83 | Ask the Expert: Patrick Shaw (Investment Apps)
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[00:00:00] All right guys. ~Well, ~I am super excited for y'all to meet someone that I've had the pleasure of getting to know actually on his podcast today. I've got the owner and founder of Rapid Funnel Patrick Shaw, who is also the host of the Beyond the Network Marketing Dream Podcast. And Patrick's got a really cool story because he's built a, an incredible passive income residual business in network marketing with a team of millions.
~Um, ~that has just given him so much freedom in his life and business to where now he chooses to spend his time and energy focused on tech tools that can simplify the lives of other network marketing leaders who are trying to grow their business. So we're gonna chat about all the things today.
[00:01:00]
Patrick, it is such a joy, a blessing to have you here.
Heather, I am so excited to be here and I do so many podcasts and I've never done a prayer before one, and it makes me feel empowered, which is just awesome. So thank you. Okay. Oh gosh. ~Well, ~thank you for being here. ~And, ~and ~you know, ~I was sharing that story with you that the very first interview I did ~kind of ~got off to a little bit ~of a, ~of a rough start and I said, ~you know, ~if I just take a second to invite the Lord into this conversation, I love it.
And so ~it's been, ~it's been a, an [00:02:00] important habit because ~you know, ~and dear Moore gathered in his name, he's with us. And I know that your story and the wisdom that you're gonna share today ~Will, ~will bless so many. So thank you again. Great to be here. ~Well, ~I'd love to ~kind of ~dive right into your backstory, especially in building a network marketing business, because a lot of my leaders are right where you were back in the nineties where they are trying to grow their network marketing company, and there's so many different ways of doing it.
Even though back then you didn't even have things like social media. So I'd love for you to ~kind of ~share your story of maybe how you got into network marketing, what that looked like initially, and then how in the heck did you build it to the point where it is today? You bet. Love to. So I, ~you know, ~it's ~kind of ~a traditional story.
~Um, you know, ~everybody, I, so many stories, there's a challenge behind it. Mine was, I failed a fourth grade twice, super dyslexic. Really wasn't wired to be an employee. I tried a bunch of jobs. I'm about seven years out of college. I'm 37,000 in credit card debt, and I get introduced to a personal development network company.
~Um, ~they didn't do [00:03:00] very well. But I learned a lot. It, ~you know, ~it was a struggle. I remember almost in tears in the basement, ~um, you know, ~because we, my wife and I had got a $750 check after two years and, ~you know, ~and every adversity is the seed of greater equivalent. Good. And you really, and we were talking about the will of God earlier, and just ~like, ~just being grateful.
And that struggle. Then I found ~a, ~a good company. It was Legal Shield, found a good company and it seemed like a meteoric rise, but as you and I both know, it, D doesn't. There's no meteoric rises. Like it was the two years of struggle and challenge. But I did ~really, ~really well and it created us kind of the dream lifestyle that we'd always wanted.
~And, ~and then, ~you know, ~about a decade ago, I started struggling. With the technology because it just wasn't built for network marketing. ~Uh, ~digital marketers were becoming experts at teaching people how to build network marketing. And ~you know, ~I'm [00:04:00] scratching my head thinking you've never built a network marketing company, which is about people and digital marketing's different.
And so that began this journey that became Rapid funnel. And ~um, you know, ~when I started it was a fax, a phone, a. B h s tape a meeting. It was a simple business and tech made it complicated. And so I wanted to use tech and make it simple again. And so that's how Rapid Funnel started. And today we're, ~you know, ~almost 60 employees in nine countries around the world.
~You know, ~the techs in 20 different languages. So that's ~kind of ~the short story. Oh my goodness. That is what a crazy cool story, and I love the fact that you built the platform and the company that you now focus your time and energy on, but you built it to serve your business first. So I know my listeners talk about, or they've been listening to me talk about the Yeah, me, them, and then the we strategy of really focusing on the tools that can not only build your business, but they're simple enough that you [00:05:00] can show the next person that joins your team, how they can use it to serve their business as well.
So maybe ~kind of ~talk a little bit about how you use those tech pieces even before you had the actual company that you're marketing to other leaders and other the enterprise level at the corporate level. Talk about how you first implemented tech in your business ~and, ~and what inspired you to do that.
Yeah, ironically I avoided it like the plague. ~You know, it ~it, ~you know, ~this is sometimes the very, because we were talking a little about faith, ~you know, ~you think of CS Lewiss of the world, they were atheist first, or agnostic or ~like, and, ~and then they came around because they fought it so hard and I was fighting technology.
I'm like, the teams coming to me and they're like, look, I recruited. Five people last month or 10 people, and I'm using SurveyMonkey or Constant Tongue contact or later became ClickFunnels or all these different tools that were not bad tools or they were leveraging social and they were becoming an influencer and a thought leader and [00:06:00] social, and my attitude was, look, keep doing what you're doing.
That's awesome. You found this little niche and you can recruit a lot of people, but you cannot teach that because. They can't afford to spend an extra $50 a month or 150 a month or a thousand a month on these different platforms. Try to get them technologically to talk to each other so that a survey can go to an email campaign that goes to a capture page, that goes to a video that you're tracking, like those don't work together.
And people can't afford 'em, and they're not savvy enough, competent enough from a marketing perspective to make all of this work. ~Right. ~And so I realized that ~I was, ~I was swimming upstream. I was not going to win this battle. Everybody was coming with more and more ideas and it was working. ~Hmm. ~What works doesn't duplicate and networking is about [00:07:00] simplicity, fun, duplication, that's the nature of it.
People have five to seven hours a week. That's a first principle in networking. It's fundamental. ~And, ~and yet, These people are acting like digital marketers and yeah, you're recruiting a bunch, but you'll never create depth and momentum. And so ~that, ~that out of that adversity, I started saying, okay, there's got to be technology.
There's gotta be a way. And I had the money and the means to start building it. And today we call it authentic sharing technology. So it's really the first technology ever built. To serve ~a ~a, a commission-based sales organization like network marketing. Oh my goodness. ~Well, ~so specifically, what would you say sets your tech apart?
Cause I know that one of the pieces, whether you're trying to again, build a following online ~and, ~and do it in a massive way, whatever funnel, we talk about picking a path and filling your funnel. So if you're trying to do it in a big, large way with ~like ~a tech piece like those guys were using, or like the,[00:08:00] ~ uh, you know, ~influence I talk about on here, the piece that's missing is the connection and the relationship.
Required And the conversations and the connections that have to happen one to one before they can scale. Yes. So ~what, ~what makes yours difference or what made it different then and what makes it different now? ~The, ~the biggest thing is, I call it a one to mini approach. ~You know, ~digital marketing tools are awesome for the Kardashians, right?
They're super, they don't really wanna talk to anybody. They're not taking a phone call and they can pretend to want to be authentic, but they're not that,~ like,~ they're just pretending to be authentic. ~Right. They don't, ~they don't wanna talk to anybody. They don't want to have a personal relationship. They just want to pretend to do that.
And so that's a one to many tool. It's a tool that you use in design and you talk to the masses and you're hiding behind the technology. Authentic sharing technology says, Yeah, we're gonna use technology, text, social, all this stuff, but I want it to be designed and written in a [00:09:00] very personal way, and I don't want any single step to be taken in the funnel, so to speak, without me knowing it's about to happen and saying, yes, it's gonna happen.
Now if I can notify Heather that Heather. I want you to send this pre-me written message. Do you wanna send it now? Yes. Oh, great. Now they responded. Do you wanna send this survey? Oh, great. You send the survey. Heather, your prospect answered the question this way. Do you now want to send this? We suggest sending this one minute video.
Do you wanna send it? Oh, Heather says, yes, I wanna send it. ~You see, ~we've taken all the digital steps, but we never took Heather out of it. She has to be involved and approved because Heather's dog may have died this morning and I just talked to you and now I'm spamming you. And that's the difference is use technology, but don't take the relationship out of it.
And that also means. It can be written in a much more personal [00:10:00] fashion because when you respond, you're not responding to a platform or an autoresponder. Your response, the prospect's response to me is, an example is direct to me. It's in my phone's tech system. It's in my personal email. ~Right? ~And so that's a one-to-one, even though we're automating and supporting the distributor.
On making a lot more touchpoints, a lot faster. I hope that makes sense. Oh, it makes, it's not a hard concept, but yeah, it makes so much sense. And I know personally I tend to be more reactive than proactive and ~I, ~I assume if I'm that way, I'm sure a lot of other leaders are that way, and certainly someone who's trying to.
Build their businesses that way. Where that's one of the things we love about automation is it does the work for us, but it's not that we don't wanna do the work or that we don't wanna have the conversation. We almost just need the reminder or the prompt to do it. So ~I, ~I really love that you've got ~that, ~that [00:11:00] authentic and that decision and that kind of step.
Cuz actually I had almost, ~well ~I don't think her dog died this morning, but I had a step in my automation where a customer. Slip a message slipped through the cracks. Let me say that. And I thought, oh gosh, we never have sent that. ~Um, if, ~if I, ~you know, ~could have gone back to do it. But intech, it can be complicated.
So allowing somebody like you who gets it to be able to put the system together or cuz you also, you partner, and we were chatting about this before we hit record, but about a third of your customers are the direct. Corporate enterprise level, but more two thirds of your actual customers are leaders like me or leaders that have organizations that use it for themselves and then share it.
~Is that, ~is that right? And do you part? That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Because look, the leaders, their job is to get the story told. I love the book, the Four Disciplines of Execution. It's not a network marketing book at all, but it's the number one bestselling business book in the world today, and it's something we can all.
~You know, ~connect with as leaders is the [00:12:00] four disciplines of execution are one, what's a wildly important goal? Two, identify and act on the lead measure, and three is have a scorecard. And four, then you can create a cadence of accountability or a culture. ~Well. ~The second one is identify and act on the lead measure In network marketing, our job is to get the company story told.
Either the product or recruiting doesn't matter. But that's our job. And so what we do at Rapid Funnel is we get the story told. So I primarily wanna work with the people responsible. Now, of course, the company comes along and they always want to be involved, and that's awesome. But we know working with the key leaders of the organization, that co-creation or that collaboration is critical to us helping the company and the leaders succeed.
I think that's so smart, and that's actually a principle just in leadership in general. I know as a,~ uh,~ creator and someone who loves to just get out there and do or [00:13:00] even do a training or create a tool or a system or whatnot, if I know that if you don't involve your own leaders or your own team and the creation aspect of it, and it sounds like you do the exact same thing with the leaders that you partner with, then they're not gonna use it.
And they're not gonna,~ they're,~ they're not gonna have an invested interest in doing it because they don't really understand what it's about. So why would you say it's important, ~you know, ~if someone has, I know for our company, our,~ um,~ we have an app that they have given to us that a lot of people, because they weren't a part of the creation of it or don't quite understand how it works, there's not a lot of,~ uh,~ leveraging happening a lot of times.
But why would you say if someone does choose to invest in Rapid Funnel for their business, or again, if their company or their leader or their mentor has some kind of tool, can you talk about the importance of keeping it simple by leveraging it? Because I'm sure you probably still see that where you've got those creators that kind of.
Don't necessarily wanna use the tool either out of fear of the tech piece of it, or out of the fact [00:14:00] that they, ~you know, ~didn't have a hand in the creating of it. And so they wanna go try to reinvent the wheel. So why is it important to leverage? Yeah, ~I mean, ~I think the biggest thing in networking is, look, I've never met a really great leader who was not a great follower first.
~Right? ~Who didn't have the humility to say, okay, there's a system here. It's in place. They've built it so I can succeed. And now once you get to a certain level and you go, okay, I think I can design something or do something here, that's different. But for the vast majority and even the very best leaders, again, we're best, we're great followers.
~I've, ~I've never seen it happen otherwise. So I think you have to take the tools and the systems that are in place and you've gotta get it a hundred percent to drive those tools and systems and see if you can influence change there. Or use that tool ~that ~that leader has provided to really understand it.
And then, and only then do you, you move into that space where, okay, you know,~ I,~ I see some [00:15:00] weaknesses or what have you,~ but,~ but you gotta leverage the systems and the tools that are there currently. Yeah, ~I think, ~I think that's great advice. I'm glad. I'm glad you agreed. I love that quote. So one of the things you also touched on that I think is super important as most people as they're building their network marketing business, like you said, it's very rare that it's a meteor rise where you're just making.
Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars right off the bat. It takes years to get to that level. So how would you advise someone, when is the right time to invest in platforms to grow their business? Is there a certain kind of ratio when you feel like they're ready? Because things like investing, even the time it takes to learn a platform and certainly the money to invest in something like Rapid Funnel.
What would you, what are ~kind of ~your principles around spending some money and some time on ~a ~a? Yeah. ~You know, ~I,~ you,~ you're,~ I, I'm, ~I'm sure you agree with this and you know how it is, ~you know, ~and I always told my team, don't ever quit your job until you've at least made three or four months of income that could almost [00:16:00] match it.
And my leadership told me that, and I ignored them completely. ~Um, ~and I, ~you know, ~wait. My wife and I, we've been married, ~you know, ~26 years ~and, ~and ~you know, We, ~we bought a house, we rented out half of it. It paid my mortgage. She had a job. And so I'm like, I'm all in. And I spent two and a half years being all in and not making any real money.
And then within a year she was retired, ~you know, ~from her good career and we've been building ever since. And ~so, you know, ~I don't think you can tell people that. I think they, ~I mean, ~you can tell 'em, you can encourage 'em, you can try to help protect 'em. But at the end of the day, You've gotta, ~you know, ~you've gotta trust God's will and you've gotta trust your gut instinct and you've gotta go with it, right?
~I mean, ~that's the bottom line. So I think it's a hard thing to dictate. Everybody's different. Some people can take more risk than others,~ um,~ and operate really well in that environment. ~Um, so, you know, I, ~I will tell you in terms of like our platform, ~You know, ~you can go grab two or three [00:17:00] other people. If you're in an organization, you're listening to this and maybe your leadership isn't as strong, or maybe the systems or tools aren't already there and in place.
~Right. Um, you know, ~I would say you, ~you know, ~for us, somebody pretty much needs to be full-time for if an individual came to us and said, Hey, And we have a risk reversal model. They're gonna make an investment, but we can almost, we're gonna guarantee we're actually gonna pay 'em that money back in our model.
But you still gotta be a full-time person. ~You, ~you just can't, you know you that anyway. You mean making a full-time income? ~Uh, ~making a full-time income? Yeah. They're not, it's kinda six figures. Yeah, six figures. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not making six figures now, if somebody's making six figures already, we can show 'em how to bump that quickly.
~So, ~but ~they, ~they need to be in that place. Or they better have three or four people that are equally committed, and maybe they're making a little less than that, but they've got a few people on the team that say, Hey, we're all in together. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So you can ~kind of ~team up with some, ~mm-hmm.~
Some leaders to make it worth the investment. And I love when you were talking about the four [00:18:00] disciplines, which I have not read that book. And ~I, ~I put it on my list with a big checkbox to Oh, good. But I love, I think sometimes people, leaders, especially with those big, wildly important goals that you talk about when ~they, ~they get the step one, right?
Like they know, but it's almost like they either have a taste of it. Like I know even some leaders that'll force their way to a rank that where they might just get. That little taste of what that income looks like, but they pushed or pulled their way to get there. They didn't get there based on duplication and based off of things like having strong foundational leadership in place.
And so then they start to plan their budgets or their investments, whether that's personally or in business and hiring a VA or whatever that looks like. They start to plan their budget on that highest, that one highest month. As opposed to, like you were saying, on a consistent proven income level that is, is justified over time.
And so we actually, by the time this airs, we will have also been talking a little bit about the money side of it and those of us, like I'm a [00:19:00] total spender, I still spend, so thank goodness my husband is like my C F O and he puts a specific amount in my business account and a specific account and a Heather fund money account.
And then of course we have our family stuff. And the rest of it goes into savings for our big important goals, if that makes sense. Yeah. Because otherwise I'll spend every dime of it. And ~so, you know, ~I think it's super important ~for, ~for wherever somebody is on that spectrum where they're not quite to that big, wildly important goal income, or maybe they are, but they're looking for tools and resources of, ~you know, ~how to invest back in their business.
And I love that you said you ~kind of, ~that's your number one goal is to. Increase their revenue and their business to the point that the investment is almost negligent at that point. But they've gotta be at that level first. Is that you agree? I agree totally. And I would also say that sometimes they're actually doing the right thing to get to the income and then they fall into management mode.
And they don't do it by design. They're trying to think bigger and they get out of the berry activities. Of keeping the [00:20:00] pipeline full of talking to people. Look in network marketing. Ultimately, you've gotta talk to enough people and you need to follow up with consistency and quality. And if you,~ and,~ and the four disciplines of execution says you can only have two or three lead measures, right?
~Mm-hmm. ~Because everything else is the whirlwind. Organizing our desk, managing the team, like all those things are in place, but there has to be some level of consistency around prospecting and following up activities. They're just due. And then if there's a third discipline, if one is prospecting, if two is follow up.
With quality and consistency. Then three would be teach one and two. ~Right? ~And if you know that, then you're saying, okay, how can I make sure to keep my eye on the prize? And our job in networking isn't to manufacture the product. It's not to ship it. It's not to handle all the branding. It's not, our job is to get the [00:21:00] story told ~and, ~and I think we lose sight of that sometimes.
You start making money. And you get in the trap of not dedicating a certain amount of your time ~to, ~to marketing, to selling, to whatever we want to call it, networking, sharing, ~you know, ~we can call it a million different things, but the bottom line is that story has to get told. I. Yeah, and I've always loved the prospecting word.
It took me a second to come around to it, but it really is like a, ~you know, ~going through rocks and it's sifting it until you, you find the gold. And that's essentially what a ~funnel ~funnel ~is, ~is just putting a lot of rocks in until you get, ~you know, ~get down to the gold and you do have to, this is ~so.~
It's just so funny, Heather, because we, I never would've called the company Rapid Funnel, but we've got too much brand awareness and all that to change now because then afterwards, all the funnels, all the automated digital funnels started coming and I'm like, no. Ours was a. Was a sales funnel. ~It's, it's, ~it's adding more people and making it easier for the team to connect with a lot more people in an authentic way at the top of [00:22:00] the funnel.
That's what Rapid Funnel was. It was speeding it up. But then it turned into all of this. But we, ~you know, ~it is what it's, but yeah. ~Well, ~we all know a brand, ~you know, ~in business is more than just your name or your logo, right? It's so much more than that. Thankfully, Jess, thankfully. But I love that your brand was built again from that we strategy.
You, you built a network marketing, a massive network marketing business that you're still able to take advantage of,~ um,~ years later. By using the principles that you are and the tools and the, ~you know, ~the techniques. ~So, you know, ~it works, you've seen it work ~with, ~with countless others. So a couple, one logistical question, and I do then I'm curious,~ um,~ to let people know where they can find you, but ~is it, ~is it tech,~ uh,~ text marketing and email marketing, or what's the comu?
Or is it they Yeah. Text, email, social. It's all about, ~you know, ~leveraging all of those tools ~to, ~to communicate and connect with more people faster. So it's every. ~Like ~if I wanna send out a survey? ~Mm-hmm. ~We just had somebody that posted a survey, a single survey, and generated 300 [00:23:00] new prospects, name, phone number, and email.
So he got 300 push notifications to his app. That because he posted a survey to social media. So when you take that survey, you could post it to Messenger on Facebook, WhatsApp, you could text it, email it, use it in any way, shape or form. And anybody that fills out that form, I. Whether it's a capture page, landing page, or a survey, they get dropped into your platform as a lead.
Yeah, and the platform as a lead, the communication happens on whatever pla, whatever communication platform you are using. So for example, I know a lot of my team and I personally use project broadcast as a text marketing platform or flow desk as an email marketing platform. So does your system, it equips you with the messaging to then go to those platforms?
Or is it its own platform? You could do both. You could take that text, you could take that link, which is trackable and it comes to you and you get all the data and you could post it on one of those other platforms. What we would do in an authentic sharing [00:24:00] fashion is we would use your own text service to be able to broadcast to all those people because when they respond, they're responding directly back to you.
Sure. So I find that texts, broadcast systems, by their nature are not authentic. Sure. It's a stop message now. ~I mean, ~clearly it's not from your phone personally. And then when they respond, they're responding back to a platform and messages are going out that you are not aware of exactly who they're going to.
So in our platform, if you said, I'm gonna send to these 50 people, you would, it would literally pop up a box and you'd go,~ yes,~ yes. Ooh, adjust this one. Yes. Oh, the, ~you know, you, ~you would be involved the whole time. Look game at Fortnite. You look at the games that are happening today and it's gamification.
~Mm-hmm. ~Everybody is using deep psychology. ~Mm. ~In gamification to drive a behavior. And all we're saying is, look, we can gamify prospecting and follow up in a very authentic way. ~Right. ~And [00:25:00] so we're driving, whether it's leaderboards or contests, or incentives or how the UI or UX is designed to. To just make sure that you follow up more efficiently, more consistently, and more authentically.
Wow. Okay. That's awesome. ~Well, ~if somebody wants to learn more about Rapid Funnel, where can they go to find out more information? I. I think I'm not very good at this part, but you can LinkedIn and type in Patrick Shaw InFunnel and you will find me easily. ~Uh, ~you can also go to rapid funnel.com and see more on the company.
~Um, ~and then you can even email [email protected] rapid funnel.com. Awesome. I'm gonna call, of course they can follow your podcast and we'll link all of this in the so notes as well. But beyond the network marketing dream and who would you say that's for? Really, I think it's similar to your audience, is that it's leaders, it's people that, that are, ~you know, ~taking their businesses to the next level or they're already there and they're looking for innovative [00:26:00] solutions, ways to really support their team ~and, ~and creating ~more, ~more duplication, more simplicity, and helping their team just have more fun in building the business.
That's awesome. ~Well, ~I know we've got an episode that we chatted about together on your platform on the proof that you can build without social media, so I'll make sure to link that episode here in the show notes as well. I've already shared it with my community, but I know that if we have a lot of new listeners, as I was telling you, and so if you haven't yet listened to that, I think you'll enjoy that conversation as well.
~So, well, ~I, listen,~ I'll,~ I'll throw it out real quick. I just, Loved your message so much. I attended a big training event recently, and there were so many people, maybe a third of the trainers on stage that were talking about being social media influencers. And everybody in the audience has taken all these pictures and screenshots.
And I remember talking to one of the gals and she, ~you know, and, ~and she saw me as an expert. I was on this stage and she confided in me. I said,~ well,~ how's it going? Because she'd recruited 2,700 people, Heather. And I said, how's it [00:27:00] going? She goes, man, if only I could get him to do something. And that is like you stepping out of social media for a while.
I thought that was so cool. And. How you're going authentically and building with the fundamentals. I won't say old school because you're leveraging technology, but you're doing it. And so that was a really enjoyable conversation. And I think I know ~you, ~you, I think you've reposted that too, so hopefully people can find it easily.
I. Yes, definitely. Definitely. ~Well, ~thank you for the kind words that,~ um,~ you know,~ as,~ as always, I know you're just as passionate as I am about helping other network marketers win big in their business. And so ~I, ~I do think that sometimes people who are focused on that as their big gang goal is just to build a big following.
They're gonna be in for,~ um, you know, ~a sad reality when they realized that it doesn't create the level of freedom that they were looking for in this business model. And that's what it's all about. ~So, ~so thank you for saying that really is you. Yeah. ~Well ~thank you again, Patrick, for being on and ~uh, ~we'll definitely make sure to have all those links and I hope you have a [00:28:00] beautiful week.
Thank you so much, Heather. God bless. Okay.
