so to speak, of other people’s networks, or OPN, as you refer to it in the book. In simple terms, how does OPN work?

Tom Poland 01:15
How does it work? Great, great question helicopter view is this that once a month for people with their email subscriber list, promote a free offer that you’ve created. And that free offer features, some of your intellectual property, it could be a one page downloadable guide, a checklist, a cheat sheet, a free book, or webinar, that is quizzes, there’s so many different ways you can package up something that’s free, that adds value to people that are embedded in that free offer is a call to action or the call to action is typically for people to book a time to chat with you about becoming a quiet. So that’s the big picture for people once a month all emailing at the same time, your free offer and better than the offer is the call to action, which is to book a time to talk with you first, they get a couple of you. And that’s why I say with other people’s networks being other people’s email lists. And that’s important is their email list, not social media connections, etc. But other people’s networks, email lists, that’s the other people’s networks. And the generation of bulk leads once a month is because they’re all emailing your lead magnet, including the call to action at that same time, once a month, then boom, you’ve got those new client inquiries generated. That’s

Uwe Dockhorn 02:25
Why that sounds amazing. So can you share maybe a real life example of a case study where OPN worked exceptionally well?

Tom Poland 02:32
Sure, look, it works business to business, but it also works business to consumer. So for example, one of my clients, Rebecca Davidson was in New Zealand, she set up a webinar, which we helped to put together, she got several partners. Now her thing is intuition. So this is not a commercial value proposition or people think, Oh, you’ve got to have something to sell. That’s like something that can make people money if to a business owner, this was for individuals who wanted to tap into their intuition and to learn how to listen to their intuition. So you couldn’t think of too many subjects which are more esoteric than this and intangible list. So she generated I think it was 15 new clients that $8,000 A pop running her first webinar. And that webinar was filled from other people’s networks. Before that, she spent a lot of money on expensive, very complicated social media, advertising platform campaigns. So that’s a real life case study. Then you get at the other end of the commercial spectrum, if you like someone who targets senior executive leaders, in some of the world’s biggest corporations, like Coca Cola, I’m talking about a client, Derrick Roberts lives in South Africa. But target Europe, primarily large corporations in North America, Coca Cola, Unilever, Heinz, Heineken, food and beverage companies. So the second in command of each of these massive organizations is direct target market. So he’s using OPM, other people’s networks to generate inquiries from his free diagnostic sample tool, if you like. And I’m better than that, of course, was the link to say click here to book a time and see if we should be working together. So two examples, both ends of the spectrum, personal development and tuition to the other end commercial products and the go on supermarket shelves and so on.

Uwe Dockhorn 04:16
Mike is listen to the great insight and kind of like the scope of grind of like redissolved works and well I know from you that you’re doing this quite some time now and and in his time, you made a ton of experiences for yourself, but what are common mistakes people make trying to implement Ethiopian regression?

Tom Poland 04:32
First mistake is a failure to recognize what marketing is and what marketing is. This is where you put an offer in front of someone that you’re already very competent looking for that offer. So this is very different to selling which is going out trying to convince people that should be after that offer. And so, the next question, of course, if you understand this is what effective marketing does is it puts people put an offer in front of people that already have you already looking for where these people hang out. Well the answer is that as human beings tend to hang out networks, there’s LinkedIn networks. It’s Facebook networks, there’s all sorts of Insta Tiktok, network network, local business, networking networks, Chambers of Commerce networks, there’s email list, it’s just the whole planet is just this massive matrix of networks, which people belong to. The question is, therefore, which networks are my ideal clients most likely to be hanging out on? And the answer is that, they’re probably going to be hanging out in the email subscription lists of people who do something similar to what you do. Because, take me for example, when someone subscribes to our email list or registering interest in lead generation. So for me to find OPN, I find people who have email lists who are interested subscribers are interested in lead generation. Now, it might be a different form of lead generation. But I know when a small business owners subscribes to someone else’s list, because they’re interested in whatever Facebook marketing, cold calling, email marketing, whatever it happens to be LinkedIn marketing, and so on, that they are interestingly Gen. So that subscriber on that other person’s email list is likely to be interested in what we’ve got. So I think that the fundamental people look in the wrong places, they go to social media. And there’s one key criteria that you can always look for in any network to immediately figure out whether or not it’s going to be happy to grab your lead magnet. And that is the reason why people join that network. So if people, let’s say, you’re in weight loss, that’s your specialty. Then if people have joined Facebook, have they joined Facebook, because they want to prove themselves physically, no, then join Facebook because they want to catch up with friends and family, maybe they get ticked off because they want to entertain, maybe they got Instagram for some recipes, or something I don’t know. But they’re not joining those with a specific intention of getting in shape physically better. But they might have joined some email subscriber lists on weight loss or personal training, etc. So if you look at the reason people join a network, the network’s that you want to target are the ones that were then joined for the same reason that’s aligned to why they might buy from you. So if you’re an executive leadership coach, you’re looking for networks, where people have joined the next week to learn about leadership. Make sense?

Uwe Dockhorn 07:21
Yeah, that’s a fantastic dive. Deep Dive. Yeah.

Tom Poland 07:26
Yeah. So just just think about it. You know, people said, Well, would you do Facebook ads? Okay. Are people on Facebook for the same reason as to why they might want to buy from you? Because they want to learn about social media? Maybe. But if they want to do lead generation, business growth, business development, any sort of consulting training work? The answer is no. And you generate leads from Facebook? Absolutely. But it’s hard work. And it’s complicated, and it’s expensive. And why would you get all that have to go to the top of a tall tree to pick some fruit, then there’s the fruits of that handout, the low hanging fruits there, which is one of the areas

Uwe Dockhorn 07:58
that this is already very insightful, Tom. So thank you for sharing that. This really deep dive into kind of like all these facets of the OPN network. So let’s broaden the view a little bit again, and, you know, because other people’s networks OPN, it sounds like, you know, what many people would call joint ventures. So is that true? And could you elaborate, kind of like on the key differences between Opia and young progressives?

Tom Poland 08:22
Great question. There’s a lot of similarities. But one of the challenges in our society, people, joint ventures is kind of like the Wild West without the sheriff’s, you know. Stranger rides into town shoots, another stranger hasn’t been there, I’d love for the sunset to find another town, another stranger. So what I’m saying was that in the world of joint ventures, there is a real dearth of quality control. There’s often no accountability, when someone does some cross marketing from one email list to another, no one checks and there was a good view of it, you know, why don’t do that again. So you can think of this as joint ventures without the Commission’s without the affiliate fees without the commercial imperative and why people would want to cross market and promote your lead magnet is pretty simple, because you’re reciprocating promote this and you’ll be selective. And you’ll make sure that what they’re offering is good quality. And they’re not hype, merchants or BS status, etc. But there’s a lot of people out there that would even if you’ve got an email list of 20, or 30, people, we’d love you to promote the banger to their email list. And so that’s different than joint ventures, because we’re not talking about commissions changing hands, we’re talking about a reciprocity of promotion. And we’re also talking about quality control where you’re checking in with a partner, and they’re checking with you, after you’ve done the cross marketing to confirm that each party is happy, and where most of the money is made is at that debrief meeting, because that’s where you’re going to refer each other to other people that might want to do the same thing.

Uwe Dockhorn 09:46
It’s an ongoing system that you’re setting up. So I love that.

Tom Poland 09:51
Yeah, it’s the only marketing system that I know of that grows itself because it feeds on itself in a healthy way. And you imagined you do Do for OPN swaps. In one month, you do debrief meetings, maybe with three of them because not was not a perfect place. And let’s say just two of them, refer you to three partners each. So that’s six new OPM partners you have, and you’ve started less than four. So it’s not easy to imagine even giving conservative examples in terms of numbers, like I just have, that the thing was like a snowball going down the hill. And the question I often hear from people around about the stage of its alive audience is, well, how do I start, you know, I may not have an email list, I may not even have a lead magnet of some sort. I want more clients, I want a systematic approach to generate bulk inquiries each month that sounds like but how they were doing do I start? And the first and most important answer is you start now, with whatever you’ve got with an email list of six people or eight people with a one page checklist with a blueprint, whatever is simple and easy. That adds value to put together. Always remember that in the land of the blind, the one eyed person is king or queen. And what I’m saying there is that you know, so much more than your target market knows, and you might not think you do, but you just got to put some of this into a one page, shiny thing, I call it a checklist, a blueprint, a cheat sheet, put a nice brand on it, put the call to action, where people can click a link in, you know, on a PDF, and go and book a time to talk with you. And you’re up and running, you’ve got an email list of any description, get into the game, because the game is your entry ticket to the game was an email list. And to see whether the smaller groups large, one of the first things we do with some clients is get them a decent sized email list of 234 or 500 people fairly quickly. Almost no one is interested in promoting what you’ve got for commission only. Virtually everyone in this game wants you to reciprocate a promotion back for their lead magnet. So you’ve made their webinar they promote yours, you’ve made their one page cheat sheet and vice versa. So payment of Camillia. affiliate commissions is not a motivator for partners. And so you don’t need to either offer and it won’t compensate for you being able to feel you’ve been needing to reciprocate. So you’ve got to get yourself an email list that you took it to entry into the European game. And once you’ve got that, every time you complete every month, you have four people promoting your stuff, you’re gonna grow your email list, and that gives you a larger entry ticket into the next size. If you like partnership or network of partners.

Uwe Dockhorn 12:33
We’re speaking of studying now. So when did you first discover OPN? And what was the catalyst for you to delve into the OPN as a marketing strategy?

Tom Poland 12:43
Well, it’s a very interesting question. And I started in 1995. And believe it or not, I had a dream about OPM. And the dream gave me confidence to try it. So I was marketing a three year, curriculum based education program for entrepreneurs. It was a small business equivalent to an MBA, I guess. And so I haven’t felt motivated and haven’t felt clear on what the strategy should be. We tried advertising and we tried sending out, you know, 20,000, direct mail letters to cold, cold prospects. We tried a lot of things. And so it worked. Okay, some of it didn’t work too well. But what after the dream approached CPA or accounting firm, so I knew we’d have our ideal clients, small business owners within their client bases in their email list. And we said to them, Why don’t we put an event on which you’ll be seeing of sponsor, but it won’t cost you anything, just invite to your clients along. Here’s a recording of the last one we did. So you can see the quality controls there, and you make sure it’s a fit. And so that’s what we did. And we ran that year after year after year until the internet started. And then I went online. And we running webinars instead of physical events. So that sort of startups that have 9095, which is almost 30 years ago now. So there’s a lot of lessons learned from that time, I have to say there’s a lot of mistakes that I made. And there’s a lot of head scratching as to why a particular OPN promotion worked or why it didn’t work. So I think we’ve got pretty well dialed in now to the point where I think we’ve got in the last three years, we’ve had something like 600 OPM partners. So we’ve learned about the book is reflective of of those key learnings.

Uwe Dockhorn 14:18
So was there a specific aha moment, kind of like when you realize that OPN potential?

Tom Poland 14:23
Yeah, I think, you know, our second year in business was a record breaking year for me. And that was based almost completely lop and at that point, whereas the first year, we’ve tried a lot of other stuff that were kind of okay, but not swell. And you know, there wasn’t a lot of margin left. So the second year, we would throw in $2,000 profit for the second year for business. That’s pretty good going. And that was all down to OPN. So that was the big aha moment, in terms of the realization that OPN could actually be the only marketing method will be needed. We didn’t have to spend money on advertising anymore. We didn’t have to send out 10 or 20,000 You know, letters to direct mail letters to cold prospects, etc, that there was enough networks who had our ideal clients and in them that were that we could we could sustain year after year after year, decade after decade because it’s taking the marketing efforts.

Uwe Dockhorn 15:15
Well, thank you for saying these days. No, it’s so crucial in our path. And I guess that listeners will be curious about how can they identify good OPN partners?

Tom Poland 15:29
So that’s step one in the process? And the answer is that it’s incredibly simple. You google search Street, store straight to searchers, one is the script, know your target market. Executives, stay at home moms, architects, whoever your target market, you Google, that term, you Google, the medium through which you want to do your marketing, whether that’s a quiz or download or a cheat sheet or a webinar or a free book, whatever it happens to be to be through it, you want to get your your lead magnet if you were, and you Google a term which describes your specialty, weight loss specialist, leadership training, whatever else it happens to be. And what you’ll find is you Google those three terms, is you’ll get 1000s of people who are targeting the target market, you’re described, with a similar or the same specialty that you’ve offered through the same medium through which you can offer as well. And you’ve just uncovered literally, if not 1000s, if certainly hundreds of people were targeting the same target market with you dollars to donuts, they’ll have an email list, but that can be quickly confirmed by visiting their website and since they have an opt in on it. And that’s the easiest thing in the world. So the challenge then is that you’ve got to create an environment for them to get to know you and trust you will what I call the four levels of psychological Allu, which is the rapport respect, relatability, and reciprocity. So there’s a lot more to unpack, which we may not have time for, but the identification is the first step, then there’s a step we qualify. And one of the big qualifications is what is the reason that people who join this person’s email list who is promoting this webinar or whatever it is to their analysis, the reasons aligned, that’s a big qualification tick. There are others such as they need to be featuring themselves on their website, and is others but there’s a few things to look for there. So identification qualification, then this is an approach to set up a meeting, there’s the meeting where you need to establish the rapport respect relatability reciprocity sensors is a series of actually nine steps that include the identification and qualification. So that’s, that’s the way it rolls out. The really important thing is, you shouldn’t initiate any of these steps, you should be controlling everything but initiating nothing, because you just don’t want to leave an entrepreneur in charge of their own marketing. Just go and chase another shiny thing, we get bored very quickly. So you want to have a freelancer, who’s doing the identification, the qualification and the approach, and you just turn up the meetings with people who you are very confident have an interest in doing some form of cross promotion.

Uwe Dockhorn 18:08
You don’t have to initiate anything was very compelling to myself. So I might say so that was kind of the thing that really stuck with me. Yeah. So it’s really kind of like, what a relief, right? Right,

Tom Poland 18:21
yeah, you and I have to build the system, that we get the freelancer to do the Google search and the qualification, etc, using the checklists that we give them, and so on. So there is a system that needs to be followed. And that’s why I say you control everything, but initiate nothing. You just want to, because I know what entrepreneurs like they want to have people have their own business. They’ll be happy to meet with people and talk about becoming clients, they’re happy to work with their clients, they get a lot of satisfaction from that. But they do not want to be sitting in front of a spreadsheet, identifying and tracking and reaching out and following up and doing all that stuff. That’s just the stuff that we weren’t born to do. So we get to get that outsourced.

Uwe Dockhorn 19:02
Yeah, that sounds also very compelling. So what do listeners need to get to get started with OPN? Well,

Tom Poland 19:08
The first thing you did was get a copy of the book, of course, because that’s all laid out there. But you folks beyond that, it is all laid out in there, but you need to get your email sorted. And that means you need an online CRM. So something like MailChimp for an eye contact or something simple like that. Need to develop your lead magnet, your one page cheat sheet or your webinar or whatever happens to be, you need something of an email list. So once you have mentioned that already, sorry, once you’ve got all those, you have the raw materials, you have the assets ready to go. And then you simply need the freelancer to run the system. And I put I feel I have to abolish all that because there are some gaps in there. But we just can’t unpack everything during the time that we have, unfortunately, but it is in the book, other people’s networks.

Uwe Dockhorn 19:53
Wonderful, so people should check it out when it’s coming out. I’m very curious about that. Yeah,

Tom Poland 19:59
yeah. We are going to do a launch late October, we will be on Amazon available on Kindle and paperback. So if you don’t get an opportunity to download the free book, we will be doing free launch, as I said towards in November, then go to Amazon and search for other people’s networks. Tom Poland, when Allen Poland same as the country next to Poland. Yeah, and go get the book and just download it to your heart’s content. It’s all laid out. It’s all step by step. really hold nothing back in the book. So the whole system is there. Go get it.

Uwe Dockhorn 20:31
Well, thank you, Tom, I appreciate you very much. So thank you for this beautiful conversation and also appreciate very much the insights and knowledge you share with us today.

Tom Poland 20:41
Appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.

Uwe Dockhorn 20:43
Thank you. And thanks to everyone and talk to you soon.

Tom Poland 20:48
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.