Primoz Bozic

How I Got Featured on Forbes

I always dreamed of being featured on Forbes.

In my mind, it was one of the most elite online publications where only the best entrepreneurs get to share their advice with the world.

It was something I aspired to, but for a long time felt out of reach.

Until last week, when it finally happened.

Last week, an article with my advice got published on Forbes:

5 Secrets to Finding The Perfect Mentor

I opened my inbox and saw this e-mail pop up:

I rushed to click the link and binge-read through the whole article:

And I loved it.

As I was so excited about it, I emailed it out to my readers:

And at the end of the email, I asked my readers if they’d like me to write about how the opportunity happened:

When I checked my email the following morning, I woke up to a flood of emphatic YESes:

So I was left with no choice but to write the full “behind the scenes” of how I got featured in Forbes!

In this article, I’ll talk about how it all happened, from start to finish. I’ll talk about what exactly I did to land an article with Forbes, what my thought process was like, and what I’ll do differently next time.

Without further ado…

Let’s dive in!

STEP #1: Build relationships before you need them

I’ll be honest with you.

Before landing the opportunity to be featured in Forbes, I spent YEARS building authentic relationships with other entrepreneurs in my industry.

I did that without any expectations of getting anything in return, and I surely didn’t expect one of those relationships to bring me a Forbes opportunity.

But in my case, that’s exactly what happened (more on that soon).

It’s not a lone case either.

My features in Business Insider, Entrepreneur.com and Entrepreneur on Fire all came through building relationships.

Now if you’re thinking “that’s great for you Primoz because you had those relationships…”

STOP.

A few years ago, I was a 20-year old from Slovenia with no connections, and I had no-one to talk to about my business, PLUS I was an introverted, shy and socially awkward guy.

If you think about it, I had no business building relationships with the top experts in my industry.

And yet… I did it.

It took a lot of time and hard work, but I did it.

And you can do it too.

So if you’re at the stage where you’re dreaming of getting big opportunities for your business but have zero relationships built, that’s something you’ll want to start doing as soon as possible.

The good news is that I documented my whole process of building relationships with influencers in my industry, and published it on my blog so you can use it too.

You can find it in the guide below:

The Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People

Having the right relationships makes getting amazing podcast, guest post and media opportunities 1000x easier, and in my opinion, that’s the best place to start.

Note that I’m not sharing this with you because I’d want to discourage you or make you feel like an opportunity like this is “far out of reach”. It’s because I want to show you the REAL behind the scenes, rather than making things look easier than they are.

Ok, now let’s move on the first real step of my journey of being featured in Forbes:

STEP #2: The introduction

This whole journey started out with a very simple e-mail I got from a friend of mine:

The behind-the-scenes context:

A friend of mine connected with an editor at Forbes who focuses on covering millennials and entrepreneurs.

As she has a lot of friends who fit that description, she reached out to 15 of her close friends and asked them if they’d be interested in being featured in Forbes.

As you can probably guess, I was one of her friends :).

And of course, I said YES!!!

If you’re thinking “I could never get an introduction like this, so does that mean I’ll never be on Forbes?”, slow down.

As mentioned above, this opportunity came out of building relationships (which you CAN get started with doing today).

There are also other avenues which you could use to get opportunities like this (through online publicity courses where members get exclusive opportunities, through meeting writers in person at events, or through cold-pitching), though those are beyond the scope of this post.

And regardless of whether you can get an opportunity to write for Forbes or not… The principles and the process I talk about in this post can be applied to pitching any publication out there :).

STEP #3: Take fast action

I have a confession to make.

In the past, when I received big opportunities like this, I had a tendency to freeze.

I’d start doubting myself, feeling like I’m not good enough and becoming more and more paralyzed.

Because of this, I procrastinated moving forward. I avoided the opportunity.

As a result, it became harder and harder to take advantage of it (because you don’t want to follow up 2 weeks after you get the opportunity).

I hate to admit it, but quite a few opportunities slipped through my fingers because of this.

But a few weeks ago, something in me changed, and I decided to never let an opportunity slip out of my hands again – and I haven’t since.

Instead, I started to seize the opportunities right away.

In this case, that meant putting all non-urgent work off my plate and immediately diving into the research phase of the pitch the next day.

STEP #4: Do your homework

The last thing you want to do with an amazing opportunity like this is half-ass it. Sure, you want to act FAST, but that should never be an excuse for being lazy and skipping the necessary legwork.

The first thing I did as I started working on my pitch was to do some basic research on the writer.

Here’s what that looked like:

I googled the writer

Damn, this sounds like stalking already :D. But for the purposes of this article, let’s just call it “doing your homework”, ok?

So yeah, whenever you want to pitch someone, the first thing you should probably do is Google them.

Whenever I’m googling someone, I’m usually looking for their website, interesting articles they wrote, interesting articles that were written about them, their interviews… Etc.

In this case, I noticed she wrote for a handful of different websites and browsed through a few of her posts to get a feel for what she writes about:

I checked out her Forbes contributor profile

After that I checked out her Forbes contributor profile, and read her bio box:

I noticed that she has a website called A Millennial’s Guide to Life, so I went on to check out her website and read some of her recent posts.

A post that caught my attention was “How I got an article published in Forbes”, so I read through the whole post and took notes on what I liked about it.

I looked through her recent blog posts

After checking out her website I went back to her Forbes profile and looked at some of her recent articles:

INSERT PHOTOS

As I did that, I noticed that all of her articles seemed to include a few tips about a specific topic (like “5 Simple And Fun Ways You Can Make Extra Money This Fall”), or a few steps to achieve a specific result (like “You Can Create a 6-Figure Business With These 8 Simple Steps”).

I also noticed that most of the articles followed a similar structure.

Here’s an example from “How to get over your fear of self-promotion”.

They began with a personal story:

Then they introduced the expert:

And finally, they included the specific tips from the expert:

The “tips” were usually 1-2 paragraphs long, so I knew I could follow a similar framework in my own article when I wrote it.

I also looked at the topics of the blog posts to get a feel for what she usually wrote about:

I noticed that a lot of advice was targeted at entrepreneurs (and a lot of them included X tips / steps), which helped me come up with my own ideas for the article that her audience would love.

I looked through her most popular blog posts

As the final (but DEFINITELY not the least important) step of my research, I took a look at some of her most popular posts from the “Popular posts” section:

This helped me get a feel for what kind of content tends to take off on Forbes, so I tried to tailor my article ideas and writing to have the biggest chances of making the article a success.

While going through this process did take quite some time, I don’t think you can ever afford to skip this part of the process.

Not only will doing your homework increase your chances of getting your pitch accepted, it will also increase the chances of your article getting a lot of traction.

One thing I didn’t do… But should have

I’ll admit that I made one mistake with doing my homework for this opportunity because I wanted to make sure I take advantage of the opportunity while it’s still there.

I shouldn’t have just looked at the writer’s most popular posts, I should have also looked at the most popular posts within the #lifehacks section on Forbes, where she usually publishes her work:

This might have helped me come up with even better content / structure ideas that I could then work into my pitch and article (as I’d be learning from the absolute best examples)

STEP #5: The Pitch

Once the homework is done, the fun begins!

I took some time to write a super detailed pitch, which I’ll share below (it’s a LITTLE bit on the long side, but I’ll explain).

In hindsight, this pitch could have been a bit shorter and to the point, and in the future I’ll try to make my pitches more concise. Still, since the pitch got accepted I must have done something right :).

Here’s the pitch break-down:

The introduction:

First, I pre-wrote a brief introduction that my friend could use to introduce me to the editor. I tried to use her voice and make her life as easy as possible.

The key thing here is that I kept it focused and brief, and I also included a link to my website through my name (this is a small detail that many people miss, but editors will really appreciate it as you save them some Googling time).

The media bio:

Next, I included my media bio with my past media appearances, which gave me some extra credibility and showed that I was an established expert already.

In the media bio, I talk about a few things:

I start with a story that makes the writer interested in me
I mention the kind of business I run and who my clients are so the writer can understand my business (or know how to present me to her readers)
I talk about things like working with Ramit Sethi and having 5-figure product launches to establish extra credibility
I also list all the past media coverage I’ve had, to show that I’m an established expert

NOTE: If you’re reading this and you’re thinking “I don’t have any / as much media attention as you yet…”, there’re two things I’d like to mention:

First, when I got featured on websites like Business Insider and Entrepreneur, I didn’t really have a “media bio”. I didn’t even know those existed, and I was never in the media before. My pitch was literally “I went from earning $7/h to $400/h out of Slovenia”. So to land big media, you don’t necessarily NEED a ton of previous media coverage.

Second, you don’t have to START at a publication like Forbes. You can take a lot of insights from this post to pitch smaller websites first, build up your credibility, improve your media bio and THEN pitch a bigger website like Forbes.

So don’t let not having a media bio (yet) hold you back!

Relevant links:

When a writer at a publication receives a pitch, the first thing they’ll do is google you.

The googling can sometimes be quite a time consuming process, so I decided to include relevant links to some of my past work / features just to save them some time.

It’s small details like this that make you stand out from the sea of other pitches, and make the writers really love working with you.

Building rapport:

I inserted a quick line sharing what I enjoyed from the article that I loved on her website to build rapport and show that I’ve done my homework.

I could have shared more details here, but as the pitch was already becoming pretty long I decided to make this section shorter.

The article ideas:

Ok, now we’re getting to the MEAT of the pitch:

If you pay close attention to my article ideas, you’ll notice that I broke down each one of them into 3 steps:

WHY this is a good fit for Forbes
WHAT I would write about in the article

The first part is there to show the writer why they should consider the idea, and the second part (the bullets) gives them an idea for what to write about and helps them visualize the finished article.

As you look over the ideas, notice a large number of links that are scattered throughout them. This is again intentional as I’m giving the writer extra resources that they can reference if they need them.

Again, almost nobody does this and it’s a great way to stand out.

You’ll also notice that the bullets are short, sweet and easy to skim – rather than long walls of texts people sometimes tend to write

Looking back, I definitely could have made the “WHY” section more compelling. I could have taken the extra steps to research similar articles on Forbes and made a stronger case why these topics would be a great fit for Forbes (whereas I focused the “WHY” section mostly on myself).

I believe that the ideas #2 were a good fit for Forbes, while the third idea might be too niche uninteresting to the Forbes audience in its current form.

I also could have tailored the bullets a bit better to the article format (for example, with idea #2 that ended up being accepted, I could have simply made the bullets about the “tips” rather than my ideas.

The wrap up:

In the final few lines of the email, I do a couple of things.

I start with the call to action and specify exact next steps (rather than just saying “what do you think?”).

I also mention that we could do a profile-based story that could become a big hit on Forbes, in case she’d be interested in that.

And in terms of the pitch… That’s it!

STEP #6: The waiting game

I heard back from the Forbes writer on April 12th (a month and a half after I sent out the pitch, on February 26th).

This is quite a long time, and in the meanwhile, I didn’t really think about the pitch. I see a lot of people really slow down after they receive a big opportunity and stop pushing themselves after they do.

I’ve done the same thing myself in the past, but then when I saw how long articles like these take to get published, I stopped worrying about things I can’t control and just focused on my work.

And over the past few months, as I worked on putting myself more and more, I learned how to use opportunities like this to actually build momentum and chase more and more opportunities (it becomes an addiction!).

STEP #7: Writing the article

As soon as I saw that my article idea was accepted, I got to work.

The next morning I put together a rough draft for the pitch.

You can read the FULL rough draft here.

It’s too long to fit on this page ;).

After I wrote the first draft, rather than sending it to the editor right away, I ran it by a few of my friends:

I asked my friends for feedback on my article because I didn’t have a lot of experience with writing short articles like this, and because I wanted to make the article REALLY good.

The first iteration of the article was really long, and I almost wrote it as the whole article (as I was told to “write some tips in a Google document”, which I didn’t 100% understand).

I got a lot of great feedback from my friends that helped me improve my writing voice and make my advice more pointed and actionable.

I also received an example of the “tips in a Google document” example which helped me understand exactly what the writer was looking for (I can’t share that one publicly, unfortunately, as it’s part of an online course).

By using all the feedback and getting a great example of what the writer is expecting, I went on to finish and submit a much tighter version of my article (though I still made sure it was super actionable and valuable):

The final version of the article I submitted to Forbes.

Notice how I try to go above and beyond for the writer by giving her extra examples to use in the article (in case she doesn’t like some of them) and by giving links to extra relevant blog posts:

I wanted to include specific examples of people in the post to make the article more relatable and useful, and I also wanted to get more exposure for the amazing work of people I know.

While most of the links didn’t get included in the end, some of the examples did, which I was really happy about.

In terms of the pitch, that was more or less it. I sent out the article tips on April 17th and hoped for the best:

STEP #8: Spreading the word

On April 24th, exactly a week after I sent the tips to the writer, the Forbes article with my tips went live!

Because I really wanted this article to be a success for the writer, I immediately found a few ways to spread the word about it.

I shared it on my own Facebook wall:

I sent out an email to my readers about it:

And I also shared it in a few Facebook groups where I thought the readers might benefit from it:

As I shared the post I made sure I only shared it in groups where I thought the members could genuinely benefit from it, and I also always offered to answer any additional questions about the article to add even more value to the community members.

In the future, I’ll spend more time mentioning this article and sharing it wherever I find it relevant, as I do feel like it’s a good piece of content that could genuinely help people.

STEP #9: Thanking the writer

I was really excited that my article got featured on Forbes and love the way in which the writer wrote it, so I sent a quick thank you e-mail to them:

I like doing this whenever someone helps me out to build a relationship with them and express my gratitude, and sometimes I’d also send a gift to them.

It’s a small touch that makes you stand out from everyone else and makes people want to work with you more in the future.

STEP #10: What I’d do differently next time

After every article I get published in the media, I reflect on what I can do better next time.

As I looked at the stats on the article, I saw that it got around 3,700 views within a week of publishing:

This isn’t bad (plenty of articles get less than 1,000 views), especially for my first shot at writing for a publication like this, and I know that the article will slowly get more traction over time.

Still, I feel like there are a lot of things I could have done better throughout my process so I can write a better pitch and a better article next time.

To write an article that gets 10,000 or 100,000 views (and really bring my name out to a lot of new people), the biggest thing I’ll need to get better at is coming up with great article ideas.

Especially on websites like this, people click on (and share) interesting STORIES. That’s how my Business Insider article got over 111,000 views:

I definitely need to get better at finding relevant stories that I can work into my articles that are relevant to more people, and that’s the #1 thing I’ll be working on in the future.

I’m also going to improve my process based on the lessons I got from this experience.

Now I know how to write article tips to send to a writer, I’m getting a feel for what they find important and what they skip on, and over time I know I’ll be able to create better articles and pitches to further grow my online business.

BONUS: My pitch-checklist

I’m a big fan of creating processes and checklists, so naturally, I wanted to break down my process into a step-by-step process you can follow to get featured in publications like Forbes.

Here are the exact steps that you can use to get there:

STEP #1: Build relationships before you need them – Use my Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People to get started!
STEP #2: Take fast action when an opportunity comes – Don’t wait (or let yourself procrastinate). When an opportunity comes, face your fear and act on it immediately!
STEP #3: Do your homework – Always google the writer you’re pitching, their past work, their most popular work, and the most popular articles on their platform. Pay close attention to how they structure their articles and the topics they write about.
STEP #4: Write an amazing pitch – In the pitch, make sure you share your story, what you do, include any past media coverage, and share 1-3 ideas with bullet points explaining each idea. Make the editor’s life easier by including all the relevant links.
STEP #5: Don’t wait… Move on! – Once you submit the pitch, don’t wait to hear back as that might take weeks or months. Instead, occupy your mind with chasing the next opportunity on your plate!
STEP #6: Get help with your writing – When you have an opportunity to write for a really big publication, don’t hesitate to reach out to your friends and ask them to help you write the best possible article. They’ll love helping you out!
STEP #7: Spread the word – Don’t just wait for the article to take off on it’s own once it’s live. Find a way to spread the word about it through your social media, your e-mail newsletter and any relevant places (like Facebook groups) where your article could really help people.
STEP #8: Thank the writer – Every time you get featured in the media, send a thank you note to the writer. They’ll appreciate it and want to work with you more in the future!

Well, that’s it for today!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it.

What’s your #1 takeaway from this article?

Let me know in the comments below!

How Selena Soo Builds Authentic Relationships With Entrepreneurs

By Primoz Bozic 10 Comments

Did you ever wonder how some people…

Are able to build a network practically overnight?
Seem to know EVERYONE in the industry and get invited to speak at conferences, get invited to private dinners and have hundreds of people promoting their work?
Somehow manage to juggle hundreds of relationships at the same time?

It’s not easy to build relationships with top experts in your industry, especially when nobody knows who you are yet (or you’re not living in a place like NYC where all the cool people are).

Especially when you’re just starting out, building a network can be overwhelming and can feel like a process that will take YEARS of hard work IF you figure out how to do it in the first place.

Luckily, there’s a shortcut that can help you build authentic relationships in a fraction of the time.

It’s a shortcut that all of the top networking experts use, but rarely talk about… Unless you find a way to spot it in their behaviors.

I used this shortcut when I first build my network, though I wasn’t aware I was using it. It just happened naturally, and I could never really pinpoint what I did…

…until a recent conversation I had with Selena Soo.

Selena is one of my mentors and friends, and she’s INCREDIBLE at building authentic relationships. She’s probably the most connected person I know from all online entrepreneurs, and it’s not even close.

A lot of people say building relationships is Selena’s superpower, and it is. It’s something that she got so good at over time (though it wasn’t always that way – she was very introverted and had few friends in high school and college) that people watch in awe as she “works the room”.

But even more impressive is the work she does behind the scenes that most people never see, which is her REAL superpower (more on that in a sec).

When I talked to Selena and we talked about how she builds authentic relationships, she mentioned something very interesting and I felt like a lightbulb lit up in my head…

And that’s where I realized that Selena’s superpower is fueled by a technique that she keeps using over again, which is the exact shortcut I’m talking about today.

The best part?

This shortcut isn’t reserved just for existing top experts in your industry (though I’ve seen many top experts use it without really knowing or talking about it).

You can use it even if…

You’re an introvert (Selena is an introvert too)
You don’t live in a big city like NYC (I used it out of Slovenia)
Nobody knows who you are yet (the same thing was true for me)

So what is this secret shortcut that I’m talking about?

I call it “The Rule of 15”.

Here’s what Selena said in our conversation that blew my mind (highlighted are the most important parts, but I highly recommend you read the whole thing):

“I spend a lot of my day connecting people. For example, I recently discovered this contributor at Forbes, and her focus is on millennials and side hustles. And that’s awesome, because right now at Forbes, a lot of people can only cover particular topics. Someone else at Forbes might talk about mental health and entrepreneurship. So I found this person that’s perfect for so many of my students, my clients and friends.”

And so, I’ve been pitching some of my clients to her. So then I thought, “Let me reach out to kind of a broader circle of people, and see if I can help them get an article in Forbes?” Some of these are my star students, my really close friends, and I wanna be able to help them. And so rather than just reaching out to one person, I reached out to 15 people. It was the same email, that started with something like: “Oh hi so and so, just thinking of you. It was so great to see you at Vegas at my even.” Or, “Hi so and so, it was great to catch up over coffee the other day.” Or, “Congratulations on your launch.”

After that I told them I met a contributor at Forbes, and asked them if they might be interested in being featured in Forbes. If so, I’d love to introduce you. Here’s what you would need to do. And so I’m building relationships with 15 people at a time, and some people are really busy and they don’t have the time to even pitch. But others are like, “Oh my gosh, I wanna seize that opportunity.”

So that was with Forbes. My friend Jess Nazarali told me that she was looking for more podcast guests, so I again reached out to 15 people. Some of them were the same people I reached out to before, some of them were different. Maybe there is a cool event that I wanna go to. Maybe I’ll reach out to another 15 friends, “Hey I’m going to this event, do you want to come with me?” So by doing it in kind of a concentrated way, and making the same offer to multiple people, it’s like I’m potentially connecting deeply with 45 people in the course of two or three days, versus three people if I were reaching out to one on one, or zero people if I was with someone who was connecting the dots, between ideas and opportunities and people.

So when you do that every single day, it’s like you can add massive value to well over 100 people in a month or two. And so that’s kind of being someone who’s a giver, then it’s also it’s easy for me to ask for a little support, or feedback, or something. And not that I even necessarily ask them all the time, but I just know adding value to them all the time will help. And then it’s also easier for me to often refer people to them.”

What is “The Rule of 15?”

The concept is simple:

Whenever you have an opportunity to add value to your network, rather than reaching out to one person, reach out to 15 people.

That’s literally it.

So next time an awesome opportunity comes your way:

Make a list of 15 people you know that could also benefit from it (or as many as you can)
Write an email (see sample below) to reach out to these people where you share the opportunity with them
Send out the emails all at once

You can likely do this in just 1-2 hours and massive value to 15 people in your network. And then, as Selena says (and does), you can use this technique to add value to hundreds of people every single month.

This way, you’re building 15 strong relationships at a time by sharing the same opportunity with 15 people in a fraction of a time it would take you to build those relationships 1-on-1.

Plus, you can constantly stay in touch and on top of mind of people you already connected with!

The Rule of 15 Email Example

Not sure what to include in the email? You can keep the email SUPER simple!

You really just want to:

Write a quick personalized note
Share the opportunity you have

Here’s an example of an email Selena sent to me about the Forbes opportunity:

It’s as simple as that!

20 real-life examples of how you can use “The Rule of 15”

Now at this point, you’re probably wondering: “What are some ways in which I can use “The Rule of 15”, especially when I’m just starting out with growing my network?

I’m glad you asked, which is why I prepared a list of real life examples of how you could use this rule to grow your network:

Inviting people out for dinner / cocktail party / drinks you’re hosting (or your friend is hosting)
Inviting people to come to an event with you that you’re hosting / going to / your friend is hosting
Scheduling a catch up call with people in your network that you haven’t talked to in a while
Sharing a publicity / podcast / guest post opportunity with your network
Sharing a really great online course / book / article / video with people in your network
Introducing people to other cool people they should meet
Sending an email to people in your network and asking them if they need help with something right now
Share articles from people that you loved on your social media (though you won’t want to do 15 in a day, you can do 15 in 2 weeks)
Invite them out for coffee to catch up
Offer free coaching / consulting calls (“office hours”) to 15 of your clients, email subscribers, or people in an online community you’re a part of
Check in with your clients or students to see how they’re doing and if there’s anything they need help with

Here’re some more examples of adding value through the “The Rule of 15”. These will take a little bit more time as you’ll need to personalize them a bit more, BUT they’ll be even more valuable for growing your network.

Sending people who helped you a written thank you card or a thank you email
Writing a testimonial or recording a video testimonial for people in your network
Writing an Amazon review of a book of books you loved reading recently
Sending book authors thank you notes for writing their books
Writing an iTunes review of podcasts you loved
Writing a written (or recording a video) review of an online course you’ve taken
Writing an article where you share advice of 15 people around one topic that really helped you
Leave a comment on people’s blogs / articles that you really loved
Write a helpful post or leave a helpful comment in a community you’re a part of

These are just some of the examples, and I encourage you to get creative with them.

And if you have any examples that I missed / that you have successfully used or thought about, please do share them in the comments and I’ll add them to this post :).

That’s it! Now you have everything you need to put The Rule of 15 into action, and if you’re ready to do that, here are some steps that you can use to get started TODAY.

ACTION STEPS: The Rule of 15

I encourage you to go through these steps right now so you can see the benefits of this rule for yourself:

STEP #1: Think about 1-5 ways in which you could add value to your network (or opportunities that you have right now)
STEP #2: Pick just one of the ways and compile a list of 15 (or as many as you can) people that you could benefit from the opportunity / value add
STEP #3: Prepare a short email template that you’ll send out to these people
STEP #4: Sit down, write and send out all of those emails in one go
STEP #5 (BONUS): Repeat the steps above every day, or whenever a new opportunity comes your way

Remember, even if you can’t come up with 15 people you can help with right now (or don’t have 5 opportunities waiting for you), you can just start with one opportunity and try to find 3, 5, or 10 people to add value to in your existing network.

As you do that, you’ll notice that there you give, the more your network will give back to you, the more people you’ll meet… And eventually you’ll have no problem with coming up with 15 or more people to add value to at the same time :).

That’s it!

If you’re going to use The Rule of 15 to grow your network, take 3 seconds to leave a comment below of how you’re going to use it!

And if you’d like to get even more strategies for growing your network and surrounding yourself with successful people, you can’t miss my Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People (enter your name and email in the box below to grab your free copy).

You’ll also love this guide if you haven’t STARTED connecting with successful people yet (or have no opportunities coming your way yet). The free guide will help you get there :).

-Primoz

How to Write a Non-Buyer Survey After a Failed Product Launch

By Primoz Bozic 3 Comments

What do you do when your product launch fails (or doesn’t perform as expected)?
How do you figure out where you “messed up”?
Is it bad timing, is the price too high, is your product not compelling enough?

There’s only one way to find out – by talking to your customers.

And the first step in that process is usually sending a “non-buyer survey” to your leads that had the opportunity to buy the product but didn’t.

Since I’ve been asked over and over again by my clients to share an example of a non-buyer survey (as well as how to interpret the data), I decided to write a post it where I’ll show my whole process of performing non-buyer surveys with you.

Why do you even need a non-buyer survey?

Non-buyer surveys are great because they allow you to start identifying the exact reasons why your customers aren’t buying your products.

The insights from non-buyer surveys then help you improve the product pricing, positioning and sales copy to make sure your next product launch does way better than the next one.

But the one thing that people miss when it comes to non-buyer surveys is that the surveys aren’t the end of the story – they are just a means to an end.

Perhaps the most valuable role of non-buyer surveys is that they allow you to find interested potential customers that you can call on the phone to dig even deeper into the reasons why they didn’t buy your product.

If you’re not using a non-buyer survey, you’re missing out on all the valuable data on why your customers aren’t buying (and if you’re relying on your guesses and assumptions and not data… get ready for a world of pain and failed launches).

So if you don’t have a non-buyer survey yet, you definitely need one!

How I learned to write a non-buyer survey

I first learned how to write a non-buyer survey back in 2014 when I worked through Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch to set up my own online business.

When I had a product launch that did “okay”, I asked his product development team how to make the launch better.

They told me that non-buyer surveys aren’t a place where you need to reinvent the wheel, and that they’d send me some templates I could use right away.

They were right. The survey templates that they’ve sent me worked exceptionally well and I use them to this day, and I’ve seen Ramit Sethi use these exact surveys to get non-buyer feedback for his products as well.

I’ve also seen a lot of my friends use the same surveys in their own businesses with great results, which is why I decided to write about these surveys in this post.

So without further ado, here’s a template that you too can use to write your very own non-buyer survey.

Below the template, you’ll also find the step-by-step instructions for how to analyze the survey data, as well as how to email the survey out to your readers.

Although it is possible to use a top business phone system and have the survey done by phone. This can be quite costly if additional employees are needed to carry out the extra task. So in the spirit of saving of money I recommend using a software like Surveymonkey to host your survey as the basic plan is free and it gives you a great overview of the data.

Non-buyer survey template

Here are the survey questions that you need to ask in a non-buyer survey

1. I noticed you had the opportunity to join PRODUCT NAME but decided not to join at this time. Would you say you were at least considering joining of were you not interested at all?
(yes / no)

2. Which of the following factors played a role in your decision? (choose one of more)
– I don’t have time
– I can’t afford it
– I don’t understand what it is
– I’m not sure it can help me
– I’m just not interested
– Other (please specify)

3. In your own words, why didn’t you join? Please be as specific as possible.
(paragraph box)

4. If you were interested but didn’t join, what will you do about TOPIC instead? (Leave blank if TOPIC doesn’t interest you)
(paragraph box)

5. Name / Email

You can tweak these to fit your own product, brand and language, but I wouldn’t tweak them too much. The overall structure and length of these questions should be more or less the same (so don’t try to add 3 more super long questions to the survey – save the extra questions for the 1on1 calls).

How and when should you send a non-buyer survey to your non-buyers?

Your potential customers will likely be the most engaged in the week right after the product launch once the memory of it is still clear.

If you can, you should send out a non-buyer email to your readers within 2-3 days of finishing your launch (if you finish it on Friday night, you can send out the survey on Monday). But even if it’s been a few weeks since your launch, it’s never too late to send out the survey and still get some good responses.

In terms of what to send, you can keep things super simple.

You could send out an email like this (with a subject line “Can I get your feedback?”):

Hi NAME,

I noticed you had the opportunity to join PRODUCT NAME but decided not to join at this time. Would you mind telling me why? (I’m not trying to sell you anything. I just want to learn how I can better serve you.)

SURVEY LINK

Thank you!

You can tweak this email to fit your voice and brand, but I do recommend keeping it super short to get the maximal responses from it.

Analysis of non-buyer survey questions

Ok, now let’s look at each of these questions in detail to understand WHY we’re using each of the questions from the survey.

QUESTION #1: Were you interested in joining the program?

This question allows you to separate the people who were not interested in joining your program from the ones that were.

You can then further the not interested in joining the program into two groups:

People who might never buy anything (or this program) from you
People who might buy from you, but just weren’t convinced that they really needed your program.

Here’s an example:

If you’re selling a program about fitness to an entrepreneur and they’re already invested in another sport (or know how to be fit already), they will likely never buy this program from you.
If you’re selling a program about mindset to a painter and the painter says “I just don’t think that mindset is that important”, then you probably could reach them in the future if you tweaked your messaging successfully.

In the latter example, it’s not that they’ll never buy from you, it’s just that you haven’t showed them (or convinced them) WHY mindset is so important to them, so they never became interested in the product.

When you reach out to people in the second category, you should try to find out why they think that mindset isn’t important (and address those concerns with your next product launch).

Now we’ve covered the people who were not interested in joining your product.

With the people that WERE interested in joining your product, you have a group of people who wanted to buy from you but had concerns against buying (which you’ll be able to identify and improve through insights you get from other questions).

One last thing we should mention is that you should look at the ratio of how many people were interested in joining / weren’t interesting in joining, because that allows you to determine where you went wrong.

If the majority of people WERE interested in joining, it means that the product is desirable, but you didn’t address the buyer’s concerns well enough.

If the majority of people WERE NOT interesting in joining, it means that either the product wasn’t desirable, or you haven’t made it desirable enough (which you need to dig into with further research).

QUESTION #2: Why didn’t you join the program?

With this question, we’re trying to identify the main concerns our potential had around buying the program. Did our potential customers not buy because of limited time, money, or something else?

Once you collect the results from your survey, you’ll first want to look at the data in a quantitative way:

You’ll want to look at which of the reasons were the most popular, and which were less popular.

Here’s a simplified way to analyze this kind of data:

IF a lot of people said that they lack time for the program, THEN your program either feels “too hard / time consuming”, OR you haven’t made it seem important enough for people to dedicate the time.
IF a lot of people said that the program is too expensive, THEN your program is either priced too high OR the benefits of the program didn’t seem valuable enough to them.
IF a lot of people said that they didn’t understand what the program is, THEN you didn’t make your offer (product outline / what it includes) clear enough through your emails and your sales page, OR you made it too confusing.
IF a lot of people said that they’re not sure how the program can help them, THEN the benefits didn’t resonate well enough OR weren’t convincing enough.
IF they just weren’t interested you can ignore the responses from this person (or address them as you analyze the responses from people who were not interested in joining).

As you analyze this data, you want to get a clearer idea what was the BIGGEST issue that you need to address and improve, and which are minor issues that you don’t need to worry about so much.

Is it the pricing? Is it the clear offer? Is it the benefits?

Then, you’ll want to primarily focus on the major issues as you dig into the data further. If we look at the graph above, I’d definitely dig deeper into the “no time”, “no money”, and “how can it help me?” issues, while I’d spend less time digging into “what is the program?”.

You’ll be able to do that by digging through the next few questions (and jumping on further non-buyer phone calls withy our potential customers).

QUESTION #3: In your own words, why didn’t you join?

This is the question where the real gold lies and where most of your attention will be spent as you analyze the data.

Here, you’ll start to see more specific reasons why people didn’t join, and you’ll likely start to see patterns between what people are saying.

For example, if a lot of people say something along the lines of “I struggle with procrastination and there’s no way I could put in the hours to go through the course”, that means that your course doesn’t seem easy or achievable enough.
If a lot of people say “I’m focused on other areas of my business development right now”, it means that you didn’t make the program seem important enough that people would want to take it (or you didn’t target a real, strong enough problem they have).
If a lot of people say “I don’t understand what it is or how it would add value to me right now”, that means that you didn’t make the offer clear enough (you didn’t explain which problem you solve for your audience clearly enough).

This might seem similar to the analysis that you were doing in the previous step – and it is – but the distinction here is that you can dig deeper into the data by finding more SPECIFIC reasons why people aren’t joining.

The first thing you can do to do that is to group your data from each category in a document, and start analyzing the data within each of the reasons.

For example, within the “I’m not sure if this program is right for me”, you could see concerns like:

“You seem to be targeting 20-25 year old, introverted people while I am 40+”
“I need to find a profitable business idea first before joining this program”
“I didn’t feel like paying money just to join a Facebook group”

Then, once you find enough real reasons why people aren’t joining your program, you can call them over the phone to get them to tell you more about them (and get even more clarity on what’s stopping them from joining)..

The main benefit of seeing these results is that you can start seeing REAL problems in the language of the people, that you can then work through step by step as you’re preparing your next launch.

Note that this isn’t an easy task, and that some of the data won’t be as clear / super useful. You’ll definitely get some responses like “I just didn’t have the time” or “I just wasn’t interested”, which won’t be useful.

But when you get a response like “I really don’t have the time right now”, but the response is 2 pages long, then that’s suspicious – how come they didn’t have the time when they have the time to write a really long response to you?

Or when they say “it was too expensive”, but then they mentioned they joined 5 other online programs (or are planning on joining them), then that’s again something very interesting that you want to look into more.

You can use these answers as a great starting point to identify potential improvements in your copy, as well as a great starting point for your 1on1 phone calls later on down the line.

QUESTION #4: What will you do instead to solve this problem?

With this question, you’ll be able to identify:

Potential competitors that are solving the problems you’re promising to solve better than you are
Additional concerns that prevent people from joining (like “I don’t think paying for connections is worth my time”)
Less effective alternatives that you didn’t talk about (like “I’ll just read a few blog posts instead”).

You can expect to find less valuable data here (as some of it will be repetitive, though once in a while you’ll discover something you didn’t think of yet which will be worth the digging).

QUESTION #5: Your name and email

This is perhaps the most important question in the whole survey, as it allows you to schedule 1on1 calls with your customers to follow up on their responses and discover deeper insights that you won’t be able to find through a quick survey.

So don’t skip this question!

What’s next?

Once you do an initial analysis of the survey responses, reach out to at least 3-5 people whose answers you’ve found interesting to talk to them for 15 minutes on the phone and get information from them (the more the merrier).

You can use an email like this to do that (subject line: I’d love to talk to you about your survey response!):

Hi NAME,

Thank you so much for filling out the survey about PRODUCT NAME last week.

I’ve found your response really interesting, especially the part about ________

INSERT THEIR SURVEY RESPONSE

I’d love for you to tell me more about that as I really want to serve you as best as possible in the future.

Would you be willing to jump on a 15-minute Skype call with me to talk more about it?

If yes, let me know and I’ll send you some times when we can talk.

Thank you!

-YOUR NAME

Right now, you have a survey template ready to use, as well as the email you can send it out with, and a starting point to analyze the data, which is more than enough to get started.

You can start digging through the data and start scheduling the 1on1 calls with your potential customers instead.

I’ll write more about the non-buyer phone calls in the future (as they’re something you need to learn as well) and maybe do a real-life analysis of a non-buyer survey as well, so stay tuned.

-Primoz

Have questions about non-buyer surveys or how to analyze the data? Leave a comment below!

Why “Charge What You’re Worth” is Horrible Advice (And What to do Instead)

By Primoz Bozic 6 Comments

A lot of advice for pricing your products or services goes like this:

“You should charge premium rates!”
“You should charge what you’re worth!”
“You should find your happy price!”

And I agree – I even wrote a blog post on what it takes to charge $1,000/hour.

But there’s a twist.

When you’re trying to land your first few paying clients, charging premium rates can hurt your business.

That’s where most new freelancers, coaches and consultants get it wrong.

They read a blog post or take an online course about charging premium rates, love the idea of it (who doesn’t love the idea of making more money with the same amount of work?), and they’re all excited about charging hundreds of dollars per hours to become the next Scrooge McDuck:

And some people make it.

Every once in a while, you’ll hear this massive success story from someone who started charging $500/h and built a 6-figure business practically overnight.

But most people don’t.

The harsh reality looks more like this:

You define a product or a service you want to offer.

You find a few potential clients.

You talk to them about how you can help them.

You create one or more packages for them.

You think about pricing, and read articles online / ask other entrepreneurs about it.

Eventually, you settle on a rate you’re happy with.

You present your rate to the potential clients.

And then you either don’t hear back from them, hear them say that “they’ll think about it”, or just get a clear “this is out of my budget right now” back.

This sucks.

It sucks because this whole process usually doesn’t take a few minutes. Finding your potential clients, talking to them about what they want, preparing different packages, coming up with pricing… Can potentially take days, weeks, or even months in some cases.

And when you get to the point where you share your price and they reject it, it hurts.

You’ve spent all this time and effort landing a new client, and it was all for nothing.

You need to start again at square one.

I’ve seen this happen over and over again with my clients and friends.

Consultants, photographers, designers… You name it.

They set out to get their first few clients (or try to launch a new service), get all hyped up, then belly flop into the harsh reality and are left with no clients at all.

Here’s the problem that most experts don’t talk to you about:

You have to EARN the right to charge premium rates.

In my post about charging $1,000/hour, I talk about different ways of raising your rates, like:

Growing your knowledge, expertise, and results you can deliver to your clients
Improving the quality of your products or service you deliver to your clients
Building your reputation as a credible expert, and becoming fully booked

And when you’re starting out, you just haven’t done all the hard work to deserve charging premium rates yet.

If you don’t have a ton of client success stories and happy clients referring you to other people they know, you have no business raising your rates.

I’ll even take this a step further.

If you’re not fully booked yet, you shouldn’t be charging premium rates.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s think of 2 aspiring designers – Jack and Tom, who both want to start a freelance business.

They both want to charge $100/h.

They both manage to find 5 clients that are interested in working with them.

They both spend plenty of time understanding their customer’s needs and come up with proposals for them.

But when they think about pricing, they take different approaches.

Jack uses the “charge what you’re worth” approach and charges $100/h.

Tom uses the “undercharge and over deliver” approach and charges $50/h.

Here’s what happens next:

Jack has high hopes and is excited to get his first paying clients, but ends up being rejected and hearing crickets.

He’s “too expensive” for the clients, and ends up with 0 clients, 0 success stories, 0 referrals, and a whole lot of time wasted.

He’s back to square one.

Tom, on the other hand, manages to land 3 of the 5 clients at $50/h. The projects aren’t huge, and they bring in around $250 per client, which is less than he ideally wanted, but it’s a start.

The flip side is that he now has his first few paying clients, and his hobby is turning into a real business.

He does amazing work for the 3 clients and receives raving testimonials from them that he can put on his website.

But that’s not all. One of the clients is so happy with the work that he decides to hire him at a bigger project for $1,000, and even agrees to pay him a higher hourly rate.

Another client doesn’t have more work for Tom but has a friend who desperately needs a designer, so he recommends Tom to them. Tom lands another project for $600 and this time charges $60/h with no pushback.

After 3 months, Jack is still in the exact same place. He’s putting in a ton of work trying to land new clients, but always gets rejected. His business doesn’t move anywhere and he’s discouraged. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong and why people won’t just pay him “what he’s worth”.

On the other hand, Tom’s business is slowly but steadily growing. He has now landed over $2,500 in client work, has more work coming his way from his existing clients, as well as more clients asking to work with him because of the amazing work he has done for their friends.

As you can probably guess, Tom’s business is likely to continue growing, while Jack’s business will likely crash and burn – all because of a simple pricing mistake.

While this is a “made up” story, this exact story happens all the time, and it likely happened to you or someone you know in the past.

So many people try to charge premium rates before they already have a strong client base and end up empty-handed.

To avoid this from happening, you can follow these two simple pricing rules:

Always “undercharge and over deliver” with your first few clients
Don’t raise your rates until you’re fully booked

The second rule should be pretty straightforward – but let’s look at the first rule in more detail.

The “undercharge and over deliver” pricing strategy

If you’ve read the above story, you already have a vague idea of how this strategy works.

In essence, it’s pretty simple:

Whenever you’re launching a new product or a service (or want to get your first paying customers for a business idea), you should intentionally charge less than your “ideal” rate and focus on over-delivering for your customers.

Just how much less than your “ideal” rate should you charge?

50% is a good benchmark to start with.

If you believe your services are worth $100/h, you can charge $50/h. If you’re developing an online course that is worth $500, you can sell a “BETA” version of it for $250.

The idea here is to make the price a true “no-brainer” for your potential clients, and to make them feel like working with you was the best investment they could have ever made.

Instead of trying to make a quick buck, you’re focusing on building the foundation for a long-term, sustainable business.

As a result, you’ll be able to:

Spend more time getting paid than looking for new clients
Collect amazing case studies and testimonials that you’ll be able to use to further grow your business
Get more work from existing, happy clients
Get referrals to other potential clients
Gradually raise your rates to “what you’re worth” AND see clients happily pay them

Then, once you land the client, you do all in your power to “over deliver” and blow them away with your product or service.

This might mean:

Proactively giving your clients new ideas for what you can help them with / proactively building those ideas out for them
Sending project updates regularly, rather than waiting for your clients to check in with you
Getting feedback on how well you’re doing, and what you could be doing better

And as a result, you’ll end up with happy clients that will love recommending you to their friends.

Now to make this even more real, I want to share a few personal examples of how I used this exact strategy in my business:

Example #1 – How I built my first ever coaching business

When I started my first ever online business (productivity coaching for online poker players), I charged my first client around $50/h for a 1-hour call with me, even though other poker coaches were charging as much as $400/h.

Then, as I got more and more paying clients, I gradually raised my rates to $75/h, $100/h, $125/h, $150/h, and eventually $250/h.

Throughout this process, kept improving my services and thought about how I could serve my clients better. I thought about how I could help them with not just productivity systems, but also things like learning, nutrition and sleep.

I started writing written call summaries for them after our coaching calls with them, with clearly defined action steps. I added weekly check-ins in-between our coaching sessions to see how they were progressing. And so on and so on.

The more I improved my coaching services, the more I could raise my rates.

Example #2 – How I turned Ultimate Guides into a 6-figure online business

When I got my first 1on1 coaching client for Ultimate Guide coaching, I only charged them $500 to help them create their Ultimate Guide. This was when I was already running a successful online business, and the hourly rate for this project was horrible.

But getting the first clients at a lower rate helped me build up the confidence, create the first few success stories, and charge higher and higher rates (I later charged up to $5,000 for 1-on-1 consulting for one Ultimate Guide, which was more than I even expected I could charge).

If I tried to charge $5,000 or $3,000 right off the bat, chances are I’d get rejected by my first few clients, and think that this is a “bad business idea” that I’d never fully follow through with. I probably would have never created a 6-figure out of Ultimate Guides.

Another example is Ultimate Guide System, my premium online course on growing your online business with Ultimate Guides.

I designed this course as a 1-year program with tens of hours of live coaching calls (as well as additional hands-on coaching support through an online community), and it’s the most hands-on online program I’ve ever seen.

When I first launched the program, I charged $997 for it, and some of my customers even complained about it being “too cheap”.

I knew that and I agreed with it – but I wanted to keep the price relatively low because I wanted to get as many paying customers (and success stories) as possible for my business.

Later on (also due to the amazing success stories and testimonials that the program got), I was able to increase the price to $1497 and later on $1997, which I believe is much closer to what the program is actually worth.

If I tried to sell the program at $1997 right off the bat, I’m not sure if it would sell as well and get me so many success stories – which would make the program a lot harder to sell in the future.

Example #3 – How I launched a 5-figure coaching program

Last November I sold a group business coaching program for the first time.

It was a 6-month program that included weekly 90-minute coaching calls in a group of 5-6 entrepreneurs, which is unlike anything else you can find out there.

Especially if you consider the opening price, which was $2,500.

Now don’t get me wrong – $2,500 isn’t cheap by any means – but to get this level and frequency of coaching from someone who runs a 6-figure online business, you’d usually need to pay way more.

When I launched the program, a lot of the clients told me that the program was way too cheap, which I knew and I was aware of. I intentionally undercharged with the intention to massively over deliver.

My clients ended up absolutely loving the program, and many of them said it’s the best business investment they’ve ever made – which is why I decided to launch it again 2 months later.

As I did that, I sold out all the coaching slots within 3 days, at a higher price point. What’s interesting here is that a lot of the new students that joined the program were referrals from old students that were super happy with the program.

Now I have two groups of amazing entrepreneurs in the program that I know will become amazing case studies that will help me grow this program (and other parts of my business) in the future.

If I charged something like $5k for this program right off the bat, I might have still sold a few slots, but I don’t think the experiences (or results) would be as good as in this case, so I know this was the right decision to make.

How to apply the “undercharge and over deliver” pricing strategy to your business

Ok, we’ve looked at the common pricing mistakes that most new entrepreneurs make, we’ve looked at a strategy that you can use to get much better results with your business, as well as a few examples of how I implemented this strategy in my business.

Now let’s talk about how you can apply this strategy to your business as well.

It’s really simple:

When you’re trying to get your first few paying clients for a new product or a service, think about your ideal price point / rate and decrease it by 50%.
Focus on undercharging and over delivering so you can create amazing case studies, testimonials, success stories and referrals for your business.
Only raise your rates once you’re fully booked or when multiple people are telling you that your rates are WAY too cheap.

And once that happens, read this article on how to raise your rates to as much as $1,000/h.

That’s it!

What about you? Have you tried charging premium rates in the past (or undercharging and over delivering)? If yes, what happened?

-Primoz

Road to 7 Figures #9: The Socrates Strategy for finding great business ideas

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

In this video, you’ll learn:

The only story I remember from my high school philosophy class
The “Socrates Strategy” for finding a profitable business idea
The 3 things you need to pay attention to when it comes to choosing a great business idea

Watch the video below:

Past editions of The Road to 7 Figures:

If you enjoyed this video, leave a comment below with the #1 thing you loved about it.

I’ll see you in the next video!

-Primoz