🔓 Leveraging Automation Strategies To Unlock Peak Productivity And Success âŹď¸Ź
Often, it’s the simplest pleasures in life that we don’t get to enjoy because we are so deep into doing everything in our work. Mark Harbert is all too familiar with this story, having worked his way out of the grind and into an annual multiple six-figure income by leveraging automation strategies. In this episode, he helps us unlock peak productivity and the rewards of success with the help of automation, so we can free ourselves for the things that matter most in life. As an automation king, Mark is all about working smarter and not harder. He shares his story along with the tools that have made his life the success that it is now. Plus, he talks about how we can still create that human connection despite automating some of your processes. The key is in knowing when automation ends and when a real person takes over. For more tips and inspiration, join Mark in this conversation!
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In this episode, I am here with the one and only Mark Harbert. He started marketing online in late 2008. Since then, he has generated over 150,000 leads. Let that sink in for a hot minute. He's created an annual multiple six-figure income and sold multiple millions of dollars of his courses and affiliate products.
Before attaining this level of success, he was enjoying things that things were not always so good for him. Mark, at one point, didn't even know how he was going to buy groceries for his family or pay the bills. He has gone from struggle to success. His story is amazing. With hard work, focus, and determination, they paid off hugely. He's reaping the rewards of success. He even had a single day where he generated over $100,000 in sales revenue. Can you imagine that?
He's hyper-focused on helping online entrepreneurs implement automation strategies. We had to have him here. In doing so, it helped them free themselves from the things that matter most in life. Faith and family are Mark's biggest achievements to date. However, the greatest legacy he is focused on leaving behind is that he was once lost but he's found by amazing grace. We're so lucky to have Mark with us here. Welcome, Mark.
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Adrienne. I love it.
I'm excited to dig in. In case anyone in the audience has not met you yet, could you tell us a little bit about your story? What brought you to the space of being the automation king and learning how to use it effectively in business?
My entrepreneurial journey started in network marketing in 2000. I got the entrepreneurial bug there because the guy who was sitting there drawing the circles was an Amway guy. Everybody's been an Amway at one point or another. He's drawing the circles and showing them. I got this vision like, “What it would be like to live life on my terms?” That's where it started. I struggled all through that. I had stuck through the home business industry for a while. I had very little success at it.
In 2008, I was like, “It's time to learn this online thing and get into it.” In late 2008, I started to learn Google PPC at the time and went into that. I continued trying to learn and had a little bit of success. I got to a point where I was living in Chile with my wife down in South America. I was doing a lot of VA work. I was building out funnels and doing webinars for seven-figure earners. I'm selling their stuff. They're only paying me peanuts for this. Why am I not doing this for myself?
I got to a point where that work started drying up and I had no money. I had no idea how we were going to buy groceries. The real pivotal point for me was I was in my office. I came out and my wife's there in the kitchen. She's got the refrigerator open. She goes, “Honey, we need food.” This moment of utter disgust came over me, this hot feeling from head to toe. I am so sick of feeling like this. I don't know what happened but something snapped. I went hardcore into massive action while I was staying up until 4:00 in the morning. I'm doing things like a madman.
I had to make money. I have a wife and daughter who were counting on me. Ninety days later, I had my first five-figure month and that was it. It took off. The next thing I know, I'm getting invited out to training in front of huge audiences. My business is exploding. I'm like, “I don't even know what to do with all this money.” I’m trying to figure it out. It took off and that's the way it's been ever since. My focus is helping other people do the same. I know what it's done for me. I love what I do. I work hard at what I do.
When you love what you do, it's not work. I love digging in and helping people have breakthroughs like that. Honestly, for me, it's never been about the huge houses and Lamborghini. I couldn't care less about any of that. For me, I can go on vacation when I want, take my wife out to lunch, and go to my daughter's something at school in the middle of the day. We went to an art thing in the middle of the day. I didn't have to ask anybody. To me, that's what it's about. My goal is to help other people do that too.
It's the simple pleasures and everyday freedoms. When you have it, life is so much calmer and more relaxed. I love your story and I hope the audience is inspired by it. They'll notice a trend too. Almost all the speakers started in a place of struggle. We were not good in the beginning. We drove the struggle bus right into the hot mess city. It wasn't good. We each had this moment where we decided the pain of staying where we were was greater than the pain of learning something new. We were ready to go out and say, “Enough with this business. I'm getting serious.” That's what you did.
It stinks that we have to get to that point sometimes. Your back is against the wall. You have no other place to go. That's where I was. I was in that moment where I was like, “There was nothing else. I have to make something happen here.” I remember my wife saying, “Honey, you might have to go get a real job.” I thought, “No.”
Interestingly, you had these amazing skillsets. You were making other people millions of dollars. You finally realized, “Maybe I should do this for myself.”
I remember thinking, “I created this automated webinar for these guys selling their stuff.” They're paying me peanuts, which is okay, but it's making them a lot. I was like, “I need to do this for myself.” Part of it too was the confidence level. You have to get to a point where you believe enough in your abilities to be able to do something. That's also where it hit me. All of that converged on this one moment when I had $7 in my PayPal account. When I was living in South America, I couldn't even go to the ATM to pull it out because I needed at least $20. Every time I pulled money out, we got a fee of $4 because it was international. I couldn't even get that money out.
I'm so glad that you decided to step into your power and knowledge and do it for yourself. In your business, you use automation in a smart, seamless, and strategic way. Many of our viewers are terrified to use automation. They don't want to come across as if they're a bot or a robot. They're inauthentic. Can you talk to us a little bit about whether is it possible to use automation and still come across as authentic and connect with real people in a real way?
The whole idea of automation is not to eliminate this idea of people interaction. It's like you and I. We're sitting here talking. This is what I do. I get on calls all the time and talk with people but the systems that I've put in place allow me to leverage myself. A very simple idea of automation is if you have a course and you sell that course. Once somebody buys it, you have to manually set up a profile, create a password, and then send an email to them to do that.
Send them my invoice even.
“I have to type out the invoice and send it out.” With automation, you can automate all of that. The invoice gets sent out using certain software. The password gets created automatically. It populates the email, which then goes out automatically and does all of that. I don't have to touch it.
Certainly, administrative things are fair game for automation.
That's one of the biggest things as well. I can go through all kinds of different scenarios. There’s one that I love to use and I implemented this. The idea of it is crazy with the responses I get back. I'm always about the idea of I want the people who resonate with me to contact me. I don't want to go chasing people. I don't do that. I hate it. You either get it or you don't. My goal is to put as many people into that and let the thing do the work.
One of the things that I did was a monthly membership. One of the things is in some cases, we allow a trial. It's like a $1 30-day trial inside the membership. I was like, “How can I make this a personalized thing?” I want them to know that I see them. There's nothing greater than somebody saying, “I see you. I'm here.” No matter how big it is, people get that idea like, “They see this guru and he doesn't care about me. I'm just a number.”
You don't want to just be a number to someone. You want to matter. Everyone wants to matter.
That's my point. I want people to know that I care about it no matter how many people we get in this thing. I implemented it where after fourteen days inside of my campaign, it sends an automated text to them. It'll say, “Adrienne, this is Mark. I noticed you've been a member for fourteen days. I'm curious. How are you digging the training? Are you liking it?” It’s an open-ended question. What happens is the way I have it set up is when they reply with the service that I use, it creates an email, which then emails me to my inbox.
I open the email and I can see what they've replied with. I can reply to the email and then it texts them back. In my daily thing, I can get in there. This email goes out. I've had people go, “Mark, thank you for texting me. It was the last thing I expected. I'm loving it so far and it's great.” I've had conversations going back and forth. I'm sending emails back and forth. The point is that it was all automated. It was a little way to touch base and it made the initial contact. When I've got people coming in, they get that little personalized message from me in a text.
This is a perfect example. For the audience, I hope you're paying attention. Yes, people might join the membership on autopilot and they might get that very first message on autopilot but it’s the minute someone responds. Only the most engaged people are going to respond. There's going to be a bunch of unengaged people who ignore it. The engaged people who want dialogue, when they respond, they get an authentic response back from you. The automation did the first 3 or 4 steps to get you to that point in time where the real person takes over.
I'm not eliminating myself from it but I'm eliminating a lot of the steps that get people to reach out. That's where I'm always looking to automate in some way. There's only so much you can do. I could look at every single one every single day and be bogged down with the idea that I need to text this or that person. If I can automate that, it's worked beautifully.
It is so valuable. I'm sure there are lots of different circumstances where the automation kicks into a point and then it triggers you that it's time for an authentic response.
You have to think through your processes and how you can do that. A lot of people are scared of the idea like, “I don't want it to feel like a bot.” Sometimes the best thing is if you are using a bot-type thing, laugh at it and go, “This is what you expected. A bot. Sorry, this is my little bot assistant thingy but this will help you.” You can play it off if it's a bot. People get that. If you pretend like it's not, then people can read through that.
“This is a bot but I want to check in and say how you're doing. If you respond, you're going to get a real person. Tell me how you doing. You can be real.”
As long as there's that way to keep the communication open. This is one tiny example of hundreds of different ways you can implement these types of things. In the end, it is about connecting with the engaged people. When you introduce me, I have generated a lot of leads. It's probably more than 150,000. I'm trying to be modest here. It's been a lot. When you get down to it over the years, out of all the leads I've generated, I've got my list down to a very tight, engaged audience.
It's maybe a tiny fraction of all the leads I've generated but it is an audience that buys up almost everything that I create. Every single time I promote one of my products, people buy it. That's what you're looking for. The idea that people have that you have to have this massive list and audience to build multiple six-figure incomes is not true. When you use automation to help you leverage a lot of those processes, it makes a difference. You can stay engaged with those who are engaged.
What would you rather have, a prospect list or an email list that's massive but has a 1% open rate? Would you rather have a small reasonable-sized list of prospects or leads where the open rate is 30%, 40%, or 50% plus? They're reading what you send and engaging with you. If you use automation in the right places at the right times, you can have a highly engaged idea.
I'll give you another example of how I use automation. For instance, let's say you create a lead magnet. You generate a lead and they come in. The first email goes out with the lead magnet download. One of the things I put in all my emails is, “Can you do me a favor? Reply to this email and let me know that you were able to download it. I want to make sure I kept up my part of the bargain.” The whole idea is I don't want them to opt in for it and then never get it.
There are a couple of reasons why. Number one, I want to connect with them. When they reply and say, “I got it, thank you very much,” I have an opportunity to reply. Not only are you connecting with the audience but the email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and all these that you're building your list with, like to see that two-way back and forth. That helps with deliverability. It creates a whole thing.
Even when it comes to the email list and automation, I'm always encouraging people to treat your email list as not a one-way communication. People have big lists but they get very little engagement because it's just pitch. They look at it as if I can send out offers all the time. Not me. I like to elicit responses back too because it gets that back and forth going. It creates a whole different experience for the audience.
Your email list is not a one-way communication.
I'm imagining back to that point in time when you were struggling, you were like, “Where are we going to get the groceries?” You had that moment. You were like, “It is go time. I'm not playing small anymore.” I imagine that prior to that point in time, you may or may not have replied to emails that you opted into but after that, if you got an email, you were probably more apt to reply. You were serious. You were doing it. You were engaged. Always engage people who reply.
The people that are in there that are doing it. This is where people fall into this trap of automation. You cannot automate everything. This is a huge mistake that a lot of people make. I was talking with a big marketer. It was a great friend of mine. I don't want to say she or he but this big marketer loves automation.
The whole idea is like, “I want to do as little as possible.” I was like, “Work on a few of these things. I understand I'm all about leverage too. Imagine with your community, one time a month, show up on Zoom, open it up for open Q&A, and hang with people. There's no prep. You don't have to do anything. Even though you're doing automation, hop on there and let them connect with you.” You'll create an audience. What people are craving more than anything is some of your time.
The gift of time is the most valuable.
As much as I love automation, I'm never going to eliminate getting on the phone with people and connecting with people. 1) I enjoy it. 2) It's vital. Some people will never buy unless you get on the phone.
At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel seen, heard, and understood. Automation can start the process but there has to be a real human connection somewhere in there for people to feel seen and heard.
As great as social media, it also creates a disconnect a lot of times. We're more connected than ever but we're farther apart than ever too. It's like things like Zoom.
They're craving that real connection.
People want authenticity in a huge way. Showcase that in a video, get on a call, or talk with somebody. It's pretty amazing though when you can add that little personal touch with the text. People are like, “Mark, I can't believe you're texting me.” I'm like, “My automation did it but here I am replying back and forth and having that conversation with you.”
It's super smart because you're only giving your personal time to those who deserve it, crave it, and want it. There's no way you can engage with all 150,000 plus leads. Would it be helpful if you tried? How good of a coach, a friend, or a mentor can you be to that many people? Not so great. If you narrow it down to the ones who are truly interested, you can have a huge impact on their business. I'm hearing administrative tasks, that's a must. Automate that stuff. Some of the initial connection points are when you're prospecting and engaging with a lead and building a relationship, whether that's through email, text message, or whatever that may be.
Email and text are the primary ways. That's where I'm focused. I take a different approach. I'm super crazy about the email list and text list. To me, that's what it's all about. I don't own anything else other than those two things. My social media could go away any day. I don't focus on building my social media. I couldn't care less how many subscribers or followers I have. Those are all vanity metrics to me. They don't matter. It'd be great to have this massive thing but all I care about is getting people on the list and then I can use my email list to drive out and build out those things.
In other words, if you were to focus on getting a lead in the email, you could have very simply what we call an indoctrination sequence. Indoctrination is where they get to know you. You could have a series of emails go out in tandem with maybe an offer. In the beginning, when people are on your list, they're a little bit more receptive to getting multiple emails. You only got a few times though that you can do that before they get annoyed.
In the beginning, they're a little bit open to that. You could have a couple of emails go out that say, “Are you on Facebook? Come on over and connect with me over here.” That's all automated. “Come on over and connect with me on Facebook Messenger. Are you on Telegram or wherever? Come on over here. I'm in these places. I'd love to get to meet you.”
Use automation to offer that authentic connection moment.
You can do that in all cases. If you're building a Facebook group, it’s the same thing. Focus on the email first, get them on the list, and then drive them to your group. Some people focus on getting them into the group. I get them on my email list. I'm the other way around. I care about the asset first and then I'll build the non-asset. They can be assets but they're fleeting assets. They could go away anytime.
A lot of people feel like followers are like kings of the mountain. It's all about your social media followers. Your profile could be restricted. You could be shadow-banned or kicked off the platform. Any of that stuff can be taken away from you.
Facebook groups are great but imagine if you built your entire business around a Facebook group. It got ranked out from under you and you had no email list backing it up. You're screwed. You need to have the email list. I find this works well and it also helps me to engage people in my paid Facebook group. When I have something I want people to engage with, I'll post something in the group and then I'll email them, “I posted something in the group. I want your opinion. Go in here.” That supercharges the engagement in there because people want to see what it's about. You're forcing the engagement in there.
You can cross-populate and use the automated email to say, “I put a poll in the Facebook group. I want to know what you think.” People are going back and forth. There's this cross-population land.
If they don't get the email, then all the engagement in the group, Facebook starts focusing on putting it more in front of people. It's not that I don't use all these platforms. I just twist it around a little bit. All I care about is getting them on the email list. Once they're on there, cool. I can send you in all the different directions that I want.
If you lose a social media platform, you can always email your list and be like, “Go figure, I got kicked off of Facebook. I'm right over here. Here's where I'm hanging out lately.”
The simplest way that I focus on connecting with people is by getting people to reply back and forth in the different communication avenues.
Email, text, message, DM, or whatever platform. You start with automation but they only go to a point and then that's where the real person takes over.
I still have people buy stuff all the time and I never talk to them. It's not that you have to. I have some lower-end courses that I charge a couple of hundred bucks for. People will go into my funnels and buy those. If I want a high-ticket coaching client, a $5,000 package, or something, you're going to have to get on the phone for that. I don’t know about you but I am not spending $5,000 until I talk to somebody.
There are some people out there who’ve taken course after course and realized, “I need a real person.” It's like when you're on hold somewhere and you're like, “I need a real person.”
It's exactly it. People get it. They need to buy courses and we do. I buy courses all the time. What people are craving is community. People want to know that they're heard. They want to have a place to go if they need help. That's where a good Facebook group can come in handy. If you don't have a Facebook group, build a forum on your site or something like that. I'd say a Facebook group first because people are on Facebook anyway. Your site isn't going to get as much traction.
What people are craving these days is community. People want to know that they're heard. They want to have a place to go if they need help.
There's this interesting movement where more people are getting annoyed with Facebook. They're speaking in other areas. That works too. This is so helpful to know that you can use automation to give yourself more time and freedom. Streamline a lot of the administrative tasks or what I call the manual hustle. We can manually hustle ourselves to death on our phone, glued to our phone 24/7 but that's not life.
I'm not for that.
We're still interacting with people but it's only the most interested, most engaged people.
That's the whole purpose of automation. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it do the sifting and sorting. I get a lot of people who are like, “Every time I send an email, I get unsubscribes.” I'm like, “That's exactly what you want.” That means it's working. Say you got ten unsubscribes on an email. Imagine if you had to spend 15 to 20 minutes on the phone with each one of those to find out they weren't interested. That's a lot of time.
You save yourself a whole bunch of people who were going to waste your time.
That's the whole purpose of a good funnel. Let it weed out the people. You're only talking with those that are interested.
There might be some audience who are like, “I'm all about the automation. I get this idea of automating to a point and then a real person takes over. Everything I try to say on social media or email is not landing. People aren't responding to it. I don't think I'm saying the right stuff.” For the people who get the concept but need help with knowing what to say and how to say it, do you have any advice in that space?
You have to know your audience well. When it comes to posting, especially if you're on social media, it has to be a mixture. If all you're ever trying to do is get people to respond to your business-related posts, I don't think you're going to get the biggest response. On my Facebook, my daughter's into this Japanese anime. She loves it. She has this wig that she bought. It's called cosplay. I throw this thing on, take a picture of it, and post it on social media. I got a freaking major engagement just being a goofball. Be yourself.
Sometimes people forget that that's why people are there in the first place. It can't just be all business all the time. People get into this idea of like, “I've seen or heard that before.” Do these funny things or be a goofball. I have a good friend of mine. Her name is Lisa. She put out this video of the whole thing with Will Smith that happened.
I'm also friends with Lisa.
Did you see that video? It was hilarious. She puts out this half video because she's talking to Will Smith. He's sitting there listening. It is so funny. She's from The Bronx so she's got that hardcore.
She has that funny humor.
She attracts people that way.
I follow all of her stuff because she makes me laugh. Every so often, I see one of her business posts and I'm like, “That is good.”
That's my point. We're so business-minded sometimes that we forget people are there to socialize and have a good time. That's the whole spirit of it. There are times when I will make a post about business or something and I'll get a response from it. I can't tell you how many times I've dropped a thing like, “I've got two spots open in my weekly mastermind. If you're interested, hit me up.” It’s that simple. I'll get messages like, “I'd love to know more about that.” It wasn't like some crazy long posts that copyright and I'm sitting there trying to get it all dialed in. It's like, “Here's what's going on.” You'd be surprised.
Automation: We're so business-minded sometimes that we forget people are there to socialize and have a good time.
Sometimes short copy converts so well.
It comes back to authenticity. People are craving that. Give people a little window in. Don't take it so seriously all the time. Have fun with it. It's not to say you can't put those posts in that or you shouldn't come up with something that tells a little bit of a story and leads into a business but change it up. The majority of the time, have fun. Drop something in there. “I created a new guide all about this. Who wants it?” “I want it.” One of my clients did that. He created a new lead magnet. He's got a picture of him holding a hard copy and he is like, “I created this. If you want one, let me know.” They got 40 leads like that.
He used smart copy though. We were talking about long and short copy. Some people are like, “I am not a copywriter.” There are a few times when I need to make a business post but I do not know what to say. I know you have a gift that could help them for those moments when they're ready to make one of those business-related posts. Do you want to tell us about the gift?
I put it together a couple of years ago but it's been such a great little tool and it's called The Copywriting Power Words Cheat Sheet. It's over 300 power words. The whole idea of the power words is that they're descriptive words that you can add to your copy. Like I was telling you before we got on here, I sent an email.
Reduce your learning curve or something?
That's what it was. The subject line was How to Reduce Your Learning Curve but to make it grab more, I added in the word drastically. How to Drastically Reduce Your Learning Curve. That one little word takes it up a whole different notch. You add in these little descriptors. If I were to say how to lose weight but what if I said how to lose weight fast? That's different. What if I said how to lose weight fast and easy? That's a whole different thing. The Power Words Cheat Sheet helps you have those extra words that you can think of. There are greed words. It appeals to like a certain type of thing like winnings. There are different emotions that these words can elicit.
It's like taking whatever normal sentence you wrote and uplevel it.
“Can I insert one of these little words to make it pull a little more?”
Make it land just right. What a great gift. If you are realizing, “I need to get some smart automation in place that'll lead the right people to have those authentic exchanges with me but I need some help with the copy that'll get them to come to me in the first place,” grab Mark's gift. It's a superabundant and generous gift so thank you for offering that. You have something special for people who are VIP ticket holders. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
Automation is my thing. I know how to do all kinds of marketing like video marketing. It is all implemented in my thing but what I like to do is help people put together that core little offer funnel. I have a training that I put together and it's a case study. It's how I used automation to make over $18,000 in 4 days. It was all hands-off. It was pretty powerful. I show you the numbers. I show you how I did it and I did it several times. It's a cool training that goes into it. It will give you an idea. I lay out some of my campaigns and how I put stuff together. It's all about automation and giving you some of that time back. There is nothing more exciting than waking up to commission emails. That's what's nice.
It's one thing to learn the concept of how and where to use smart automation. It's a different story when you get to pull back the curtain and see how someone implemented it step by step, how it came to life, the details, and the guts of it.
That's what I go through in the training and I show you some of the numbers on it and how I implemented it. It is a very simple training. I go through and show top marketers online. I pull out some people with very familiar names and I'm like, “Let's go look at their website. Here's what they do. You opt in and they have an offer. Here's an automated webinar. Look at that. This is all this automation and this is how these guys are doing it.”
I laid that out in the training and showed them how the biggest marketers are using automation. If you want that ability to go big, you need to have it in place while not losing that human touch. That's what it's all about. I know big marketers out there that are scaling massive but they still have that human touch and that's what's important.
Case studies are so helpful. If you love the idea of an inside look like case studies of how this is done in real life and how real people are actioning some of these tips, be sure to grab your VIP ticket. If you don't have it yet, why don't you have it yet? Take a look at the case study and see how it's broken down. Conceptually understanding it is one thing but seeing how it comes together is a whole different story. What a valuable gift. Thank you so much, Mark.
My pleasure.
Important Links
Mark Harbert – Facebook
6 Figure Strategy - Facebook
About Mark Barbert
Mark Harbert started marketing online in late 2008 and has generated over 150,000 leads online. He has created an annual multiple 6-Figure Income and sold multiple millions of dollars of his own courses and affiliate products.
Before attaining the level of success he is now enjoying things were not always so good. Mark at one point didn't even know how he was going to buy groceries for his family or pay the bills.
However, hard work, focus and determination have paid off in huge way and he is now reaping the rewards of success. He even had a single day where he generated over $100,000 in sales revenue.
Mark is hyper focused on helping online entrepreneurs implement automation strategies into their marketing and sales processes so they can free themselves for the things that matter most in life.
Faith and Family are Mark's biggest achievements to date. However, the greatest legacy he is focused on leaving behind is that he was once lost but now found by amazing grace.
