21 Apr April 22, 2019 – SAM 6 Lonny Kocina and Custom Design Life Niajae Wallace
“The audio file was removed when we switched hosts. Sorry. The cost was prohibitive. If you need the file, contact us and we will send it.”
Lonny Kocina – CEO of Media Relations, Inc. and Author of The CEO’s Guide to Marketing: The Book Every Marketer Should Read Before Their Boss Does
People starting out really need to stay focused on their
message. Some people haven’t taken the time to define their
primary value points and positioning.
Lonny Kocina is founder and CEO of Media Relations, Inc. After founding the company in 1988, he created Media Relations, Inc.’s unique Pay Per Interview Publicity® business model, allowing clients to pay only for media coverage they receive. Thanks to his leadership, Media Relations became the top performance-based public relations firm in the country. Lonny also owns Checkerboard Strategic Web Development, which specializes in helping businesses market their services on the Internet, and recently sold Mid-America Events & Expos, Inc., an events production company. Previous to founding Media Relations, he held the position of marketing director with Investment Rarities Inc., a precious metals investment company with more than $4 billion in sales.
Niajae Wallace – Founder of LevelUp Mastermind – Read interview highlights here
We have excuses that we tell ourselves that stand in the
way of achieving the life we desire. I help people identify
their limiting beliefs and then custom design their lives.
Niajae Wallace is a sales funnel consultant and manifestation influencer. She helps clients build websites, landing pages, and funnels, and she aids them in growing their emailing list, creating membership sites and online courses, and scaling their businesses online. Niajae assists with Click funnel projects like account creation, integrations, routine maintenance, and other tech support. She coaches entrepreneurs on how to take their business online, create a high converting sales funnel, grow their email list and scale their business. She is also an influencer that spreads a positive message about manifestation, positive energy and going after your dream life.
Highlights from Niajae’s Interview
How did it feel to have the whole room of 200 people go bonkers for you?
Oh, my god, it was amazing. It was really, really amazing. Because it was a really big aha moment for me of how powerful I am, and how powerful my story is. Sometimes we don’t realize just how powerful we are, and that’s one of the things that I teach is to step into your power. So that was a moment for me that just opened my eyes to how powerful it is when you share your story.
What’s the story?
I am an anomaly. I was born in the Bronx, New York, to a single mom. She was probably about 18 years old, and my father wasn’t 100% sure that I was his. So by statistics, that would leave me to have three baby daddies and about five kids, living off of government assistance. But I looked at my life and said, “This is not my story; I see a better situation for myself.” And I completely changed my life.
I started traveling the world; I started several businesses. I took my situation, and did things that people didn’t think were possible. Now, what I do is encourage other people to ditch the excuses. We have excuses that we tell ourselves, that stand in our way of achieving the life that we desire. So if I can do it, anyone else can do it. I help people identify their blocks; I help people identify their limiting beliefs, and custom design their life, because we are all powerful. The thing that stands in our way is our mindset. You can shift your mindset for success, getting clear on what you really want, and taking action.
The first thing is getting close on what you really want. I always tell people to ask yourself three times, because the first time is going to be layered with all of this crap that society has put on you. So what your parents feel like you should be, what your friends or your partner feels like you should be doing with your life, and what you feel like you are capable of doing with your life. You have to peel those layers back, peel them back, and say, “What do I really want?” This is like if you had a magic wand, and you can leave your life, and be anything that you want. What would that be? Sometimes it’s hard for people to even imagine how amazing their life can be. One of my favorite quotes is, “What if it turns out better than you even imagine?” because sometimes we are more powerful than we can even conceive. But it’s because of our–and I just learned this term from a book by Gay Hendricks–upper limit. We all have limit problems where we only allow ourselves to become so successful or so happy or feel so good. And when we hit that threshold, we self-sabotage. The negative self-talk starts to come in, the block starts to come up, because we have to work through those blocks. We all have negative pre-programming and blocks to stop us from being the best version of ourselves. And that is our challenge. That’s our challenge, to get past those blocks to really become the best possible version of ourselves. And I had a lot of them, because no one in my family ever owned a business. No one in my family ever traveled. No one. My mom doesn’t even have a passport. So when I said, “I’m going out of the country,” and I was going alone on top of it–that was part of my pitch, I told how I went to Tahiti, and I’ve been to Paris, and I’ve been to Italy, and I’ve been all over the Caribbean. And these are things that people around me, when I was blowing up, were saying were crazy. Like, “That’s not even possible.” But I set my mind on a vision of what I wanted my life to look like, and I went after that.
I opened a brick and mortar business; I ran a dance and aerial studio for five years. And when I started this business, I, in my head, wanted financial freedom. I wanted to work for myself and achieve financial freedom. That was my vision at this time. Because of where my studio was located, there was no other aerial studio. And for anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know what aerial is, it’s like Cirque du Soleil, where you climb the fabric and do tricks in the air. So I popped that, and we were the only studio in the city. If anyone wanted to try it, they had to come to my studio. That blew up faster than what I was ready for, and I felt like the first year or two was amazing, like, I’m getting paid to do what I love, this is amazing.
And then year three, I became burnt out, because I didn’t have a good self-care regimen. Entrepreneurs, they work, work, work, work, work. And if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not getting the proper amount of rest, it takes a toll on your body. And I became very unhappy, because I didn’t have that balance and structure in my life. There was one day that was the breaking point for me where I said, “I don’t feel like getting out of bed.” And I’m a happy, bubbly person; I have a real passion for life. So for me not to want to get off the bed, I was like, there’s a problem, and I need to figure out what it is.
I went back to the drawing board, and I got really obsessed with system. There were a couple of books that I read that helped me shift my mindset. There is a difference between owning a business and owning a job. And that was my aha moment where I created a job for myself, and not a business for myself. Really understanding the cashflow quadrant is system.
Year four I was revamping my whole business, and then year five I decided to sell it, because I decided what was more important to me than financial freedom was time and location freedom. I wanted a more flexible business where I had more free time. I had time to enjoy the fruits of my labor, I had time to take care of myself, fix myself a good meal, and not constantly go, go, go. It was really important to me that I designed a business that was in alignment with the lifestyle that I truly desire. That’s where ClickFunnels comes into play. I worked for ClickFunnels for a year because they put you through an extensive training. And I wanted to learn a specific skill that I could help coach entrepreneurs who also have an interest in time and location freedom. ClickFunnels is a platform that allows you to build sales funnels, online courses, your emailing list, and pretty much sell anything online, or manage your customers online. You can automate that process, which frees up time, so you’re not constantly checking emails or sending emails. It offers you more time freedom. It’s really amazing for entrepreneurs or small business owners. So I worked with ClickFunnels for a year, I learned the platform inside and out. And then it’s just been amazing.
Since then, I work from my laptop. I have a beautiful rooftop pool that has Wi-Fi. So typically, I’m working from there. I can travel anywhere in the world, and as long as I have Wi-Fi, I’m still making money. I have basically custom designed a life. That feels amazing to me. Now, when I wake up in the morning, I feel amazing. The first thing I do is say thank you because I’m so filled with gratitude. But it took a lot of tweaking, and a lot of sacrifice. People were like, “You’re going to sell this thriving business? You’re crazy.” I feel like every phase of my life people are like, “You’re crazy.” But now when they see my life, they’re like, “Wow, how did you get there?” And I’m like, “It’s been a struggle, but it’s so worth it.” At http://www.niajae.com/ you can see the picture there of this incredible pool. It’s one of the pools that’s so cool that it has the lounge chairs in the pool. Damn, is all I have to say.
I wholeheartedly believe in manifesting, and the law of attraction. And I know that some people have taken it to a whole ‘nother level of if you think about money, it’ll magically appear. That is not how I explain it, but our thoughts create our reality. So if you think something is possible, then it allows that to be drawn to you. If you don’t think something is possible, you’re basically cutting it off from manifesting in your life, if that makes sense. For me, manifesting is setting an intention, believing that it’s possible, but also taking the action. So if I sit in my house, and I say, “Okay, I’m going to think about a cup of coffee, think about a cup of coffee, think about a cup of coffee,” a cup of coffee is not going to magically appear. No one’s going to knock on my door–most likely, you never know–but no one’s going to knock on my door and be like, “Hey, I bought you a cup of coffee!” It’s probably not going to happen. So that’s not how I see a manifestation, because I know there’s a lot of programs out there.
The way I see it is setting an intention, visualizing. I do believe in vision boards. And the thing about a vision board is it’s not magic. What it does, if you set an intention, and you have a physical thing that you can look at every single day, it’s going to remind you of your goals. It’s going to remind you of why you’re working so hard, it’s going to remind you of the things that you want. So that when you see that, you’re like, “Yes, this is why I’m working hard every day.” Setting that intention, emotion, but you have to take action. One thing I’m really good at is taking action. A lot of people get analysis paralysis, and they’re like, “Oh, but what if it goes wrong? But what if it goes wrong?” And I’m the person that’s like, “I’m just going to do it.” Because I don’t believe in failure. I believe in lessons. Anything that did not work out the way I planned was a lesson. And I went to the drawing board, and I said, “Okay, what did I do? What could I have done better? What happened? What did I learn from this?” So the next time around, I can do it bigger and better, and I’m wiser.
For me, manifestation is setting a goal, visualizing it, believing that it’s possible, and then taking action. Our minds are very, very powerful. I heard about this new media summit the day before the event. And when I went to the website, it said sold out. Most people would have said, “Okay, I’ll catch you next time.” I said, “No, I feel like I should be at this event.” I wrote Steve, the guy who put it together, and I said, “For some reason, I feel like I’m meant to be there. How can we make this possible? How can I be an attendee at this event?” He said, “You know what, someone just canceled. I’m sending you the information now.” So that, to me, is manifestation, because I took action. Anyone else would have been like, “Oh, no, it’s sold out. I’ll go next time.” But I took action, I made it happen. I do feel like I manifested it, but it still takes action.
I really think it boils down to belief, even if you don’t believe the manifestation itself, you still have to understand that if you have blocks that stop you, you can’t do it, you can’t have this, you’re not good enough, then you’re not going to be good enough. So whatever this is, the bottom line is you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe in your goals, and you have to take action. Regardless of what you want to believe, that manifestation is possible. And a vision board is setting things in motion. People have to cling on to an idea that inspires them and motivates them to take action. So if that’s not it, that’s fine. But the reality is you have to set a goal, you have to visualize it, and see that it is possible, and you have to take action.
Give me your top three click funnel secrets, some secret sauce.
One of the things that I always tell people is do not believe the fluff. There’s a lot of programs out there that say, “Oh, copy my one funnel, and you’ll make $80,000 a month, or $100,000 a month, or whatever the price is that they’re expressing. So what I want to tell people, and this is probably the most valuable lesson, is there’s no one size fits all funnel, don’t believe it. Because it’s not every company that I’ve seen make really significant money, they have to test the test, and they tweet the customer a tweet. So they have multiple funnels, it may take them 20 different funnels of figuring out what resonates with their target audience to really get one that’s converting well, and then they put all their assets into that one funnel. So don’t believe that one funnel is going to make you a whole bunch of money, you have to create different funnels, different offices, different copy, different pictures, to figure out what really resonates with your target audience. And then once you figure it out, then you can scale. But that figuring out process takes time. People are always looking for a really quick fix. Now the fact that you can automate something, and once you set it up and figure out what works, it just runs by itself is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I have seen people making significant money a month where it just operates by itself.
What you want to do is build an email list and let them know what you’re offering. So what are you offering? What value? Are you offering someone? And who are you offering it to? Knowing your target audience is really, really important, because you want to speak directly to them. A lot of people say, “Oh, my target audience is women.” That’s not a helpful audience, because there’s so many different types of women. Are you talking to single women? Are you talking to moms? Are you talking to women that are struggling with insecurity? Are you talking to confident women? Because your copy is going to be completely different. If you try to speak to everyone you need to know what to do to make sure that anyone who reads your copy, your post, your ad, will be like, “Oh, my God, I feel like they’re talking directly to me,” because that’s how they’re going to opt into whatever you’re offering.
All right. What do you charge?
I’ll give you a ballpark of sales, funnel consultants, I’ll just do that. Typically, it’s about $495 for a five hour block. A lot of times, if someone does a flat fee for a funnel, they’re probably not building a funnel from scratch. So there’s different ways that you can do it. You can just have someone create a funnel for you. You can have someone teach you how to work the platform, because a lot of people sign up for it, and it’s very intricate. They say it’s easy because it’s drag and drop, but it’s a lot to learn. So I build funnels for people, I teach them how to use ClickFunnels, I’ve helped with strategy as far as figuring out your target audience, figuring out the process that works best for your business. And then I also do Mastermind where we set 90 day goals, and I hold people accountable, because accountability is huge, huge, huge. So just making sure they’re getting it done.
The Niajae Wallace website is https://www.niajae.com/. I am on Facebook. I am on Instagram. I am on LinkedIn. But you can find everything from my website.