How To Create An Experience That Leaves Your Customers Wanting More: Mark Stern - Custom Box Agency

0:05 this is the beyond the story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now sebastian ross ross, mark, welcome to the show. Thrilled to be here, sebastian. Thrilled to have you here, man, thanks for taking some time out of your day to hang out with me for a few minutes. I love to tell people's story on this podcast, so I'm excited to learn a little bit more about you and your story and what really brought you to present day. So, just for some context and our listeners, let's back up a little bit.

0:45 Go back to the beginning of the story. When you're I hate to use the word journey, I don't know if there's a better word out there Great band, but it's an overused word. But when you first started doing whatever it was that you were doing, that really brought you to what you're doing today. Yeah, I can start all the way at the beginning if you want to know. Yeah, let's go back to the beginning. That sounds fantastic. So I grew up in Alabama and growing up in Bama, everyone is wired the exact same way. So, like what I knew was the same thing, like my goals and aspirations were the same as my peers. And growing up in Alabama it was you graduate high school, you go to college. You graduate college, you get the job.

1:25 Then you go back to grad school and you get the dream job and it's like home with the white picket fence and the dog and the family and everything. And that was like living life and that was like the pathway and trajectory that not only I was on, but I felt like everyone I knew was on, and I used to joke to say I was the poster child because I'm like I'm going to crush this journey. And graduated high school, went to college. I was president of my high school. President of my high school, president of my college, had the dream job. I wanted to work on national marketing campaigns in the beverage industry. So Absolute, jameson, malibu, we would incubate the national marketing campaigns and did that up to business school, got my MBA at Duke and was president at Duke and then went and worked for a big consulting firm called Deloitte after Duke, thinking this is life and I'm doing it well.

2:08 And then you realize I got my MBA in 2012, which is crazy. It's been over a decade that I graduated from grad school and walked out with $165,000 in student loan debt and two years committed to this consulting firm. And you have this moment to say did I work my entire life to have $165,000 in student loan debt? Feel like the weight of that? And then 2013 hit. I saw a YouTube video for a company called Mindvalley. I don't know if you're familiar with Mindvalley. I've heard of the name. I just don't know a bunch about them, but they have piqued my interest. They have an event that they used to call Awesomeness Fest.

2:48 They've since changed it to A-Fest, but what it was was bringing together 250 entrepreneurs from around the world to what was essentially from the videos, ted Talk, speakers meets, burning man, parties and me and Corporate America at Deloitte Consulting, the lifestyle you live there is every Monday, a cab picks you up at 445. You go to the airport, you work for your client. Thursday, you fly back and you do it again the next week. So you're this road warrior and had a moment in 2013 that I'm like this is my life and I have no personal life and I'm contractually committed with all this debt to this company for a minimum of two years. And so I made a decision to go to this conference that I had no business being at.

3:32 I just wanted to be around entrepreneurs and it introduced me to the digital marketing realm. I think Noah Kagan was there of AppSumo, neil Patel, dane Maxwell, yannick Silver of Mavericks All these digital marketers were there that I had no idea who any of them were, nor did I know about the digital marketing world, but it was like going to a conference and thinking the world that you were living in was the world that you were supposed to pursue. And then, all of a sudden, this bubble burst and I got exposed to a different way to have a fulfilling life. So it took me. That event introduced me to Traffic and Conversion Summit.

4:13 It introduced me to Funnel Hacking Live. It introduced me to this whole underground world of digital marketers and while I was at Corporate America, I convinced Deloitte that I wanted an expertise at Deloitte in digital marketing and got them to pay for me to go to all these conferences while trying to balance this life of do I want to be in Corporate America or do I actually want to pursue this itch of entrepreneurship. And so it literally took till 2018 to make the leap. I was on the borderline of becoming a junior partner at this firm and finally said if I don't do it, I never will and the rest of my life would be at this consulting firm, and left and took the leap with having no idea what the business would be but how.

4:59 It led to Custom Box Agency and really building the expertise and customer journey and then building these box experiences that we help bring our clients' business to life in a really powerful way. That all was an accident. That happened because somebody told me when I became an entrepreneur, one of the fastest ways to build leads is to do a virtual summit. And I did a virtual summit. I interviewed 40 experts and, in doing so, had the simple realization that I'm building all this digital content, and it felt overwhelming that I'm just dumping 40 hours of interviews on people and I didn't know what to do with it. And it was 40 different perspectives of business.

5:41 So at that event, I decided to turn all the speakers' best insights into a publication called Entrepreneur Elements and we started sending out this physical publication to everyone who bought a ticket to this virtual event. And that's kind of what made me have the idea of once. I saw people receive this physical publication. I'm trying to see if I have it in the room. I don't see it. But what was cool about it was people started doing these reveal videos to show off the publication. People were showing off, speakers were showing off their spread, people were teaching insights from that publication to their communities on Facebook. People were taking pictures holding the publication.

6:22 So I was getting all this organic traffic for sending something physical. The link to a digital experience and that's kind of where it all started with our agency is that, seeing that every time we'd been launched an event, we would send something physical to link to the digital experience, we'd give people the tools and resources they needed to be set up for success. We wanted to accelerate outcome faster, and that's kind of like the early days of Custom Box Agency is that every time a box would drop, people would say how are you doing these experiences? And we were getting so much organic buzz and traffic and results faster that it was like there's something here that's really powerful about marrying something physical to this digital experience, and I think that's more relevant now than ever, because we were already uploading billions of pieces of content.

7:12 Now you introduce AI and content overload is a big thing right now. How do you instantly? Recording in progress. All right, I just got to take a timestamp right here. I just didn't hit record on the video part on here. No big deal, I just didn't want it to say not recording while you were talking. Sorry about that. Awesome, all right, hold on one second. We're at 37 minutes actually. Okay. Awesome, awesome, awesome. But ultimately, it was just the realization that anytime you launch something physical, you should absolutely introduce it with something digital, and especially now in this digital age. We've already been in a world that we've seen billions of pieces of content get uploaded a day.

7:53 Now you have AI generating even billions more a day, and that's not going away. Now you have AI generating even billions more a day, and that's not going away. The easiest way to differentiate is tying something physical to whatever digital products and services that you have to really amplify it, and so that's kind of where Custom Box Agency really started to carve out its place in the market. I love that. I love that, so let's back up a second here. So, traffic and Conversion Summit I was part of that for about four years. What, what years did you attend? uh, 2015, 2016. Yeah, so I was the mc all those years I used to wear a bow tie. So, yeah, I I met ryan dice on twitter. I didn't know who he was and I sent him a tweet and was like I saw an ad for traffic and conversions.

8:38 I was like, hey, you need a guy in a bow tie to MC your event. He's like, actually we do, and I was on the phone with him the next day and he booked me and I ended up doing that show for like four years. In fact, our mutual friend, damien Zamora um, that's where him and I really reconnected. Uh, he was in orange County at the time and then he's for his infamous you know closing TNC party every single year that he did with Dave Albano themed in all good times. So it's kind of wild. That ripple effect continues. I continue to run into people that were there that we didn't put two and two together, that I was there too or I was actually working. I mean, I was such a lost puppy there because, like deep in corporate America and being exposed to this new world, that I was probably the guy in the back of the room pacing, because it's like you have this realization of like and at that traffic and conversion.

9:31 I remember Russell Brunson wasn't even a main stage guy, he was in a breakout session and I went to his breakout session right as he was launching ClickFunnels and like that's what he got exposed to the funnel hacking. Wow, I didn't even know. I didn't know, but it's like way pre, like I just stumbled in a room and I'm like it was the first time I saw someone speak that I was like I could quit my job today and I'd be just fine. I love that. So, so modern, like not modern day, present day. What exactly are you guys? I know you guys are doing these custom um gift box. Are they gift boxes or are they product boxes, or how does it all work?

10:11 So we're not swag. We say swag means stuff without a goal, so stop sending swag to your customers. Um, we're not giftology. That's a different model, because that's good one-to-one gifting. A lot of what we do is we love scale and you'll see a lot of our boxes are. I get into the things we save, so I know when you read a book you put it on a bookshelf. You'll see a lot of our boxes behind me. I just have a couple of examples. They're small and fit on your book like a bookshelf. A lot of our boxes have 30 to 50 pieces. But what we anchor on is show me the journey from start here, with navigating your products and services to the outcome. So we'll build that visual map and then, along every stop of the journey, how do we ensure all the tools and resources are inside the box so we can get deep into the business strategy and our deliverable, our vehicle's box.

10:57 But what we're really known for is getting into your business and showing you how to optimize that customer journey. Once you do that, I can show you ways to leverage that as sales collateral. I can show you ways to increase the lifetime value. I can show you ways to get your customers unstuck when they're stuck at pivotal points. We can gamify your business, but it's just like knowing that journey and that's what we really specialize in Box is just our vehicle that we deliver the end result as. All right. So give me an example, Like I don't know how quick or I mean how much thought or planning goes into the whole process and we can riff on this, and if we can't, just let me know. But like, let's use me for an example. So I own a podcast agency. I help people launch a podcast days or less.

11:40 It's completely done for you. All they need to do is record the episodes and upload the content to us and we produce the show for them. What would something like that look like for a podcast agency? So for you, the first thing I would want to look at is what's the 90-day journey? So can we have a visual depiction of the journey that they go through in the 90 days to get the outcome? Are there pivotal phases and milestones that happen along that journey? Because if they could just see that journey, you can use that almost as sales collateral to be like we have this process, here's the process you're going through. I don't mind giving away my strategy, because the tactics are the difficult part. The tactics are usually what people are paying for. So step one would be like how do I start to educate them on the phases that they go? Because the cool thing about defining phases across the 90 days is to say if you started in phase one and now you're in phase two, I can tell you've gone through a transformation.

12:24 Look how far you've come, look how close you are to the end result. I can say, when we get to day 45, if there's a big milestone that they need to hit, I can incentivize it and say, when you hit this milestone, I'm going to send you something, I'm going to trigger something to celebrate you. Celebration is a retention play. Any type of recognition is a retention play. We call them jewels. So those are things that we can look at at the journey. But what I'd want to do is break down the 90 days to say is there a clean story of how we can navigate them through the 90-day journey? And just for you and your team, just knowing where they are along the journey, the phases that they may be in, is a lot of intel on who they should be engaging with, what they should be doing at that point in time.

13:05 And so that's kind of what we'll look at first, and then, as we define that structure, we'll go deeper into saying, okay, in phase one, what is it? What's the outcome of this phase, what are the tools they need? And we'll do it again and again. And a box experience doesn't necessarily have to be one box. There's many boxes that we do that. If it's a longer program, we may say that you get a box every 30 days. This is box one of three and it only focuses on the first part of the program. Then they get box two of three and three of three. So there's ways to incentivize the collection aspect of that. And if I print on the box, it's box one of three. They want to collect the anthology. They have to keep playing the game, whether it's time-based or milestone and achievement-based, to get the next box.

13:45 So those are things that we could easily do. Looking at that type of journey, I love it. Love it. So what have been some of your favorite projects? You've worked on where you've delivered a box on. Yeah, I have so many. We've built somewhere about 120 to 150 of these experiences since we launched. The one I'm really excited about is we're about to launch our own product in September, and it all started with the like what's the customer like, walk me through your customer acquisition journey, acquisition journey. We took the concept of like, walk me through the stages of your customer acquisition journey and we turn that into a physical product, and so I actually have it right here. I can show you real quick, but from a box you can see.

14:27 Boxes can be any shape or sizes, but I wanted a simple black box with a custom insert, so we actually had an insert made. This is just a simple tool for people to lay out their customer acquisition strategy, with a board game board that we did and a series of cards. So this is all different tactics you can use to get clients. That we turned into cards that you can lay out on the board. So it's just a visual depiction and a brainstorming tool of your customer acquisition strategy. We have had ones that were about if your software is a service company, how do I get you to stick and use the platform the first 30 days? Because they know if I can get you using my software platform in the first 30 days, chances of you staying are exponential.

15:09 So how do we gamify and educate the first 30 days of how to utilize the tool? We just did this with a credit repair cloud company that has turned into this beautiful experience to guide their people to utilizing their credit repair software in the first 30 days. So that was a really cool one. But all of our boxes, I think, have a lot of fun to them. They all have a different purpose into how we do it. It's just how you engineer the experience. And now, who's like an ideal fit for a client, for what you guys actually go and do? Are these large brands, companies, smaller companies? Do you run the gamut or have you found your sweet spot? Yeah, our sweet spot. Usually the company is doing about a million in revenue a year and I say that as a number just because they have a validated offer, they have an audience, they're looking to take what they have to the next level.

15:57 We've worked with clients that have a smaller revenue than there, but they have to fit a certain profile for it to make sense for the done for you. But typically our five categories of clients coaches and coaching programs are huge. Info products, which would include virtual summits, courses, challenges that's a big category. Software as a service companies huge category Service providers doctors, lawyers, chiropractors and the last one's, e-comm. So products like Activate Deck is an e-comm product. Those typically are our big five verticals that clients typically fall into Love it, love it, so I was going to ask you what you're excited about for the rest of 2024.

16:38 At the time we're recording this episode, but it looks like it's the new product that's on deck. I am excited about it. I'm excited about it because I think it just will help people have the breakthrough around. Do they truly understand how they acquire customers? And now they have a visual way to brainstorm and understand I'm doing too much or I'm doing too little, because I could just lay it out. There's another product that I'm doing as a joint venture play called 57 Hats, and that is all about you as a business owner. Do you understand how many hats you're wearing? So that's another deck of cards and a whole system, but it's about, like, a lot of times, as an entrepreneur, you don't realize that you're wearing so many different hats. When I got started, I was not only doing sales, but I was also doing strategy and I was also doing copywriting.

17:22 So understanding all the hats you're wearing is power for you to then eventually take the hat off and outsource it or delete it if you don't need it anymore. So that's another one that I'm really excited about that we're going to be rolling out. And when did you guys launch? How long have you guys been around? Officially 2020. We're a COVID baby COVID business, so I've done it indirectly for years. So I started doing this in about 2018. It was never the all-in business until COVID and my mentor at the time was like I was building a business in virtual events and then had this side business of boxes that we were building and COVID happened and I killed the virtual event business, which is the exact opposite of what you think you do at that time.

18:04 But there was just something that pulled me towards boxes that was like this is an untapped market with how we approach it, but that was it. I remember my my I was trying to place, cause I'm familiar with this when I got yeah, I wrote my last book with uh, chandler bolton, self-publishing school, cool, and that was my first experience getting a box and it came with I don't know a bunch of not me, but like relevant swag. It was like a journal and a pen and the work book of the whole program and all that and I was like, ah, my wheels started to spin a little bit. It was like what's that look like for the podcast side of things as well too. But you're right, it creates.

18:45 It is an experience to be able to get that. In fact, I mean, here I am three years later and I still four years later and I still remember, you know, getting the box and I've got it right here on my desk. Yeah, it's amazing how people save them too. Yeah, it really is. It really is Well, dude, it's been great to connect with you and learn more about what you're doing. Absolutely love what you've got going on. My wheels are already spinning as to what's going on. Now, any final thoughts for our listeners based on what it is you guys do and why they should consider figuring something like this out. Yeah, my biggest thing is stop making it so difficult for your customers to get results. And the other thing that I really harp on with a lot of customers or clients is have you defined success for your people?

19:28 Do they know what success looks like? It's pretty easy for you because if part of it is at the end of the 90 days, the podcast is launched, then it's yes to know. Is the podcast launch? Yes, if not, it's not. But have we truly defined success? And you'd be surprised at how many businesses don't really have a clear metric. You look at the inner circle or the funnel hacking live world, a two comma club award. Did you make a million dollars using ClickFunnels? Yes or no? They defined success. When you define success for your customers, you give them something to strive for. It's a really important measure to make sure you've defined Love that. Love that. Great final thoughts. Thanks again for your time. Mark Appreciate it. Wish you ongoing success and good luck with the launch of the new product.

20:09 I'm excited to see you guys roll that out. Awesome, I'll get one out to you. I appreciate that, man. I really do. All right, until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the beyond the story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way, you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast launchlabcom. We'll talk to you next time.