[Top Black Business Leader Series] Scaling Up & Attracting Clients on Auto-Pilot With Marquel Russell

Marquel Russell is the Founder of Client Attraction University, a marketing consultancy helping businesses attract clients on auto-pilot and scale up while working 50% less. Before establishing Client Attraction University, he had a thriving entertainment company that helped clients with artist management and club promotion, building renowned organizations in the network marketing industry. 

Marquel also hosts The School of Client Attraction podcast, where he shares how he has helped clients generate billions of ad impressions, millions of leads, and over $250 million in revenue.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:07] Marquel Russell shares Client Attraction University’s backstory and the services it offers
• [05:57] How he got into direct-response marketing
• [12:38] Client Attraction University’s business model 
• [16:05] How does Client Attraction University optimize its client onboarding process?
• [24:39] Marquel’s thoughts on multiple streams of income
• [28:03] What is the importance of niching in business?
• [30:37] Tips for moving up the ladder in the business world 
• [38:14] Overcoming obstacles to achieve success and Marquel’s personal development journey from a young age 
• [48:06] Client Attraction University’s customer success stories and ideal client profile

In this episode…

What does attracting more clients and growing your business consistently and predictably take? Where can you get the support to realize this productively?

Client acquisition is a challenging part of business. Entrepreneurs find themselves overworked trying to gain clients to grow their revenues. However, client attraction expert Marquel Russell believes it is possible to experience rapid growth without feeling chained to your business. He shares how he helps create predictable, reliable, and automated client attraction systems for companies, enabling them to scale up, all while cutting their work time in half. 

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz welcomes Marquel Russell, Founder of Client Attraction University, to discuss how to attract clients on auto-pilot and scale a business. Marquel talks about Client Attraction University’s services, its business model, the platforms it uses to help companies get clients, and tips for moving up in the business world.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Marquel Russell on LinkedIn 
• Client Attraction University
• The Automatic Selling System Bootcamp
• The School of Client Attraction

Special Mention(s):

• My Life as a 50+ Year-Old White Male: How a Mixed-Race Woman Stumbled Into Direct-Response Copywriting and Succeeded! by Carline Anglade-Cole 
• Time Collapsing-The New Art of Speed, Money, Power & Meaning by Ed O’Keefe 
• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield 
• 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy 
• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker
• The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks 
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown 
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
• The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham 
• Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat by Michael Masterson  
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie 
• Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman 
• The Boron Letters by Gary C. Halbert and Bond Halbert 
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall  
• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz 
• Robert Smith on LinkedIn 

Related episode(s):

• “The Pixar Story: The Letter of a lifetime That Started Everything With Alvy Ray Smith, Co-Founder of Pixar” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “Can People Change? The Miracle of The Other Side Academy with Dave Durocher” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “Life as a 50+ Year Old White Male and Other Copywriting Secrets With Carline Anglade-Cole” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “[One Question] Finding the Right Business Coach with Ed O’Keefe Founder of TimeCollapsing.com & EdOkeefeshow.com” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “Ed Challenged Me… How Do You Push Yourself? With Ed O’Keefe, Co-Founder of Consulting For Equity” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 

Quotable Moments: 

• “80 to 90% of businesses end up going out of business simply because they don’t know how to get clients.”
• “Multiple streams of income is a tool of the rich, not a tool to get rich.”
• “In your earlier phases, your most powerful weapon is focus.”
• “You only got enough time and bandwidth to do two to three quality things a day.”

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Marquel Russell, and you can check them out at scalethesmartway.com. And Marquel, I always like to mention other episodes, people should check out of the podcast and we’re going to talk a little bit, Marquel has some great content, you should check it out on YouTube. He did one about Disney, which I really liked. You could check out an episode I did with the co-founder of Pixar. And he had some crazy stories about starting Pixar working with Steve Jobs and everything else. So that’s a great episode. Also, the theme of this is also turning your life around. Marquel did not have a silver spoon, I guess right to say the least Marquell, early on.

Marquel Russell 1:08 

Yeah, to say the least.

Jeremy Weisz 1:10 

And I there was an episode I did with Dave Durocher, who’s the executive director of the Other Side Academy in Salt Lake City, and Other Side Academy is committed to transforming the lives of people who are incarcerated who have records and multitude of crime that turn their life around, he was on the brink of actually a 29-year prison sentence when he would went to as accepted to lancy Street. And I guess he first got arrested, he was 13 he had spent a total of 15 years in jail, and is now the executive director of the Other Side Academy. It was a really inspiring episode. So check that out him anymore, and inspiredinsider.com. And this episode’s brought to you by Rise25 and at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast we do the accountability, the strategy in the full production execution. Marquel, we call ourselves the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the host and make it super easy to push button solution. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to profile that people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should, if questions go to rise25.com. And I’m excited to introduce Marquel Russell. And his business is called Client Attraction University. He helps coaches consultants with growth and revenue generation. And he went from high school dropout, former drug dealer to multi-million dollar business growth strategist and coach, you can learn more at scalethesmartway.com. And they’ve helped their clients collectively do over a billion dollars in revenue. So Marquel, well, thanks for joining me.

Marquel Russell 2:55 

Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me, Dr. Jeremy,

Jeremy Weisz 2:58 

We will get to the crazy days, we’ll go back to your 19-year-old self. But for now, just tell people about Client Attraction University and what you do.

Marquel Russell 3:07 

Yeah, so what we’ve found is I’m just gonna give you some backstory. So I got introduced to this whole crazy world through network marketing. And when I got into Network Marketing, it also for me what is like MLM and stuff like that. So it’s like, typically, they’re like, hey, just talk to your friends and family and things of that nature. So based on my background, I had an interesting group of friends and family. So, but they also they weren’t interested in legitimate business. So the only marketing advice network marketing companies gave you was talk to your friends or family or talk to people who come within three feet of you, or do home my hotel parties. So I tried that way didn’t really work out. I did, I did it to the max. And then I was introduced to online marketing. So I got introduced to online marketing, which introduced me to direct response marketing. And I was just totally fascinated about direct response marketing, and how to leverage it to actually attract clients for businesses. And I also discovered that 80 to 90% of businesses end up going out of business simply because they don’t know to get clients. And of course, in business, the way you make money and business in the world is by helping people solve a problem, or you help people solve a big problem. That’s the you can make a lot more money, right. But I know a big problem, obviously, was getting clients by the side of the car, my space out in that particular area. And I just started teaching what I was learning as it relates to getting clients and getting leads online and how I was growing my businesses. And then people started reaching out asking me to coach them, and then I discovered that coaching was a whole industry by itself. And I started teaching what I was learning. And then the individual started getting results to report back and then it just snowballed because I was learning all different types of stuff and teaching them all different type of stuff. But that thing snowball that fast forward a few years. It birthed into Client Attraction University because I wanted to create a one-stop shop where you can actually sink your teeth into thinking have a full-blown system to actually get new leads and clients to use or consistently. Versus like the way I had to do it, I had to kind of go get pieces all over the place, and then try to put the pieces of the puzzle together to finally get something. But it always felt like it was missing something. So I was like, okay, what if we had just like a full thing where we can just install the system until a business so that way they can get new leads and clients sooner later.

Jeremy Weisz 5:24 

We’ll talk Marquel about your offerings, because I’m interested in kind of what the product ladder looks like how people enter in your world, and what are the ways they can utilize your services, but you hit something near and dear to my heart, which is direct response marketing, I love direct response marketing, I geek out on I love it. Who did you learn from? Who are some of the people at that time? And then even now that you learn from maybe you know him personally, or maybe it was just you got one of their courses or looked at some of their materials?

Marquel Russell 5:57 

Yeah, so I’m super weird when it comes to like direct response marketing, right? So I’m kind of guys I always want to know, like, the Genesis right, so like when I was going through a lot of because a lot of the stuff today, a lot of it can be regurgitated. And people haven’t really applied it. But like when I’m like if I’m reading a book, or I’m listening to a course and they mentioned somebody, I’m the type of person that would like go down that rabbit hole. And before you know it, I’m down a rabbit hole that drastically predates the internet. So you want to go back to the source, essentially. Yeah, I want to go back into the source. So I’ve done I’m just looking at my bookshelf. So I’ve gone through people’s stuff, Halbert, obviously the Dan Kennedy stuff. Escaping me right now Scientific Advertising. Eugene Schwartz. Yeah, Eugene Schwartz breakthrough advertising. I mean, you name it. I’m just a total like, unlike you, Matt. I geek out with total nerd like I did collect direct mail. I have like a binder with just like tons and tons of oh, letters. Yeah, I’m a total nerd with this stuff.

Jeremy Weisz 7:22 

Any people lately that you like, you know, those are old school for sure. I think out of those Dan Kennedy is the only one who’s still alive. But any lately that you follow? Or people?

Marquel Russell 7:38 

I mean, not. I mean, to be honest, I’m not as it relates to direct response marketing, because there’s not any new direct response marketing stuff being taught, right. It’s all like principle-based. I mean, people take the principles, people who are good at taking those principles and apply it to their different things, whether it’s webinars or challenges or whatever that model is, but I mean, what I love I think most about direct response marketing is personable based. So it’s like, yeah, the technology has changed from like, written sales letters to mail out to people, which still works, by the way. But now it’s turned into like Facebook ads and YouTube ads, and other mediums.

Jeremy Weisz 8:17 

I have to say, I’m gonna shout to Carlene Anglade-Cole, I think Marquel, she’s also in Atlanta, I believe. But she’s one of my favorite interviews I’ve done in direct response world. And she has a book she says My Life As A 50 Plus Year Old White Male, obviously, you can see the picture, she’s not a white male. And because she’s writing her off, her copy is writing to white male, so she’s had to get in the mind of the white male and she was doing her copy. So it’s one of my favorites. She’s a genius when it comes to this stuff. But for direct response world, use that talk about in you have a good video about Disney and you kind of talk about it’s genius, because they get you in watching the cartoons. Right? And they have an amazing built out product ladder, right? That’s like there’s free stuff and then they have goods and movies. We went on a Disney cruise at some point, a keychain can cost like whatever $1 But if you buy one on a Disney cruise, it’s like $25 right? Because it’s got Mickey Mouse on or whatever. So what is your product ladder look like? Some of the free stuff take us through all the way to the different services?

Marquel Russell 9:36 

Yeah, for sure. So basically so ours so we like you said Disney to have the free content and output hope ladder you bought it already. So basically, so ours, we believe more like a free or premium model, right? So we don’t really do like loss, we don’t do courses and so forth in a traditional way like a lot of people do. We just take whatever we would have taught in the course and then we give it away for free, right? So we’re all of this, like the stuff that people would know him. So a lot of people reach out to us and they’re like, oh my god, I went through this free video you broke down. And this isn’t a third of this free MasterClass and you broke down XYZ. And what you shared in it, I bought coaching programs, it was one more wasn’t as valuable, right? So it was like we heavy three. And then our premium stuff when you come into our actual program, I core program is a Client Attraction University partner program. So that’s essentially where we work with businesses, we install our systems and sort of business to help them get more clients, and then now wants to have more clients coming in and they can handle. The second thing that typically happens is now you have the problem that demand creates, right? So at one phase your business, your biggest problem is like how do I get more clients? The second phase of that is like, okay, wow, how do I serve these clients at scale? How do I manage the team? How do I hire a team? How do I create systems in place to create this business operational? How do I position this business to eventually sell if I want to, or at least build it to sale? So then we have another program, where we actually help with the CEOs and founders, put those systems in place, and so forth. So that was pretty much our two core programs. And on the front end of that is just heavy, free stuff.

Jeremy Weisz 11:22 

So, Marquel, what does that look like? So I love that people can just consume as much as they want and learn but the people who want but you talk a lot about this in your videos, which is the importance of bringing on help, and coaches and people have done it. But if they want to go faster and maybe better, because it takes a lot of time. And sometimes when it takes a lot of time, you’re wasting money, right? So people think, oh, if I hire someone, it’s gonna be expensive, or something like that. But it’s more expensive not to hire someone a lot of times.

Marquel Russell 11:59 

It’s expensive not to hire somebody. Is like your service, right? It’s like, okay, yeah, you can go on YouTube and tinker around and figure out how to do a podcast. So they come to you guys. And you just do it all for him. And he’s like, okay, now they can focus on some of their business.

Jeremy Weisz 12:16 

Yeah, exactly. So when someone is like, sign me up, Marquel. I want the first part, right? I want to start getting clients. And then obviously, they can go through the phase, which makes sense, then they need to worry about the operations, fulfillment, how does it work to work with you? If they’re like, listen, I want to your system, I want to get system installed and start getting clients.

Marquel Russell 12:38 

100%. So basically, how we do it. So what we found, and one thing that we did previously, is over a series of weeks, we’d and depending on how fast the person the client moved, we install our system in place, like the pages, the emails, launch the ads, all that and then depending on the person that could take a week to get live, it could take three weeks to get live, it could take three months to get live totally depending on the person, right? However, when we say okay, how can we shorten that. So we can actually get clients live faster, because the faster we can get the entire system installed, the first week I started getting them results. So what we created was what we call the smart system intensive, because our whole framework is called the smart system. So we basically was okay, how do we do this in two days? How do we install the entire system in two days, so that when we got them live, and now we got a new leads coming into clients, new conversations, and new revenue, so that sort of first Astrid question. The first phase is they we get them on boarded, do some initial pre-work. And then we do a two day intensive, where we install the entire system instead of business. Right? And then now is live now they got new leads new conversations coming in. And then from there over the next three months, six months, 12 months, which is helping them dialed in. Right? So let’s say for example, they came on board, and they were like, okay, I’m looking to add an extra million to revenue over the next year, over the next three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, we’ll be focused on making sure we’re optimizing everything because the first phase is like launching right? The second phase is optimizing. And then the third phase is like scale. And basically, optimizing is the unknown. It can be a fancy buzzword in the marketing world. But essentially optimizing is launching it getting some data, right, cutting the fat, and then the stuff that’s working, maximize that. So we mentioned the scientific advertisers earlier. So when marketing you have a hypothesis, right, so you get your best-educated guess. So we will launch a system based on our best educated guesses. Then we do the experiment just like it was a science class. How that experiment response and marketing mess call getting some data. So did that work? What didn’t work? How can we improve on it. And then we get that data based on what we know is a fact now. And then we build on top of that to increase the results with less effort and remove artifacts. So now over that next period of time, whether it’s add an extra million will add an extra five or 10 million, or doesn’t want to add an extra three to four or 500,000, or whatever the numbers are. We’ll reverse engineer what that whole process looks like.

Jeremy Weisz 15:29 

It seemed like a key piece of your journey was here was optimizing the onboarding process. And you shifted to this model where you again, like, it’s not like, you can get pieces over weeks and weeks, but you’re just like, let’s just put this on the fast track and you decided to do two days, was that a hard decision? And were you getting any pushback from people on carving out two days? What did that look like when you transition to that onboarding process?

Marquel Russell 16:05 

So I think the biggest thing was actually like, when I was like laying it out to the team, right, and then getting the team to kind of see it as well. And like to own the process as well, because we were so used to doing it another way. So I think the biggest thing is like was given the team on board. And then even it also even took us actually doing it for the team to fully see what I was saying in terms of the clients. It wasn’t a big sale, it wasn’t a hard sale for them. Because they weren’t used to doing it any other way. Right. So it was just so necessary. Next step. Right. So for the team, we were used to doing it a certain type of way. That was like, okay, how’s it gonna work? And then we did it. And now it’s like, oh, okay. Now it makes sense. And now we’re continuing to optimize that process as well.

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