Get More Views – Adam Linkenauger Interview

By: Michael Dunlop     Topics: Interviews     More posts about: Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing

Something for every entrepreneur to relate to.

Read this short interview to hear how Adam Linkenauger went from Olympic hopeful to moving back in with his parents, coming up with an idea for a business, only be told by a ‘friend’ that it was not going to work. Read on to see how his friend was way wrong!

Here’s why you should listen to Adam:

250,000+ FREE Leads from Youtube

Verified on Facebook which has served as leverage/credibility in the market.

1,000,000 Facebook Fans
180k YouTube subscribers
114,000 Google+ Followers
36k on Instagram

Hopes of scaling GetMoreViews quickly due to a goal of having two separate
7 figure companies by the end of 2015!

If you want to get YouTube and Facebook traffic then read this first!

Introducing Adam:

1. Tell us the story of how you became an online entrepreneur. How did you go from trainer offline to trainer online?

I built my first website at 16 years old. It was an online portal for local track and field teams in Roanoke, Virginia. It was a place to share pictures of events, discuss training tactics, and plan upcoming track meets.

The runner’s parents loved being able to see pictures that were actually taken on the track versus from the stands. We had over 100 athletes throughout the district taking pictures and uploading them to the portal.

This is where I found a real passion for building online communities.

“LinkTrack.com” (the portal) unfortunately faded once I went to Clemson University for high jumping. But, the desire to create a new online community was always in the back of my mind.

In fact, I put the wheels in motion for Freak Athletics in 2006 as I began writing my first training manual. I wanted to use that training to help athletes all over the world get better results. But, due to the time constraints of school and college track, I was unable to continue with the project.

After a successful high jumping career at Clemson (winning 7 ACC Championships :)) I decided to high jump professionally. I had reached qualifying height for the 2008 Summer Olympics and I was finishing my degree in Sport Management.

Training was going phenomenal, and I was poised to have a big meet at the Summer Olympic Trials. But, two weeks prior I strained my hamstring during a routine warm up.

My sponsors immediately fired me and my professional career was over.

That summer, while watching some of my friends compete in the Olympics, I interviews for a few college track and field positions.

I realized that wasn’t the career path I really wanted to take. My perception of coaching was laughs, success, and FUN. It’s what I had observed from my coaches over the years.

A cubicle, paper pushing, NCAA eligibility tests, and countless rules and infractions.

So, that summer I made a very ballsy/ DUMB decision to leave Clemson withOUT my degree, move back to Virginia, and give up on track and field all together.

I was back at my parents house, living in my old room, depressed, scared, and uncertain of whether running from what appeared to be the rest of my life was the right thing to do, or the worst decision of my life.

One night, I was thinking back to LinkTrack.com, and then Freak Athletics came to mind.

I remember getting out of bed with excitement thinking Freak Athletics was IT!

It was how I was going to live. Even if I just made enough to survive on, building a community around jumping higher was how I was going to do it.

And, it’s all I’ve done since that moment.

2. What’s a day in a life of Adam Linkenauger look like? (interest in diet, sleep, work hours, gym etc)

My typical day is not typical for most.

I actually sleep in until 10am typically, as I prefer the solitude of working late at night.

Once awake I’ll drink a protein shake and ride a stationary bike for roughly 30 minutes to an hour. No set time, just enough to “feel it”. I read marketing and business books on my Ipad while riding to pass time as well as educate myself without taking away “actionable” time from my day.

I’ll drive around 30 minutes to my office (when I’m at home in Roanoke). I’m also going to be working out of an office in Baltimore with Brian and Scott Moran (SamCart.com) and splitting the time between Baltimore and Roanoke.

Once I’m at the office, I’ll check emails and business KPIs before talking with Rocky Ullah, President of both Freak Athletics and GetMoreViews.

From roughly noon until 5 pm I work. Our team has an all hands on deck approach, therefore we all roll up our sleeves and get work done, no matter what the job entails.

Though we all have areas of work we specialize in, everyone in our office is capable of doing any other job necessary. That’s been BIG in our success.

After 5pm, I try to hit the gym to play basketball or shoot around, but admittedly, I put my job first – so a lot of time I skip the gym in order to keep working.

After the gym, I’ll grab a quick dinner at a local restaurant in Roanoke and head back to the office to work until around midnight.

My job is my absolute passion, and the process of growing businesses is what I truly love to do. So, although the hours sound long, it’s that way because there is nothing else I’d rather be doing.

When I get home I may watch something on Netflix if I’m not too tired, or read a bit more, but typically I go straight to bed to do it all again the next day!

3. 1 Million Facebook Fans or 180k YouTube Subscribers. If you had to delete one of your accounts, which would it be and why?

GREAT Question.

I’ll go with 180k subscribers on Youtube 100% of the time.

With Facebook continuing to throttle organic reach, those 1 million fans aren’t as valuable as they used to be. The ability to boost to the Fanpage yields solid ROI for us, but it’s not like the good old days where one post could bring us 1000+ leads.

I love Youtube because you actually get the opposite effect as any other social media platform. For example, a Facebook post may lose relevance in 24 hours. A tweet likely will lose relevance within an hour…

A Youtube video will generate MORE relevance over time, bringing you more leads, subscriber, and customers on autopilot.

We have 3-4 year old videos that are still bringing in 1000’s of leads a month to Freak Athletics. It’s truly incredible.

Youtube also allows clickable annotations, the ability to get paid for posting videos with in-stream advertising, and a ton of cool tools for branding.

It truly is a marketer’s dream when used effectively.

4. What kind of commitment is required to become successful with YouTube? (how often do I need to post, how long do the videos have to take etc)

It used to be HELL to maintain a Youtube channel. I use to have to post a video three times a week with slow dial up internet that would take hours a day per video!

Nowadays, you can actually upload all of your videos at the same time, and then schedule them.

This addition makes running a Youtube channel a BREEZE.

We have a “video day” where we shoot a month of Youtube content in under 2-3 hours.

Our videographer edits the clips and adds effects that night.

We will then upload, headline, describe, and tag all the videos the following day.

We dd our video annotations and BOOM… we are done for the month, and the videos will bring us leads for years to come!

5. If you could only make one video ever, to get you the most traffic possible (good quality traffic, not viral), what would that video look like?

I would make an extremely HIGH QUALITY (in content and appearance) addressing the BIGGEST pain point in your market.

If you could only shoot one video to get the most traffic possible, it would need to blow the socks off of anyone watching. Why? it’ll increase the average “Watch-Time” per viewer (how long a typical viewer watches this video).
With cold viewers (non-subscribers), you’ll want to immediately go into the content as soon as the video begins. Don’t do a 30 second introduction highlight film, or even a 15 second stinger for your logo.

That can all come later.

Instead, over deliver on CONTENT, and have direct Call To Actions to “Like, Comment, and SUBSCRIBE” to the channel.

6. We’ve had a lot of views on our videos but when I look up YouTube in analytics I get no traffic from them. What don’t we know that you have mastered?

I’d first check your Annotations to make sure they are “clickable” and that you linked them to an optin page.

I’d make sure these annotations appear at the beginning and end of every video on your account, and your offers are 100% congruent to the subject of your video!

For example, if you were creating videos to teach people how to become bloggers, you wouldn’t want to offer a free “Facebook fanpage blueprint”. Instead you’d want to offer something like “Blueprint: How I built my Blog to 1 Million viewers a month” (give them the END RESULT)!

I’d then recommend that moving forward, you should include a VERBAL and PHYSICAL Call To Action in each video you create. The call to action will point towards the annotation location and SAY “Click Here to get a Free (Whatever)”

7. What sells best often depends on where your visitors come from. What’s the ideal product to sell to YouTubers?

I love Youtube because your subscribers already trust you PRIOR to opting in. You can establish yourself as an authority before they ever hit your site.

In most business models using other forms of traffic, a squeeze page, or Ad is the first connection in business. That makes for a lot of “questions” in the mind of the lead.

“Is this guy legit?”
“Can he truly do what he says?”
“Am I going to get spammed?”

With Youtube, anyone who opts in to our mailing list and is offered a program has already seen PROOF, CREDIBILITY, TRUST, SOCIAL PROOF, and looked into our eyes and heard our voice.

This of course is all done through our videos.

Saying that, I recommend all sales materials, and product training to be video specific if and when possible.

There is a disconnect if your traffic comes from Youtube videos, but your first product is a pdf download.

I’d recommend sticking to video training whenever possible.

Saying that, from a product standpoint:

I often get the question: How much do you give for Free on Youtube vs paid within a product.

My answer to this is always…

I can show basketball moves, and drills for free FOREVER.. same with Youtube tips and tricks. People aren’t paying for that…

…people are paying for a trusted step by step PROCESS that they can follow to get results.
Simple as that.

Someone could hand me a lifetime of wood, hammers, and nails.. but I’ll never build a house until I have a step by step, easy to follow plan to do so.

8. People still are buying Facebook likes! Is it even possible to game social media in 2015, is it ever worth it?

I’m sure it’s possible to “game” Facebook in 2015… but you will LOSE. NO it’s not worth it. Facebook (and same with Google/Youtube) will ALWAYS win, and you WILL be punished.

Whether it comes in 2016..17… or 18. You will be punished, and it WILL destroy your business if you try to “pull one over” on these companies.

Facebook and Youtube offer us an INCREDIBLE sea of potential leads, clients, and customers, and all we have to do is provide quality content our market enjoys!

Stick to it, use ethical tactics, and good things will happen.

A good story here is when one of our competitors assumed all of our success HAD to be because of our large Facebook following. So they apparently paid for likes, and shot up 50-75,000 likes in a matter of days…

His page quickly became one of the top locations online for pornography links, knockoff shoes and handbags!

NOT good when your market is 13-16 year old basketball players.

Saying that, his page was either removed by him, or deleted by Facebook less than a year after this incident occurred.

9. You are an athlete first. How does that influence your business? Do athletes make better entrepreneurs?

My athletic background has taught be how to fail. I’ve failed more than anyone I know, young and old, and because of that experience of failure… I know how to succeed.

Athletes are great with leadership and dealing with adversity, as well as possessing the unique ability to have others put trust in them, and to put trust in others.

I do believe my athletic background plays a huge factor in the way I run my businesses.

10. The first time I met you, you were at a workshop, learning about business. How important has it been for your growth to invest in your education?

I will never go a day in business again without being in contact with a coach AND mastermind group. Education in this business is extremely important.

Saying that, I urge readers to limit education to 2-3 sources TOPS and take on the mentality of TRY first and ASK LATER.

I see people in mastermind groups asking TOO many questions… questions about their every move.

I understand they want to do everything correctly, but it’s important to spend most of your time IMPLEMENTING and acting without fear.

Failure is learned, it’s the best education you are ever given.