Allan Blackwell: Welcome to your 20 minute podcast with David Brower, where we do our best to give you useful information in 20 minutes or less.
Now, here’s your host, 5 time voice arts awards nominee, David Brower.
David Brower: Thanks Allan, this is David Brower with your 20 minute podcast. Our special guest today, from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is Casey Stubbs. And Casey is a former Vet, in the Army, so first of all thank you for your service.
Casey Stubbs: Welcome.
David Brower: And welcome to the show. When you got out, or as you were getting out I suppose, what was kinda going on in your head? How were you gonna, how did you feel this whole financial piece was gonna …
Casey Stubbs: I actually really didn’t put a whole lot of thought about it to be honest, I was just trying to find whatever I could.
David Brower: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Casey Stubbs: And so, I just started to do, I started working at UPS loading trucks when I first got out, which is pretty cool job by the way …
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: Keeps you on your toes.
David Brower: And keeps you in shape.
Casey Stubbs: And in shape, yeah, it was, so I really enjoyed that. But as time went on I started to grow my family and I needed some additional sources of revenue, so I just started to try all kinds of different things. Until where I’m at today, in business.
David Brower: And at today means, folks, he’s an expert at enhanced marketing strategies, growing your business through increased authority and visibility. And teaching proven strategies to increase cash flow.
So, going from unloading a truck to all of that, that’s, that’s quite a leap man, congratulations. You’ve been doing this for a while.
Casey Stubbs: Thanks. As a matter of fact it’s my 10 year anniversary this month, 10 years of working for myself, so it’s been pretty cool …
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: Being able to celebrate that milestone.
David Brower: Absolutely, I hit mine on May 1st, last year, so a great celebration indeed. So, when you’re, with over a year of experience in marketing, and you’ve got, you have your own podcast, right? Finance and Markets Cashflow Hacking for … hacking podcast. And, over 322,000 followers on Facebook, that blows me right out of the sky. How in the world did you do that?
Casey Stubbs: Well, it’s all through my advertising manager. So, as a marketing expert I’m always learning and figuring out how to do marketing. So, I had to go to a lot of trainings, I spend a lot of money on Masterminds, I spent a lot of money on marketing seminars, and I go and travel and attend these events. And this Facebook strategy, this one that I’ve picked up at one of the events, and I’ve actually hired someone now to manage all my ad platforms, I basically took everything that I learned from these conferences and training and all the materials that I’ve learned, and I hired someone to run all the marketing ads full time.
And so, in order to grow your Facebook presence is just one of the strategies that I’ve learned through …
David Brower: Brilliant.
Casey Stubbs: All that training.
David Brower: Brilliant. And the other thing I would think, with the investment of time, money, resources, to study all these different things and go to all these different conferences, you’re bringing a whole lot of education and learning to the table that you’re sharing with your clients, right?
Casey Stubbs: Yeah, you know one of the things about, in today’s world, is that it moves very fast.
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: I think this is probably the fastest pace that humanity has ever been. And so, you might be on top of Facebook, but then 2 days later, you’re not.
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: So …
David Brower: No, that’s right.
Casey Stubbs: And that’s intimidating with some regards, but for me it’s not too bad, because I really like to learn, I like to stay on top of stuff and that’s one of the reasons I developed my team. I would say that as time has gone on, I’m no longer the expert and the people on my team know more than I do.
David Brower: And that’s a good thing.
Casey Stubbs: Yeah. Yeah it’s very good.
David Brower: I think one of the things too, like smaller businesses, it’s not like they’re often times gonna have the time, money, resources to do all of that travel, conventions and all those kinds of things so, finding an expert like you is invaluable. But also trying to figure out, and I think, you have to correct me on this, also trying to figure out where do I start?
Because I can’t start on all the social media at once, I gotta figure out what’s gonna kinda open the door for me and then go from there. That a fair statement?
Casey Stubbs: Right. It’s a really good statement, one that I like to bring up, because there’s so many options on the table.
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: It’s like where do I start, and so my suggestion to that is just start in, just pick one thing and get really good at it, and then you grow to another item. Right now, I’m spending a lot of money on Facebook, I spend a lot of money on google, I spend money on twitter, I’m spending money on email marketing. I’ve got a very large media budget. Well not large, but large for me.
David Brower: Sure.
Casey Stubbs: ‘Cause I’ve been growing it, but it actually started at a hundred bucks a month.
David Brower: Nice.
Casey Stubbs: Right, and I just used that well, and then I’ve been slowly growing my marketing budget in different areas. And that’s what I would recommend is just start one, in one location and start small, because when it comes to marketing, it’s really easy to throw your money away. You can spend $10,000 in a blink of an eye and get no results.
So you wanna make sure that you really know what you’re doing before you start to increase the spending.
David Brower: And to have somebody to help you, be your mentor, have the experience and the training to lead you by the hand in many cases. Otherwise you’re just out there shot-gunning it, and that’s just gonna, you just well put a match to the money doing that.
Casey Stubbs: That’s what I’ve seen a lot of people do in marketing, and I’ve done it myself. And so, now, I take everything slow. Slow and steady.
David Brower: Yeah, there’s a saying, and I have no idea where it came from but, when people are reducing their debt, paying off their bills, and they get one paid off and then they take that amount of payment and they add it to another payment, let that snowball, right? So that that goes away, and then that money goes to another one, snowballs, and that goes away. I would think you would take the same approach in increasing your marketing, right?
As you start out with your hundred bucks a month, and then as you get more return on investment, you can increase that and be real thoughtful and careful and appropriate with how you grow that budget.
Casey Stubbs: You know, that’s exactly how I do it. I take a little bit and I just slowly grow it, and that principle works really well like you said in paying off your bills, it works great in growing your business and marketing and great, it works great in investment, just take what you have and slowly increase it. And then you see that snowball effect where it just kind of blows up on you, which is a really great place to be.
David Brower: Absolutely, because there is no, there is no silver bullet, there is no quick answer, and so learning what to do, how to do it with somebody that’s got some authenticity, credibility and integrity, and to help you along the way, that’s invaluable.
So, if you have, how, I mean … Joe Smith down the street. He owns a couple of dry cleaners. And he’s thinking that he wants to increase his cash flow. What would you tell him? To start off.
Casey Stubbs: Well I would say that, this is dry cleaning?
David Brower: Yeah. Or whatever, yeah.
Casey Stubbs: I would say, well dry cleaning works.
David Brower: Okay.
Casey Stubbs: He needs foot traffic, right?
David Brower: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Casey Stubbs: I mean there’s a lot of ways to increase the, increase the cash flow, you can increase your margins, you sell additional products, but, so you’ve gotta look at all those things, but for me, I’m always thinking foot traffic. Right?
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: I think people in the door. And then you can work on those other things, later, make each person more valuable once you get them in the door.
David Brower: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Casey Stubbs: Right off the bat, I would say foot traffic. And a great way to do that is Facebook, because everybody’s on Facebook now.
David Brower: Right.
Casey Stubbs: And everybody that needs dry cleaning is on Facebook. And so you can start a campaign on there and begin to engage with people locally in your area and start to build your brand presence, and start using that to drive people into the door.
Whether you use Facebook page to hold coupons, special offers, special offers work really good to getting people in the door, you know new customers get one shirt done for free. That kind of stuff goes crazy, not only do they come in, but they also share it with their friends.
David Brower: Well that’s the thing right? It’s the new word of mouth is Facebook I think, or twitter or whatever.
Casey Stubbs: Right, and when your running specials, especially when you’re running a promotion, because people love to get those promotions, and it works and then, you know, you might not land everybody as a long-term customer, but you’re gonna land enough to get your brand out and to make the marketing worth it.
David Brower: Brilliant. Easy steps there folks. If you didn’t write them down, make sure to listen to this podcast again, because that’s, no matter what your business is, that’s invaluable right there. So, when you started growing your business, you grew your cash flow, you grew your marketing, and you started to grow your social presence, how does, what does it take to build a world class marketing strategy like yours?
Casey Stubbs: For my specific strategy, again, I wanna just reiterate that I started with one thing only …
David Brower: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Casey Stubbs: Okay, and you should really start with just one thing and not, get overwhelmed about what I’m gonna tell you now, because I have a lot of people working for me, and I’ve done a lot, but the very first thing I started with was the website. I’ve built out a website, and started to get people to come to the site, so that worked and people started to come, and then the next thing I learned was well, I need to be able to communicate with these people, so I began to develop an email list.
The way you do that is you give them something for free, in my case, since I’m in the finance industry, it was a free financial report on how to invest in the markets.
They give you their email, you give them the report, and now you start to communicate with them. All right, so then once I started to communicate with them, I started focusing on growing the traffic, growing that list. Until now, where my email list, I’m growing it by 20 to 30 thousand new names every month, when I first started I was only getting one or two a week.
David Brower: Sure.
Casey Stubbs: Right, and so then after I did that, then I just noticed oh, well there’s Facebook, and I started working on my Facebook presence. I started working on other websites that have social communities, trying to get my presence in there. Then just keep going from one social platform to another, until you have systems built.
And so one of the systems that I have built is that I post an article once a week on my website …
David Brower: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Casey Stubbs: And then I turn that article, I actually turn it into a video, so I take all the text and I have somebody narrate it, I add music, I add slides and then I set that out onto YouTube. Then I shoot that out onto Facebook, that same video. And I share it on twitter, and then I turn that article also into an infographic, and then I post the infographic on twitter, I post the infographic on Facebook, and then I submit that infographic to infographic directories.
And I do that with every piece of content I have, and I do the same thing with my podcasts, I create little snippets of audio, and a 30 second snippet and I post that on all the social media platforms, and then I run ads to those platforms. And so it’s a big, big thing going to every platform.
And it just took time to get that set up, and I have systems in place now where it’s all happening automatically.
David Brower: Well, and the other thing to keep in mind folks is this is a 10 year process. This didn’t happen, this didn’t happen overnight. So …
Casey Stubbs: Exactly.
David Brower: You’re taking it slow.
Casey Stubbs: Right.
David Brower: You got a hundred dollar marketing budget, you’re taking on email, then you take on, so you take on one, you find a system that works, that gives you the return on investment, to move on to another one, and then as you grow each one, I assume, then you start being in the position to hire people to come in and work those systems either with you or for you, so that you continue on your treadmill, if you will, to keep growing.
Casey Stubbs: Yeah. Once you realize that you can’t do it, then you gotta either get somebody or be stagnant.
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: Adding people is another way to really grow. But, a lot of people don’t like to take that step, it’s a little scary. Sometimes they take it too soon, sometimes they take it too late, you’ve got to find the right person. It’s another difficult step, but if you can’t do that, you’re eventually gonna tap out.
David Brower: Yeah. Absolutely. When you started getting into your email campaigns, and you started, you started from your website to grow that list, how did you do that?
Casey Stubbs: Well the very first thing was that I got really fortunate to get traffic my way, I started a website pretty early, and a couple of bigger websites picked up some of my articles …
David Brower: Nice.
Casey Stubbs: And they started driving traffic. And I got a lot of traffic for being really new, and so I just started researching, like, okay, how am I gonna make money from this?
David Brower: Right.
Casey Stubbs: And I found an article. This is, this is really good, I found an article that said how to make money online, or how to make a thousand dollars a month online. Right? And it was like a really in depth article. And I just read it, it was like 8 pages long, and I just did every single thing.
David Brower: You didn’t have to pay a thousand bucks for it?
Casey Stubbs: No, it was free. You can get free stuff online. You just gotta be willing to research yourself.
David Brower: Absolutely.
Casey Stubbs: But I just followed the steps, right? And one of the steps was building that email list. And a couple of other things, and it worked.
David Brower: Wow.
Casey Stubbs: I just did what … and another little interesting nugget about that, in those 10 years I’ve had probably 20 people come up to me and say, “Hey, how did, I wanna get started online, how did you do it?” And you know what I do, I send them to that article.
David Brower: Exactly.
Casey Stubbs: And not a single person followed through on it.
David Brower: Seriously?
Casey Stubbs: That has actually asked me. Seriously.
David Brower: Oh my God.
Casey Stubbs: So, it’s not so much the knowledge, but it’s the acting on that knowledge. People say knowledge is power, but that’s not true. It’s acting on the knowledge that you know.
David Brower: Well you gotta make a commitment, I mean my goodness gracious. Here’s the, here you go folks, here’s an 8 page silver platter, not costing you anything, have a great day. Call me, call me in a year when you make your first $200,000.
Casey Stubbs: Right.
David Brower: And they just go away.
Casey Stubbs: Yeah.
David Brower: Wow, that’s uh, how sad. Really.
Casey Stubbs: I think they’re looking for that silver bullet, right?
David Brower: They are. They totally are. Yeah, they don’t realize, it’s like the overnight success, right, in show business. It took years and years and years and like you, it took 10 years where you are, and they’re going, well hell, I can do that. Uh, no. You can’t.
Casey Stubbs: Well, they can, but they just gotta take time and work at it.
David Brower: That’s right. Exactly right. So, you travel around a lot. Do you speak at conventions? How do you get the word out there, other than obviously, your social media platforms? And are you still continuing to go out there to learn?
Casey Stubbs: I go out to learn mainly. Most of my traveling is for, it’s other business owners.
David Brower: Okay.
Casey Stubbs: And people at a higher level, people that are smarter than me. Right.
David Brower: I hear you. Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: So, I’m trying to find some people that are smarter than me to hang out with and, so that they can kind of blow my mind.
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: And that’s really, has helped me. Developing business relationships, people that, definite another thing that really takes, helps your business take off. When you get some solid people that you really like, that you can trust, you can do business with. I know that it, for me, business isn’t just about make money, but it’s about relationships. And it’s kinda cool because it’s like having friends and making friends and then making money together.
David Brower: Yeah. And everything in life is about relationships, you know? And a lot of people don’t get that. And they need to, they need to take a course on relationships.
Casey Stubbs: Hey if you have all the money and no relationships, you’re a big loser.
David Brower: Oh my God. That is a true story there man. So, you go from the dry cleaning guy to the wall street real estate investment architecture guy in New York City. That’s, I mean, that’s a big leap. So, you’re all over the map, all different kinds of business sizes, all different kind of opportunities to help people, to grow relationships, and in the same time learning more about, learning more stuff for yourself, right?
Casey Stubbs: Yeah. And the thing about the online marketing is it really does fit basically any business today. I know a lot of brick and mortar companies are always saying, well, what can you do for me? But the truth is that they’re really missing out …
David Brower: Yeah.
Casey Stubbs: Because if they’re not online now, they’re really hard, they’re not gonna survive long.
David Brower: No, they’re not. And you see you know, like Toys R Us, and different, you know, different chains like that, that have been around forever, and all of the sudden, oops, gotta close my doors.
And just because, I think, I mean obviously I don’t know the insides of all that, but I would assume that they weren’t far enough ahead on the curve to be able to implement the online marketing the way they should have.
Casey Stubbs: Right.
David Brower: So, if somebody wants to get more information about you, from you, where you can help them, how do they? Are those opportunities out there? How do they do that?
Casey Stubbs: Well, I’m available by going to my website, which is CaseyStubbs.com, C, A, S, E, Y, S, T, U, B, B, S.com. And on their it has some information about me, and access to my podcast, which is called Cash Flow Hacking podcast where I teach tips, tricks and strategies to increase your cash flow. And some of those tips are about marketing and business building, and some of them are about investing and trading. I try to bring different people, anything involved with building cashflow I try to build them …
David Brower: Nice.
Casey Stubbs: Into the show. And you can always contact me from my website. I have access to my social profiles, and uh …
David Brower: Yeah, all your social medias on there, and what, tell me a little bit, we’re running out of time unfortunately, but tell me about your book, The Ultimate Harmonic Pattern Strategy book, the most accurate harmonic patterns and how to trade them. What does that mean?
Casey Stubbs: Well, inside of the market, patterns are constantly repeating themselves, if you are not familiar with markets and trading, you’ve got to realize that nothing is actually random. It’s all based on human behavior, and humans act the same over and over again.
David Brower: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Casey Stubbs: And so you’ll find the consistency and the patterns in the markets, and harmonic patterns are just specific patterns that can identify potential market movements based on patterns that have already happened previously.
David Brower: Fascinating. And probably, and I don’t know what I don’t know about this, but it may very well be why investors would tell you, you know, just stick with it. It may be going down for 3 months, but it’s gonna be back up in 6 years or whatever. Because of those proven patterns, right?
Casey Stubbs: Right. And also the more that you practice, the better your proficiency is going to be.
David Brower: Absolutely. And that goes for everything in life folks, from relationships to business to taking out the garbage and walking the dog.
I mean, seriously, it’s that simple, right? Caseystubbs.com, that’s the place to go to learn more and to reach out to this fellow. Hey man, really enjoyed talking to you, congratulations on your great success, and again thank you for your service. You are one blessed dude.
Casey Stubbs: You said it, thank you so much for having me on the show.
David Brower: You bet.
Allan Blackwell: Listen to your 20 minute podcast with David Brower on the go. Downloads are available on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, iHeart Radio, Spotify, any podcast app and on our website at Davidbrowervo.com/your20minutepodcast.
Until next time, thank you for listening.