How I Raised $10,000 on GoFundMe to Buy An Employee a New Car

TRANSCRIPTION

How did I raise $10,000 on GoFundMe to buy an employee, a new car and get paid in the process? I'm going to be walking you through it in today's episode.

One thing that I think is worth far more than its weight in gold is influence. When you have influence, when you are an influencer, you have access to a variety of tools and things that most people don't have access to. And something happened a couple of weeks ago with an employee of mine. Alice. Now Alice is my assistant. And when I say assistant that, that actually does a complete disservice to her because she is far more than an assistant executive assistant, whatever you want to call her. She handles things that, I mean, she does payroll. She does she handles all the paperwork for all my real estate investments, all my regular investments, like, like, you know, investing in hedge funds and, and debt funds and all the way down to booking doctors appointments for me as well as a myriad of other random things that I don't have to deal with so that I can focus on running the company.

And, you know, I mean, I'm talking about like construction on houses, everything, right? And so she had an issue with her car, you know, and the thing about Alice's, she works extremely hard. But she came from the hospitality industry. She was a bartender, and this was her first job in, I'm hesitant to say the corporate world, cause I wouldn't call myself that corporate, but office sort of situation. She did work at capital one for a little bit. But you know, she came from the bar industry and was trained on all, you know, we trained her on all kinds of stuff. Like, I mean, she was never dealing with investment portfolios and, you know, pay, you know, all this stuff. So she came in and she learned a lot, but she did bring a lot to the table because she did, she was a manager at a lot of these restaurants and bars.

So she did have that management experience. And she, she had an issue with her car where it's pretty much put as, as some would say. And so I wanted to help her out because she works very hard. Now you might say, well, Dan, why didn't you just buy her a new car? Well, it's 2020. And I don't know. I think just randomly buying a female employee, a new car, and saying, here you go. I don't know. I just, I don't want to touch that with a 10-foot pole, so I don't even want to go near that. So I decided to help her out by trading my influence and information in exchange for donations on GoFundMe. And so what I did was I thought, and cause, you know, look guys, I'm a marketer, right? I'm an entrepreneur. That's how I think whether you agree with it or disagree with it.

My brain thinks in promotions; my brain thinks in making things happen. I mean, that's where my talent lies. So here's what I did. I created a page where I said, Hey guys I want to help my employee Alice out. I want to help raise money for a new car. And you know, basically she's, she's gonna put a down payment on a new car. So it's not like we raised all the money for the new car, but I wanted to raise enough money for her for a down payment because you know, she, she gets paid well. I've, I've given her raises multiple times over the past few years cause she does a great job. But when you go to buy a car, whether you can afford the monthly payment or not, you need a down payment. Right. And Alice is she, she tends to help her family out a lot like her mom.

And so you know, she didn't have the down payment and so I thought I'd help her out with that. So I made this go fund me page. I made this page on a landing page software use, click funnels. And I basically said, Hey guys, I have this sales training called the stupid box. It's a training on handling objections. It's a very specific construct or framework that you can use on sales calls that has helped us close a ton of sales, and it's called the stupid box. And so I made this training and if you donate to Alice's car fund, no matter, no matter how much you donate could be $5, it could be $10, $50, whatever, if you do that, we, I will give you this training for free. And so I put the page up, and I had two buttons, one button went to go fund me.

And that was just a go fund me page. And we've we set the goal at 10,000 because I thought that was good, you know, that's about what she needed for down payment. And so we set it at 10,000 and then I made another button that goes to jot form. We use a form software called jot form. And basically it said, go to go fund me, donate, take a screenshot of your donation, come back to this page, click on jot forms, submit the screenshot and we will direct you to the training. So that's what they did. They came back to the page and they went to the job for them. And what I did was when they submitted the screenshot. And again, because I'm, I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a marketer. I like that. The very next step of the form said, Hey we're about to give you the stupid box training.

You know, one of the best sales techniques we use to grow our company. How would you like to also in addition, get a live training on this, where you can ask questions and apply this to your company, to your business, to your offer. If so, go back to the GoFundMe page, donate an additional $50. Come back here, put that screenshot in and we will give you a zoom link to attend a live training on whatever the date was. I don't remember. And so not everybody right, took that upsell if you will, but a decent portion took it. And that, that drastically raise the amount of donations. So it's funny how putting in a one as you would say, a one click upsell or a upsell offer because if you think about it, come on guys, like not to toot my own horn, but to get on a live call and be able to ask an eight-figure entrepreneur sales questions for 50 bucks is a pretty good deal.

I mean I find, find me an eight-figure entrepreneur that will let you hop on a zoom call and ask them questions for 50 bucks, you know, and I'll, I'll, I'll find you an asteroid that has a dance party on it. But I did it because I just thought it would be a great way to increase donations and it worked. And so what I did was I did that, the live training you answered questions for, I think it was like hour and a half, two hours. Right. And and that, that was the funnel, if you will, right. We ended up hitting $10,000. And I think, I don't remember the exact amount of time. I think it was only like a couple of weeks or maybe it was like a week and a half. And we, we hit the goal pretty quickly, did the live training.

And here's the funny part. As a result of this promotion, we made several sales for my premium coaching program because when people went and donated and then watched the stupid box training, I taught the whole method. I didn't hold anything back. I didn't make it a pit. I just, I just taught it. But then at the end and I didn't even say this on video. I didn't even, I probably could have increases if I said it on video, but I'd already recorded it. And I didn't didn't want to go back and do again. I just put a button down below the video and all I said was, did you enjoy this training? Imagine if you were in Dan's coaching program, if you want to apply click here, that's all I did. Well a fair portion of people click that button and applied. And I believe at last look, we did two or three sales a week that week, or no, I'm sorry that, that first two weeks just from that, and we may have made more sales since then.

I just haven't looked. But yeah,

Fact that, and I just, I just find this incredible that, you know, over the past few years, I've obviously built up an audience and build up influence. I mean, that's the reason you're listening to this podcast right now. I'm assuming you didn't just randomly stumble across it,

But to take

That influence and just be able to wield it and literally raised $10,000 for an amazing employee that hit, you know, hit a rough spot. And, and again, she gets, she gets paid well, but when you, when you're taking care of your family and you know, maybe, you know, I don't want to get into her personal stuff, but guys think about this, right? It doesn't matter how well you're getting paid. Sometimes things happen, right? Maybe you've taken care of your family. Maybe you had debts to pay. Maybe something else happened that took your reserves. And now all of a sudden your car goes caput put, and you need a car. And it's, it's just, you know, it happens. And I, I did not want to you know, choose a car for her or whatever. I wanted her to be able to choose. And so, you know, I did this and it worked and it was literally wielding influence to at all simultaneously give my audience great training and give them value while at the same time, helping her with her down payment and letting it be, you know, letting her take that money and do what she wants to do with it, choose whatever car she wants.

And at the same time, generating a few sales in the process. I find, I find that incredible and incredibly fascinating that you could just take influence, right? Because you've given value over the years and because you've done what you've done and use that to and wield it to, to make things happen. And so, you know, if you're out there and you're wondering, you know, should I, should I open my voice? Should I talk, should I say things, should I put myself out there? And what I think should I, I give content to the marketplace? Yes, you should. Because at the end of the day, the more you share and the more you help and the more you help your audience, the more influence you will accumulate. And it's not just about sales and growing your company, but it's about growing your influence. And so once you, you develop that influence, you can wield it, right.

I mean, imagine if Tony Robbins right now wanted to, and I, he does all kinds of charity work, tons of charity work, but imagine if he wanted to just randomly help a certain cause, whatever, you know, cause a, he could literally literally release one video or do one interview and just literally just help that cause tremendously. And yes, he could donate himself. Absolutely. I donated a thousand dollars to the fund to get it going. But what's worth more is the fact that, you know, the fact that he can literally wheel that influence to create, create things out of thin air. I remember seeing a commercial with Michael Phelps and Michael Phelps was talking about mental health and he was promoting a service called Talkspace, which is like, I guess it's like a, like a therapy online therapy type of website. And I'm sure that he has some sort of, you know, deal with them some sort of advertisement deal.

But at the end of the day, I hear it's great service and it helps a lot of people, especially now when everybody's home and, and everybody has, you know, pandemic anxiety. But if Michael Phelps wasn't Michael Phelps, regardless of what he got paid for it, if Michael Phelps wasn't Michael Phelps, then he would not be able to use and wheel that influence to help people find a product that can help them. I just find that fascinating. And so if you're not taking action to build your influence right now, you know, w what are you doing? I mean, come on you look, there was a time not too long ago where I was, what many would call a Rondo in, in a Facebook group? Just, just like everybody else, just, you know, asking questions and, and wondering what a funnel was and wondering, you know, what Facebook ads were and, and wondering what books I should read for entrepreneurship and all that jazz and today you know, wall street, journal, bestseller, eight figure company you know, whatever, all this stuff.

And it never would have happened if I didn't begin, it never would have happened if I didn't start. And, you know, perfection, a lot of people don't begin because they're seeking perfection and they're waiting for things to be perfect, or they're waiting to, you know, they're afraid to say the wrong thing to begin building their influence. And it's like I said, so many things wrong in the beginning. I still say things wrong. I'm sure somebody will find fault somewhere in this podcast episode, they'll find some way to be offended. I mean, you never know what people are going to complain about, but you can only be sure that they will find something to complain about. And you can't worry about that. If you're afraid to say the wrong thing, you'll end up saying nothing. And, you know, I got good at saying the right thing.

And when I say what I mean saying the right thing, good advertisements, good, good promotions, whatever, by not always saying the right thing, you know, by having bad promotions, but thing, the important thing was that I began and I started. And when you grow that influence and you begin learning how to do the right thing by sometimes doing the wrong and right thing, you will grow influenced that you can wheel to do great things, whether that be create revenue for your company, whether it be help out in an employee, whether that be support. Cause you can wheel that influence. And that right there is literally the best stock you can buy. But you have to begin, you cannot seek perfection because there is no such thing as perfection. There's not a single blade of grass on this earth. That is perfect. And I believe that the pursuit of imperfection is far more imperfect than the acceptance of a reasonable level of imperfection.

And what that means is that you have to understand that done is better than perfect and that, you know, there is no such thing as perfect, but there is a degree of perfect, right? And so if you're always waiting to make it perfect, that is far more imperfect than simply accepting a certain level of imperfection what you're doing and moving forward. So maybe I'll do another podcast episode on that. But the point is, is that begin now build your influence because you can do great things with it. I'm fascinated by this. And also a lot of people have been asking updates on they're like, what car did Alice buy? And it's like, guys, this just happened. You know, she's like, we haven't even withdrawn the money from GoFundMe's yet, which is I gotta log in and figure out how to do that. But basically the plan is she's going to you know, search for cars.

She's going to decide on what car she wants. Cause this, all, this was kind of a surprise where this all came and she was like, you know, Whoa, like I didn't expect this. She's very happy about it. She, she almost said she didn't want to accept it, but I said, look, accept it. It's fine. But she she's gonna search for a car. And then she is going to pick one and then we'll you know, I'll, I'll withdraw it, give her the money and she'll go and do that whole thing. And I'll, she'll do whatever she does. I'll let her decide that. So we will definitely give you an update and I'd love to take a picture of whatever car she ends up with. And I think it would make a great, I don't know, maybe a little blog poster or something.

Anyway, so that right there is a cool way. And for those of you that do have influence, right? If you do want to support a cause and you do have influence, I, I recommend this this funnel per se, or this process is, you know, offer your audience a piece of info that is or training or whatever that is valuable. And yeah. You don't hold anything back, but yeah, look, if people see your stuff and they find that it's good. And then you say, Oh, by the way, I have this premium product that's okay. And some people will buy, but you offer them this thing. And then you just, you just say, Hey you know, go donate to this cause, or it doesn't have to be GoFund me. It could be a charity. It could be it could be signing a petition.

You could do it to sign a petition and come back and use, use, jot form here to to submit the screenshot. And then we'll send you this training for free and that's what you do. So if if you have influence and you want to wheel that to support a cause, I do recommend that you do that. I think that would be a really great thing to use your influence for it. And it'll, it'll not only make you feel good inside, but it's just, it's just amazing how you can make things happen with influence. So I highly recommend that you do that. And if you enjoyed this episode, tell your friends about it. I'm going to be, you know, having the show around for a long time. And I really liked doing this show and I will be bringing guests on, but a lot of times it's just me sharing things from my business and my thoughts. And I appreciate you guys listening. I will see you in the next one.

Hey, Dan Henry here. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to visit, get clients.com for more free resources on how to grow your online business. And if you love this show, don't forget to leave me a five star review. See you in the next episode.