How To Dominate Digital Marketing - Perry Belcher

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. Harry Belcher, welcome to the show, dude.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

What's that, brother?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

It's good to see you, man.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Thanks. Good to see you too. It's good to be seen. The night is good to be.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

It is. I think the bow is today. That is a fantastic day. Um, I think the last time I saw you was uh traffic and conversions last year. Oddly enough, I was there and it wasn't work. Well, it kind of was. I was there with one of the sponsors, but you know, it's better than being a slave to the stage for three long and treacherous, treacherous days. But I tell you what, those were some good fond memories and of traffic and conversions and being the MC for you guys. I uh I think that that ripple effect still is an effect. I still get calls going, weren't you the guy that MC traffic and conversions? I want to start a podcast. So that great guy in the boat. Yeah, man, exactly. The bow tie's been retired, and so is the MC business, but uh it was definitely fun while it lasted and kicked open a tremendous amount of doors. Uh that that's for sure. Well, you've been marketing since God spoke to Moses, it's been a long, you know, a long, a long journey uh for you to say the piece in your who do you think who do you think sold those 10 commandments to the public? Exactly. Exactly. And when I uh I never forget when I first met you, it was like 2015 at Trackman's. I'm like, You look familiar. I had you confused with another Perry, Perry uh Marshall. There we go. Because I was like, you look familiar, and you're like, I kind of look like the guy that looks familiar.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Perry Marshall.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yes, looks like that. Right, right. He just did a somebody just text me a picture in my in my in my networking group. I'm gonna Perry Marshall.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Perry's really, really smart, by the way. I always give him a hard time when I always give him a hard time because I always say tell them that when we every now and then they'll put us together on a on an event speaking somewhere, and they say, Well, which Perry are you? I'm the good looking one. You know, I'll always give he's a good guy. He's very, very, very smart. He's one of the most efficient marketers I know. I'm not an efficient guy. He's very, very efficient.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Well, um, so you've been doing this marketing thing for a minute, as I just as I just said here, and um digital marketing is not really that special shiny object anymore. It is in fact something that is that is marketing this day and age. It's it's taken over what you know traditional and marketing and advertising, you know, as we know it. And every time I had the opportunity of introducing you at traffic and conversions, I always stayed for at least a majority of your session because it was always something that I that I did not know. Um, and it was mainly geared towards you know, businesses and brands on how they can really build an email list, convert a better offer. And then there's several different genres within the digital marketing world. So let's back up a little bit. Let's let's talk about you know, the a little bit closer to the beginning of the story when you decided, you know what, I really got a knack for this marketing thing, and I think I got something here. Um, and then you know, the the the really the recipe in history, and of course, we'll get to get into chatting about what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah. Um, I was born a black child in Mississippi, and I'm just kidding. It's uh the reference from the jerk if you don't know the movie. Um no, I I I really um I guess I've always been marking selling something, right? Since I was little. I started my first business when I was 14 years old. I was selling uh uh I didn't know they were fake, but I was selling knockoff fake designer jeans and designer uh shirts out of the back of my car in Paducah, I was selling fake Calvin Klein jeans out of the back of a car when I was I didn't I didn't own a car yet. I bought a car for my buddy to drive that was 16 to drive us around to sell stuff, you know. From the very beginning, I always was selling something. Um, I got in the marketing business. Um, really, I got in the online marketing business after a career in retail and after a career in wholesaling and importing. So my first real business was retail. I had uh 42 jewelry stores when I was really young. I was only 20 years old when I started those, and 22 when I was done and bankrupt. Uh, you know, that nobody talks about the bad stuff. I got plenty of bad stuff. And then uh I wouldn't do uh manufacturing and importing and selling to wholesalers and stuff like that. And then finally in 1998, the year after Jeff Bezos started Amazon, um, I started a website called craftstore.com and I sold craft supplies, candle making and soap making supplies on the interwebs. And um, and that year we did 10 million dollars. It was very, very, very easy back then. You know, we you could manipulate the search engines really easily. People thought it was cool to get email. Oh wow, I got an email. You've got mail, you know. What are you doing tonight? I'm checking my email. Yeah, I'm checking my email. Yeah, so and people actually opened them and read them, and you know, we had I remember us, you know, when you could monitor when you started be able to monitor it, we were getting like 90% of the people we sent an email to opened it. It was like insane, you know. And um, but but anyway, um, I started off in basically e-com selling craft supplies, and uh then I just started buying other brands, and uh I owned rubber stamps.com, dry raceboards.com, dry race board.com, um all sorts of other stuff. I started importing products, manufacturing products, distributing products. Um, I just found it to be the coolest thing ever that you could basically put a brochure up on the internet, tell people you had a thing, and they would just hop on and buy it, you know. Um back then, actually, about half the sales came in by the phone. People would find the website, find the thing they wanted, they would call in and buy it like a mill or a company. And um, so I did that for a long time, and then uh um I got into the eventually got into the supplement business because I'd been I'd been a wholesaler of supplements to the dollar store industry. So I got in the online supplement business, got in a lot of trouble in that business, almost went to jail, lost everything I had in the world. And in uh 2008, 10 years after I'd started selling online, um, I was completely bankrupt, busted out, and three million dollars in debt. Wow. And I had a buddy, um, you know, a lot of friends when I was making, yeah, I was making four to five hundred thousand dollars net a month, you know, on a couple million dollars in sales, had 11 cars and a 15,000 square foot house and all kinds of crazy stuff, and tons of friends, as you might imagine, and um rented private jets and went just with everything you could do that's stupid, just textbook, dumbass, you know. I did it all. And uh, so when I got in trouble, all the friends evaporated and you know, I was kind of on my own. And uh um a couple of buddies that I'd met along the way, Frank Kern and uh Ryan Dice, um, really reached out to help. And Ryan especially um was like, Man, what are you gonna do now? And I was like, I don't know, I'm broke, I'm three million dollars in debt, and I got a terrible name in the industry. He said, Come be my partner, you know, and we we took that company. Uh, he had a company called Touch Tone Publishing was the name of his company. We rebranded it to digital marketer.com, and it had been doing a couple million dollars a year for I think three years in a row. Uh and we did uh nine million dollars in seven months. Wow, so it was together. And um I think the next year we did 13 or 14 million, the next year we did 18 million, next year we did 21 million, and um we became the number one player in that that digital marketing education space. And then we started buying uh consumer brands, um, survival life.com and um a bunch of others. And um today I own all those brands. I own sewing.com, survivalife.com, the American Gun Association, homemade recipes.com, homesteading.com, all those consumer things. I still own those. Uh Ryan owns Digital Marker. We did kind of a stock swap, and but we still own some stuff together. We own the Warroom Mastermind together with Roland Frazier, and we own the rest of Traffic and Conversion Summit. Along the way, we started Traffic and Conversion Summit, which is, I guess, still for now, anyway, uh the largest uh online marketing event in the world. So we did all that, and that's kind of what got me to where I'm now. So now um when I I we had a bunch of exits, we sold a bunch of stuff, and I exited out of um four companies in two years. Um, three eight-figure exits and one seven-figure exit. And I reinvested back into some done for you service businesses and um um and I'm back in the manufacturing business, if you can believe it, you know. So just everything old is new again. So I'm back to selling consumer goods that we make online again and investing in businesses and you know, trying to become a little less active, frankly, because I'm getting old and I'd I'd rather young people go out and hustle, and I'll just put up the money and some expertise and work with them. That's kind of my my goal nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, I talked to a talking to a buddy at an NFT event here in uh Miami last week and uh old buddy of mine, but I said, What are you up to? He said, I had a couple exits and uh now I'm just consulting for web three companies, helping them structure a strategy. They're paying me to do so, and then I'm taking a piece of action on the exit, and I just rinse and repeat that process.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

That's exactly what I do. I don't do it for those kinds of companies, I do it for old traditional boring style companies because I don't get all the NFT web three crypto coin token thingy stuff. Are you gonna try and figure it out? I think I'm not. I think I'm gonna zig while everyone else zags.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

That's always served me pretty well. That's a good quote. Harry Belcher refuses to enter the metal metaverse. That's a great blog.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

I do.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I refuse.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah, that might be on my tombstone. He died broke, right? I I don't know. They'll bury me in a virtual grave somewhere, um, you know, virtual graveyard. There's your there's there, that's coming soon to the sandbox.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yes. So so when when you reach a tremendous, you know, a certain level of success and you do all these exits, you make a bunch of cash, and you're like, I'll never be able to spend all this money. Well, maybe I could. Uh what keeps you going? What keeps you getting up every day going, you know, well, let's go get another deal, let's go find another way to make some more cash or you know, increase what's already there. My big secret's divorces.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Um, if you want to stay motivated, just give away half your shit every um eight or ten years, and you'll you'll always have motivation. There's a tip number two. You can write that down if you want to. That's a good thing there. Another quotable. I'm not even kidding, really. Um, I I was I just uh you know, I'm I'm going through a very friendly divorce right now, actually. A great ex-wife and not quite an ex-wife yet, but close to an ex-wife, and and she's a wonderful person. We just kind of very different directions. But yeah, when you give when you I was sitting around for the last couple of years, honestly, wondering what was going to motivate me. Uh well, I found out, you know, giving away half my crap is very motivating and buying guitars. And buying guitars, yeah. I collect a lot of guitars and I buy a lot of fancy cars, and I like cars and I like cars and guitars. I'm not big into I'm not big into houses, I'm not big into a lot of other stuff, uh, but I'm big into cars and guitars. And so uh that's where most of my money goes to classics. I thought maybe you're guitar.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

I thought maybe you were headed down to my neck of the woods.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I saw you down here a couple times. I was just down there yesterday. I was down there last night, actually. You in Miami, right? Yeah, yeah. I was there, I was there for the last uh I was there all week last week. I do a lot of business down there. Damon John and I do some business together. He's living down there now. He's oh, did he move down there? Okay, cool. Yeah, he lives in he lives in South Beach. Yeah, he's a good guy. He and I and I do some stuff together, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, oddly enough, ran into the airport a couple weeks back. I had my mask on. I'm like, what up, Damon? Like he knew who I was with a mask on, so I didn't even explain it, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

But yeah, yeah, he's such a good guy. He and I he and I have had a that was a fun story. He he called me one day in my car and said, uh, hey, this is Damon John from Shark Tank. And I'm like, Yeah, who the hell is this really? And I hung up on him. My kid wasn't and my kid's a huge Shark Tank fan. He's like, Dad, what are you doing? So uh the phone rang back again. He says, Hey Perry, this is really Damon. Joe Polish asked me to call you. Don't hang up, please. It's really me. And I'm like, I'm like, oh shit, you know, I should have probably not done that. And uh I bought a company that he bought on Shark Tank, I bought the majority of it from him, and we've continued that kind of tradition. He'll he'll buy a company, and then I may buy a big piece of it, and then I I'll kind of grow it. And if it's successful, they get to go back on Shark Tank and do the after the tank show showing how awesome it was. But most of those deals don't make money, there's not a lot of money in it in those deals. But it's fun to know Damon, and we've done a lot of other things together that were profitable and and some new stuff that we're doing that we think is going to do really well.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

I met him like 12 years ago on Miami Beach on a Sunday afternoon, and his book had just come out, and he told a story about playing Monopoly with his employees and making them have a little skin in the game. It was like a hundred bucks ahead, have everybody over, food, drinks, a whole night on a Friday night, like team building. But Monopoly would reveal personality traits, and he would literally sift through and fire his staff according to how people responded on Monopoly. You know who the cheaters are, you know who gets angry fast, you know who you know has the poker face, etc. So he comes in and we were we were working on a deal with him at the time. And uh I said, So uh so tell me about this Monopoly game. He goes, You read the book, and this is like this is actually this is 2008, so it's one year before Shark Tank. And uh he sent one of his guys out, his entourage there to find a monopoly board because we were gonna sit on one of those beds there by the pool and play Monopoly. And uh he couldn't play a monopoly board, but that was the beginning of the story there, and I ended up staying in touch with him uh and uh was a great, great just uh touch point and mentor, and then Shark Tank came along, which they didn't think was gonna last a uh a season. Um, and then I think last time I saw it now they're like now they're like 15 seasons of that thing. It's crazy, it's crazy. You guys have some TNC one year or two?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, we had two years. Uh he's coming in tonight into Vegas. He he's in Vegas almost every week because he speaks so much, so many different places. So I we we get to meet up here pretty often, and now I go to Miami probably once a once every six weeks or so. So we'll see each other in Miami. I was at Floyd Mayweather's birthday party. I doubt it between Vegas.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yes. That that's no, I wasn't at the party, but I saw your I saw pictures from it, and I was like, I gotta track down this Barry Belcher next time he's uh in in my yeah, it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I've never met Floyd. I've been at his birthday party two years in a row, never met the man. But a buddy of mine always invites me to go with him, uh uh Brian Sullivan. So I always go and it's a ball. But sometimes sometimes he'll come in and he'll be there 30 minutes and then he's gone. He just makes an appearance and leaves. They know two million dollar party. Doesn't he doesn't he live in Vegas too? He lives in Vegas, yeah. He lives in Vegas primarily, but he's he likes Miami a lot. Yeah, everybody does these days.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

It's getting a little out of control, actually. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Pretty crazy down there. It it really is. And Austin's a little crazy too, but Austin's real different than Miami. I was there for South Bike a couple weeks back, and uh whole whole different animal. Everyone's like Austin.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

I lived in Austin 10 years, and uh, I you it's it's a wonderful place to visit.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

It really is. If you like if you like skinny jeans and uh you know cold brew coffee, it's uh it's the spot for you. Yeah, and lumberjack looking dudes that you know with a bad attitude, lumberjack servers with a nose ring too, action.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, a rat tail, a rat tail beard hanging in your soup. Yeah, it's great, you know. Not for me. There's a there's a comic who does a podcast. I'll just send it to you. Yeah, please do uh that moved to Austin because Joe Rogan was down there and he has a whole bit on how screwed up uh Austin is, and he he says how how inept they are and everything and how how little ambition everyone has. Um, somebody said it's where we're we're young where young people go to retire. But but they said they had a mass shooting on 6th Street and no one was hurt. He said even the mass shooters uh don't do a good enough job. Nobody was killed, you know, that a mass shooting was killed.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Yeah, he does a whole bit about it.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

I've been doing a bit of uh stand-up comedy myself here in Miami and uh tried to get in here. Yeah, I mean try try to get over that that that fear a little bit. I you know I can I can speak to to to the many, uh, but and being on stage no problem. But when you get there, tell 50 drunk people, make them laugh. You know, comedy, yeah. Comedy's not comedy's easy when it's when it's not expected. So uh yeah, I've been navigating through that whole thing. I just don't know if I want to hang out at a bar Tuesday night at 11 o'clock at night and you know, make people laugh for five minutes and then go home and feel good. Beg for a spot. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So um, so so this year, and I know you've been working for a little bit on these uh these new done for you services. What what's that all about?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, man, I just you know, um, I've been the king of the low, the king of the low rollers for a long time. I've been selling a lot of low dollar stuff to you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people for years, you know, little bitty micro purchases that led to continuity purchases and things like that, out of you know, literally millions of people, 22 million people on my email list from the um survival and gun um space, which I never liked that space. I was always I bought that business. Uh, I I wasn't it wasn't a business I started, but uh but I really just when I when I refitted and I sold a bunch of stuff, I decided really I was gonna go back into much more expensive stuff. So I'm doing um, you know, we have done for you services company called Scale Win. So we do um we do unlimited graphics and video for so much a month. We do unlimited um uh customer service for so much a month. We do unlimited copywriting for so much a month in these kind of bucket service programs. Um and um that business has really grown like a weed. It's doing really, really, really well. It's uh it's up about 800% this year over last. And I think it'll grow again. As as fewer and fewer people want to go to work, I'm like cheering that on. I'm like, yeah, stay at home, buddy, drink some more beer, right? We'll outsource that, you know. So we're so we're really in the outsource business, um, in the managed outsourcing business. And um, we do that. Um, I'm back into like I do a lot of private label manufacturing for people now. We manufacture candles, bath products, organic pesticides, cleaners, chem, all sorts of stuff. Green screen paint. Green screen paint.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

You know, I used to sell green screen paint. I know that was a great story. That story stuck with me. I really I remember that green paint.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah, it turns out it's just green paint, but when you call it green screen paint, it's worth $70 a gallon. Um yeah, yeah, there's a certain color of green paint that you can sell as green screen paint, and and it's worth a lot more money. Um, but yeah, I've been taking products like that for years and years. In fact, weirdly enough, I'm gonna move the camera so you can, but the book that I sat my computer on to level it out so you could see me is called the Henley's Book of 20th century common formulas. And this book has probably made me 20 million, 30 million dollars over my career in sales because it's just a book of chemical formulas of stuff that you can make. And I've sold so many chemical products and so many um, you know, we've done everything from chemicals to food products to, you know, we're making freeze-dried pet treats right now and all sorts of crazy stuff. I like being a manufacturer because you you can't be more prime than being the manufacturer. No, not at all. And it gives you a lot of advantages. If you're everybody today, I think people are going to physical products business, are really screwing up because they hire these third-party manufacturers to make all their stuff. And the problem is they eat all the margin. The third-party manufacturers are eating all the margin. Something I could make for two dollars, somebody else is paying six or eight dollars for it wholesale, quote unquote wholesale, to try to go retail that for 30 or 40 bucks. Where if they made it for two dollars and sold it for 20, they'd sell 10 times more. So I can go into a market and really clobber the market because I'm prime um I'm prime on the product, you know. And um, we got a software company with a guy named Chad Nicely. Um gosh, what else am I? Doing, I don't know, all kinds of other crap. There's a bunch of other crap. Oh, uh conventions.com. I own conventions.com. So we're in the convention services business and do all that. So I got a lot of things going on. Uh, and then I own a minority share in several other companies, bookkeepers.com and a few others. Keeping busy, then to say the least. I yeah, I don't I don't get a chance to sleep a lot. I gotta make that I gotta make that money back, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

You gotta redo, I gotta feather my nest back up. Yeah, you do. Well, I don't I I'm I'm pretty confident you're not gonna have a problem doing that. Uh when are you starting the podcast? I don't know if I'm ever gonna start a podcast. You know, you definitely don't need to. You definitely don't need to. I prefer to be a podcast guest than to start a podcast. Smart man. But not everybody can get away with that. People confuse that. I run into people all down, like I am only a podcast guest. Like, guys like you can say shit like that. Like dice, like I don't need a pod, but even Roland's got a podcast, does a damn good job of it too. But like you guys can need a podcast on there. And the guesting is um, that's one time I I will agree with I only guessed, you know, versus actually starting one on there because uh there's far more. I mean, it's you look at like the influencer market and getting out there in the influencer marketing and stuff, and the impact that that's been able to have, you know, depending on who you're working with. I think podcasting is going to be in that in that same arena here. But well, dude, go ahead just 26 years.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

In just 26 years, I've become an overnight success. So only 26 years. And only 20. I've been selling online for this year, it'll be 26 years of selling online. Can you believe that shit? Wow. I've been selling online, I've been selling online longer than most of your listeners are old.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Good guy to learn from, that's for sure. Well, well, dude, man, it's always good to see. I your name came up the other day. I was with uh Dan Henry over in St. Pete. Oh Dan, yeah. Yeah, and he was like, uh, Perry's great, man. You're been out with Perry? Heard any of his stories? I go, I definitely have. I guess you told me on the on the podcast, I'm like, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yeah, I like old man. He's going through a uh a bit of a mid uh early midlife crisis right now. I think he's changing he's changing his gears pretty good. Well, what he's always trying to beat is he's trying to beat himself, which is good. That's it, you know, if you can constantly be competing with yourself, um you're always gonna do well.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

I mean, he's doing so good, man. I we got a chance to spend some time together too, and uh, and we went to dinner and and and and had a great conversation, and he's done so much growth, man, just as a human, like just uh in general, too. And uh yeah, I think he's got over his travel fear, is what happened, though, his fear of flying, really. Got to Costa Rica and then bought the new crib, and he's like, I can do this. So I see he posted yesterday. Next up, Amsterdam.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yeah, yeah, he's a I like that guy a lot. He's he's one of the brightest young men I've seen uh pop in the face. And down in Austin, uh uh like Heck is the same way. Um, I don't know if you know him or not, but he's he's killing it, YouTube and retargeting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

This team calls me twice a day.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, he's they're aggressive, but man, what a good guy. And the services he provides for people are doing. I mean, he just does so well for his clients. He's so loved, he's such a good dude. Oh fuck, now I'm gonna take his call now. See, in an industry of scoundrels, you know, he's a pretty good guy, you know. A lot of gypsies, tramps, and thieves in this business.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

So a couple, a couple two or three out in there. Well, dude, so good to see you, man. Always good to uh to chat it up with you. I'm glad you're uh officially on your podcast interview tour here. I I saw your post the other day and I was like, is it April 1st?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

I thought Yeah, I got almost 200 people uh were asking the you know you'd be on podcasts, and I've got a lot more private ones. So I don't know. I'm trying to do I'm trying to do four of them every Wednesday. I'm trying to get them booked into one day, so I just pull them out, but we'll see. Who knows? I thought it'd be a good idea to get it there and mix it up and see who I meet. So yeah, man, uh you know, always looking for business partners. That's my big goal. I'm not trying to sell anything, I'm just trying to find partners.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

So sure, absolutely cool. Well, good man, keep rocking and rolling, dude. You're yeah, it's good to see you too, brother. It's uh you're an inspiration, man. It's good, it's been shit, man. It's been since 2015, gosh, seven years since I did T. Well, the first year doing TNC. So time flies, you know. My grandma used to say the days the days drag on and the years fly by. Yes, sir. Isn't that the truth? All right, man. Well, uh, keep keep doing what you're doing, man. It clearly uh is uh is uh getting some results here. And uh again, I'll great to see you. Next time you're in Miami, uh hit me up, we'll go grab a mojito or 12. Let's do it, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I like those Cuban sandwiches. All right, buddy. Take care. Thanks, bye.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.