[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Big Ticket Pros, the podcast for agencies, coaches and high end service providers who know what it takes to thrive in competitive markets. I'm your host, Josh Thomas. You can find me on all social media t literally. Our guests share insider tips, strategies and sometimes cautionary tales to help you close bigger deals and scale your business faster. Big Ticket Pros is sponsored by Conversational Funnels, the new way to close deals in 2025 that doesn't rely on any of the old traditional methods everyone hates. We use this method to book 121 qualified sales calls in 10 days without any ad spend, outreach or endless social posting. Download the free step by step blueprint that shows exactly how we did it@conversational funnels.com. once again, that's conversational funnel funnels.com Today's guest is Aras Webster Berry. He is the founder of and CEO of websterberry Marketing, Ignite funnels and launch Ignition AI. He specializes in entrepreneurship, marketing and business automation, helping businesses scale and succeed through innovative strategies. As an author, his work focuses on empowering entrepreneurs, particularly through the use of AI to enhance business operations and digital marketing.
He's committed to supporting a thousand entrepreneurs and achieving six figure success by 2026. Arius welcome to Big Ticket Pros and your perspective. What is the best piece of advice that you would give to somebody just starting out in your industry?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me, Josh.
If I were to, if I were just getting started myself, what advice would I give myself or somebody else?
I would say focus on mastering the basics, you know, before chasing trends.
Every time you, you look up, there's a new guru telling you that dancing on TikTok is the newest thing or you know, this secret mechanism for webinars. I would just focus on the, the basics, you know, before you get into the details, you know, understanding the foundations of what you do and speaking specifically in marketing, which is my industry, you know, the, a lot of people don't understand the basics of websites and funnels. Basic design, email marketing, lead generation, lead sources.
Those are the, the ABCs one, two, threes of marketing. I would tell you, you know, anything that you, you want to get into, you have to master the foundational principles before you get into the advanced stuff.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Blocking and tackling, man.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: You know, there's, there's really only so many things that we can do to, to grow a business, to get sales and everything else is just a variation of everything you just said.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, everybody thinks there's some kind of magic bullet, you know, hey, if I Spend this much, or if I say this thing on, you know, an ad or, you know, if I meet Elon Musk and I get him in a video, well, then all of a sudden I'm going to be, you know, a multimillionaire. And, you know, I always say anything that comes quickly can leave just as quickly. You know, the. Like you said, the blocking and tackling of any industry is especially. Marketing is foundational. Because when all the hype and all of the newness of you being in an industry or some new pocket that you found yourself into, that's, you know, got you really quick success, the foundational principles is what's going to carry you into longevity.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: And so let's talk about some of those foundational principles. You know, let's. Let's go more, more granular than, you know, marketing, sales, those sorts of things. Like, what really makes effective marketing and effective sales effective carpet copywriting. Like, what do we really need to be doing there?
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Authenticity. That's the biggest thing. You know, I would say that the average consumer is pretty savvy. They can smell a fake for the, for the most part. You know, there's a few, you know, really good carbon copies out there, but for the most part, they can tell if you're being genuine or not.
So the biggest thing that you need to focus on is being honest with your.
Your audience, being a little vulnerable and doing a great job of explaining the problem and then showing how you can solve it. That's all marketing is, right? And all these different channels and different avenues you can go down, they're all just places for you to put your message that says, hey, customer A. I have a problem, that solves it. Here's my process.
That's it. That's all. And if you can get really, really good at the messaging and how you deliver that to people across multiple, you know, mediums and in different formats, and you can be concise, well, then you're gonna win.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's. It's really interesting. I had no idea what you were gonna say, but I'm so glad you said all of those things because that's 100 exactly what I would say.
And I'm not just saying that either. But, you know, identify a very easy to draw person.
Identify the main common pain point that they actually have a desire to do something about.
Give them a solution that they have a reasonable confidence is going to work either because they have confidence in you, or it's something that they haven't already tried before. So it's a New or a different way because you said, hey, the market's pretty sophisticated and as long as you have that combination, then you don't even need good marketing at that point. You just need to put it in front of them.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: I mean, the best marketing is you being good at what it is you do.
[00:06:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: If you solve a problem and you do it well and you do it at a decent price, people are going to tell other people.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: You're not, they're not the only people who have a problem.
And you know, people love to be the one to refer you to, you know, something that works.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: They want to be the first one to say, hey, I was the first customer. I was. Oh yeah, I told you about that.
I was, I turned you on to that.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: You'd be nothing without me, fool.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Exactly.
Exactly. So, you know, it's one of those things that you, you can't beat bad publicity.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: If you're not good at what you do, it doesn't matter how good your marketing is. It doesn't matter how much money you spend on advertising. You know, people are going to out the back door just as quickly as they're coming in the front. And that's not a way to run a business.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Not, not long term anyway. And, and, and it's a good segue into another point that I know is really important to you. And it's the concept of personalization and the marketing experience today specifically. Like you could get away with just this broad shotgun approach 10 years ago, but now, because the market is so sophisticated, because we've been through all of these things, we're really not looking for this big volume. We're looking for real relationships and personalization in our marketing messages because we don't want to be talked at or treated like a cash register. We want to be treated like human beings. And so talk to me about some of the ways that you're developing that and kind of catering to where people are at right now in their headspace for, for buying and selling goods.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to get the one size fits all approach. You know, no one, I would say, even, even amongst your friends and family.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: They don't want the generic happy, happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: They, they appreciate something that's a little more personalized.
And you know, it's never been easier to get generic personalization at scale, which is kind of an oxymoron. But you know, with automation, with AI, with, you know, your ability to collect information stored and kind of injected into pre formatted text and stuff like that. It allows you to collect a little bit of information about a customer and say instead of just hey or hey, customer, it's, hey, Josh, I see that you like gray sweatshirts.
You know, we've got a brand new line of striped gray sweatshirts coming out pretty soon.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: That's all information that you can gather from a behavioral data. You can grab that from a survey or a form.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: But it's just grabbing that information, storing it, and then knowing when to use it. And that's what we've been really successful with in our agency, both internally in marketing, but also for our customers, trying to figure out how we can collect information and then use it strategically in order to strengthen the connection in the relationship with the prospect.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. Hey, I know you like gray striped shirts. And wait, is that because I'm wearing one?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: So Facebook has decided that I am obsessed with random isolated islands in the ocean. They've decided that obviously you need to know about this island that's uninhabited and it's the farthest from any land. And, like, I get that probably every fifth post. So sometimes the AI can know too much. Like. Like, I get it, man. I like islands. But. But, yeah, the idea is if we can start to understand and predict what behaviors or when somebody's ready to make a decision, it makes it much easier to have that personalized approach. And AI can help with that. And it can also help on the front end kind of conversation of the sales process as well. Could you talk about some of the ways that you. That you do that?
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the great thing is, you know, when I started doing this digital marketing thing, it was what I just talked about, which was, hey, just build a form, try to put it somewhere, and then try to bunch it together to where it sounds a little more customized.
Now, with AI, it's conversational abilities. It can process natural language and respond in kind and with context. You can keep track of conversations over months or years with customers, reference that, and then respond, keeping that information in mind. It blows my mind. I've been doing it for years now, but it just truly blows my mind.
And the great thing is it's becoming more common and more easy for the average, maybe less sophisticated entrepreneur if you're not the most technologically savvy person to get access to these things and deploy them.
So what we're doing in our agency and on the Ignite funnel side is we're really working on doing Omni channel AI conversations.
So the ability to maybe have a conversation with someone that starts as a comment on a post on Instagram, move them over to a dm, have a conversation, and then trigger maybe an email or a text message and allow that to be again responded to by AI. But also referencing the original conversation from the original channel.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: And being able to simultaneously kind of back and forth and keep the context just like a human would.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Like, hey, this is Josh on, on Instagram. Okay, well, that's the same Josh that just texted me. Okay, let me go ahead and. Yeah, okay. Hey, yeah, Josh, I got you on, on text message. What were you, were you at asking about that gray sweatshirt?
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Okay, great.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: So we are focused on pulling all those things together and then more importantly, also getting into the voice aspect of it. So truly omnichannel, whether it's email, text, social media, or, you know, a phone call or voicemail, being able to keep all the context from all those conversations straight and stay in line and moving towards the end goal and objective.
Nice.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: And so tell us a little bit more about who is this a good fit for and where can they learn more?
[00:12:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we work with a lot of coaches and consultants, a lot of small businesses, usually those that are under 5 million in their first three to five years, you know, most of them are under the first million.
You know, getting to that first hundred thousand is a huge hurdle for most entrepreneurs. And then once you get that first hundred thousand, trying to make the second and the third and getting into the seven figure territory is tough.
But yeah, we focus on a lot of small businesses, a lot of solopreneurs that are really just looking for some automation and some systems to help them get over that hump in terms of where they can find it. I mean, ignite funnels is.
You can just ignite funnels.com, the system is there.
If you're looking for more of a holistic approach and someone to kind of do it for you, well, then my agency would. Webster Berry Marketing is there to kind of take all these tools and put them to use for you.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Excellent. Well, hey, we're going to wrap from here. Thanks so much to our guest Aries Webster Berry, for coming on and sharing a little bit of wisdom about how you can sell some stuff in today's sophisticated market where they're not going to put up with your generic bs. You got to really personalize this, integrate AI and make sure that you're paying attention to what the customer actually needs and desires and deliver that for them. You can learn more about what he does by going to ignite funnels.com if you're an agency coach, professional services provider, or otherwise sell expensive stuff, we'd love to have you on a future episode. You can
[email protected] once again. If you want to learn about the new way we're booking dozens of qualified calls per week with no ad spend, download our free blueprint at conversational funnels. Com. That's all for now. Let's go get that big ticket punched.
