SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 119: Fat to $14k/mo With the 30 Day Challenge and James Swanwick
20 Nov 2015
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, every Monday I give one of you a hundred bucks to invest in your idea and get to the top. To enter, subscribe to the podcast right now on iTunes and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove it. This week's winner was Jesse from up in Chicago.
Coming up tomorrow morning, we have power couple Justin and Tara Williams of 8 Minute Millionaire coming on and breaking down how they netted $4 million in real estate, doing over 150 deals. Okay, Top Tribe, good morning. You're really going to enjoy our guest this morning. His name is James Swanwick, and he's an Australian-American investor, TV host, and former SportsCenter anchor on ESPN.
He's the host of The James Swanwick Show podcast and creator of the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol. He's interviewed celebrities, including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with world leaders, including U.S. Vice President Al Gore. James, are you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it, Nathan.
Okay, tell me about this first. Where are you right now? Are you in Australia or in America?
No, no, I live in Los Angeles, California. So although I am Australian, I've been living in the States now for about 11 or 12 years.
Okay, and what's your main focus? What are you focused on selling?
Yeah, right now it's the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge. I've been an entrepreneur for some years, but right now it's the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol.
Got it. Okay, and walk us through, if people want to, what's the link? Where can people find that?
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Chapter 2: Who is James Swanwick and what is his background?
And I'm like, yeah. And then, you know, about a year ago, I was like, maybe there's a business in this. Maybe I can turn this into... business and really help and inspire other people to quit alcohol for 30 days and get healthier. So I just, you know, February or March of 2015, this year, I just started, just built it.
Interesting. Now, most people get turned off when they hear about these kinds of things, you know, weight loss, alcohol, no alcohol, you know, get charisma kind of thing. But I see I'm on your page right now. I mean, I see the story. I literally, I see your fat rolls when you were drinking.
Yeah.
I see you running in the Hollywood Hills. I see you on ESPN. So let's say I want to sign up for this thing. What's it cost?
Yeah, so it's $67 to do the 30-day no alcohol challenge and you automatically go into a $67 a month VIP group. So essentially, it's $67 a month. You can cancel at any time on the recurring and what you get is you get daily videos every day delivered to your inbox from me, which is like it's day one. All right, this is what you do when your friends are encouraging you to have a drink.
Do you do that voice too? Yeah, I was putting on a little bit of a show there. And then I might say, you know, okay, welcome. It's day seven. This is what you should drink instead of having the alcoholic drink and so forth, right? So, it's just accountability. Customers also go into a closed Facebook group and that is where the real community begins.
Like people have been sharing stories, helping one another and that really does hold people accountable so they don't break during the 30 days. On top of that, they get twice a month, they get a live call with me. So, I'll go on there and I'll talk for an hour and a half and people can ask me questions and
um yeah so how many people are in the facebook group yeah 215 as of this morning i launched this thing only four months ago and what month was that except uh july uh july july yeah late late june actually it was late june july of 2015 and since then i've been just been polishing it refining it making sure that it's you know that obviously all the things like
delivering the emails work, getting customer feedback. You know, initially I just put out what I would call a minimum viable product, an MVP. And it was just, I threw up a bunch of videos. I wanted to see whether people were interested in this and people were, they went crazy for it. And then since then I've been going back and sort of swapping out some of the
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Chapter 3: What is the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge and how does it work?
Of the 215 that are in your group, are those all ā I mean, I imagine you once had more or once had less. But how do you think about churn in the 30-day no-alcohol challenge?
Yeah, well, the stick rate at the moment is just short of two months, and I've done the average. So, look, it's early, right? So, we're still fine-tuning this thing. But at the moment, it's about ā excuse me. It's just short of two months. So they're canceling after, you know, just before two months if you do the average.
Why do you need the 30-day membership after 30 days?
Because a lot of people find that they want to reduce alcohol after that. They do the 30 days. They feel amazing. But then they continue to want accountability as they go on. And here's the other thing. They get so addicted to that closed Facebook group because people are interacting with one another, supporting one another, talking about problems they've got.
They get support that they want to stay in that group. and keep getting the feedback, keep getting the accountability.
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Chapter 4: What results have participants seen from the 30-Day Challenge?
Plus, what I'm trying to do is deliver as much amazing content as I can in those live calls that I do two times a month. And a lot of people are picking up things not just to do with alcohol, but productivity tips, business tips, happiness, relationships with people. It's all entwined in terms of reduce alcohol, improve your life in all those areas.
Okay, understood. So if you have, just to make sure I understand this, if you have 100 people in it this month, you'll churn through about 50% of them. So 50 will stay into the second month and none will stay into the third month, right?
At the moment, right, exactly. So my challenge from here is to just deliver a ton of value to get them to stay more than the two months.
James, is that realistic? Like, how do you give so much? I talk to so many people that are going through this and I would not have the patience to be thinking every morning, what's the next video or piece of content I can create to get my people to pay me $67 next month? How do you do that?
Well, I just launched an upsell program from that which costs $1,000 to get in called the 90-Day Healthy Habits Challenge. And I sold 12 people of those 200 people into that just last week. So the answer is yes, people do have the patience. People do want to change their life.
People do want to have a continuous coach, continuous Facebook group, continuous community that holds them accountable to do these habits likeā¦ sleeping eight hours a night, like reducing the alcohol so you're not waking up feeling irritable.
So in terms of delivering content, you know, I interview New York Times bestselling authors, I interview people who quit alcohol, I've interviewed movie stars like Bradley Cooper about how he quit alcohol, and I just deliver all this content. So as long as I'm giving more stuff, not just on quitting alcohol, but on how do you make more money in your business?
How do you get more energy in your day? What kind of smoothie should you drink in the morning? And I started to educate on all areas of health and productivity. Then people start to go, oh, this is no longer just an alcohol product. This is actually now a transform your life product.
And those interviews and things, you only give those to your paid members. You don't put those out free anywhere.
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Chapter 5: How does James market the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge?
is growthgeeks.com forward slash top tribe again growthgeeks.com forward slash top tribe go check it out Guys, we'll link to those in the show notes at NathanLatka.com forward slash the top 119. Again, forward slash the top 119. James, you know what time it is? I do. It's time for you to ask me some questions about my favorite books and things like that, right? Damn good, guys.
It's time for the famous five, James. Are you ready for number one? Let's do it. Okay. What is your favorite business book?
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. He teaches you how to use connections and your network to really grow your business. I read that book and it changed everything for me. It was terrific.
Great. Number two, is there a CEO that you're following or studying right now?
Yeah, it's Ty Lopez. Ty is my mentor. I've been working with him now for two years. And in fact, he's been giving me some guidance on the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge. I get to work with him at least a couple of days a week here in Los Angeles and meet all the people that come into his world. Mark Cuban was there a couple of weeks ago. And so, yeah, it's very much Ty.
Ty is very good at online marketing and that's the business that I'm in.
James, I'm in so much pain right now. The audience will understand why. I had Ty on back in episode 45, and I have never had somebody dodge as many questions as Ty did. He would not answer one single question when I asked him about the success of his 67-step program. I mean, not one.
But look, it's also weird because I talk to people like you who are smart guys who are paying him, I assume, a lot of money to work with him.
I mean, look, I think Ty is terrific. He changed my business life. I can only speak so highly of him. He's been very fair. He's very honest. He loves his family. He's got his cousin works for him. He's got brothers work for him. His childhood friends work for him. And he's very generous with his time, with his expertise. You'll never hear me say anything bad about Ty.
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