How to Get More Leads: Pick One Strategy and Master It

All right. Here we go. Every dollar you’re ever going to make in business will start as a lead. So lead generation is crucial if you want to make money as an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or freelancer. But what’s working right now? What’s the best way to get leads for your business? Well, I’m going to help you with that in this episode of The Digital Nomad Entrepreneur.

Now that’s me. I’m Eric. I’m a full time digital nomad entrepreneur traveling around the world with my wife and four kids and having an amazing experience. Are four teenage kids? Well, almost all four. One of them is just about to turn 12. But we’ve got some older kids, and we’re just having a great time introducing them to different cultures and countries, exploring with them, spending a lot of very intense time together. It’s been an amazing experience, and we’re able to do it and continue to do it because we have a business that supports us. We bring in leads. And so having these leads come in is super important.

Now, lead generation is one of five business processes you’ve got to have nailed for your business to succeed. In episode three of my podcast, I unpack the digital business engine, the five systems you’ve got to have in place to really get a growing business. Those five are leadership, lead generation, lead conversion, collecting and managing money, and project management. When you get all five of those working, and then you start improving each one, your business will grow through the six stages of business.

The six stages of business: the first stage is ideation, the dreaming phase. The second phase is the weekend warrior phase, where you’re learning and experimenting and trying, starting that side hustle while you still have the 9 to 5. The third stage is all in. You ditch the 9 to 5, you’re out there, it’s all in, it’s all on you. This is 100% the way you’re going to make a living. Then we go to Team Builder, and we start building a team around us, developing people to work for us and as part of our team. Then we move into C-suite, where we’re now leading our frontline team through a layer of other leaders. And finally, we move into legacy.

Now, that’s the typical journey. Not every business is going to go through that process. But from my experience, the entrepreneur that tends to listen to this type of podcast, running a business, leading a business in the digital space, tends to go through those six stages the majority of the time. Some of them stop at all in. Some of them stop at Team Builder. But there is a pathway to go further for those of us who want to. What does stay true for all businesses are the five systems: leadership, lead gen, lead conversion, collecting and managing money, and project management.

Now today, I want to focus a little bit on what’s working right now. What’s the best approach, the best way to get leads in 2024? And I’m going to say this isn’t only the best way to get leads in 2024, this is the best way to get leads in 2024 and beyond.

Now, I know this is of interest to a lot of people. One of my best performing lead magnets out there in the world is on FinallyLeads.com. FinallyLeads.com. It’s five strategies for 30 leads in 30 days, and that gets downloaded on a very regular, consistent basis by new people because they’re very interested in this. We all realize we need leads. We all realize we need leads.

Now, unfortunately, a lot of people focus just on that, on leads. But leads is just one of the first five metrics that really make a difference. I’m not going to get into a lot of detail on this in this episode. I’ve got seven specific points to make to help you with lead gen in 2024. But a lot of people think the success of business is more leads, more leads, more leads, more leads.

We just the other day, I was working with one of my one on one coaching clients, and I was sharing my screen. I showed him an Excel spreadsheet, and we walked through his numbers. We put in his five core numbers. The number of leads he’s averaging per month, that’s one. The average number of sales he’s making per month from those leads, so that’s his lead conversion. Then the third number we looked at was the average sale, what is the average contract worth to him. Then the next number we looked at was his margins, what are the profit margins he’s making. When we looked at all of these numbers across the board and multiplied them out, if we wanted to double his profit, doubling his leads didn’t do that. But I showed him if he just made a 15% increase, 15%, in each of the metrics across the board, he would double his revenue.

So it’s not just about leads. I would propose that for most people, starting at the far end of the equation is best, where you’re really focused on your margins, and then your average sale amount, and then on the way back to leads. But it still does start with a lead. You’re going to have to have a system for lead conversion, collecting and managing money, delivering, project management, where you’re controlling margins and profits and repeat business because of the quality of work you’re doing. These systems all work together to really grow a business. It’s why you can’t just stay focused on one of them too many times. We think leads is the answer. It is just a small part of the equation.

All right, so what are seven ways to get more leads by the end of the year? I’m recording this in June of 2024, so I’ll say, what’s the best way to get more leads? Not just in 2024, but really, very quickly, almost right away, you’ll start to see a difference. I would say definitely, if you follow these seven things for the next 3 to 6 months, you’re going to be blown away with how many more leads you’re getting and how much better you’re doing in lead conversion. So what are the seven things? Here are the seven ways to get more leads.

Number one: stop changing your plans. Stop changing tactics. Stop changing strategies. Have a strategy and go for it. There are so many people I talk to who’ve tried Facebook ads, and then they see, then they try cold emailing, then they try cold calling. What happens is they listen to each of these different experts that are out there that have their way of generating leads, and they see an ad for it, they hear a person talk on a podcast. This person gives these amazing results that they get through their ads, or through their outbound marketing, or through their content strategy. So what a lot of specialists, solo producers, and freelancers try to do is they try this thing and they try that thing. And as soon as it doesn’t get the exact results they want right away, they buy into a program on Monday, and by Friday they’re ready to jump onto the next thing.

Now, I’m exaggerating that a little bit, but not a whole lot. It’s unbelievable to me how many people change their strategy. I’m just going to tell you right now, the honest to goodness truth for you is this: almost all, the vast majority, of the, I’m using air quotes, gurus, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but the experts online that have plans, have courses, have masterminds, have all of the stuff. They’re like, oh, we’re going to teach you to generate leads with Facebook ads. Or maybe you’re seeing ads for something like a lead source, or somebody emails you and they guarantee you so many appointments a week, whatever that is.

You know me, I am a huge proponent, especially if you haven’t left your passport country and you’re just starting out, and you’re in that dreaming or weekend warrior or all in stage. Nothing beats local networking and marketing. I mean, there’s just, that’s the thing. And if you’re not going to be location independent, if you’re not going to move around, I just love that strategy. But the thing is, with all of these strategies out there, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. What happens is you choose something and you do it half heartedly. You do it part way, you just kind of dabble in it, and it doesn’t work. So you go and try the next one.

So let me tell you something. Stop looking for the easy road to money. There is no easy road to money, my friend. It takes work. And you’re not having success because you’re not sticking to it. You keep changing plans. So the first way to get more leads in 2024 is pick a plan and stick to it. And honestly, it doesn’t matter which one you pick. Choose one that you like, choose one that you know you can do for the foreseeable future, and commit to it. Stick to it. Stop looking at others. If the grass is greener on the other side, they have a higher water bill. So stop looking over at what other people are doing and comparing yourself to them or the results they’re getting. Comparison robs you of your joy.

Pick a strategy and become an expert at it. I mean an expert at it. If you’re going to do Facebook ads, learn the ins and outs of the system. Learn Ads Manager. Learn all the business tools and suites and how every little bit of it works. There’s a lot of technical jargon in there. You have to become an expert at every part of a lead gen strategy. If you think you’re going to go in there and just drop an ad next week and boom, that’s it, you’re going to start getting leads, you’re fooling yourself. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work that way.

You have to master it, and once you’ve got it so honed in that it’s on autopilot and it doesn’t need your attention, then you can move on to a new strategy and add on a layer if you want to. But right now, stop changing plans. You’ll get better results consistently doing one thing than you’ll get inconsistently doing five things, I guarantee you.

And if you’re sitting there thinking maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, well, I’ll just ask this: has what you’ve been doing been working for you? Probably not, or you wouldn’t be listening to this episode right now. Maybe you haven’t even started yet, and you’re like, dude, I don’t know, it’s scary to start. Well, you’ve saved yourself all kinds of headaches. Just pick a plan and stick with it. Stop trying to find the perfect way, the best way. The perfect and best way is what you choose, what aligns with your vision, your mission, your core values, your ethics. Just pick it and stick to it.

Number two: do less with more. Do less with more. Don’t try to do seven things. Don’t even try to do two things. Do less with more focus. For my digital marketing agency, we have a singular strategy, and we stick to that. Every Friday, when we have our leadership team meeting, we talk about that one strategy, and we look at how we can make it better, what we can tweak, what we can do to get a better result.

Too many people, they’ll start something, and again this kind of goes back to number one, instead of tweaking it and making it a little better, they try another thing and another thing. To find success in your lead gen, do less with more focus. If you’re going to have a YouTube channel, then you need to be an expert on the YouTube Creator Studio. You need to know every single button, every single setting. You need to study it, know it. You need to be an expert on the whole platform. Most people just start a YouTube channel and they know just enough to post a video, and they’re missing out on maximizing all of the possibilities and potential because they’re trying to do too many things. They don’t have focus. So to get more leads this year, do less things with more focus on the thing you choose.

Number three: if it doesn’t work, tweak the system. Don’t start something new. Now, you might be thinking, how is this different than number one? Number one, I said stop changing your plans. Well, this is kind of the other side of the same coin. If you’re not going to change plans, and you’re going to stick with doing less with more focus, well, you’re going to have to tweak. And I’m telling you right now, every sustained business challenge you have is going to be a systems challenge. So always be tweaking the system. Don’t think it’s the strategy that’s the problem. Don’t think it’s the people that’s the problem. It’s human nature. It’s always going to be a systems issue, and so you have to tweak the system.

Now, the thing is, one of the reasons we’re attracted to new things is because new creates momentum, which is really what we want. At the end of the day, we all want momentum in our business. But new isn’t the only way to create momentum. In fact, the best way to create momentum is to be new and improved, to constantly be making improvements to your system, not a whole new thing. Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater and starting all over new. Making just one part of your system a little bit different, a little improved. A new way to think about it, a new approach to it. And you keep tweaking. So you want more results: stop changing plans, do less with more, and make tweaks to the system. Focus on the system.

Number four of the seven tips I’ve got for you for more leads this year, actually, before I share that, I want to quickly share this week’s featured resource. This week’s featured resource is Open Phone, and very specifically, Open Phone’s missed call text back feature. I absolutely think this is amazing. For a very low cost, a few bucks, you can have a separate phone line for your business that is an app on your phone. I like this as a digital nomad because it automatically works wherever I am in the world, because it’s solely voice over internet. It works great. I’ve never had anybody complain about the call quality when I’m on the phone with them, whether I’m in Istanbul, Prague, Peru, or Costa Rica, doesn’t matter. I’ve got my number, and people come right to it.

You can do all kinds of things with Open Phone. You can port an existing number, or you can get a new number. But one of the features in there, one of the settings, is you can set up this call text back. If somebody calls your phone, you can actually set up two different versions of this, and I’ve got both of these set up for mine. If somebody calls during our business hours and I can’t answer, I let them know I’m currently in a meeting, which is about the only reason I wouldn’t answer my phone. I use my phone as my webcam. So if somebody calls and it can’t come through because I’m on a Zoom call, I have an automated text message: “Thanks for reaching out. I’m in a meeting. How can I help?” That text message goes to them. So if somebody is calling me and I didn’t answer, and they’re thinking about calling one of my competitors, right away they’re getting a text back, and I’m saving that opportunity.

If the call comes in during my off business hours, then I let them know: “Hey, thanks for reaching out. Sorry I wasn’t able to take your call. I’m currently off right now. I’ll be back in touch with you as soon as I can. Did you have a specific question?” That goes out to people during off hours. This is an amazing feature, especially if you’re a solopreneur or a freelancer, have a small team, and the phone calls are primarily coming in to you. You’ve got to check out DNEPodcast.com/openphone. Again, DNEPodcast.com/openphone. I’ll put a link in the show notes. You’re going to get savings using that. They’ve got a special offer for my listeners. So go to DNEPodcast.com/openphone, and that’ll redirect you right to the page with the special offer. But you can also learn more about all of the features of Open Phone there. I would strongly encourage you to check it out. It works so much better than Google Voice. Even if I change SIM cards and change my number on my phone or in my WhatsApp, this phone number still works. Definitely worth checking out.

All right, so back to the seven tips I’ve got for you for getting more leads in 2024. Number four: be patient. Be patient. Stop chasing short term gain at the expense of long term success. Lead generation takes time to get honed in. You’ve got to take the time, you’ve got to do the work. It costs money to acquire new clients. It just is. There’s no way about it. You are not going to acquire new leads and convert them into customers for nothing. It doesn’t ever happen. Never. So you’ve got to be patient. Do the work. That’s number four.

Number five: understand the principle behind the practice before you change anything. Now, if you’ve been a listener to the show for a while, you know I end every single episode with a leadership tip, because your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. And so I want to help you lead better, because the better you lead, the better your business will be. Better results. It’s just that simple. Better leadership, better results.

One of the leadership axioms I’ve shared before, this is actually one of the core values of my company, for my team, is the principle behind the practice. And we use this regularly. What it means is when you sign up for one of these programs, you decide to sign up for somebody’s program, or learn from somebody, and they tell you to do something a certain way, don’t change it. Just do it until you understand exactly why it’s working. What’s the principle behind the practice? Why are they doing it that way? What universal truth is at play that’s making that thing work? Once you understand the principle behind why it’s working, then you can contextualize it for you, and not break it.

I’ve seen this even with stuff inside the Lead Factory, which is a membership, specifically teaching lead generation. It’s the only thing inside the Lead Factory, and I only open enrollment for that once a year. So enrollment is most likely closed right now. The best way to find out when it opens is go to FinallyLeads.com and download the five strategies for 30 leads in 30 days, or you can download the Remote Success Bundle on DNEPodcast.com. It doesn’t matter which of the lead magnets you download, you’ll learn when the Lead Factory opens up.

But inside the Lead Factory, I’ve had people come in and start working through it, and six, seven, eight weeks in, they’re like, Eric, this didn’t work, this didn’t work. And I’m like, hey, well, let’s get on a call. Let’s get on Zoom and find out. And I’ll say, show me what you did. And as they show me, I’ll say, wait a second, that’s not what I said to do. I said to do it this way. Well, yeah, but I was just thinking, I don’t know. And I’m like, okay, well, that’s why you didn’t get results. You broke the whole thing. And here’s why. And once I explain why I said to do something a certain way, every single time they change it, they get poor results. A hundred percent of the time. So you have to understand the principle behind the practice before you change anything in any program that you sign up for, mine or anybody else’s. I’m not even advocating for you to sign up for mine. Whoever you follow for their system, for lead gen, don’t change it until you fully understand the principle behind the practice.

Number six: if you don’t want to do cold calling, don’t. If you don’t want to do Facebook ads, don’t. It’s your business. Don’t let somebody out there tell you that this way or that way is going to get you more results. There’s no possible way one person, or not just one person, but there’s a group of people out there that teach cold calling and cold emailing, and they swear up one side and down the other, and they have all this social proof that it gets amazing results. And then you have people who run social media ads, and they get amazing results too. The thing is, both are true. Both are true. So just choose one of those, or one of the other multitude of ways out there to bring in leads, whatever that looks like for you. You’ve just got to pick one and do it.

Now, there are some foundations at play under all of those, for sure, that you’ve got to have in place so you don’t miss opportunities and stuff like that. You want to make sure you have your profit margins dialed in. All of that. Because I’m telling you, if you’re not making your profit, if you’re selling watermelons and you’re losing fifty cents per watermelon, a bigger truck isn’t going to make you money. It’s just going to be a bigger truck that you drive to bankruptcy faster. So you have to have all five business systems in place. Collecting and managing money is how you’ve budgeted and ensured you’ve done your cost calculations. If you haven’t done that right, then doing lead generation is probably a really dumb idea, to be honest, because you don’t know if you’re going to make any actual money or not. So you’ve got to have these systems in place. But here’s the thing: it’s your business, you choose the strategy you want.

I’ve had people I’ve talked to who say, I don’t want to do cold calling. Well, then why are you doing it? Well, I heard somebody say, I listened to one person, he said make 100 calls a day. Make 100 calls a day. Okay, is every business out there making 100 cold calls a day? Well, that’s obviously not the only way to make leads. So the best way to make leads is pick a way that you’re passionate about. Pick the system that you love. Now again, like I said earlier, once you get that honed in, get that firing on all cylinders, get that set up in a way that it’s operating without you, and it can go weeks without you touching it, then by all means, add another strategy on top of that. But don’t add the other strategy until you get the first strategy honed in perfectly. It’s got to be dialed in. So that was number six. If you don’t want to do it, don’t. Just choose the one that you want.

Number seven: if someone tries to sell you something using a method they didn’t use to reach you, don’t buy it. All right, I have seen this. There’s this YouTube commercial that every so often I see, and the guy starts out, you’ve seen it, and the guy starts out: every business owner knows that explainer videos are the best way to make sales online. The guy’s not using an explainer video. Totally cracks me up. If the explainer video was the best way, then you would be using that.

There’s a guy that says he brings in leads using this video sales letter, and you never have to run ads. Well, you know how I just saw his thing? By an ad that he just ran. Well, if it works so well and you don’t have to run ads, why are you running ads? Okay, obviously ads do work. Ads do add to it. And I can’t trust you now because you’ve said such a foolish thing. If someone tries to sell you something using a method they didn’t use to reach you, don’t buy it. The best person to buy Facebook ads or retargeting ads from is the person that captures you with a successful ad. The best person to follow for cold emailing is the person whose email jumps out and captures you. So you be the first guinea pig. If it worked on you, it might be worth learning.

All right, now before I wrap up with this week’s leadership tip of the week, do me a favor. Do all the nice things: leave a review, subscribe, rate, we would really appreciate it. I mean, the world to me.

Now, real quickly, recapping. I know that you came here and you saw the title, The Best Way to Get Leads in 2024, and you were like, oh, he’s going to tell me which strategy to choose. I’m telling you right now, here’s the strategy to choose: the one that you want, the one that you like, and the one that you’ll stick with. Choose it. Just choose it. I don’t care what it is, it’s going to work if you become an expert at it, if you focus on it, if you stop changing your plans and jumping from one idea to the next. In this thing, lead yourself. Be self disciplined. Have the self control to say, I’m not going to do something else. This is my method, and become an expert at it. By the way, once you’re done with that, you can then turn around and get paid to teach people how to do it. Just a bonus little idea there. But you can’t teach somebody if you haven’t become an expert at it yourself. Become an expert at one thing.

So what’s this week’s leadership tip of the week? Management is not leadership. I’ll say it again: management is not leadership. If you are trying to manage a team, you are not leading a team. There is a difference between leadership and management.

If you find yourself being an accidental leader, someone who didn’t plan to have a team but now you do, and you’re trying to manage them and you’re not happy with the results, and you’re frustrated because maybe you keep trying to hire people and you don’t seem to hire the right people, and you’re bringing people on and they’re just not lasting, and you’ve got all these things. I’m telling you again, it’s not a person issue and it’s not a human nature issue. It’s a systems issue.

I want to invite you, if that is you, if you’re struggling with leading a team, figuring out how to hire a team, reach out to me. I’ve got a one time coaching roadmap where I can help you put together a staff recruitment, onboarding, and leadership plan. A system that is going to work. I have literally hired and led hundreds of people all through my career. I used to be a camp director, and every summer I would hire summer staff, and I learned leadership in the trenches. I’ve been in all kinds of leadership positions. I have a team now that I lead, and we just don’t have turnover on my team. We don’t have flakes on my team. These are hard workers. This didn’t happen by accident. I have a system that works to bring in winners every single time, and to develop them and grow them up and keep them, and get amazing results out of them, and enjoy working with each other.

Management is not leadership. If you’re trying to manage people, that’s not a great way to go. What’s the difference between management and leadership? Management focuses on keeping things the same. Management wants the status quo. Management is about the checklist, the standard operating procedures, getting this done, meeting deadlines. That’s management. Who’s got this task, who’s doing that task, is this task getting done on time, that’s management. You are managing what’s happening.

Leaders are different. Leaders are looking out and saying, where do we have a problem, where do we have a bottleneck, how can we fix this, how can I help you work more efficiently, where can we remove a barrier, what’s a new skill you can learn, what’s your key result area, what are we really measuring, what results. A leader lets everyone on their team clearly know what winning looks like for them. It’s not the whole job description, it’s one sentence: this is what winning looks like for you. And leaders help them see that. Leaders point to a future and move their people to it. That is very different than what a manager does. If you’re trying to manage your team, you’re not going to grow your business. You’ve got to grow your leadership.

So that’s this week’s leadership tip of the week: management is not leadership. Well, until next time, chase the big dream, lead with courage, and safe travels.