Need a creative strategy to promote your book and build trust with your audience? In this episode, Merrill Chandler joins Juliet Clark to discuss free shipping book funnels and other strategies that will help you do just that! Merrill is a high-performance business coach at Get Fundable and the author of The New F* Word. Tune in as he gives practical, actionable tips to get you engaged with your market.

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Using Free Shipping Book Funnels To Build Trust With Merrill Chandler

We have Merrill Chandler as promised. A little bit of background, Merrill has a very successful book called The New F* Word. The F word is not what you think it is. He talks about being fundable and business funding. I want to talk a little bit about what they do with the book shipping funnel. Let’s jump into that and we will go to a couple of different ways that you distribute this book that is pretty amazing. The first is your free shipping book funnel. Tell us about that because you have a bump on that that makes it very worthwhile for them to do.

It’s free plus shipping. It’s popular among direct marketing and internet marketing circles, where we will be at an event or we will be in our bootcamp, and we will say, “The deep dive on this section which I can’t go into it right now, but go to GetFundableBook.com and get your free copy of the book.” When they fill out the information, they are paying for shipping. It’s $8.77 for shipping.

Right after they hit submit, it takes them to a bonus bump. For $37, there are five eBooks, each one of them worth the $37 alone, that’s targeted on auto loan purchasing and mortgage purchasing. They get an audio version of the book. That’s an MP4, so they can listen to it while they are working out or driving, or otherwise, and all of those bonuses come in and they say, “I would like that bonus for $37 or more.” We make $3 to $4 per book on shipping.

That’s more than I make in other places if I direct publishing or otherwise. I would make more money shipping it, but I do have to buy inventory and assign somebody to ship it out. There are some downsides, but I make money on the shipping even with all those costs involved. I profit by the cost of the lead for them to put in their email and contact information. That’s the first introduction they have to our organization. If they buy the bonus bump and we are at 48% of our buyers buy the next level. At that level, we are wildly profitable because it’s all electronic products. They get an email with the downloads. “Here’s your audio files and eBooks.”

We are working on a discount to our bootcamp in the bonus bump. “Including those bonus bumps a 10% or 20% discount to our bootcamp.” We are looking at ways to split test and see what creates the most drops because our end game or the foundational brick of our business is our bootcamp attendees. That’s how it works for us and it’s profitable right out of the gate and 50% of the time wildly profitable right after we set up the funnels, etc.

I do want to share it sounds like he does his a little bit differently. When we set up the free shipping book funnels, it’s the book’s wholesale price plus shipping. That shipping is standardized for everybody. If you are shipping from California, it’s $3. If you are shipping from New York, it might be $6, but there’s still profit in there. It just matters where you are shipping it to. It’s not just a standard $4 shipping. The next piece of this and this is where you guys have such brilliance. When you go out and you speak. I have watched it at Aaron Young’s event, a room of about 100 people, and 95% of them buy your bootcamp.

It’s true. Once we create the value and show people what they are going to get, there’s a high conversion rate for our bootcamp. We announced that it was $97, which is a one-time viewing. Once they get to the bootcamp registration page, they can get recordings and other bonuses in a bonus bump for $197. By 6 to 1, our most popular ticket event price is $197. There’s a $29 a month subscription where they get to meet with me in our tribe meetings twice a week.

I spend an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays and for $29 a month, by the way, including that $29, they can attend as many bootcamps as they like. They get to bring their fundability questions and lender questions and all that stuff to these Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it’s an open forum and we take Q&A for the hour. It’s a ride. It’s my favorite two hours of the week.

From a marketing standpoint, here is the brilliance of what you guys do. I’m not nearly as good as Brad. What’s brilliant about this is he’s not going out from the stage and selling $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000 programs. He’s selling something simple, $97 or $197. I have been in his program. Here’s why this is brilliant when you do the $29 subscription. My experience was you put us in this Facebook group, you run the workshop, and people are blown away by the amount of fabulous content.

The New F* Word

What happened for me was and a couple of other people I talked to was, “I could do that myself.” The following month, it popped up and I realized, 30 days later, I had not done a thing, but I wanted this business credit. I might take a couple, “I’m going to try this and that,” which I tried a few of your things, and they worked. It was that instant gratification. When you and I started working together, it was because I had gotten to that point where I was like, “I can’t do this on my own. This is super time-consuming.”

You would love to be able to do it on your own. The parts themselves cost $150, but the know-how, knowledge, and expertise are highly valuable. I encourage people. That’s why the Funding Hackers twice a week. Bring your questions. I will answer your questions to the degree that I can without getting under the hood and knowing every little thing that I need to know in order to give you that answer.

I’m very generous with offers. Nobody feels like I’m holding something back. It’s simply, “You want to know if you close that low-value credit card?” I can’t tell you because there are eleven variables and I need to know every one of them in relation to your profile to give you an answer. That’s why we have customized coaching solutions, but nobody feels like I’m holding things back from them.

The real brilliance of it is you understand that you have a product that requires trust. There’s a lot of knowledge and you approach this from the standpoint of these baby steps that build trust to get people into those bigger programs. I love the way you do that in that sense because nobody feels like, “I spent $4,000 and I did not get anything.”

I have to admit, I was the worst student. I will be transparent about something else. The first call I had, he looked over my work and said, “How are you going to pay this debt?” I walked away feeling bad, but for me, that’s my motivator. “I got to do something.” That transparency was good, but a minimal student and I got my first business credit card. That is a testament to what you do that I did not have the bandwidth because we grew so fast during COVID, but doing those principal things that I learned, I was able to take that first step. Remember that as you are doing it. If I recall correctly, you sold over 2,000 books before we even published your book.

Correct. We had a huge pre-sale and that’s where we introduced the free plus shipping. “Get your free book,” and they pre-registered. We had already pulled the book, but we did a launch party for the digital product. We have over 50 reviews now, so we hit the best seller in five categories and we even beat Dave Ramsey in his marketplace and Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich for that period. I was like, “I will take it.”

Merrill’s goal has never been to be a big seller on the platforms, but surprisingly, he consistently sells books every month. Since we have the extended distribution, I now get a market insights report and he is never on it. That means that his sales, metadata and social media is good. He’s the only author I have. I have one other rock star who’s on the edge of dropping off that, but everything that they do keeps it off of those reports that say, “Could do more,” and one of the keys on the report is 25 or more reviews. That’s amazing that you keep asking and you do what you are supposed to do.

That is one thing that we do in the bootcamp. The cool thing is we can put the things in our book because we are in charge of shipping. We put in little specials. We have a couple of toss-ins that say, “Help the shift to the power to borrowers. Take a picture up a tag Get Fundable and we will send you a t-shirt.” We send them a t-shirt, so we get to put this in the book and we put in a $1 million bill.

That reminds them that our goal is $1 million in business lines of credit or up to because some people don’t need that much. We get to remind them, “We want a relationship with you and we are going to give you some swag if you show them holding the book in our social.” Maybe that’s what the platforms are measuring, but we have these all the time where people are like, “I have got the book. I love the book,” or they are doing page-turning boomerangs. It opens and closes. Brad is a genius and we stay in front of our tribe over and over.

You have the t-shirt, courses, and what else do you guys do to sell books? Brad got this great mind for getting things out there.

The principle is know, like and trust. How do we get them to know and like us? It’s creative, fun, and the million-dollar bills, my personality in the bootcamp or my personality in the book. They like us because I’m very vulnerable about my experience. I developed fundability optimization in prison. The story is in the book. Get them to know and like you. Our goal was to engage them at every trust level and price point. There’s free, $8, $43, $97 and $197. We are working on an interim one that’s going to be $495 before we jump to coaching, so know, like and trust.

The trust piece comes when you give them operational Intel that they implement and go, “Just like you. It worked. What happened?” They must know what they are talking about. I don’t care if our sales cycle is a year or if it’s a day. I don’t know how long it takes them to trust us. Our social, we are always delivering free to on Get Fundable, the Facebook page is free content. We are always doing news updates. What are lenders happening? What’s going on in the marketplace?

People can remote view for months or years. Every once in a while, somebody would be like, “I have been following you for years and I’m ready to go.” They will go into coaching, know, like and trust. You got to develop relationships with them without expectation of return. Give them a step ladder. My philosophy is if you are in this to make money, you got your bass-ackwards. You got the cart before the horse. Do you have a mission and a message? Get on point with your mission and your message and then frame it, so people will know, like and trust you, then they will pay you.

This was not part of this episode, but this is so true because there are so many programs out there that focus on, “Let’s build your revenue,” and then people are disappointed. They don’t understand the pieces about you are visible or you talk to people. A click is not a relationship. I don’t know how many times I can tell my people that you have to talk to people without the expectation of a sale. I do that on all of our calls. I would put forward facts. “This is a comparison. I’m happy to read your contract from other publishers and tell you what’s in there, good, bad and ugly.” That’s what brings me a lot of business is I don’t go into any call with that expectation. It’s just, “How can I help?”

Once that mind flipped because I started out with all these people that were like, “You need digital and you need this and that.” Once I said, “I don’t need any of that. It’s me they are buying.” All of that shifted. You have to realize that it’s you they are buying. In the case of Mr. Chandler, I’m going to mention one of the unique things that gave me such a chuckle. He spent a summer in the hammock at lunchtime in his backyard reading his book on Facebook, which was hilarious because you are not Mr. Rogers.

I read for free to my audience. Anybody who wanted to watch those, I read the entire book online on Mondays with Merrill or it was something like that. I literally read it and it was dramatized. If you listen to my audio and it’s done with my mic, I got a pretty nice setup here, but I would comment. I’m like, “This is so important. What I’m going to read right now?” It is not just me reading the book. It’s me commenting on my own book. I did the same and that’s what triggered the idea. “How do we read this to the audience?” That they are like, “I want to copy of this, so I can study it, but what I heard out of two chapters was amazing. Let me buy it.”

Free Shipping Book Funnels: The trust piece comes when you give them operational intel that they implement.

The Good Book says, “Cast your bread upon the waters. It will return sevenfold.” This is no joke. Get them to know, like and trust you by serving, giving and solving their problems at every single step. Brad has a concept that he’s learned from other giants, but he’s the one who taught it to me, which is, “What is the next thing?” What’s the next thing they need? Not fourteen things.

Once you go to my bootcamp, “What’s the next thing you need?” It’s some sort of solution. There were some holes in our that we could offer at a lower price point before they had to jump up to coaching. We are giving everybody something that they can engage on, depending on their level of trust and their price point.

Thank you so much for taking the time with us to share because it’s important for people to understand the out-of-the-box thinking that they can do with their book.

Good luck, everybody. Juliet is a superstar. I adore her and the program we went through with her was amazing. She coached me on how to become a national bestseller. The new version of the book that I have says, “Amazon Best Seller.” Thank you to you, Juliet.

You should have this thing. “I beat Dave Ramsey.” For reference, before we go, if people want to see what you are doing with all of this, how do they get to your workshop if they want to purchase it and go through it?

Go to GetFundableBook.com and GetFundableBootcamp.com. Read the reviews as an entrepreneur, you are going to see people like yourself who were blown away at getting business lines of credit, establishing a business that’s fundable, but those are the two big places where you can see how our magic happens. Take screenshots of what we are doing. Thank you, Juliet, for having me on.

Important Links

• The New F* Word
• GetFundableBootcamp.com
• Funding Hackers – Facebook Group
• Think and Grow Rich
• Get Fundable – Facebook Page
• The Good Book

About Merrill Chandler

Over 25 years ago, Merrill Chandler—a personal and business credit pioneer and co-founder of Lexington Law Firm—became dissatisfied with the ineffective results of credit repair. Leveraging his extensive knowledge of credit profiles and lender underwriting requirements, he developed a process that could ‘optimize’ personal and business credit profiles AND improve a borrower’s “fundability.” He founded CreditSense to deliver this revolutionary technology to real estate investors, business owners, and entrepreneurs nationwide. Merrill has helped thousands of borrowers become more FUNDABLE and help them access the capital they need to fulfill their financial dreams.

In 2016 he and his executive team met with FICO® CEO Will Lansing to review the impact CreditSense optimization technology was having on borrower fundability. As a result of that meeting, Merrill was authorized to meet with the personal and business FICO® score development teams. After signing an NDA, Merrill was able to ask the FICO® developers 100 optimization questions to better his ability to help borrowers accomplish their funding goals.

What he shares in his presentations and web classes will radically transform what you believe about funding and your ability to get the funding you need to accomplish YOUR funding goals.

Through superior client relations, Merrill and his team have maintained an A+ Better Business Bureau rating for over 20 years.

Merrill is a compelling and knowledgeable keynote speaker and has addressed real estate investment conferences and businesses forums around the country where he has delivered his popular fundability optimization technology. Adventurous and passionate, he is an extreme sports enthusiast and enjoys exploring the world.