Clive Jeffrey on Helping Entrepreneurs Get More Leads and MLSP
Clive Jeffrey owned a printing business with his wife Dawn, when they decided to move to America. He now helps Entrepreneurs generate Leads.
Thanks you for this interview, Clive. You have an amazing story. . .I’m excited to learn more about you. So, let’s get started!
Where were you born and raised, what was childhood like, and what did you want to be when you ‘grew up?’
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and lived there with my family, Mum and Dad and 3 brothers, I was the middle one.
We lived semi rurally on 5 acres and had an absolute blast growing up. Having 3 brothers, and neighbours, with boys our age, there was always some sort of activity going on! We were always outside doing something until dark. A good old fashioned childhood.
Long summers were spent swimming and barbequing around the pool and winters were for playing rugby.
In 1978 we moved to New Zealand as a family, mainly because of the apartheid regime in South Africa, which we strongly disagreed with.
It was a big change, especially as a teenager. Leaving our extended family was hard but we also left with a sense of adventure and excitement.
I will always be full of admiration at the courage my parents showed and the actions they took to ensure that we had a great life.
Without the internet, the world was a much larger place back then and it would take around 6 weeks to get mail to and from South Africa to New Zealand, which made keeping in touch with family difficult. Using a phone was possible but extremely expensive!!
We settled into life in New Zealand quickly and never really looked back. In fact I have not been back to South Africa since I left in 1978!
With New Zealand being made up of two main islands with multiple smaller islands everywhere, we soon realized that to make the most of the New Zealand lifestyle, you needed a boat. This was when my love affair with the sea started.
Growing up, I never really had a clear idea of exactly what I wanted to do but I always knew I wanted to work for myself.
I have always been self-motivated and a self-starter. And worked part time jobs after school and school holidays and had my own car and motorbike while still at school, which I had paid cash for.
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What did your parents do for a living and was there any Entrepreneurship in the family?
My Dad has a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He was extremely good at what he did and sought after by companies around the world. He designed and set up bottling lines for breweries and dairies in South Africa, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia, where my Mum and dad spent the last 6 years of my Dad’s working life.
We were fortunate to have my Mum at home the whole time while we were growing up and I was determined to provide the same thing for my own kids.
Even though my Dad spent his working life as an employee, he always encouraged us to become entrepreneurs.
He would always say, learn sales and marketing and then you will be able to run any business successfully.
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You got into Sales and was naturally good at it. Can you tell us about the printing business, and what were the pros and cons of running a traditional business?
I actually got into the printing industry by default. When I finished school, I got a job as a Sales Cadet for a printing company. It was here that I not only learned all aspects of commercial printing but also the fundamentals of selling.
This was a great introduction to the world of business and I quickly learned that to be successful in sales, you had to build relationships with your customers. Printing is not a “make the sale” and you never see the person again kind of business. It is very much consultative.
It involved working with a client right from concept stage to final print production.
The types of clients I handled were from small business owners, marketing managers from blue chip companies and advertising agencies.
Negotiations were at a high level involving large contracts with some being over a million dollars in annual spend.
In 1992 my wife and I decided to go into business for ourselves so we started our own Print Broking Company.
We grew that from the ground up to a multiple 7 figure annual turnover. We ran the business successfully until we sold it in 2013 prior to moving to the USA.
The Print Broking business model we adopted proved to be very successful and really helped me develop my relationship building skills.
Being print brokers, we did not have any of our own printing equipment but would contract out the work to printing companies that had the ideal equipment for the job at hand.
This ensured the need for strong relationships with not only customers but also suppliers.
We had our own in house graphic art department and at our peak had a staff of 10.
Some of the pros of owning this business was that it was profitable and provide a great lifestyle for us.
The cons were that it was very stressful. We were always working to tight deadlines. Managing cash flow could also be stressful at times with being liable for the cost of print jobs that we had placed on behalf of our clients, if clients were slow to pay us, then it would put pressure on us personally to ensure that our printers were not out of pocket.
Another of the big cons with printing is that if there are any typos or problems with images etc that do not get picked up, you can end up with a whole lot of useless paper to pay for but then also have to fund a reprint with the corrections! Certainly not for the faint hearted!!
You have a beautiful sailboat. I grew up sailing with my parents as well. How long have you been sailing, what was it like living on it and crossing the ocean to America?
Thank you, the last boat that we had was a 65 foot steel ketch, my wife and I bought it and lived on it for 2 and a half years while we were fixing it up.
We had a berth for it right in downtown Auckland which was only minutes from our office. We actually set up our washing machine and dryer in our office which worked out perfectly.
We actually ended up selling that boat when our kids were born and became land lovers again and did not actually sail across to the USA
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You moved to America with your wife and kids. When did you discover network marketing, what were your first two years like, and can you tell us what you learned?
I need to full in a few gaps here, I left New Zealand in 1984 and went backpacking around the world for 3 years. It is a pretty common thing to do in New Zealand and is affectionately called going off on your OE (Overseas experience). It is almost expected of you!
I left New Zealand with 3 Mates and we first went to Japan, then across to Europe before making our way to the USA.
We would find part time work everywhere we went doing whatever we could to fund the next leg of our journey.
Our first job in the USA was helping a retired Navy commander and his girlfriend, sail their 41 foot ketch around the Bahamas for a month before sailing up the East coast to Newport, Rhode Island.
From there, we headed back down to Ocean City, Maryland where I got a job as a deckhand on a commercial fishing boat, long lining for SwordFish and Tuna.
Funny how it all works out, as I met my wife Dawn, in a bar where she worked as a bartender in the fishing harbor, that was 32 years ago and we are still growing strong.
Needless to say, I took her home with me as a souvenir!
We would come back to visit Dawn’s parents most years, and on our trip back at the end of 2012 our kids said that they wanted to finish high school over here.
I was sick of the printing industry after 30 odd years so we decided, what the hell, you only live once. So within 6 months we had sold everything and headed to the USA.We did not want to live in Maryland where Dawn is from as it is too cold so we decided Florida.
We then chose St Augustine because of the schools and we have not looked back! We love it here.I had no idea what I was going to do once I got over here and fell into network marketing by accident really.
I was introduced to a product that resonated with me because of my printing background by a realtor that we were dealing with.
The product happened to be part of a Network Marketing company. I did not know anything at all about MLM but was intrigued by the leverage that I saw was possible.
Having successfully leveraged other print companies for years, I knew this business model was for me. The only problem was I did not know a soul in St. Augustine, so I turned to the internet to find a solution.
The first couple of years were tough, a real steep learning curve for me. I had practically no computer skills as I had just hired staff in the past. However, I knew that if I applied myself and simply did what successful marketers did, then in time, I would find success as well.
I must admit, at first I thought with my corporate sales skills that I had developed over the years that I would make a killing……I very quickly learned that this was not to be the case! Network marketing requires that you learn its own very unique skills if you want to be successful.
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What is the biggest mistake you see new network marketers make, and how can they fix it?
I can answer this one easily as I made all the same mistakes myself!
To me the biggest mistake is how they use Social Media
From what I can tell, it is not the fault of the new company distributors but to me the blame lies with the companies themselves in the way that they tell new members to share their business on social media.
It appears that they are encouraged to literally spam their company links and images all over their timelines and their friend’s inboxes.
This simply does not work!
The way to fix this is to encourage them to learn Attraction Marketing.
Once I learned Attraction Marketing, my business finally took off.
It is now my mission to share Attraction Marketing techniques to not only my own team members but also with all other Network Marketers who are looking to build a long term, sustainable business.
I do this by sharing everything that I learn on my Blog and also my Youtube channel
When did you discover MLSP and how can internet marketers benefit using it?
I basically found MLSP when I went online to try and figure out how to market my MLM when I first moved over to the USA.
It was through MLSP that I first heard the term Attraction Marketing.
All business owners of any kind, including network marketers and internet marketers can benefit by using MLSP not only for all the tools they provide like a blog, CRM, Funnelizer funnel building tool and all the up to date marketing training that goes along with it.
I am able to run my whole online business using the suite of tools in MLSP plus the skills I have learned from their training.
MLSP teaches marketers to Brand Themselves, ie “You Inc” as opposed to any business opportunity and by doing so attract qualified leads to you each day that want to do business with you personally. What a life changing way to do business!
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I love your blog! How old is it, how many posts are on it, and what is your daily traffic like?
My blog is a couple of years old now and has 102 posts.
My daily traffic is starting to pick up as my SEO efforts kick in and also since I started using Twitter to drive traffic to individual blog posts. This strategy is proving to be very effective
What’s the best way to generate leads for you these days, and can you share a technique?
I am finding that the best way for me to generate leads is by combining my social media efforts. Video is by far the best strategy as prospects get to see what you look like, hear how you sound, and they instinctively decide whether they like you or not.
This way your videos can be doing all your cold calling and sorting and handling rejection for you! Better yet, they do it 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and they don’t ask for pay or sick leave!
I produce videos for my Youtube channel and optimize them so that they can be found in the search engines.
I also have videos on my blog posts and I also do a Facebook LIVE broadcast on most weekdays.
I then prepare “Tweets” with links to these videos and blog posts and put them into my Twitter Rotation, so that they are Tweeted out to my Twitter followers regularly. This technique is working well and I can thoroughly recommend it to everyone
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You have a lot of videos on YouTube. How has video helped your home business and how do you create “evergreen content” that generates leads?
Yes, I now have 320 videos on my main channel and about 30 on my secondary channel.
As mentioned earlier, video has been a game changer for my business.
Potential prospects really feel like they know you from having seen you in video. When you actually get to speak to them in person or on the phone, it is not uncommon for them to actually tell me that!
Evergreen content is content that you produce once and then gets seen over and over again providing ultimate leverage.
The first step I take when creating evergreen content is to make sure that my potential prospects are actually looking for it in the first place. I do this by doing Keyword Research.
I use tools that tell me how many times a certain word or phrase is being searched for each month and also what the competition is like for that keyword. By doing this I only go after Keywords that I know I have a good chance of ranking for.
Let’s face it, if your video or blog is not on the first page of Google, it is not going to get found organically. Just look at your own habits, when you are searching for something online, how often do you go back past the first page?
I then also put these video links into my Twitter rotation which literally starts driving traffic immediately.
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What is your favorite book right now and why?
I am currently reading “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” by Dr Joe Dispneza.
I actually experienced Dr Joe Dispenza at a live event in Austin, Texas in August last year and found him fascinating.
Learning and understanding why we do what we do and how that affects who we are, has been a real eye opener for me.
Dr Joe’s explanation of Quantum Physics and how the brain functions and how we can control and manifest everything with our thoughts has opened a whole new world to me.
By implementing what I have been learning, through mediation and visualization is really starting to have a big impact on how quickly I can make positive changes to my life and business.
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What are your goals for 2017?
My Goals for 2017 are to continue to grow my business each month by at least 5 new personally sponsored team members per month.
To keep learning new skills and to keep working on the ones I am developing.
I want to reach the rank of L5 Honey Badger by the next Live the Dream Event in August
To take my family back to New Zealand for a holiday and to visit family
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What is your favorite quote and why?
My favourite quote is “If You Think You Can or You Think You Can’t, Either Way You Are Right” ~ Henry Ford
This quote really resonates with me! It basically sums up your mindset and literally works on the premise that our thoughts will manifest any physical result. You get what you focus on whether you want it or not!
Thank you so much for this interview Clive!
For more information on Clive, please visit his Blog HERE.
Other Awesome Interviews:
David Jones on the Friendly Marketer, Affiliate Marketing, and MLSP
Larry Porter on Cherishing More Family Time Because of MLSP
Daz Baldwin on Lifestyle Engineering, Law of Attraction, and MLM
Tommy Keough on Building Your Online Brand and Standing Out
Bogdan Lendel on Digital Altitude and Designing Your Own Life
Milena Milivojevic on Pet Protector and Being MLM’s Queen Bee
Debbie O’Connor on Mum’s the Boss and Digital Marketing Solutions
Sincerely,
Erik Christian Johnson
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