From Cigars to Continuity: Simon Devlin’s Secrets to Building Customer Loyalty
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What's up everyone. This is Russell. Welcome back to the selling online slash marketing secrets podcast. We're still in the middle of transition with the names, but I'm excited to be with you guys here today. Uh, we are actually at the prime mover mastermind meeting here, downtown Boise, Idaho. And before the event started, I was looking at people who were coming to Boise and I was like, I want to do some interviews. And, uh, the person I pulled for you guys this time is really fascinating. Someone from Australia, I'll announce his name during the official intro, but, um,

What I think you're going to get a lot of benefit from this one is he's got an offline business selling cigars and he's using continuity and he's using offers and he's using all the things offline. A lot of us internet nerds do online, but he's doing offline at a really cool level. He's using Ascension. He's doing like a whole bunch of really cool things. But then secondarily, a lot of you guys who have online businesses, you have online continuity or membership sites online.

Some of the things you'll get from this conversation are really fascinating on ways you can increase your retention, get your stick rate, get people to not cancel, get people not to message your support desk, which is the greatest thing of all, and a whole bunch of other things. So I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm excited for you guys to jump in to learn about continuity income and both online and offline, how it's going to change your life.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.

I'm excited to be hanging out with Simon Devlin from Australia, all the way here in Boise, Idaho, right? I'm very excited to be here. I'm glad to have you here too, man. So this is a podcast I'm actually really excited for because I've been watching you now for a couple of years. You came into the Dan Kennedy world, right? After we bought Dan's company, you came to a mastermind in Boise and then you came to

At the most recent Super Conference, you were in Lederhosen, right? Lederhosen, yes, yeah. On stage. So I got to kind of know you a little bit through that, but I've also been watching you and your business for a little bit. And so I'm excited to get to know you a lot better and your business and some of the things you're doing that are unique. I think a lot of times when I have people on this podcast, we're solely like internet marketing nerds, whereas you have a business that's a little bit different, but you're using similar principles and stuff, which I think will be a lot of fun. So to start off, we do want to tell people a little bit about your background, your story, and what your business is.

I know you got a lot of stuff you're doing, but what your core businesses are. Yeah. So I started my business back in 1997, uh,

importing, wholesaling and distributing cigars. So I have a, I have retail stores in Australia and a private club as well. Like a cigar club? A cigar club. Yeah. So it's a physical location, you know, where people pay an annual membership fee to be a member. It's a great, great community. And we also distribute cigars for some of the biggest brands in the world. And yeah,

We do retail online as well. So I have a different separate business, which is I started a couple of years ago to try to do something a little bit different with a different character to sell cigars online. And yeah, it's been an incredible journey. It was 2010 that I actually first...

first found Dan Kennedy and started learning about. So then 10 was Kennedy. What, when, when did the cigar business start? Started in 1997. Okay. So three years, wait, 13, 13 years later. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. How'd you find Dan initially? What was the, I was actually a guy, um, that I met. It was actually a basketball, Australian basketball, who actually played for the Australian team. His name, uh,

And I met him. We had lunch and we had these amazing conversations and we had sort of similar philosophies. And he said, you need to meet a mentor of mine. He lives on the east coast of Australia and you're going to absolutely love him. And his name was Gary Dean Atkins. And so I go to the other side of the country one time. I meet this guy and I'm like, wow, this guy's amazing. He's got similar sort of philosophies.

Anyway, he gives me a book, which was Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. One of the greatest. Dan Kennedy. And that, of course, blew my mind. Oh, you got the co-author version with Dan. The co-author version with Dan. And then I was like, who's this guy? Who's this Dan Kennedy guy? And so then I searched him online and I found The Ultimate Sales Letter. And I read that book and then I was like, oh, wow.

I'm going to sell a lot of cigars now. And I was like, up until that point in time, I thought, hey, I'm a pretty good sales guy.

But then that just changed my world, just all the different pieces of it. And then I just started buying everything I could of him. It was GKIC days back then where it was all sold piecemeal and I was buying CDs and DVDs and just consuming it all. - I still have an entire bookshelf full of Dan Kennedy CDs and DVDs. I was the same way. - So the other day I got a young guy working for me and I'm teaching him marketing. I'm giving him a marketing apprenticeship at the moment.

And I was like, oh, I need... One of the things wasn't in the whole enchilada. I said that to him. I'm like, do you have a CD player? And he's like...

CD player? Like an 8-track player, right? So I go online and buy like a DVD player and I buy a stack of blank CDs and I'm like, I'm going to burn it. And then I'm like, I can't wait this out. That's so awesome. That's what I learned too though. I bought every course, every manual, every CD, every DVD and that's like you're glued to it. You know, my driving CDs or TV with the DVD watching to learn, you know, back in the day that's how we all consumed stuff. But it was...

It's so exciting. Okay, so I'm Mormon. I've never smoked a cigar in my entire life. Right. So what should I know about cigars that I don't know? I think the biggest thing is cigars are all about flavor and taste. So people think...

And this has been a problem in Australia. And when I actually started the cigar business back in 1997, you couldn't buy cigars anywhere. It wasn't part of the culture, whereas it had been more part of the culture in the United States. People just saw it literally as a big cigarette. Now, I've never smoked cigarettes in my life and never will. But cigars are actually about flavor and taste. You don't actually inhale a cigar. You actually just draw it in your mouth and you blow it out.

But I think the true value of cigars and why so many people smoke them and successful people actually smoke them is people think it's a status symbol, but it's actually because it's the only time that really busy people stop.

Because it actually takes time to enjoy a cigar. Generally, we don't say smoke a cigar, we enjoy a cigar. There is a rhythm to the breathing almost. I often say it's like a form of meditation. And when you can share that with other people, yeah, it's a pretty amazing experience. Does it have nicotine, tobacco, similar stuff like that in it? Yeah, it does, but...

You're not going deep into your lungs. Yeah. And so the thing is about nicotine is what makes it highly addictive in cigarettes is the other chemicals that they add into cigarettes to make the increase of the uptake of the nicotine into the bloodstream.

So that was that, um, movie with Russell Crowe, the insiders was all about as how they'd worked all that out. So I was thinking about this actually, um, this morning. So I smoke cigars. I love cigars. I would have, um, on average, a couple of cigars a day, which is, which is a lot of cigars. And like most people might have one cigar a week kind of thing. Um,

I left home a week and a half ago. I haven't had a cigar. You're not like going crazy. And I hadn't even thought about it, you know? So I, I really, really enjoy the experience, but I don't feel the need to want to have a cigar. So yeah, it's interesting. It's a very, very enjoyable pastime. My only experience with cigars is Mark Ford and Rich Sheffrin did a mastermind event and Mark Ford, Michael Masterson, AKA Mark Ford, uh,

uh he's got a cigar bar in florida and so that was where the event was at so we all flew out there and there was like 300 internet marketers jammed in this little tiny room and everyone's smoking and like video and filming and everyone's like influenced and it was just like it was total chaos um but it was you tell like it was a cool vibe and people were hanging you know like when there's not 300 people jammed in a little tiny room it's probably like a really cool yeah the smoke can get a bit much there and the eyes can water a little i imagine yeah 300 in a room yeah

So my question, first question then, so you went for 13 years running a business for Dan. How did it, so how did that part of the business change and transform? You went from like running a traditional business to like applying Dan Kennedy style marketing into a cigar business. Yep. Yep. So I really, it started out as a, uh,

Well, I started initially importing, wholesaling and distributing cigars. And I actually had a business partner at the time that I had in the early days. And I found that he wasn't my kind of guy and we didn't really know each other. Perhaps our values weren't quite aligned.

And we kind of split and he took over the wholesale distribution at the time. And then I took over the retail side, which was in a tiny little cigar shop in a little beautiful little alley called London Court in Perth. And,

That shop is so small, I always joke that you have to go outside to change your mind, right? So it's this tiny little shop. And then, so really, I started out that in 2002 as almost like a one-man band. And, you know, just learning, learning how to have team members, learning how to...

you know, make sure that you've got the right cigars and teaching people and those sort of things. And that progressed. And eventually I put on some more team members and I kind of worked out, well, actually I had a problem. So first of all, I put on some team members and their sales were nowhere near what my sales were.

they were just, I couldn't understand, you know, it's not that hard. You guys go on. And I hired people that were passionate about cigars. So I, at first I thought, Oh, is it technical knowledge? And then it was like, okay, no, it's not, it's not the technical knowledge. Um, so what is it? And then I started observing what it was about my own interaction that was different. And what I realized was I never actually, um,

talked about cigars with the customers. First of all, I actually talked about them and I got to know them. Um, and then eventually we would get round to cigars. Like there was a different level of engagement. And by that time we'd kind of made friends if you like. And you know, that whole thing, people want to do business with people they know and like. So then I just thought, Oh great, that's all I need to do. I need to teach my guys how

How to build rapport, right? Like how to... And so I started to create this idea of an engagement funnel. So rather than a sales funnel, like how to truly engage with customers and clients when they came in. And I taught them this.

But the sales, I got a bump, but I didn't get to where I definitely thought we should be. So I was a bit sneaky. I actually, it was a tiny little shop and I would hang out just around the corner from the shop and actually listen to their interactions to see actually. Spying on them. Yeah, to see what was actually happening. And the interesting part was is it just sounded really clunky.

Like it sounded put on, like the way they were interacting was just, you know, natural. Yeah. It wasn't natural. That's not what they naturally did. And therefore they weren't getting the benefit out of it. And I was like, okay, so I actually need to hire a different type of person. I actually need to hire someone who most naturally does that. Someone that was more similar to me.

And that's where I started developing this idea of who that person was. And eventually it evolved over a number of years where I realized that that person is actually someone we call that has the service gene. So someone that has not only the desire but the innate need to want to look after people.

And that was quite a point where I turbocharged my business because then I had a system for finding the right people. And then when I found them, I taught them how to fly with their most natural, what they do best.

And so my business really started to expand fast because people were having incredible experience. They were, they were getting incredible engagement. It was actually, it started out in that little cigar shop. And on a Friday afternoon, people would come and they would smoke cigars in,

inside the, and you could smoke inside back then, they'd smoke cigars inside the little shop and also in the London Court alleyway as well. And they'd bring a bottle of wine and it became this huge thing until, you know, some Fridays it would be 30 or 40 people kind of hanging out there because they were coming for that community and that engagement as well. And so that was the, where I really worked out that whole experience and engagement circle. But

What I was kind of missing was how do I consistently get them to come back again and again? And it wasn't until 2010 when I discovered Dan Kennedy and Magnetic Marketing that the next piece of the puzzle really fell into place. And that was the return path.

That was having a system to get people to come back again and again. That whole number one reason why people stop doing business with you is they forget about you and you constantly sticking up your hand and saying, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. Don't forget about me. Right. And I hadn't actually done that. The experience and engagement, that's the rocket fuel that can turbocharge the return path.

But that was the, that was the next step. So then I started thinking about how can I add different pieces to the puzzle? And, and,

And then that eventually evolved into a membership. It actually started with private cigar keeps, putting private cigar keeps in the next evolution of our store. Is that like a locker? Yeah. They put their own stuff in? And I'm like, oh, this is like a little real estate play here, right? Like a tiny little box. You can charge them an annual fee. So how'd that work? How much would you charge people for that? So look, I think of a real...

When we originally opened, so that Subiaco store we opened in 2006, sorry, no, 2003. And I think we were maybe charging like $500, $600 a year for the keep. It was a small amount and it was us dipping our toes into what would people pay? You know, like I think often as business people and marketers, we always undervalue it, right?

And we're testing how much people would actually pay for it as well. Then I guess the next evolution was... So that was in 2003. In 2006...

The smoking laws were changing. We built a joint venture with a private club in Western Australia, which was the oldest private club at the time. And we built a cigar lounge as a joint venture with them called Churchill's. And they had a membership business. They were a private club. And the smoking laws were changing. And we weren't going to be able to have it there anymore.

we'd opened another store in Subiaco. So that was in 2003 that I was talking about before. And we worked out we needed another location and there was an opportunity across the road. And I thought, okay, maybe we build a private club of the retail store and we make it really, really discreet. And I, as often us marketers do, I,

Sold it before I'd made it and sold these memberships. So I sold these founding memberships, which were based around the keeps. We had originally 60-odd keeps in there and –

You had one of these keeps, you had access to a private lounge behind the retail store, which has swipe cards and like nondescript doors, you know, it was kind of get smarty and it's how you get through to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And that became our private club. And so 2010, I had this private club, but we had one level.

And I hadn't really worked out. We were underselling it. It was 500 bucks a year still at that point? Or did shit change now that you had the club selling it? No, I mean, our initial membership was like $550 a year, right? We hadn't really worked out that whole...

thing and uh and then learning for the first time about ascension and you know ascension equals retention and you know and the different ladders and you know that sort of thing and then going oh okay so i i need to i need to stop making this about the keep about the product

And now I need to make this about an offer, you know, all the different things that we actually add into that offer stack and call it a membership rather than just your locker. What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. I've got something really cool for you today from my friend Taylor Wells. Taylor spoke at our last Funnel Hacking Live because I wanted him to share a really cool concept

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I have a question because there's a place in Vegas. I get all my clothes done and they have a locker system like that where they, and in the locker, everyone's got their own, whatever, like whatever they want to keep in it. Usually it just looks like there's a liquor bottle and some other stuff that they can have. So,

My question for you is like, so people would buy cigars and they just put their own cigars there. So when they don't have to carry them back and forth, they just have it there. That's the whole reason, right? So you'd sell them the cigars and then they would place it in the locker. Absolutely. And when you come out and, and they could put a bottle of whiskey in there or they could put, you know, you know, some, some would have their lockup.

absolutely full of cigars and then others would come in and they're lucky it would be empty and they would just buy a cigar on consumption as well but they had that

you know and and you know it gave us different things to sell as part of the membership and as part of the you think because i have an event center that we're launching and it's like a library museum thing i was like wouldn't be cool to have when i saw the one in vegas i was like that'd be such a cool thing i'm like what are people gonna put that put their book in there they want to read and they come back you know i'm like i don't know but it's crazy they would buy a cigar from you and put like i could sell a book in there they could

store the book. Yeah. Or we could do a JV and I could sell cigars and they could put some cigars in there. Maybe a little bit. Maybe that's a secret. So fascinating. Okay. So started there and then you started bundling in offer stack in other stuff, memberships, you could increase the value.

Right. Yeah. And we started adding in different products to our store as well. It went from being a cigar shop to a men's luxury gift store where we were selling writing instruments and beautiful writing instruments. And we were selling, you know, luggage and wallets and stuff.

you know, great things like that. So it really evolved into being what I call a big boys toy store but still always had a heavy focus on the cigars. But the beauty of cigars is actually the toys that go along with it, you know, the different cutters and lighters and humidors and they're just beautiful accessories as well. So we started selling, you know, all of those products as well.

And then just kept adding to the membership. So, and realizing that we could keep adding membership levels and then our members would want to ascend. Now, because we did the experience in the engagement part so well, they just love hanging out there. And it's become quite an incredible community. We're just amazing bunch, predominantly men, but

Though, you know, women are incredibly welcome as members and we do have some fantastic ladies as members. It tends to be that it's the men that generally enjoy the cigars more.

just by their nature. But yeah, we've got an amazing, amazing group of members there. So what do the levels look like? What do you charge these levels? What are people getting at these levels? Yeah, so it's evolved over time. So first of all, there's a joining fee. So we charge a joining fee. So the joining fee is currently $995. And then they...

And then there's the different levels. So we've actually changed it recently. So there's the, we used to have a bronze level of membership, but we've done away with that. And we actually, the opening level of membership is a gold level of membership. And with that, they get their private cigar keep. They actually get,

a 10% discount on everything in the store as well. And they also, we added things into the stack, which...

are from outside vendors, which is a really, really good thing. So if you go to this restaurant, you get an entree. If you go here, you get that, or you get access to a private dining room, or you get access to different things as well, which we found was really, really valuable to add in to the stack as well. So that's gold. They pay around about $1,600 a year. Then we have our Platinum.

Um, so they get everything obviously that's in gold. Um, plus they actually get a whiskey keep. So actually, so the cigar keeps this to walk in humidor rooms with private cigar keeps. So there's now 500 private cigar keeps. We started out with, you know, uh, 60, um, and, uh,

the platinum members actually get a whiskey keep as well, which is actually inside the lounge. So that is a keep, which actually has like a, um, like a mesh to the front of it and it's lit up. And so you can see what bottles they have in there, in their keep, and they can keep whiskey in there or wine or, or soft drink, whatever, you know, we, uh, we obviously don't mind on that. Um, but,

But they also get four platinum member lunches a year, which are special lunches that we actually host in the lounge itself. And they're just fantastic. They're some of my favorite events. Just a great bunch of guys. We now have about 100 platinum members, but it started out as a very, very small group.

And, um, they are, uh, fantastic days where we have three cigars and we have huge amount of food, a lot of barbecue, American style barbecue stuff as well. Got a great guy, barbecue events, Australia. They look after us. Amazing. And, um,

a little bit of wine, a little bit of whiskey as well. And of course, now we made it kind of a sales event where we have a particular raffle item, which will be something really, really special, hard to get or you can't get. If you purchase a certain amount of boxes of cigars on the day, you can actually...

go into the drawer for that as well. And you get a platinum members jacket, which is a smoking jacket, which is really cool. And, of course, you get a platinum members pin. We follow the formula. The platinum members pin and platinum members card as well. All those things which are really, really important. And then we have platinum plus.

which is, sorry, Platinum doesn't have the jacket. Platinum Plus has the jacket. Again, different card, a couple of other different events as well, which are even more exclusive because there's only a 30 or 40 of those. And finally, we have a membership that we launched this year, which actually, it actually came to me in the mastermind meeting with Dan and he,

It was like I was telling him about all the memberships and all the rest of it and he's asking questions. I'm like, oh yeah, there's a waiting list for platinum, waiting list for platinum plus. And he goes, you know what that means, right? And I go, yeah. And he goes, your membership's too cheap. You need another level. So we just created a Devlin's Black and that's $10,000 a year. Right.

And we wanted to make that really extra special. So we didn't actually market that. I literally came to, I hand selected the people that I wanted in that very, very small group of 15. And I went and invited them individually and they get a beautiful Devlin's black card, which is a metal card. And they get access to things that other people don't get access to. For example,

Teresa, my partner and I, we go to a, we get invited every year to a special cigar dinner, which is in LA, which is hosted by Joe Mantegna, the actor and Andy Garcia and for their foundation. And it's a bit of a who's who of Hollywood. Arnie was there last year. Like it's a, it's a pretty special event and it's a cigar thing. And we've been lucky enough to get invited and we're like, okay, so if you're a Devlin's black member, you are going to get a golden ticket to this event. You get a,

get you away from Australia and your accommodation and all the rest of it. But you get to come with us. And we took our first group in early September and they just had the most incredible time as well, which just cements that whole relationship as well. So you handpicked those people and invited them personally. It wasn't like a, here's a sales letter. What was the close rate? Did you get all of them? Everyone you invited? Yeah, there were two guys, right?

that because of their circumstances, they couldn't. And I know they really, really wanted it, but it was because of their personal circumstances at the time. You're ruining my close rate. Come on, guys. Yeah, yeah. And like the first five, I was like, I am, and I'm batting 100% here. I'm the greatest ever. Yeah, I'm the greatest ever. You know, and we did it. The guys will listen to this podcast and be like, yeah.

I knew what you were doing. But we had these Devlin's Black cards made and I put individual numbers on them. But I actually, before I went and sat down with these people, I had their name written already engraved on the card.

And so, you know, I'm going through my perfect webinar pinch and, and then I, and you get this card and I hand it over and they turn it over and their names on it as well. And look, the guys, the guys were amazing. They just really appreciated being invited to it as well. And, you know, some guys were like almost to tears, you know, like, wow, you've included me in this, which was, which was really, really cool. Cause I,

the truth is they're actually my buddies as well, you know? So it's, um, yeah, but it's great if you can, if you can offer that next level and, and I'm sure you have it with your Atlas group and your other groups as well. So cool. So if somebody cancels or leaves, doesn't re-up, do you take the jacket and the cards and the pins back or they get those forever? No, we, we, uh, we take them back. Do you really? Well,

Well, we, do you know what? Let me take your coat back. Will you store it at Devlin's? Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to be a huge pain to disconnect knowing like, oh man, this is my, and that's what you have to do, right? It's the, it's the pain of disconnect. It's like with the Devlin's black, everyone has their own number. So I am, my number is triple zero.

And then there's 001, 002, 003. I mean, we've never numbered anything like that memberships before. And so, and now what we did is we built a whole new set of whiskey keeps. Teresa actually organized it. They were only actually installed this week. And they're three times the size of the other whiskey keeps. And they're a different color and they're next to each other. And then there's a plaque on there. And everything that we do with the Devlin's Black is all their number.

So it's 00002, you know, and then their surname as well. So the pain of disconnect is do I want to give up 007 or 008 or, you know, all of that as well. So in fact, even at our events, so we actually did something with the Devlin's Black

quite special in that we actually did instead of just doing the events at Devlin's we actually have a private dinner at my house or at our house I should say and they their Teresa had organized that you know they have a steak knife which has got their number and name on it there's a riddle black tasting glass which is a completely blind tasting glass so the glass is completely black and

And it's got their name and their number on it. And, you know, there's a napkin embroidered with their name and their number on it. So just making things ultra special as well. What a cool experience for people. I'm thinking like, obviously...

It's funny because normally when we talk about continuity and memberships, everyone's like, oh, membership site. They think online really easy. Like, I don't know how this would work offline, right? And then as you explain offline, it seems so cool. Like, well, that would never work online. But it's like both these principles work both ways, right? You know, I think when I got into the Dan Candy world before we bought the company back, back, you were in it, right? A GKIC had, there was like what, there's Diamond, Diamond Plus, Gold, Gold Plus, Peak Performers, Titanium, Titanium. Like there's like,

20 different levels. When I got it, I think there was like six or seven still. And I was like, I can't handle all these levels. So we shrunk it down and simplified it. But now we're like starting to reopen different levels. But I think...

I want to make sure people are listening to this. They're not going to be like, oh, well, I don't have a brick and mortar, so I can't do lockers, so it's not going to work. It's like the concept is you create an offer at each level. And like these exclusive things where people like they feel status, they feel excitement, they feel these things to be able to be there. And that's what they're plugging into, right? It's not that it has to be a locker. It's just the concept of how you structure the offer and then how you give status and these things that people don't want to lose. Yeah. And I honestly believe there's not a single business in the world that you can't add a membership to.

So Teresa and I have just acquired a venue, which is going to be a great new hospitality venue, which is not far from Devlin's as well. And there's great, obviously synergies there. It's actually part of it is actually the worst business in the world, which is the restaurant business, right? A hundred percent, the worst business in the world. But if you do it differently and add a membership into that, then that changes the numbers completely.

And so one of the things actually that I'm, this is my this week thing is getting my offer stack right.

Maybe you can workshop that with me. So basically the first part to the membership at this venue, so the venue is called The Embassy. It's going to be opening in February and it has a restaurant at the front. It also has a bar. There's actually three different levels to it and it has a rooftop as well, which would be a whiskey and cigar lounge, which is awesome. And it has some private cellars down underneath it.

which we're calling the symposiums, which are private dining rooms where you're actually in a wine cellar as well.

And so I'm looking for all the, what are all the different parts that I can put as part of an offer stack as well? So we'll do like a wine club to start with as well, where people that love their wine, you know, they'll open the menu. There'll be two different prices on there as well. You know, there'll be the member price, the wine club member price, and then there'll be the normal price, right? And there'll be quite a difference in those prices. So they're like, oh, how do I get that?

Right. Oh, you need to be a member of the wine club. You know, we'll do, we're, we're about to do a founding membership for the embassy where it'll be for probably two or three years. And we'll, we'll where I'm in the middle of creating that stack. I'm trying to work at what to put in and what to leave out, you know, but that just changes the business of the restaurant business, you know, because going back to our model of experience return path and offer, you know,

is we do experience incredibly well so only people that have the service gene will work in this venue you know so they will be automatically engaging with people but how do we get them to consistently come back and that is you must have that systemized return path and that systemized return path must include a membership like that that i think with retail and hospitality um i've

I've got a book coming out. Can I plug it? Yeah, yeah. Let's go for it. Okay, so that framework, the Experience, Return, Path and Offer, the first book is actually on retail and it's called The Two-Legged Stool, Why Your Retail Business is Destined to Fail.

And it's because so many businesses, if they're just concentrating on the offer, which a lot of businesses do, they'll fail in the first 12 to 18 months, right? Because if they don't have the experience and engagement- People come and they'll come back. Exactly, right? Like, ah, what's this? You know, great. You know, they concentrate on the offer. We sell cigars at this price. This is what our store looks like. It's beautifully merchandised all around. That's the offer, right? The experience is the rocket fuel.

that makes people truly engaged, but it's the return path that gives you the rivers of gold.

You know, that is the, yeah, that's the whole thing. So the two-legged stool is, you've probably been to a restaurant before. You had incredible experience. You know, the food was amazing. Maybe the wine list was amazing. You know, the staff were fantastic. On the way out, you said, you know, thank you so much. And the maitre d' of the owner said, yeah, please come again. And like you've never come back. Yeah, two years later, like, let's go back to that place. And then what happens is,

You hear in the newspaper, which is happening a lot in Australia at the moment, I'm sure it is in the United States, much love restaurant closing its doors and

And that's after three years, four years, five years. And that's because the owner's been sitting on this two-legged stool and not wondering every morning whether is it going to be a busy day, is it going to be a busy week, is it going to be a busy month, and business just continually goes up and down like that. But with different systemized return paths, with all kinds of different return paths, which include membership continuity, that completely changes. You can pay your rent now.

It's my goal with the embassy that we actually are making the repayments on the building from our continuity program. So then that changes the whole...

- The whole dynamic.

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Well, it's funny because like you think about every, now every single customer is coming into your,

into your business, walks through the front door. It's like, it's compounding on the continuity over time, right? That's like what I teach in the linchpin. I'm like, if you structure this correctly, like every time you sell something, it's compounding your continuity versus just a one-off sale that you got to go pay Zuckerberg for another click and another one. And you know, the thing that we get into where it gets more and more expensive versus like if one out of 10 of those people turn a continuity member over time, that starts stacking and stacking. And you know, with ClickFunnels, we had that, we got the point, we had a hundred thousand active members. It's just like,

It's insane. The revenue from that we never could have matched in bringing new people in the front door ever. You know what I mean? It's crazy. And that is the true lifetime value, right? That is the thing. I actually took our framework and wanted to know whether I could take it online. So I'm kind of the opposite of- Going back from off to on, yeah. Yeah, right. So I was like, okay.

could I do experience and engagement? So I knew I could do return path and I knew I could do offer, but could I take the experience and engagement online and therefore get the same kind of jet fuel propulsion into my return path? Sorry, I keep hitting the mic. And so I decided to create a completely separate cigar business. So Devlin's is our, is our business. And I,

call it something completely different, create an attractive character out of thin air. A guy by the name of Joe Box was called cigarbox.com.au and the attractive character is this guy called Joe Box. Is it someone you know or is it like a cartoon? No, no, cartoon character. He's really Aussie. G'day, mate. How are you? I'm Joe Box here. And so when we write copy, that's how we write it all, right? Like in g'day, everything's, yeah, how are you, mate? It's kind of Crocodile Hunter meets Cigar Guy, right?

Right. Anyway, so we created this attractive character and then the only, and cause you can't advertise. So you can't advertise cigars. Yeah. Cause it's anywhere. Just Australia in, in definitely in Australia because the tobacco product, right? So it's illegal to advertise. So we couldn't do,

We couldn't drive traffic. And I was not going to use my existing database, right? So because I wanted to be a completely separate business at different price points as well, mainly focused on the East Coast of Australia. So the only thing that we could do was SEO and word of mouth.

So we had to make sure that every person that came in stuck, right? So the first thing that I did was like, okay, how do we change that whole experience? Like you buy something online and there's no human interaction and stuff arrives and all the rest of it. So I created something that I call a lifetime value call. I initially called it a stick call, but...

But basically what it is, is it was a welcome call. So the first time you ordered from Cigarbox, you would actually get a phone call from a team member. And originally it was me being Joe Box and literally just welcomed them to the Cigarbox family.

So welcome to the Cigar Box family. So it literally, I'd call you and you'd answer and I'd say, G'day, is that Russell? And you'd go, yeah. It's Simon Devlin here. Well, I wouldn't say Simon Devlin. I would say it's Joe here from Cigar Box.

Just saw you placed your first order with us and wanted to give you a call and welcome you to the Cigar Box family. Now, it was not an add-to-cart call, which goes against the grain a little. That's plugging the experience part you're missing. Exactly. And then we would just say to them, hey, just to let you know what happens, what's happening, we're packing your beautiful cigars today and we'd always make sure we ship same day.

And we're going to send that out and you're going to get an email letting you know about all of that. And, you know, do you have any questions? And they'll be like, oh, wow, thank you so much for calling. Like I've never got a call before when I've purchased something online. And often they'd have questions and often they would do their own add to cart, but it was completely different.

And then I would say to them, whereabouts are you on your cigar journey? And they might say, oh, look, I'm just starting out. And we'll say, do you want us to send you some fact sheets on cutting and lighting or enjoying your cigar? I've been smoking cigars for a long time. We'd say, hey, do you want us to send you a fact sheet on pairing your beverages with cigars? And they'd go, oh, wow, that's amazing. And then they'd get a follow-up email straight away. And then they would actually go into a 11-email welcome sequence as well.

And when they got their first order, it have a handwritten note in there with a little gift, a cigar cutter as well. Now, just that welcome call, people would write reviews before they even got the product.

Like off the charts. And these reviews, I was like, I don't know if I can use them. It looks like I wrote it myself. And things like, I have never experienced service like this online before. This is old school service, that sort of thing. So then when we started making offers in our return path, like our weekly Ligador, the uptake on it is huge. All because they have a different interaction. And the other thing that happened is,

you don't get as many calls, people calling up saying what's happening with this, what's happening because you've built a level of trust that they haven't felt before. So in

In fact, so much so that one of the other things that we do with that whole experience and engagement is sometimes they call up and they're like, hey, my parcel hasn't arrived. It was sent with Australia Post. I can see that you guys send it. I know it's not your fault, but is there anything you can do? And we were like, yeah, no worries. Let us follow this up. And they might say, oh, I followed up with Australia Post. And they said, if they haven't received it in two weeks, then, you know, call us back. You know, and what we would do is we would offer to resend the entire package. Right.

And generally it's like $300 or $400 worth of cigars. And they'll be like, oh, okay, you just resend the whole thing? And I'm like, yeah, we just resend the whole thing. And when the second package arrives, you let us know and we'll give you a postage to send it back to us. Now, there's a lot of trust there, right? You're trusting that people will send it back. The reason why they send it back is that first welcome call.

Now, what actually happens is this.

the second package always arrives the day after the other one. It's like they kind of push each other out of the system. And then we call them and we say, hey, you can send it back or we'll give you a 10% or 15% discount off the second package and you can keep it. Now, 90% of the time they go, all right, I'll keep it. They'll keep it, right? But that experience and engagement, they have not experienced before and it completely changes the model. And we took that business from literally zero to,

to now doing over a million dollars a year in a couple of years. And now we're adding in the true continuity program, which is our new thing, which is a cigar of the month. So at this point, that on-off, there's no continuity. That's just a straight... Yeah, so we have an offer that we send out every week, which is called the weekly Ligador, which is... Ligador, I mean. So Ligador means master blender. Actually, most people, cigar people don't know that.

It was kind of a name I was looking for a name. Spanish for master blender. It's called Ligador, which is a seven or eight stick offer. And we will throw in a couple of other things with it as well. And it changes every week. And, you know, people, we just send that out and we go deep on the stories behind all the cigars as well. Like not just going, this cigar is like this and it tastes like this. No, we do the storytelling, right? Yeah.

And that just changes everything. So now we are now launching the continuity program, which is called Family of the Leaf. So Joe is always talking about brother of the leaf, you're a brother of the leaf or fellow brother of the leaf or sister of the leaf, right?

Um, so we're creating family of the leaf, which is the, which is the cigar box a month, which you sign up for with three different levels. And, um, and that's launching early next year as well. So that's cool. Do you know the price points will be at those three levels? Yeah. So, um, so we, we need to really finalize it. Um, but I think it will be 197, 297 and 597. That's a monthly or quarterly monthly. People have $597 a month in cigarettes, cigars. Do you know what cigars in Australia are?

crazy expensive like because the tax is really really high like your average cigars you know 50 60 70 dollars really yeah yeah I had no idea yeah huh yeah it's you gotta you gotta really love them but mind you the the average wage in Australia is a lot higher than what's your what's your margin on that or should I say maybe not I don't know

Yeah, it's reasonably healthy. Let's just say that. Well enough that you're in Boise, Idaho hanging out with us today. No, that's fascinating. Okay, so I want to recap a couple of things. Number one, so your three parts you always talk about. Walk through those three things again. Experience and engagement. So we write it as a Venn diagram because they are overlapping circles.

You know, what becomes part of your experience engagement becomes part of your return path, becomes part of your offer. And the bigger you make those circles, the closer they come in together and the faster they spin and throw off cash. You know, so it's experience, return path and offer.

And once you start laying that framework over your business in terms of retail or hospitality, and in fact, a number of my friends who have other businesses, they're like, no, no, mate, this works in everything. But that's what I know. You will just be picking the diamonds out because you realize where you can tweak things. You know, oh, we actually do experience reasonably well here.

But now I know why that person is amazing and that person is not, you know. So we need to find some more of those people. Or, okay, I have great experience and engagement. I have a good offer, but I don't know where my customers are coming from, you know. So, okay, I need to put a membership in it, you know. So that's the other thing too. I'm always saying to people, don't think subscription.

Think membership. There's a difference. You know, you can subscribe to something and turn it on and off. But with a membership, the pain of disconnect is greater because you're actually got to be part of something. So we actually have...

we actually have something called the lifetime value pyramid. So the idea is obviously the money is in the list, right? But it's actually, the money is actually not in the list. It's in your relationship to the list. Experience and engagement is what changes that. So at the top, we have customer and client. So at the top, we have list, which is really cold. No one wants to say like, hey, Russell, he's on my list. Let me introduce him. Customer and client.

then we have herd, then we have tribe, then we have community, and finally we have the richest vein, which is what we call BFMs, which is business family members. So you're part of the ClickFunnels family. You're part of the magnetic marketing family. And it's where they...

not only feel like that, but they're treated like that as well. It's where they identify like that. I mean, your funnel hackers, they're your BFMs. And they're the most hyper responsive to your offer is where you could get them into BFMs. And it's the experience engagement circle that pushes them down that lifetime value pyramid. You want to get them all to be BFMs as well. So that's the...

I love it. So, so powerful. And I think it's really cool to see how you did it in a, in a local business. And then now how you do it on the online. I think a lot of people online, same thing. Like, how do I, how do I create an experience? They're buying them through a funnel and then we ship them something, you know, just the way you took that and weave that in is really a unique way to look at it too, for everyone, which is awesome. Yeah. I said to a, a mate of mine, he had a purely online, actually a guy that I met had a purely online business. And I asked him and it was, it was reasonably sizable. I said, how many people do you have in customer service?

And he said, I have four. And I said, what are they doing? He's like, mainly answered calls. What's happening with this? How's that feel? You know, all the rest of it. And I said, oh, how quickly do you ship? And he's like, oh, we ship within two or three days. And I'm like, okay, take your two best customer service people and just have them call every single person on their first order and do this lifetime value call, this welcome call.

And then fire the other two people. Solve all your problems. Because you don't need them anymore. Because you're not going to get the inbound. Because they're like, oh, wow, like I already know what's happening. You know, plus I said, get all your people, put them into your warehouse and get to shipping same day. People think that Amazon win because of price. It's not. Amazon worked out.

And they actually got it from really the company that bought Zappos, but they worked out they needed experience and engagement. But the best way for them to do that was to get the product to someone as quickly as possible and make a no questions returns policy. They were the two things that actually matter more than price.

And, you know, that makes, so people don't need to compete on price all the time. They just need to compete on customer service and speed of delivery. That's so cool. That's it.

well, dude, you gave me like 25 ideas for myself. So I'm actually really, really excited. I hope everyone who's been listening to this gets ideas. Again, we have so many people who are online businesses. I think the things that you're doing offline will help them. But I think also there's a lot of, we have a lot of offline businesses, right? I don't understand these funnel things. How could it possibly work for me? And I think you showed kind of both sides of that, which is super fascinating. So I appreciate you coming in Sharon. Uh, what is the book out live? Is it live already? So, uh, the book officially comes out in February. Um,

It's if you go to simondevlin.com forward slash book or you can actually go to the twoleggedstoolbook.com, either one.

you can start ordering a pre-copy. And if they're down in Perth, they can order some cigars and come to the shop and upgrade to the top level of membership. If you make the little flight out of the 30 hours to get cigars, I promise you it'll be completely worth it. And if you're in Australia, and I'm sure there are so many ClickFunnels people in Australia as well,

Yeah. We're in, we're in Hay Street, Subiaco and the new venue opens up also, you know, the February, which is called the embassy and that's on Rockabee road. Very cool. Are you ever going to do the online business here in the States as well? Or are you keeping it local to Australia? Cause the laws and regulations. Yeah. The laws and regulations. Actually what I'm working to now in the States is why I'm coming here is, is really the coaching information business. I,

I worked out that framework and I worked out how badly it is needed in retail and hospitality. And I really came to the Renegade Millionaire Masterminds to work out how I was going to do that in Australia. And it was actually Dan and Darcy and Marty that actually said to me, hey, don't do it in Australia. Come and do it here. So I'm partnering with some people here, Kim Walsh Phillips and

and hopefully we're going to teach that framework here and find millions of people with service genes and give them another boost in life as well as we teach them what their superpower is and yeah and have another great business and have a lot of fun doing it which I think is my calling it could America more often so yeah second home Boise absolutely my second time here and I love it awesome I appreciate being here and that was an awesome episode so thanks so much thank you really appreciate it cheers