In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Bob Sparkins, the Sales Marketing Manager at Leadpages. Bob is a former high school history teacher and he teaches business owners around the world how to leverage digital marketing to impact more people with less effort. Bob’s primary role is the public face of Leadpages by speaking on stages and panels in person and virtually. He supports people who want to share Leadpages with their audiences and the education piece is for their affiliates and future customers so they understand how to build a business online.
Bob became a high school teacher right out of college and it became a 10 year career. He loved working with teenagers. Testing became more prominent over learning and social studies was never a priority over the curriculum fields. The itch of making more money and impacting the world in a different way developed during this time and eventually became a profitable business teaching others marketing. He got more involved with affiliate marketing as part of his coaching and he did so well teaching others how to use Leadpages, the CEO reached out to him and asked him to officially join the company 8 years ago.
Bob’s biggest challenge in his career was knowing the balance between taking a big risk and playing it safe. For a lot of entrepreneurs, the ability to take a risk is a real challenge especially if you are going from month to month and hoping to be in the black and not in a deficit. He didn’t have big savings leaving teaching and he felt like he was on a hamster wheel trying to generate revenue and it was difficult to have the patience and have a proper launch or repurpose it for each of his products. For the first 4-5 years of his business, he never had the chance to optimize any one thing because of this. If he could do it again, he would have had the patience to optimize one product more prominently and move it forward at a deeper level versus spreading himself too thin.
Leadpages was created 10 years ago in a loft in MN to solve a problem of helping someone put out marketing pages rapidly without a big team, design skills or the ability to code. If you struggled with WordPress and needed to get a page out there quickly to showcase your business in 10 minutes, you could free up time to help serve people that will join your audience as a customer. You can sell your services or products as well as showcase a LinkedIn profile to generate more leads to buy your main offer.
Bob fostered building a community and his best advice is to make sure you see yourself as a brand, even if you’re an individual. You may not want to be an influencer but you are that person to the people following you. You are the person they look up to and don’t let your ego shout on the rooftops but you should be proud of the people that look up to you and you need to be visible. Let people recognize you as a face and not a logo of a company or an avatar. They will respond to you as a human being and be willing to be that human being.
Asking for help was one resource that helped Bob out the most. He knew he couldn’t go to the next level without help so he hired a business coach and was part of a mastermind group. He met his wife at one of these events. He recommends finding someone who can lead a group of people and become a cohort. What he loved about the group he was in, you’re not the only person getting the advice and you can cheer each other on and then be coached by your peer group. He prefers a group with a mentor vs a 1:1 mentor. Another resource was continuing to want to learn. Using a mind mapping software that helps you visualize where you want to go in your business is something else Bob recommends. You won’t spend all your time writing down on a document all the nitty gritty details and it will let you dump your ideas quickly so you can free up some of your brain space.
Bob’s favorite quote is “that which we persist in doing becomes easier not because the nature of the thing changes, but our power to do improves.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bob hopes to leave a legacy of people having an easier time in whatever it is he has helped them understand.
Bob is excited about an upcoming training camp. He will be teaching people how to come up with your offer, how to craft the words for the offer, how to turn it into a great landing page and optimize it for sales.
Bio:
As the Sales Marketing Manager at Leadpages, Bob Sparkins champions the customers of the top landing page and website building conversion platform and the audiences they serve. A former high school history teacher and academic team coach, Bob has taught business owners around the world how to leverage digital marketing to impact more people with less effort since 2006. He is the author of Take Action, Revise Later; and lives in Bloomington, Minnesota with his wife, Therese, and their amusing kids, Kira and Landon. Connect with Bob on the social channels via @BobTheTeache
Links:
@BobTheTeacher
Book: Take Action! Revise Later: A Simple Guide to Success in Business
Bio of the Book: Grab this book ONLY if: You're ready to get out of your own way and finally finish what you start; You're eager to achieve bigger results in your business without working ten times as hard or trading time for dollars; You're passionate about helping people profitably, but not sure what to do next; You're overwhelmed by all the choices and possibilities with your business, and you want a clear guide to making more profitable decisions.
Podcast - https://lp.leadpages.com/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobtheteacher/
Leadpages affiliate link - https://try.leadpages.com/lvfzmytj0jf7
