1 Focus: Client Acquisition With Justin Goff

 

Do you struggle to generate leads and clients in your business?  

In this episode, my guest, Justin Goff, teaches us how he has helped business owners (maybe like you) get more leads and sales with cold traffic. 

Justin has grown his company from zero to $23 million in sales in just under three years.  He’s worked with some of the top experts in business today, and helped them have a bigger impact with experience more growth using cold traffic. Experts like Dan Lok, Agora Financial, V-Shred, 4Patriots, Mike Geary, Natural Health Sherpa, and more.

If you’re looking for new ways to use cold traffic to get more leads and sales, then make sure to listen to this fun conversation.

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Listen to the podcast here:

1 Focus: Client Acquisition With Justin Goff

We’ve got a unique expert, who by all standards, is an American success story. He’s someone who built a nutrition company from $0 to $23 million in business in under three years using little-known traffic strategies. We’re going to talk about a lot of things. If I were you, I would grab a pen and a piece of paper. Our expert is Justin Goff. He has been able, not only to build a successful company that he’s able to grow and exit, but he works with experts like Dan Lok, Agora Financial, V Shred, 4Patriots, Mike Geary and the list goes on and on. He also mentors up and coming entrepreneurs and copywriters, and doing some amazing things. Justin, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

I want to dive right into it because you have been phenomena over the last few years. By the way, we have Dr. Jeremy Weisz to thank for our connection and introduction. He is someone who is an amazing super-connector. By the way, thanks for making us part of your day. If you never want to miss an episode, go to GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe. Justin, you help all kinds of people get their message out, help them attract more clients and get more customers using paid traffic. Why are you doing what you’re doing?

I had a realization back in 2010 when I’m launching and all that. It was a big thing. The launch thing was this big circle jerk and you had to know everybody. You had to do all these favors for people and I hated the whole thing. I got serious at that time where I started running some Facebook ads and cold traffic. I was trying to get an offer to work on cold traffic. I got one to work right out of the gate where I was spending $10 a day and then I was spending $100 a day. Eventually, it was up to $5,000 a day. That was the first time I ever saw the power of getting an offer to work on cold traffic.

You need one offer that brings in customers that can start building up your email list and start building up your data. - Justin Goff Click To Tweet

I was like, “Would you do this? You control the whole traffic stream. You have more control over everything instead of playing this affiliate game,” which was what everybody else was doing that I honestly had no interest in playing at the time. That was the first eye-opening thing where I was like, “This is the better way.” I don’t know why other people don’t realize this but you have actual control over your own traffic through being able to run cold traffic. It was a real eye-opener to me and that set me on that path of every business I’ve built since then. The stuff I consult with people on is getting offers to work on cold traffic so that you can bring in 100, 200, even 1,000-plus customers a day.

As you’re reading, what would it be worth to you to be in a place where you could control your traffic? Go beyond referrals, go beyond your sales or profitability predicated on you and your effort as the founder, entrepreneur, and CEO. If that interests you, you’re going to want to stick around on what Justin has to share on some of the insights and strategies to be able to do that. Justin, you talked about a shift in your business focus. You’re shifting a little bit away from so much business to relationships. I’m curious, why the shift in focus? What can we all learn from that?

I sold my last company in 2017 and I took a year off after that. I hopped back in 2018-ish and started doing consulting, coaching and stuff like that. I noticed that I fell into an old habit of mine, which was being a workaholic. You said you could relate to this and a lot of entrepreneurs are hit. Usually, somewhere in their mid-30s or 40s, they burn out because it’s always foot on the gas, nonstop, 12 hours a day for 15 years. At some point, you can’t do it anymore. You break down physically, mentally, and emotionally. I had started running into that again where every minute that I had free time, I’ll hop back on the computer and work. That’s something that’s normal for entrepreneurs to do. It’s like, “I’ve got two free hours. I’ll do this. I’ll update these stats. I’ll do whatever.” I had a realization thinking about it. I was like, “If I put in more focus and I make an extra $200,000, what the hell is that going to do?” I sold a company in 2017 and I became a multi-millionaire. An extra $200,000 is not going to do a thing for me.

 

I realized that all the goals that I was setting were all business-focused, all about making more money in my business and making more impact, and all that type of stuff. I was like, “The thing I want is to find someone to spend the rest of my life with and I’m not putting any time into that.” I’m doing my casual dating and stuff but I was like, “The impact that would have on me is quality of life if I found someone who I could share my life with that I truly enjoyed being with.” It’s obvious to me but for some reason, this did not dawn on me because everything was the autopilot. It was always just business. A lot of entrepreneurs probably relate to that because we tend to sacrifice a lot of stuff with relationships with a spouse, going to a kid’s soccer game, and all kinds of stuff like that. We’re dedicated to the business but I’ve reached this point where I’m like, “I want more balance and I want to be able to focus on the things that I truly think will make a difference in my life.”

As you’re reading, one of the keys to be able to enjoy a high-quality life and get connected, whether it’s a spouse, a partner, otherwise or the things you love to get freedom from your business. Getting out of the day-to-day of the business is something that we’re going to talk about with conversion and using paid traffic. I want to dive right into it. We alluded to the idea of freedom and relationship focus. Someone like you, like me or if you’re reading, like you, has the ability to build a business where you can get yourself out of so much of the day-to-day. What do you see as some of the biggest mistakes that people make with trying to connect the dots by using paid traffic to get customers from somebody they’ve never met before?

A lot of people don’t have a focus on it. There’s one thing I see over and over, even by smart entrepreneurs who are doing $10 million a year type business. They don’t understand that you don’t need eight offers. You need one offer that brings in customers, you can start building up your email list and start building up your data. If a client comes to me and they’re trying to get something working on cold traffic, and they have, let’s say, 3 or 4 different offers and they’re usually trying to work on all 3 or 4 of them at once. They’re like, “We think this one could work. This one could work.” It’s like, “Let’s find the one that’s had the most traction so far and then let’s start figuring out what’s not working about it,” because there’s a proven path for a lot of front end offers to make them work on cold traffic. If you’re in the weight loss niche, all you have to do is look at 7 or 8 offers that are working on ClickBank or you’re seeing on every health email list that models what they’re doing.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, which is what a lot of people try to do. It’s like, “I want to sell this.” It’s like, “Here are the 7 or 8 ones that are working. They all have these five things in common. There’s a reason they all do that. It’s because that’s what works.” A lot of people try to reinvent the wheel and they’re trying to sell something way too expensive. The whole idea of a frontend offer is to get customers. If you could break even and build up a customer list of 20,000, 50,000 or 100,000 people, you have a legitimate business because we have a customer list of 100,000 people who have bought something from you. It’s super easy to pump out more offers, products, and stuff that you know they’re going to want to buy.

You said something that is a big challenge. I know with a lot of the clients I’ve worked with in my early years of media buying and advertising, I didn’t get it. You glossed over it because it’s natural for you. You said something along the lines of you run your ads and generate 20,000 to 30,000 customers at breakeven. Now, you have 20,000 to 30,000 customers and you can make your other subsequent offers. Speak to psychology and the importance of that because I see that many people are like, “I’ve got to make money on my front end.” Granted, you don’t want to lose a bunch of money. At our peak, we were losing $20, $30, $50 per client on the frontend but we knew our backend number well, the long-term value that it didn’t matter. We could outspend our competition at times. Speak to the importance of this because it’s something that many people miss. Not only have you done it for you, but you’ve done it with dozens, if not hundreds of others.

Dan Kennedy is famous for saying, “Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer, wins.” It’s one of those things that took me a long time to grasp what he meant by saying that but it’s 100% true. If I can spend $150 to acquire a customer, and you’re in the same niche as me and you can only spend $100, I’m going to dominate you all day because I can buy way more traffic. You’re going to be able to buy maybe a fifth of the traffic I can buy. Get that offer to work to where it breaks even or you’re losing a little unacceptable amount of loss that you know you can make up on the back end. That varies much from company to company because we have a company that we work within the health niche that’s in our mastermind.

They’re only looking for about a 30% return on ad spent on day one and they make up the rest over the next 30 days. Let’s say they spent $1,000 on ads now, they’re only looking to get back $300 now. For most people, that would scare the living crap out of them because if you don’t know your numbers, that’s the quickest way to go broke. If you know your numbers as they do, they know that after 30 days, they can break even on that. They’re able to buy traffic in places that the majority of their competitors can’t buy traffic because of A) They don’t know their numbers that well and B) They don’t have as good of a backend setup as they do. I made this mistake myself over an offer I put out in 2014 before I ever truly understood the breakeven stuff.

Focus on the things that will actually make a difference in your life. - Justin Goff Click To Tweet

I had an offer that I put out right out of the gate that was breaking even. I stopped running traffic to it because I was like, “It’s not making enough money.” I look back at it and I’m like, “That offer was a home run and I hadn’t tested anything on it.” I put the thing out and it was kicking ass right out of the gate. I’m like, “I lost millions of dollars on the table by thinking that that thing wasn’t working.” When you put one out and you’re looking for potential, if you run $1,000 worth of ads and you get back $500 right out of the gate, and you haven’t tested much. That’s going to be a big winner to me. By the time you start testing the copy, headlines, some new leads and maybe a new hook on it and start dialing in the upsells, you’re going to get out there and you’re going to have an offer that’s kicking butt. That’s the way I look at it.

Speaking of the way you look at it, Justin, if you were going to give someone advice who was starting paid traffic and they’ve been in business for a while so it’s not like they want to be entrepreneurs. They have a business and they want to use paid traffic, but they’re unsure. Unfortunately, maybe they met some other experts who don’t look at it like you as science and know the number side of it. What would be the first handful of steps you would recommend somebody to take to get started and confidently put out a test or an offer? What should they expect?

The first thing I would have someone do is to do the research. Go and find the five offers that are working the best in your niche. Let’s say you’re in health, I do a lot of stuff in health, and you’re going to put out a supplement. Look at Dr. Gundry offers, which are all over the place, on every email list and Google Ads. You’re going to see him everywhere. They’re kicking butt and they’re a $500 million company. Look at a couple of their offers and let’s see what they’re doing to make this work. You look at it and you’re like, “They’re selling a probiotic supplement and they offer 1, 3 and 6-bottle version of it.” That makes sense. You order the product and then you look at their upsells, and they’re selling you more supplements on the upsells. You’re like, “I have somewhat of an idea of what this offer is, that’s working. Let’s go look at another one that’s doing similar.”

You find another one on, let’s say, on Facebook. There’s a company called V Shred, who’s in our mastermind and does about $100 million a year and they do similar. They sell supplements as well. You would find maybe one of their fat loss supplements and they have a 45-minute video sales letter. They do the same thing. They sell 1, 3 and 6-bottle. I buy that and now their upsell is they sell me more bottles of the supplement. I have two offers that I know are working on cold traffic and they both have a similar setup. That’s one of the things where I would start words. Those are clues as to how you should construct your offer.

Speaking of that, what about somebody who is in an area where there may not be successful or they think there aren’t other successful offers in their market using paid traffic? What advice would you give them to try to find it and/or find something close to model from?

You can always find comparables and it might not be the exact same thing. I have a buddy who does stuff in the gardening niche and does well selling little gardening books, little plants, and pots and stuff that you can buy. It’s a make-your-own garden stuff. They do well in that niche. That’s what I would consider a hobby niche. Let’s say you’re not in gardening, but you’re in knitting. Knitting is a similar thing to gardening. It’s a hobby thing and it probably appeals to a similar demographic. It’s probably women over the age of 50. That type of stuff, you can always find something that’s not the exact same thing but they are comparable easily. You’d be like, “This person is putting out these gardening eBooks and then selling these little gardening boxes that I can get one every month. That’s an interesting thing. Maybe I could do something similar with knitting.”

 

As you’re reading, what would happen for you to take this mindset of research? You probably heard this before or maybe hearing it from, Justin. He built a $23 million a year business on this approach. Start with the research, find other parallels that look similar and/or are similar, and model some of the constructs of what they do. How would that shift the game for you? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. How much time would it save you? How much money would it save you? Having a coach, mentor and someone who’s been there that does that can help save you time, money and make you money.

It’s my perception that I see a lot of small business owners, they let technology and automation fascination get in the way of them in making real money in business. One of the things I perceive about you is I get an email from you regularly, almost every day. I love your writing. He’s an amazing writer, compelling and provides a lot of insights, wisdom, and strategy. You talked about one of your rituals or habits, which is writing every day. Speak to that. What’s your perception of automation technology of getting in the way of somebody in making real money and or making their business work?

I have realized that the biggest thing I can do in my business every single day to push the business forward is to write an email to my list. That’s the central hub of where everything shoots off for me for my business. By writing every single day and building that bond with the people that read it, I’m furthering my influence and my bond with the people that read my email every day. That could be a different thing in every single business, but for me, I realize like, “If I write every day, and if I focus on putting new people onto my email list, everything else will take care of itself because I have back end coaching programs and stuff like that that I do.” You’ve got to figure out what are 1 or 2 things that you’re like, “These are my almost non-negotiables.” It’s usually about six days a week that I read the email. It’s a part of my day and it’s non-negotiable unless something serious comes up. I write it every single day because when I look at what moves the business for me, what’s going to get people to come to my live events or join my coaching programs, it is me communicating with them every single day through email.

As you’re reading, let me speak to the elephant in the room and you might go, “I don’t like writing it.” It’s not about writing. Could you do audio? Could you do a video? It’s about bonding. It’s about connecting. There’s this big misnomer, a big lie out in the marketplace, a false belief. “I’m emailing my list too much.” No, you’re just either boring or compelling. If you’re compelling, granted, not everybody reads. I don’t want to spoil this for Justin but I’m sure he’s aware of it because he can see the stats, but I don’t read every single email that Justin sends. I stay connected to him because he sends them almost every day. Think about that simple strategy. It’s a big lie or a false belief to think, “I’m emailing my list too much.” It only will be true if all you do is promote and offer 100% of the time.

If you mix it the right way, that’s we’re working with someone like Justin who is a master of communication and bonding then he weaves offers in. He’s not selling, he’s creating a buyer’s experience. If you will learn by modeling or watching someone like Justin on how they create a buyer’s experience and a buyer’s culture versus a selling culture and how it still lifts the game, creates revenue and creates profitability, it’s amazing what can happen. Justin, let’s shift to conversion. I want to try to extract as much wisdom as possible so people can get more of a glimpse of your superpowers because you have such a well-rounded amount of experience. Why should customer acquisition be the number one focus for the small business owner?

This is a big thing that probably 2014 or 2015 is one of those baseball bats over the head moments for me. We’re growing our supplement company and we got an offer that was working well called Patriot Power Greens. We took that from scratch. At its peak, it was making about $700 to $750 sales a day. These are high-quality orders that people were spending $215 average order value with us. There is a solid buyer that we’re bringing in. As I was going, I remember realizing how easy the back end became when we’re bringing in many customers like we were just printing money. It was the easiest thing ever. Before that, it never dawned on me. Customer acquisition, I always knew is important, but I had this light bulb moment where I was like, “That’s what this business is. It is all about acquiring customers.” If you can get the customer acquisition part right, you can be bad at a lot of other stuff and still do well. If you’re not good at the customer acquisition part, you can be amazing at everything else, operations and running everything smoothly, none of it matters if you can’t acquire customers at a high enough rate to keep going.

This is one of those things that Mark Ford talks about in Ready, Fire, Aim where he’s like, “Your first $0 to $1 million is all you should be focused on selling and acquiring customers.” That continues as you grow but too many people focus on stuff that doesn’t matter. They take their eyes off the ball where they’re like, “I’ve got this offer going. I’m going to focus on this.” We have people in our coaching program who do $30 million a year. One of the guys hit me up and he’s like, “This is embarrassing how you always hype about customer acquisition. We started focusing on these back end offers. I wanted to fix them up a bit. For about five months, we took our eyes off the ball of customer acquisition. I’m noticing all of our profits are going down. I feel stupid. You tell us this all the time. We did the exact same thing that you’ve been telling us not to do and it was a real eye-opener.” It is easy to take your eye off the ball in terms of customer acquisition and focus on other things when the reality is the more customers you can bring in should be the number one focus.

As you’re reading, what would you have to get in place to be able to focus on more, better or unique customer client acquisition methods? Think about that. What’s one strategy you could put in place to tune your focus into client acquisition? Justin, we have a lot of advisors, founders, CEOs and consultants that follow our show. There seem to be polarizing methodologies and there’s a lot of ways to be right. Someone who says, “I am one way,” is young in their business development. As you look at acquiring customers for coaching, consulting, masterminds and these types of programs, there’s one model called ascension model. That’s where you acquire customers here, then move them up a ladder to your higher-end thing. There’s another approach which is a descending offer. It’s not your super high price program, but a program that would be of good value, and then you can bring them down and/or bring them up. What would you recommend to a coach or an advisor who’s building a business that wants to acquire more right-fit clients but doesn’t want to attract low-level type clients? What would be an approach you would take?

My business is probably similar to this because we have a coaching mentorship program that’s $30,000 a year. I don’t have anything else I offer on the low end. To me, it’s mostly because the clients I want to work with, $30,000 doesn’t mean anything to them. I’ve always been in the Dan Kennedy school of like, “You’re the one who gets to pick your customers, so you might as well pick the best ones.” A lot of what I teach tends to be a little more high-end. You can do this in any profession. I’ll give you an example. The guy I work with who does my tax strategy stuff, he specifically targets entrepreneurs who make over $1 million to $2 million a year. His niche is super successful entrepreneurs who have businesses. There are average CPAs out there who are like, “Here’s $400. Do my taxes for the year.” This guy completely flipped it. It’s $60,000 minimum to work with him.

He’s got a whole application process. He’s doing the same thing I do in my business, except for taxes. In that business, it’s great too because it’s the same as ours in terms of referrals. I’ve sent him probably eight people because a guy I know who’s a successful entrepreneur is like, “Who do you use your taxes for?” I’m like, “You’ve got to talk to Jeff.” The first thing I think of high-end taxes for entrepreneurs is I’m like, “Jeff, it’s not.” That’s what you want to be known as. We do that with our mastermind. It’s like if you’re a hardcore direct response marketer and you’re trying to get offers working on cold traffic, coming to our mastermind is the place to do that. I’m trying to have that one sentence thing of what you want to be known, so that people can instantly be like, “That’s the guy who I want to talk to about that.” That’s a huge thing for any coach, consultant, advisors and stuff like that.

Having a list of people who have bought something from you, it's easy to pump out more offers that you know they're going to want to buy. – Justin Goff Click To Tweet

What is one sentence of who you want to be known as, so it makes it easy for people to refer to you? When you want Justin Goff to refer to you in an easy way and think of you when they were looking for a particular service, think of the people that he knows, the circle of influence that he has with the right potential clients and growth mindset. You could probably have one of your criteria, by the way, for your ideal client that can afford your service. If it’s not, I will make sure to be adding that criteria to what you do and set up your model to work accordingly. As we shift the game here, there’s so much wisdom here and I want to know a little bit more. You’ve given a great glimpse of what you stand for. Where can people connect with you? Where can they find out more about you and that sort of thing?

Joining my email list to be the best way. If you go to Justin123.com, you’ll see the application there. Unlike most email lists, mine is an application you can’t opt-in. You have to apply. I go over all the applications each day and see if people are a good fit. I started doing that because I wanted to interact with the people on my list. If they respond to stuff, I’ll respond back. I try to make sure the right people are on it, who I want to interact with. If you’re a copywriter, business owner, marketer, or anybody that’s like a consultant or an advisor type person, it would probably be right up your alley. Go to that website and you can find the application there.

I want to encourage you if you are a founder, CEO, business owner or copywriter to have an affinity to direct response marketing or want to be better at direct response marketing. Go check out what Justin’s got available at Justin123.com. Going through the process of entering your email and his application process for that will probably spark what could be a lot of great business ideas to help you filter. At the end of the day, in your business, when you want to have clients who are pre-qualified, pre-motivated, predisposed and ready to do business with you, positioned and culture in a certain way. In the first step at Justin123.com, you’re going to see an example of that. Not to mention, if you do qualify and you are on his list, you’re receiving basically his pearls of wisdom, nuggets, and apple seeds that he sends out regularly. There’s so much there that you’ll be able to get from him. Go to that website. Justin, as we wind this down, what is something I should have asked you that I didn’t get a chance to ask you yet?

One of the questions I like asking people is, what are you struggling with? It’s an uncomfortable question and especially if you tend to be successful, you don’t want to show what you are struggling with. That tends to be a question that I like to ask other successful people to see how open they are about what’s going on in their life.

What are you struggling with?

Probably the toughest thing for me is my dog, George. He is old. He’s ten years old and a Great Dane. He’s in the last couple of months hitting the wall. He’s got some neurodegenerative issues going on, his legs are giving out and basically falling apart slowly. It’s one of those things. I’m a huge dog lover a lot of stuff I do is with dog rescues. I help them raise money with their direct mail and their email marketing. I do a bunch of that pro bono. I’ve always been a huge dog lover. I had to put down one of my dogs and now this one is not doing too well. You see him. It’s like a human getting old. You’re like, “Everything stops working. Everything starts falling apart.” It’s still all there mentally but it’s a tough couple of months watching him, but we’re hoping he’s going to pull through.

 

I’m curious. Do you take walks regularly with George as a ritual or have had been taking walks with George? As you look at this from an emotional and a personal point of view, how is this showing up for you in this navigation of George and what may be his last days and that sort of thing? I’m curious.

One of my favorite parts of my day is usually when George and I going to the park for an hour. I’ll go during the middle of the day after I’ve gotten maybe 3 or 4 hours of work done. That’s my time to zone out, be with him, not think about work, get the blood pumping a little bit and do something active. For me, it’s definitely emotionally tough. I definitely do not handle loss well. It’s one of the things that do with dogs. People who aren’t dog lovers don’t get it whatsoever. They don’t understand how you look at a dog as a kid almost. It’s been emotionally tough for me to watch him get old and fall apart. There are days where that takes away from everything else I’m trying to do because it’s like caring for an elderly adult who’s falling apart. They need help a couple of hours a day. It’s not the most fun thing but I’m trying to enjoy what seems the final 1 or 2 months.

What has George given you and what have you learned from George? I’m curious.

Presence, I would say that’s probably the biggest thing. That’s probably one of my favorite things about dogs is how at the moment they always are. They’re not thinking about past or future stuff. They enjoy what is going on in the moment and how the littlest things can make their day. That’s always a great reminder like going outside and run around the park is like Christmas morning every single day for them.

You brought up the idea that you do this pro bono work. Speak to that on why do you do that? What does it do for you? How does it fill you up?

It all started at one of the Great Dane rescues that I have always donated a bunch of money. I wanted to get involved a little more and see if I could help them more. There wasn’t a whole lot that they needed but threw the idea out there. I was like, “I’m a copywriter and I charge this much money to do stuff. I would love to do a campaign for you guys and see if I could help you raise some more money.” It was funny, the first one I did for them, I fronted the money for the whole thing. It was only $600 to $700 but it wound up raising about $13,000 for them which for this rescue is about as 60% or 70% of their operating budget that they need for a year, so they were in heaven.

It was funny because I haven’t in so long had anybody critique my copy or ask me questions because if I do client work it’s always been for smart companies who let me do my thing. It was funny because I wrote this letter and I send it back to them. I had to go through the whole rigmarole of, “Why is the letter eight pages? I don’t think anybody’s going to read eight pages.” I have to explain it to him and gave him a crash course on Direct Response 101. It was funny. Eventually, they finally gave in, but now they’re super happy and willing to listen to whatever I say. I’ve worked with a couple of other nonprofits and banging my head against the wall for five months before I honestly gave up and I was like, “If you’re not going to trust me, this is not going to work.”

Sometimes the sales prevention department can get in the way of growing which is fascinating. As you’re reading, ideally, you start not to understand the business wisdom that Justin has but also the human being side of it. You can see this is more than business for Justin. It’s a way of being and I encourage you if there’s something here that sparks your interest and you want to learn from one of the best in the world at what they do, go check out Justin123.com. Take that first step. Learn what he’s got and model what he’s doing as best as you can. Ideally, figure out a way if it makes sense and there’s a fit that you go deeper with some of the resources that he’s got. Can you remember back being a kid? I’m curious about your fascination with copy and building a business. Can you think back to your childhood and can you remember a moment or a time where you were like, “That is it. I’m going to do my own thing and this is the direction I’m going.” I’d be curious to know what that was. What was that igniter?

For me, I’ve always been entrepreneurial. Even from when I was seven years old. We’d have garage sales. I would literally have a side business set up at the garage sale, where I’m selling baseball cards and stuff like that. I was trying to sell wrestling figures on eBay when I was nine and stuff like that to try and make money. I never made any money until about college. That’s when I got into affiliate marketing and stuff like that. I wasn’t crushing or anything but I was making $400 to $500 a month. It was enough to buy beer, books and stuff like that. I did not get a real job like all my friends. I always knew I wanted to do my own thing. I always knew that I didn’t want to be under someone else’s control. I didn’t want to have my life depended on someone else. How to get there took me a while.

I started this in college and I went through a grind. I was one of those guys who I had a good job offer coming out of college to work at a marketing company and basically turned it down to the dismay of my parents who were happy whatsoever. I was like, “If I put some real time into this affiliate marketing thing, I could get it to $2,000 a month. If I could make $2,000 a month, I couldn’t live on that.” I was living in an apartment that cost $250 at the time. I was eating ramen and was scraping by. I was like, “If I put some effort into this, I could do that.” I was like, “Worse comes to worst. I’ll get a bartending job and I’ll try to do this during the daytime. That was the goal around the chute.

Writing everyday and emailing it to your list builds a bond that further influences your readers. - Justin Goff Click To Tweet

Quickly within a couple of months, I got it from putting real time into it. I was making $500 a month to making $2,000 a month. I struggled with that for a while. It was 2 to 3 years where I was making $30,000, $35,000 and back to $30,000. I had a lot of ups and downs but things finally started to click for me. I remember when I had my first six-figure year. I made the stupid mistake like a lot of entrepreneurs when they first made money, I blew almost all of it buying stupid things that I did not need. I went and got a car and spent a bunch of dumb stuff. I learned my lesson with that one but for me, it was trying to have my own thing where I wasn’t relying on someone else. I knew that early on that I would make a bad employee.

As you’re reading, you can probably relate to many layers of this. You shared something and you went to this phase of being where you were at and it clicked. Do you remember what clicked?

For me, it was more like a Steven Pressfield idea of turning into pro and going from the amateur to the pro because I was still in the, “This is cool, fun and it is money,” but I still never looked at it as this real thing that. I remember that I was doing affiliate stuff during the poker boom so I was doing affiliate stuff for poker websites at the time. I met a couple of affiliates who were consistently making $200,000 a year or more doing it. They had families and real lives and I was like, “This is their real job. This is what they do.” It never even occurred to me that was possible.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio with 10,000 people. My dad works in a factory and my mom was a waitress. I didn’t know anybody who made money on the internet. It didn’t even seem like a real thing. When it was happening, I had this money but sooner or later this is going to end. This doesn’t sound like a real thing. I didn’t see the whole business portion of it. When I finally saw some people who were making real money and this was their thing, I was like, “This isn’t a get rich quick, make a bunch of money and move on kind of thing.”

 

As you’re reading, what would have to happen for it to click for you? Ideally, there are some of the insights here that Justin has shared. Justin, what would be 1 to 3 action steps you’d hope our readers would take from our time together?

I would say the biggest one is shifting as much of your focus as you can to customer acquisition and making sure you have, whether that’s one lead gen funnel or one offer funnel, whatever that is. It’s getting serious about getting an offer that could work on cold traffic so you could bring in new customers. That would be number one for me. Number two would be similar to what I’m focusing on now. It’s not falling prey to the hustle culture that is prominent. It’s one of those things that if you’re 25, you might think I’m an idiot saying this because that’s what you’re doing. We know a ton of people including ourselves who if you are always pedal to the metal twelve hours a day and business, you’re are going to burn out. You’re going to hit a breaking point where you can’t do it anymore. Trying to find that balance in your life of still building your business and still doing a great job of doing that but also still having a life outside of that. If the only thing in your life is your business, you are going to burn out.

The quickest way to go broke is not knowing your numbers. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

I want to encourage you to check out what he has available for you. You’ve gotten a glimpse, you’ve got a glance of insights, wisdom, strategy and certainly a whole lot more. I wish we had more time but out of respect. Go check out Justin123.com. I encourage you to take action with what Justin has shared with you. Ideally, it will click for you. Number one, shift a client to customer acquisition. Number two, get an offer to work on cold traffic, not falling prey to hustle, build a frontend offer that’s at breakeven. Don’t worry about if it’s not completely profitable on the frontend and there’s much more. If you never want to miss an episode, go to GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe. He’s Justin Goff. That’s it for this episode. Seize the day. Make it a great week. We’ll see you next time on GrowthToFreedom.com.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Justin Goff
• Dr. Jeremy Weisz – past episode
• GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe
• Dr. Gundry
• V Shred
• Ready, Fire, Aim
• Justin123.com

About Justin Goff

Justin is best known for helping marketers and business owners to convert their offers on cold traffic. He grew his own supplement company from 0->$23 million in sales in just under three years by focusing on cold traffic growth.

After selling his supplement company in 2017, Justin now helps some of the biggest names with their marketing like Golden Hippo, Dan Lok, Agora Financial, V-Shred, 4Patriots, Mike Geary, Danette May, Six Pack Shortcuts, Natural Health Sherpa and more.