How To Earn A Sizable Income As An Expert

What’s up everybody? Chris Evans here, Co-Founder of Traffic and Funnels. In this article I’m going to show you how to earn a sizable income as an expert.

This is a process we use and that our clients use.

We’re going to cover my own story, then I’m going to break down how you can do it yourself.

A Few Short Years Ago I Was Broke. 

Financially. Emotionally. My health.

I was a depleted man. 

And get this… I was an EXPERT! I actually had a helluva lot of skills that were desperately needed.

But I was missing some things (I’ll share in a minute).

Contrast this with my life today? It’s completely different. 

There are a few key elements I want to share with you in this article that will help you finally start getting what you want… the money… the freedom… the time…

2017 was an amazing year for us, both professionally and for my family. 

Traffic and Funnels™ grew to explosive new levels. We acquired top notch talent.

Our revenue… off the charts.

I was able to buy my wife her dream house AND built her the kitchen of her dreams (and mine).

My health is back on track. Stress is very minimal (I used to be chronically stressed to the point I hardly slept). 

And probably the most important thing I’ve gotten back has been the ability to spend time with my kiddos and really enjoy it. 

By the time you’re reading this, we’ve all just come out of the holiday season – this season, for me, used to be the most awful time of the year. 

I couldn’t wait for them to be over so that I could get back on the “grind” and figure out how I was gonna get more clients and pay the billz.

My mind was dominated by thoughts of “making it work”, it was overwhelming.

Why am I telling you this and being open about my life?

I know many of you have or are currently experiencing this in your life and I truly want to help you get unstuck. 

I wish I had what I’m about to share with you back in the day. I’m breaking it down to be stupid simple.

I have SO much confidence in THIS process because we’ve helped so many clients grow to 6 and 7 figures.

I’ve literally lost count. 

Your mind is going to fight the simplicity of what I’m going to talk about.

Prepare yourself for that. I promise you’ll end up saying…. Is that it, Chris? haha.

Note: This article is not written for people who are already loaded / people who are already clients (you maniacs just can’t stay away). 

Are You A Broke Expert? 

You Might Deserve It

I was broke and I actually deserved to be. 

It’s astonishing the amount of experts we talk to who truly have something valuable to offer the world but they are depleted just like “old” Chris was. Heck, there are even well known experts (you know who they are) who are running close to the line of losing it all. 

Listen, I’m gonna give you some tough love.

I actually do care for you.

Not only this, but Taylor and I have witnessed story after story of people who were at the end of their rope and had NO CHOICE but to go ALL in on themselves.

And they WON! So there is pretty much no scenario that we haven’t seen someone “make it”.

Everything you need to pull in the revenue you want and work with the clients you want – IS 100% doable! 

There are many reasons why you are where you are in your business and if you don’t break the cycle and the crap you’re feeding yourself then you will stay in a place of constant frustration, anxiety, stress and overwhelm.

YOU need to identify the reasons for you.

Why are YOU stuck. Here lemme help you. Grab a sheet of paper and I want you to write all these down – honestly. 

Let’s get this list rolling…

Reason 1. You’re a knowledge “addict”

All you do is consume information and you actually get a high off of it.

You might not actually go through the course you’ve bought but just the sheer act of buying it gets you going.

You don’t take action.

Reason 2. You’re scared.

You talk yourself into a deep dark hole of “what ifs”. What if it doesn’t work?

What if I fail? What if people hate me?

What if I look stupid? What if my husband or wife get mad?

Ya get the picture, right?

I’m not talking about the fear that we all experience and go through.

This is the paralyzing fear that chokes you up and keeps you from doing anything. 

You’re so scared of it not working that you’re making a self fulfilling prophecy for yourself. 

Reason 3. You’ve been “burned” before.

This is one of my favs. Lol. 

Who hasn’t been burned? Seriously.

Think Taylor and I haven’t been burned?

Of course we have. We’ve bought services that didn’t deliver.

We’ve bought courses that absolutely sucked.

Facebook has used and abused us on more than just one occasion. 

It never stops so just get over it or go get a day job. 

Reason 4. _______________ (fill in the blank).

We could keep going on ALL the reasons but let’s just leave it here.

The point is we’re always going to create excuses because we think we’re protecting ourselves.

It’s in our DNA to “survive”. In many cases though we’re only hurting ourselves because we’re not progressing in life. 

We create imaginary doomsday scenarios typically based off past experiences.

They will keep you stuck and stagnant AND broke. 

“Your mind is the starting point of all war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark.” – Robert Greene

Now that you have the list of all the things you’ve told yourself on why you can’t invest in yourself to hire a coach or spend time running ads or demonstrating leadership in your market place…

I want you to create a list of all the reasons WHY YOU SHOULD succeed. 

You want to take care of your husband, wife, kids, parents, retirement…. Or possibly to make a huge impact?

Create the list of reasons WHY you should succeed and there should be more than the reasons that are holding you back. 

How to Go From “Broke” to IN CONTROL, of Everything 

Finances. Time. Emotions. 

You only need a few things to work for you to have CONTROL.

That’s what it’s all about riiiight? 

What you do not need is a website, webinar, podcast, book, native ads, blog, clickfunnels, leadpages, Infusionsoft, calendar app, application funnel… more bull crap. 

Yes, some of these things you’ll want for long term stability and to make your life easier.

But most people put the cart before the horse and they’re sitting around making $5k a month trying to launch a podcast.

Wrong. 

Once you start making money you have to “stack cash”.

This frustrates me to no end!

And, you would be shocked at the amount of experts who start making money and they spend it just as quickly.

Be wise. Please. Build yourself a little war chest. THIS gives you more control. 

I digress. 

Okay, you only need a few things to work as an expert to have control:

• a good offer 

• a way to get in front of the right people 

• a predictable way to turn those people into clients 

I Use to Be Terrified of Getting on the Phone With People 

How to Overcome this Fear and Thrive 

One thing I’ve noticed is that many experts don’t want to get on the phone and have a sales conversation with someone. 

They’re terrified. 

Tons of experts are out there just hanging out behind their keyboards like a bunch of little perverts afraid to come into the light and let people see them and hear them. 

That’s one of the reasons I got into online marketing personally (no, not to be a pervert)

…so I could just be a hermit in a dark basement hitting buttons and making money.

That’s not what you signed up for, too? That’s what the gurus told me I could do and I believed it. haha.

Sorry, boo. If you wanna make the big monies – the fastest way (from our experience in all things marketing and business) is to get on the phone and lead people in a conversation to buy your service or offer BEFORE you’ve built anything out.

Are you sh*tting your pants yet? lol

It’s okay. I was scared but I’m not any more.

I figured out the reason why and I want to help you get past it so you can finally start making the money you want at a consistent rate.

Here are 3 keys you need:

Key #1.

Clarity in what you’re offering (I address this in the next section).

Key #2.

Have 100% Confidence in your ability to provide THE result they need – THIS IS HUUUGE.

EVEN if you don’t have it all “fleshed” out yet.

You still have to communicate your confidence in helping them with their problems.

They can feel whether you’re confident or not.

Trust me.

Key #3.

Don’t give a Crap of the outcome – literally don’t.

If you are tied to “needing” the sale you won’t make any sales.

But if you visualize yourself as a doctor and you’re diagnosing their problems and giving them a solution this is when it becomes HIGHLY effective. 

Use these keys. Get on the phone with people and REALLY listen.

Then give them value and if it makes sense make an offer to work with you.

This is exactly what we did when we launched Traffic and Funnels™.

This is what our clients do. And it works.

Of course – you need tweaks and you’ll get in your own head.

That’s par for the course. You have to fight that though.

Do the mindset work that we talk about, non-stop. 

The Nomadic Expert vs The Settler 

How to Discover What The Market Wants

I want to give you some clarity in regards to the thing you are selling.

Because what I’ve noticed is that the majority of people looking to sell something “high ticket” get stuck right here.

This is what they (maybe you?) are thinking…

”How do I even create an offer?”

”Nobody is going to want what I have to sell.” 

”What I have to sell isn’t worth $5000.”

“I don’t have my offer figured out yet so I shouldn’t talk to anybody about it.”

One thing you MUST understand is your initial stage is “nomadic” in nature (what I was talking about in key #1 above).

You are going to roam from person to person, talking to them, asking questions, diving in to where they’re at in their business and life.

Initially, YOU are an explorer. This should provide some relief to the stress of “SELLING!!!”. 

This is okay and it’s exactly what you want.

Every single day we see people get hung up right here and just another reason to add to the list above.

When we first launched Traffic and Funnels™ our initial mission was just to get people (our market) on the phone so we could discover what they wanted, needed and what they would pay money for. <<<Major.

The first 3 clients we had were all completely different.

However, we listened to them and at the end of the call said.

Yep, we can help you fix that. We didn’t have a members area.

We didn’t have a course. We didn’t have beautifully designed content. 

What did we have? Confidence that we could help them with their problem.

So we were in the nomadic stage for about 50 phone calls.

Of course, we were making sales through this period but we just weren’t 100% locked in on WHO we were serving or exactly WHAT we were selling for scale – for the long haul.

After about 50 calls though we were ready to settle.

We had spoken to enough of our market and sold enough offers that we knew who we liked dealing with, what the market wanted and that we could help them reach their goals.

Important note:  

We could have speculated for weeks, months and years on what the market would want.

I made this mistake in the past and it was a terrible failure (CK clients hear that story, lol). 

Know this, you are not going to have ANYTHING figured out until you start talking to people. 

Stop speculating and start doing.

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain

Get on the phone with your market and ask them questions and truly listen to where they’re at.

Then if it makes sense and you like them, offer to help. 

How To Build A Primed and Ready Audience (on $10 a Day)

Finally, you need people who know who you are, what you do and know that you have what it takes to help them.

We teach this to our clients in several different ways.

The way I’m going to show you today is one of my favorites and it has to do with paid advertising and since I’m a paid ads guy… I had to bring you a little of this goodness. 

Now don’t freak out. My goal is to keep this simple and give you the principles you need to make this happen.

You’ll get a lot more detail in the walkthrough I do above at that link.

Here is what you’ll need:

1. Facebook Fan Page (in your name not a company name. i.e. Chris Evans)

2. Facebook business manager account (oh my god Chris, I’m terrified of ads. Get over it!)

There is a basic and easy framework I want you to implement.

Who are you? We just gotta let them know you exist. 

I’m listening. They know what you’re about and they’re “hanging” out with you on a social level. 

Let’s talk. You’ve given value, built trust and demonstrated you can help them.

We want to move people through this framework so that you can hit that revenue goal. 

Step 1: “Who are you?” – This is where we’re identifying brands, market celebrities, etc who our prospects might follow. If I know that my perfect prospect follows ‘Tony Robbins’ then I need to start running ads and waving my banner to that crowd. We need to get their attention.

Step 2: “I’m listening.” – At this point people have engaged with you in some form or fashion. My preference is they’ve become a fan of your fan page (i’ll explain more in the video), meaning they’ve liked your fan page. In my years running launches for people and even now these people are a great source to sell to.

Step 3. “Let’s talk.” – So we’ve built attention and awareness. The next step is to ask who needs help.

Did you know that there are people online who need and want the result that you can provide?. 

You’ll need 2 types of posts. There are several ways you can go with this and you can definitely innovate on this but remember – we’re trying to keep it simple. 

The FIRST POST (ad): ATTENTION and some ENGAGEMENT! This is what you need to accomplish. Remember these people don’t know who you are yet so create a post that will get their attention and ask them to engage. Because I know you’ll probably overthink this I’m posting an example for you and I’ll also break it down more in the video walkthrough: trafficandfunnels.com/InvisibleMarketingList

REASON: We’re building our “INVISIBLE MARKETING LIST™” (thought I was gonna forget didn’t you?). So that means that people who engage with our “content” we’ll be able to get back in front of them with more targeted content that is RELEVANT and will give you the ability to do the following…

GOAL: Build your “list” of people who…

• LIKE YOU

• KNOW YOU

• KNOW THAT YOU CAN HELP THEM

• TRUST YOU

This post is rather simple but the PRIMARY thing I want you to see is how many likes and how many comments. 17,000 likes and 119 comments.

Do you understand? I didn’t set up a webinar.

I didn’t buy a hosting plan.

I didn’t launch a podcast, or create a course, etc, etc.

[LIGHT BULB?]

You can get attention and build an audience fairly inexpensively these days. 

Best part is… we only spent about $189 dollars for the above audience of 17,000 people.

Now I can get back in front of them over and over because they have demonstrated they’re interested in what I’m talking about. 

That’s what YOU need. That’s what YOU can build.

Whether it’s for $189 doesn’t matter.

It’s the ability to get the attention, building the audience and convert those people prospects and eventually clients.

That’s the game. 

Now that I have this audience of 17,000 people do you think it’s possible to get a couple dozen on the phone in the next 30 days?

YES!

Of course. Now some markets are gonna be different.

What you need to remember is you’ve gotta continue building your audience and then establishing trust, authority and relationship with them.

At this point you’ve pushed out several pieces of content to this audience in your warm “I’m listening” stage.

Value driven; could be a live stream you do about the top 3 ways to save 10% next year on your taxes (if you’re a tax advisor for example). 

I’m not going to post examples of this because you can go to our Traffic and Funnels™ fan page and look around at the valuable content we post.

Point is you are helping people and being awesome.

The Second Post (ad):

Ask them if they need help. They’ve consumed your content. You’ve demonstrated the ability to help them. Our second post is simple….

“Hey I’m looking at developing a new strategy that I can help entrepreneurs save an additional 7% on their taxes next year. Would you be interested in this for your business? If so let me know and we can chat.” Very chill. 

You’ll probably have to test different messages.

It’s unlikely that your very first post is going to bring in tons of messages asking for your help.

You’re gonna have to get over yourself with all the self-doubt and such. 

Most people will do it once and say,

“All this bullcrap and doesn’t work. Chris lied to me.”

So let me save you the trouble and let you know you’re actually going to have to be a marketer with all this stuff and TEST IT UNTIL YOU GET IT RIGHT.

Don’t come whining to me cause you can’t get it to crack by yourself.

If you want help we can have that convo – if not, you just have to figure it out.

Goal:

Get a conversation going with them via messenger and then get them on the phone to 1. Listen and 2. Make an offer to help them.

So let’s break this down and wrap it up.

Step 1. Go to a cold audience and get their attention 

Step 2. Start giving them value through live streams, content posts, etc

Step 3. Get 20 people on the phone and close 4 of them as a client

Step 4. Rinse and repeat

A few closing notes: This is the structure we used to launch our consulting business.

This is the strategy that many many clients have used to grow their business from $30,000 to $50,000 a month (some of them NOT even using the paid avenue yet). 

What I’ve laid out for you is the simplest way I know (in article form) to get the ball rolling for you so you get your business to a place of health which ultimately means control.

This framework changed our lives and I know that it can do the same for you if you WORK IT.

Here’s what I’d like you to do next…

TAKE ACTION. Please… It’s not going to be perfect. You just need to get moving.

***If you got value out of this, how much more would you get in working with us?

Our clients regularly double & triple their ROI very quickly. And they go on to create sustainable businesses that serve their families for the rest of their lives.

… If you want to talk about kicking this year off with a BANG… My team and I are happy to do a brainstorm with you.

You can sign up for a consult here, or at the link below. 

Here’s to an absolutely EPIC year.

Hope you enjoyed reading how to earn a sizable income as an expert

Talk soon,

– Chris