Why Your Offers Aren’t Converting (And How to Fix Them) w./ Author of The Offer Code, Jake Setterlun

Struggling to create offers that actually convert? In this episode, I sit down with The Offer Code author, Jake Setterlun, to break down the science of irresistible offers, market psychology, and how to craft deals that buyers can’t refuse. 

What’s Covered:

• The hidden formula behind high-converting offers.
• Why most entrepreneurs get their pricing strategy wrong.
• The psychology of urgency and how to ethically use it.
• The ancient wisdom of selling—and how to use it.
• Real-world examples of offers that took businesses to the next level.

📚The Offer Code: How To Create Winning Offers That Are Guaranteed To Sell In Any Market by Jake Setterlun 

Learn more about Jake:  https://jakesetterlun.com/

From failed companies to scaling to Million-dollar months and then losing it all and building it back up again. Jake Setterlun brings a diverse angle to the general chat about business and starting from nothing.

Simple & strategic marketing solutions for the busy coach and consultant. Visit www.reinventingperspectives.com

Transcript

Jake Setterlun: [00:00:00] that's one of the hardest things to master in business, is, am I just moving too quickly and trying it? Oh, it doesn't work one time and then I'm switching things up. And then it's like you're never really committing or is it that I stuck with something too long and I'm just wasting time because I could have changed things and had success. even when we got to those million dollar months, , again, things started failing. it doesn't get easier. It doesn't get harder. It's just different.

It.

Priscilla Shumba: Welcome to the Lessons of Entrepreneurship, the Journey of Reinvention. I have a special guest for you. Jake Setterlun from failed companies to scaling to a million dollar month and then losing it all and building it back up again. So you've done the whole thing 

Jake Setterlun: Full circle. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Priscilla Shumba: I'm excited to talk to you [00:01:00] and for you to share your wealth of experience, 'cause a lot of entrepreneurs who are somewhere in that cycle of either failing or doing really well or losing it all, to somebody in all those four spaces.

Jake, please let us know what's your mission?

Jake Setterlun: Absolutely. Yeah. And thank you so much for having me. My mission is to really help as many people as possible. That were in my position or currently are. Again, like you said, I've been on that cycle a couple times now where it's, you fail, you have a little bit of success.

You fail, success fail. It's really my mission as of right now to share my story and help as many entrepreneurs as possible no matter where they're at.

Priscilla Shumba: What is the hardest part? I think people are really interested. Am I in the hardest part or is the hardest part still coming? What would you say hit you hard in all those phases or hit you the hardest?

Jake Setterlun: That's a really good question. I feel like it doesn't get easier. It doesn't get harder. It's just different. So when you're first starting out, . There's different things that are hard, like you wanna make your first dollar and then [00:02:00] it's, how do I make my second dollar and build systems and build teams?

But then it's like when you get to that point where you have teams, it's okay, this thing broke, or I'm dealing with team drama, or this person quit, fell off the face of the earth and now we have to replace 'em. So I feel like it's just getting comfortable dealing with those different problems and comfortable facing those challenges.

I don't think it's that it gets easier or gets harder. It's just different.

Priscilla Shumba: The way in which you handle stress probably is one of the biggest indicators really, as much as yes, there's, knowing about business and then when the right thing is to do, , would you say that's true from your experience?

Jake Setterlun: Yeah I think so. And unfortunately, I've been doing this for so long, I feel like sometimes you hit it spot on. I can be like emotionally numb , where it's just like a robot. You don't really process things. You just do and you react. So it absolutely does have to do with how do you deal with stress?

How do you deal with your emotions? And can you put those things aside to do [00:03:00] what's in front of you and tackle the challenge that is ahead?

Priscilla Shumba: I'm a super fan of Russell Brunson, so when I saw the Two Comma Club Awards, I said, you've gotta tell us about that. 'cause there's always a story to the two comma Awards.

Jake Setterlun: It's so funny because, I'm a big fan of him too, and I actually got my start in. Marketing doing funnels. From day one, I always saw people with these awards and I was like, one day I just want one of those little gold ones. And then you get into marketing and you start building these businesses and you learn from people with those awards.

And I found a good partner and that partner, led me down the road of real estate and doing marketing for real estate agents. We found a really good offer. And, the two things clicked and, things shot up and that's led to, having all those awards having a lot of success is really, finding that partner, finding the right offer, and then.

Really growing from there. But there's a story behind every single one of those. I will have to say [00:04:00] that goes deeper than just finding the right partner.

Priscilla Shumba: Tell us your favorite one because people love a story, 

Jake Setterlun: Every single one of 'em represents a different company a different offer. Starting with the first one and first company, we were in real estate. And me and this individual, this was right around 20 19, 20 20 we were doing marketing, and we were having a little bit of success.

So our offer was done for you, advertising and marketing. It was like, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Real estate agent, we can help you grow your business. We can market you online. And it was going really well. This done for you program, was a monthly fee that they were paying us and.

We had gotten up to about 20 or 30 customers. So again just the two of us , we quit our jobs. I'm outta school, like it's going well. Unfortunately this is right when, COVID was starting to flourish and we lost about like 80% of our customers, 80, 90%.

And we were like, okay, like nobody wants to commit to this. Monthly fee. 'cause [00:05:00] nobody knows what's gonna happen next month. So we changed our offer into, instead of it being this done for you marketing with a monthly fee, it was a one-time cost. We're gonna set you up this marketing system and then on the back end, it's yours for life.

You can pay us a little bit for support, a hundred bucks for support every single month. But it's your system. And by us changing that offer and really strategizing and making it this one time purchase. It allowed us to scale the business because we also found very quickly that real estate agents wanna be involved.

They, actually have a little bit of understanding of marketing and not all of them have the budget to pay just these crazy monthly fees that everybody else was charging. Obviously Covid was terrible, for everybody. But for us it helped us position our product a little bit better in the industry that we were in.

And that was really what shot us up into, again, it was $10,000 a month and then a hundred thousand and then we got up to a million. Again, a [00:06:00] lot happened in between. We grew our team we hired a sales manager. We had an outsource support team that, got. Too big and too crazy, and that led to our failure of, quality control and stuff like that.

But I'm really trying to jam it all into, just a little brief few minutes, but it was really a journey. That absolutely sticks out as probably my favorite story, just because it was the biggest and, still is the biggest kind of piece of my entrepreneurial career.

Priscilla Shumba: It's interesting you say that. 'cause when you haven't made a million dollars, and you think of other people making a million dollars and you finally get there. Is that the biggest mental shift? Because I feel like when you haven't done it, it doesn't matter what people tell you.

There's like a mental block to is it possible or maybe there's something that's missing for me to get to a million dollars. 

Jake Setterlun: Yeah, that's a really good question, and , to my core, I believe anybody can do it. Anybody can, even a million, 10 million, whatever it might be, if you have that goal, I a hundred percent believe everybody can accomplish that. The weirdest [00:07:00] mindset shift of being there, dropping down and, building back up since then is.

When you're at that point, it doesn't feel real. You still feel like that same person that was on your laptop not making any money. And then you're like, we have how many people working for us? And that, as you're starting out that thought in your head of I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna be doing this.

This is how my life is gonna be. I think if you can come to the realization that you just need to be happy with where you're at now, because that feeling of where you're at currently it's gonna feel the exact same as when you get to that point. So you really need to understand that It's like that saying like the grass is greener on the other side.

There is no other side, it's just where you're at currently and it's always gonna feel like that. So if you can get over that mental roadblock and then just work towards your goals. I would say that's the best mental and mindset shift to help you achieve what you do.

Instead of thinking , oh, it's [00:08:00] gonna be great, it's gonna be great, it's gonna be great. When in reality, nothing really changes when you get there.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you for those wise words. I'm thinking you've got 30 or so clients and then all of a sudden you lose 80% of those. What Was the timeframe of you've got 30 clients, you've lost these clients, and then you've finally figured out how to reposition.

Jake Setterlun: It was about a six month period where and funny enough that new offer, that new program that we ended up selling a year ago, he was one of our first clients actually, we had sold a very similar package, covid hit, we lost all those clients that were paying us like a thousand to $2,000 a month.

And our thought was let's just lower our price. Let's drop it down to $500 a month, 4 97 a month. That sounds reasonable. And we'll still do monthly. We won't do a contract. And let's see how that goes. And we were signing up a couple people and people were still just leaving. It just still wasn't a good fit for the market.

And we were thinking back like. What can we [00:09:00] do? He's doing sales, I'm doing the client support. We're hearing like, nobody knows what's going on. Nobody wants to pay these monthly fees. They still want marketing. So it's this weird they want something, but they don't want to commit to anything and.

A year ago, he was one of our first clients. We had sold this individual again, I mentioned real estate agents want to be involved in their business. He didn't want to pay us monthly, but he was like, Hey, if you guys set this marketing system up for me, I'll just, pay you the one time and then I'll take it over because, I know how to do things.

I don't need you guys to manage it for me. I'll just manage it myself. And we were thinking , I spent an hour setting him up. We were paid $1,500 and we're still in contact with him. He ended up becoming a referral partner for us 'cause he was so happy with us and we were like, why can't everybody be like that?

Like we should take what we did for him and basically just sell it as a system because we spend less time. People are [00:10:00] happier with the service and as of right now, what's going on with the market? And COID it makes sense that would be easier to sell. Still had the sales presentation from him and my partner started taking sales calls and pitching that product and it just clicked.

Priscilla Shumba: When you hear how these things happen in terms of timeframes, you get a sense of , how quick do you need to move? Or when should you know that, okay, this is not working, I should do something. 'cause sometimes you don't know. You think, oh, maybe I'll just stick this out for another 90 days and see how it goes.

Especially when you're starting out and you don't have that experience like you do, you're not sure at what point you should say, okay, maybe we need to do something different.

Jake Setterlun: That's a really good point because even when we got to those million dollar months, , again, things started failing. We had some reputation issues because our fulfillment was outsourced and. What I'm, getting at is we started losing month over month, and we ran that about eight months and didn't change anything because we were like, oh, , it'll get better, it'll get better, it'll get better.

And that's a really good point, and that's one of the hardest things to [00:11:00] master in business, entrepreneurship, whatever you wanna call it, is, am I just moving too quickly and trying it? Oh, it doesn't work one time and then I'm switching things up. And then it's like you're never really committing or is it that I stuck with something too long and I'm just wasting time because I could have changed things and had success.

So I think that's one of the biggest reasons why it's important to have, different peers in the industry and different mentors that you can run things by. Because it can really be hard when it's just yourself and you're like, do I switch? Do I not switch? And you contemplated for, again, like you said, months and.

You always have that thought like, did I make the right decision?

Priscilla Shumba: Jake. You've got a new book, called The Offer Code, how to Create Winning Offers that Are Guaranteed to Sell in any Market. So I'm excited to talk offers with you today because sometimes you think you've got a great offer and you don't understand why it's not selling what are the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make around offers 

Jake Setterlun: the two biggest mistakes that I see is not [00:12:00] having something that is too familiar to what everybody else is selling. And then the second mistake is going way too far down that route, which is having something that is just completely different than what everybody else is selling and almost too different.

So I'll give you, two examples. Let's just say you do marketing just because that's what we do. It's very top of mind for me. And I do Facebook ads. My neighbor does Facebook ads. I'm sure there's 1500 people in my city that do Facebook ads. Which means everybody does it.

And when I start selling a product that is just like everybody else, I start getting compared to this person, and I'm just causing competition for myself for absolutely no reason by selling the exact same service as everybody else. It's very similar to if I was picking a lawyer, it's I have this option.

And they all do the same thing. They all have legal services. Now the flip side of that is, okay, like I can't sell Facebook ads, so I'm gonna [00:13:00] sell Spotify ads. That's just way too alien. I use that analogy a lot where your offer's just completely alien. Because if I'm pitching Spotify ads. People are gonna be like, I didn't even know that existed.

I don't even know if that works. It's not proven. I haven't heard anybody have success with Spotify ads, so it's like now I have to educate them and just convince 'em that thing works. People know that Facebook ads works so. I don't have to convince 'em of that, but I have to convince 'em that Spotify ads work.

I like to call it the Purple Ocean. I talk a lot about that in the book where it's, you have the red ocean, which is when you're competing with everybody and it's just bloody water everywhere. Everybody's price shopping and it's just a lot of competition. You have the blue ocean, which is super unique.

Nobody around, but there's challenges in having, a blue ocean offer as well. So a purple ocean is when you take a red ocean offer. So something like Facebook ads. You put a spin on it and you say, I have this omnipresent marketing system with voice [00:14:00] AI that helps chiropractors grow their business. Part of that system is Facebook ads. Part of that system is voice ai. Now you're still competitive. It's Facebook ads, but I have this uniqueness because we have voice AI involved. So now it's this purple ocean offer where it's, I'm in the red ocean. I'm still selling Facebook ads. We're still selling advertising, but it's just unique enough that I'm separated out from the competition.

And somebody can't go to the other Facebook advertiser and say oh, they're similar. I'm gonna go see what they do. Then we're able to be like they don't have voice ai, so you can go talk to 'em, but, they don't do what we do. So that's my favorite thing and what I recommend to everybody in terms of offers is.

Really understanding your market. How can you be unique with not being too alien?

That's such a good one. When you said Spotify, I said, I can imagine some people with the Apple phones asking you where is it? Can you show me where it is?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Priscilla Shumba: does it work? And then, okay, what are [00:15:00] you talking about? That's the whole day. And they still won't buy.

Jake Setterlun: No. That you know it too well.

Priscilla Shumba: You just educated them and they learned something. They're really happy about that, but not happy enough to buy. They have no need for it, . I'm so excited about it because, offers is one of those things where you think what you have to give to the market is an obvious sell, and sometimes it's not , selling? how would you say, like a test, a litmus test maybe to say if it really is a great offer or , is it really a great offer, 

Jake Setterlun: it sucks, right? Because I could have the greatest product in the world and the greatest offer, but if my market doesn't want to buy it or is not reacting to it, unfortunately you have to go with what the consumer wants, not with what you think the consumer wants.

And that can be one of the toughest things in business too. Especially for me, when I got started, I was doing marketing with golf courses and I was like, oh, this is great. I'm not gonna have any competition. Nobody does marketing for golf courses. And I realized very quickly it was hard to get appointments and [00:16:00] that's why I shifted into real estate, didn't really care about that industry, but we had success.

And to answer your question, that is absolutely one of the biggest ways to get initial feedback is. Am I able to book appointments ? Now you can use chat GPT too and have a little conversation there, but really it's, if I post something on social media or if I run an ad , or even send a DM message if I reach out to somebody or cold call or whatever if I'm saying, Hey, Mr.

Business owner, Mr. Prospect, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer. Are you interested in this? Whatever I do. And if they're not saying yes, or if 50% of people, or 30% of people or whatever it might be, are not saying yes, that means you have a bad offer, unfortunately. And you could either take what you have and market it differently, or you could just come up with something completely different.

Because that is one thing too, that sometimes it's not about the offer and it's not about the product. It's about how it's marketed. Again, goes back [00:17:00] into can you put a twist on what you do to actually solve the problem of the customer? But it's really initial feedback is ask enough people, and if enough people say yes, then it is definitely valid.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you. For that. I think that's such an important step. 'cause sometimes we spend all this time trying to find marketing tactics and to an offer that we haven't validated if people really wanted, 

Jake Setterlun: absolutely.

Priscilla Shumba: and there's a lot of frustration that comes 'cause you think, oh, maybe if I take this course and I learn how to do , this, when you're starting out, you think all these crazy things.

Jake Setterlun: You really do. You really do?

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you for telling us about that. , I know the success with offers is what led probably to the book, but I'm interested in your story. Like, how did you get into this entrepreneurship space and all these awards? And you say you still feel the same. I don't think I'd feel the same,

Jake Setterlun: I think you'll have a little bit more confidence in yourself and your ability. I think that's probably one of those things that does change. But even then, again, I was humbled the other day. There was one business I was [00:18:00] a part of that we ended up getting a mentor to come in and help us.

And I was like, what do we need that person for? We know enough. And they came in and they, turned things on its head and it's doing really well now. Even now I'm still humbled sometimes with, what's going on , in the market and other people's input, but.

As far as my journey goes I started, I was 19 years old. I was in school for mechanical engineering. And I got to the point in school that I was doing internships and, talking with professors about jobs and all that stuff. And I realized like this whole nine to five thing wasn't for me.

I had done a very corporate internship, clock in, clock out, you have a desk. And I was just like. I can't do this for the rest of my life. And as a kid, I had always been interested in product development. That's why I went to school for engineering. I like creating things and I realized very quickly that you can approach that in business and take what you like to do and do it in business.

So , I'm gonna start a prototyping [00:19:00] company because I like to create things. I could make a business out of it. And just put the two things together and , I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna make a website. Get an LLC. And I realized very quickly that you can't just have a business and expect people to come because everything was set up and nobody was calling me saying, Hey Jake, I want you to make a prototype for me.

With that I learned marketing and then from learning marketing, I was like, wow, I could do this for other people. I can do it from a home, I can do it from a laptop. And then that really led me into, okay, I am gonna. Start doing some marketing for golf courses. Again, that led me into finding my partner, doing the real estate marketing and the rest is history.

But it all started just from being in school, from engineering and really getting the point where it's I need to do something different. 'cause I can't do this whole desk thing for the rest of my life. 

Priscilla Shumba: Yeah. I'm glad you realized it early and you went through that process early. 'cause sometimes people go through that as career transition when you're much older and you are tired of this corporate life. But you've given 20 years [00:20:00] of your life to it and I think it's even harder then .

Jake Setterlun: I look up to those individuals because it took me a long time to start making money. I did a lot of work for free and I admire the individuals that are, 20, at that time even, late twenties, early thirties, forties, fifties, whatever. And they're like, I'm gonna, quit my job or I'm gonna start this business because if they have a family 

For me at 19, like I didn't risk anything. I didn't take a chance, but. Those people like it's impressive. Because they really are taking a big step into wanting to build something new for themself.

Priscilla Shumba: Absolutely. It's a big thing and like you said, you spend a lot of time not making money in the beginning, and you can imagine going from making money and being stable to making no money to trying to figure this thing out. I wanted to ask you the psychology behind high converting offers, 

Jake Setterlun: It really, comes down to your industry and starting to reverse engineer again, this is where the engineering comes in. Reverse engineer. Like really think about what's the current state [00:21:00] of my market, whatever it might be. If I'm business to business to customer, what's the current state of my customer?

What are their pain points? And then where do they want to get to and what's their desired outcome? So I like to use this analogy of a bridge. If you think they're over here. And then, we're over here and how can we bridge the gap and get them to walk across the bridge over to our product, to our service.

And there's two things that you can do to get them across the bridge. Number one is you could push them across, which is using fear is using, Hey, don't miss out using fomo, like all these kind of scarcity tactics or. You can use that desired outcome, which is, do you want to get richer? Do you want to do something easier?

Do you wanna save time? You could push 'em across the bridge or they can walk across the bridge is what I like to say themself, and they can come to you. So those two aspects. And then, as far as the psychology goes, it's okay, I need to have a [00:22:00] solid offer.

Which is, I need to have a solid bridge. To get them from point A to point Z, I need to secure their mindset that they feel confident in what I'm gonna do for them. If you have a guarantee, that's where that comes into play.

, whatever your offer is, they feel like it's solid enough that. It's gonna get them to that other side of the bridge. And then lastly is the troll under the bridge, which is their objections. That's the things that, during that buying process, when they're deciding to go with you, to not go with you or to buy your product, not buy it.

Are you handling the troll under the bridge, which is the objections, which is, it's too expensive or not the right time, or, I tried something else. Doesn't work. Whatever those objections are, you need to handle those within your offer. And then if you can completely, make that bridge and handle everything to me, that's when your offer really becomes like a hundred percent solid psychology wise, because [00:23:00] again, you got 'em in the door, you have a purple ocean offer.

You handle all their objections. They actually want your product. Or you're pushing them towards wanting your product and again, there's nothing left for them to do, but buy.

Priscilla Shumba: That's so well explained. I can see it. At a trade show or you're trying to get people to your store. You can see how you'd maybe run over with a sample or , you try to entice the person to come to you.

But somehow when we get into the digital world, , we get so confused as to what should happen when, it's like foreign land and we forget those same principles of hey, walk them across or invite them over and those simple. Principles of just how to sell.

Jake Setterlun: Yep.

Priscilla Shumba: What's your number one tip for someone who's trying to sell or your thing that you learned and it changed what was not working to what was working, and you remember that 

Jake Setterlun: for me, I'm not a natural salesperson still not a good salesperson. Like I, I can do it. I can get on the [00:24:00] phone with somebody. , what's always worked is know what you're talking about. I think that's number one. If you go into a call knowing I can talk marketing all day, so I'm gonna have no problem talking to this individual. That should help out with any anxiety or any fears or any issues that you might have in the sales realm. Number two is really just ask, , Hey, do you want to buy this? Is this something you're interested in? If they say no I think that's where , salespeople are all about psychology and like manipulation and, oh, if they say this, then I say this and then I say this.

And in Reality just have a conversation with somebody. Ask 'em if they're interested and if they need to think about it, book a follow-up call and be a nice person. Give them value. What you said with the free samples too. I think that's huge where people don't wanna start work until they get paid.

When I first got started, I would say yo, check these ads out. Let's get these, campaigns started. and I would do free work and I would give them a little taste of what it's [00:25:00] like working with me before we ever, got any payment from them or went to the closing table and signed a contract or anything like that.

As far as getting started in sales, you really have to think how was sales done a hundred years ago? Not the snake oil salesman, but like truly somebody that owned a business. How did they do sales? And it's being friendly, knowing what you're talking about, and building a relationship.

And then eventually that relationship will come back and pay for itself.

Priscilla Shumba: It's interesting that you would say you're not good at selling. Which I think is encouraging to a lot of people who feel like they're not good at selling. But I think it's that approach where we are thinking we've got to be, this typical sales person and know all these tactics and know how to get around a person's objectives you think you should embody that.

And to hear you say that, look, how was sales done a hundred years ago? The building of a relationship . Asking and being willing to serve someone before you get paid. Those are really important things. 

If you had to sell a brand new offer and [00:26:00] you were like, I have to make money in 48 hours, what would you do first?

Jake Setterlun: That's a really good question. I would probably go to local businesses. I'd walk in their business. I would have some kind of chart that I would put together with a deliverable. I. And I would go into businesses and basically say, I'll automate your business. That's a skill that I have. Zapier doing all those automations, and , I guess you could throw AI in there too.

But I would walk into local businesses and I would say, Hey, you guys are doing things the old way. We can help you do things the new way. We can automate a lot of your processes. We can send out marketing messages. We'll automate your whole business. If I really needed to make money, obviously I would take money up front.

If I didn't need to make money and I had a few months, I would say, let me automate your business, see the result. Let me drive some customers in with you also with marketing then when I'm done, we'll talk about payment and they would see okay, wow. Like you revolutionized how we do [00:27:00] business.

And then I would be like, okay, what do you value that at? I would work back and be like we're saving this person 10 hours a week, this person 50 hours, for the month, whatever. What does that cost you over a year? Oh, it's, $50,000 over the year. Just pay me 10. And that's how I would do it if I didn't need to make money upfront.

If I did need to make money upfront, I would have those numbers estimated and then I would. Propose what it's gonna cost me by justifying it off of how much time I'm gonna save them.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you for that. the offer code, how to create winning offers that are guaranteed to sell in any market. I think we got the idea. And please go and buy and read this book. Thank you Jake, so much for being on the podcast. To the listeners, if you can go to jakesetterlun.com to know more about that.

And Jake, please, where can people follow you?

Jake Setterlun: Just optimize Jake on Instagram or jake sutherland.com. Those are the two.

Thank you so much for having me. 

Priscilla Shumba: It's been a pleasure. Thank you