#270 Matt Lakajev - How to Instantly Drive More Sales (Sell-by-Chat Framework)

Watch This NEXT: https://youtu.be/dkixSG4hVRI

You’re sleeping on LinkedIn.

Even if you’re posting every single day, you’re still letting leads slip through.

You’re doing the hard stuff:
- Scripting content
- Finding funky hooks
- Posting consistently

But something’s off. 

You’re not turning leads into customers.

That’s where Matt Lakajev’s Sell-by-Chat strategy comes in.

Matt has booked thousands of meetings and closed millions in revenue—through DMs alone.

The crazy part?  You don’t even need content to get started.

If your Stripe account looks dead and you’re tired of chasing leads, this 90-minute episode with Matt will change how you think about sales forever.

We recorded this live in Bali, and it’s filled with everything you need to know about sales, psychology, and turning conversations into cash.

And if you get value from it, drop a comment below!


(00:00) Preview and Intro 
(00:32) Why People Struggle with Sales  
(01:51) LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategy 
(03:35) How to  Build Trust and Convert Clients  
(07:59) The $3.5M Business Model Breakdown  
(10:22) The Competitive Advantage in Sales  
(14:36) The Right Way to Start LinkedIn Conversations  
(20:28) Why Most Content Creators Don’t Make Money  
(22:55) How Matt Lost $180K Before Finding the Right Business Model  
(26:14) The Power of Brand vs. Cold Outreach  
(29:53) Overcoming Fear and Rejection in Sales  
(32:52) Mindset Shift For Success 
(39:45) Need-Based vs Curiosity-Based Growth  
(42:18) Why Most People Stay Stuck in Mediocrity  
(47:49) Sales as the Ultimate Survival Skill  
(53:08) The Fastest Way to Validate a Business Idea  
(55:05) The Truth About LinkedIn Growth & Lead Generation  
(01:02:24) Using LinkedIn for High-Quality Leads  
(01:08:37) The Rise of LinkedIn Entrepreneurs
(01:12:37) How Licensing & Education Models Scale Faster  
(01:14:40) Why Hiring a Sales Team is the Ultimate Growth Hack  
(01:15:22) The Secret Behind High-Ticket Coaching Success  
(01:22:13) How to Use a Podcast to Build an Online Business  
(01:26:00) The Mistake of Choosing Random Niches  
(01:29:31) How to Automate and Scale a Podcast Business  
(01:35:02) How to Test Niches and Pick the Best One  
(01:42:08) How to Use AI to Improve Productivity  
(01:47:03) How AI Can Optimize Sales Conversations  
(01:50:57) Why AI Won’t Replace Human Creativity

Chapters

• 0:00 LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategies for Profit
• 6:57 Business Models
• 12:40 Effective DM Strategies for Building Trust
• 25:19 Building Brand Trust Through Cold Calls
• 34:02 Personal Evolution and Finding Direction
• 38:15 Mindset Shift Towards Success
• 41:59 Breaking Through Personal Growth Barriers
• 51:31 The Power of Taking Action
• 1:03:03 Maximizing LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategies
• 1:07:53 LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategies and Scaling
• 1:14:30 Hybrid Coaching Sales and Ads
• 1:20:02 Sales Team Management and Lead Generation
• 1:30:53 Effective Positioning for Business Success
• 1:39:08 LinkedIn Lead Generation Through Personal Branding
• 1:45:43 AI and Skills in Content Creation
• 1:51:35 Expertise vs. AI Content Creation

Transcript

Matt Lakajev: 0:00

Only 3% of the market is ready to buy right now. The other 97% will be ready at some point in the future.

Darren Lee: 0:06

Most people are wasting time on social media. Matt Lakovich isn't one of them. He's ranked number one in Australia for lead generation and has helped hundreds of clients add anywhere between 30K and 100K per month, and knows exactly how to turn posts into profit. This episode has no fluff, no theory, just real simple strategies that turns conversations into profit. This episode has no fluff, no theory, just real simple strategies that turns conversations into cash. What do you think you're doing differently on LinkedIn?

Matt Lakajev: 0:32

than everybody else. The reason why a lot of small business owners can't sell, it's just because they don't have enough leads. And when you don't have enough leads you act desperate, you drop your price, you do things that you usually wouldn't do, you treat your staff badly because you just might be in a bad mood. But if you solve the leads problem, everything else gets solved.

Darren Lee: 0:49

Where I do want to start, though, is I think I want to from your perspective. What do you think you're doing differently on LinkedIn than everybody else?

Matt Lakajev: 1:00

The biggest thing that people don't know how to do is they don't know how to have another conversation with another human being and build trust with them and not sell to them, because only 3% of the market is ready to buy right now. The other 97% will be ready at some point in the future. But when you pitch in the first message you're only actually hitting into a small percentage of the 3%, and the other 99.5% that you hit you're immediately breaking the trust and you can't go back to them. The only thing I do different is I reach out to everyone but I don't pitch. I only add value and then I invite, and so I have 333 times the amount of leads than everyone else, because everyone else pitches in the first message.

Matt Lakajev: 1:51

So if you look at it, three percent of the market's ready to buy right now. Only about 10 of that will be interested, so that's 0.3. That's the whole total addressable market they're reaching out to right now. That will get back to them. I'm reaching out to 100. So if you times that, you know, 100 divided by 0.3 it's like 333.

Darren Lee: 2:10

So just from the number of conversations I have, I had 333 times the amount of leads, and we just sell on a longer time horizon dude, this is going to be so sick so let's get a bit of context as to, yeah, what your offer is, how much money have you made with it, and why this way is going to be a better opportunity for people than the traditional way that they're selling on linkedin, which is obviously wrong.

Matt Lakajev: 2:32

Yeah, gotcha um wait. Are we into it now or just?

Darren Lee: 2:35

yeah, we've always been recording.

Matt Lakajev: 2:36

I was like I thought you're like setting me up into the thing. I was like this is hilarious. Um, so we just hit the ground running. Yeah, sweet, this is sick. We've got three offers, so we've got a free one. It's how to start selling on LinkedIn immediately. It's like a free five-day email course. I actually took a piece of our paid program and I was going to charge $500 for it, but I just was like screw it, let's just do it for free.

Matt Lakajev: 3:01

Just agree with that, yeah, and just, we've even had people just messaging me because I have a market, a massive market in lower socioeconomic countries who can never afford our thing, and I was like, man, let's screw it, I'm just going to give it away for free because I want to help as many people as I can, because our second offer is like 3K USD, right, and so for some people that's just crazy money, and so I want to be able to help everyone. So we gave that away for free and that kind of acts as a conversion mechanism that we have, and since we launched that on October 15, we've had about 5,700 opt-ins since then.

Matt Lakajev: 3:35

And that was organic from LinkedIn, which is pretty good, and they go through it. And I get people messaging me all the time saying this is amazing. And in the offer itself, in the videos, I say to people hey, I want you to win first to make money. And when you do, pinky, promise me that you're going to join our paid program. And I actually have like a big pinky promise on the thing and I ask people to comment on the video pinky promise and there's like 180 people that have commented pinky promise and so it's like a commitment and consistency thing.

Darren Lee: 4:04

It's like um, aligning yourself to the actions, all right, and having the it's like self-acceptance, being like, okay, I'm going to do this when I'm at that point it's actually just like a psychological like.

Matt Lakajev: 4:16

it's like it's just using reciprocity. So robert shieldini's he's got. He wrote a book with six rules of persuasion but he actually has seven, because he talks about the next rule he made up in persuasion, which is the next book. But reciprocity is saying, hey, I did this thing for you, making it known to them when you get this thing, you do this thing for me. It triggers something in people's brain where it sticks into their long-term memory, where they can't remove it and they always have guilt Until it's like, if you, you know, if you go out to dinner and you forget your wallet and it's an expensive dinner and your friend pays for it, you just feel so guilty until you do something for them. And so it's wired into our DNA. If you do something for people, they're going to feel reciprocity. But even if they don't buy from me, they'll still feel this pull to tell other people because they have to, because if they don't, either they're a psychopath which is nearly no one or they have to do something. And so they might show up on my content and comment, they might tell people, they might just spread good word.

Matt Lakajev: 5:22

There was someone who went through our free course and he got so much value. Comment. They might tell people they might just spread good word or that you know, like we had. Um, there was someone who went through our free course and he got so much value. But he's working with one of my competitors who's a friend right, we could mate but like so he couldn't. He didn't buy our thing, but he went through the free course, made so much money from it, that someone came to him and said who do I use to sell on linkedin? And he's like you have to use this guy. And this guy came to us and he paid me 16,000 USD and I never spoke to him in person. He comes just from the strong referral. So it creates this energy bubble of value and trust around you and that's why I'm like I like a lot of free stuff and giving it away.

Darren Lee: 6:05

Just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes? Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year. Thank you, yeah. What I think is really powerful there as well is the fact that when you enable someone like that, so you teach them the mechanism, they take responsibility and ownership for their action, yeah, and therefore they're more inclined to recommend you.

Darren Lee: 6:33

I find that's a big difference between agency and coaching. Is that an agency? You do it for them? So it's kind of like a dirty secret. Does that make sense? They're like oh, I don't want to admit that this person did it for me, whereas with coaching it's like, oh, I'm so grateful for Don Martell Taki, james Kemp Mark because you actually helped them, you enabled them.

Matt Lakajev: 6:54

It's weird, right. I think the agency and coaching are just slightly different business models, different with others. There's times when people are in positions in their life where an agency, like, makes absolute sense to use because, like, their time is valuable so they shouldn't be spending their time on doing it. But there's the other flip side of things of like, you know, when you get coached, you just it's just speed of getting better at a skill, yeah, like that's, that's all a coach does. So you know, I, I before this podcast and I recorded with chris doe on monday, like two days ago as well, I got speaker coaching, like.

Matt Lakajev: 7:31

I reached out to one of my friends, arabella, who's coached like, like all these massive companies and their ceos, and I got her to coach me on speaking before and like, what I learned from her, like, like, was you know, in four sessions was way more than two years of YouTube videos, because it just it skills you up a lot faster. So coaching, I think, gets you the skill which enables you to, but agency can get you the results really faster. Yeah, so if it's a good agency, if it's a good agency.

Matt Lakajev: 7:59

Yeah, so it's like it's kind of you got to trade off of, like what you're doing and yeah, yeah. But if you're an entrepreneur starting out like you want to learn the skills.

Darren Lee: 8:08

So with this offer right now, you've hit three and a half million yeah In total, or this year.

Matt Lakajev: 8:12

So the our run right now is three and a half million. So I'll run through the numbers and break it down, because people are always like what?

Darren Lee: 8:19

did you actually do? That's the value for like. Why the fuck should we care about this and why?

Matt Lakajev: 8:23

should we focus on LinkedIn Exactly? So we've got a free offer to sell on LinkedIn. Our second offer is like our main offer. It's called our Six Figure Creators Program. It's specifically targeted to small business owners or creators who want to drive, like multiple six figures to their business through LinkedIn and to do it themselves. So it's very much around teaching someone to fish instead of giving them the fish. So it's like we show you how to do it and because of that we get some insane results because people pay. You know it's three grand USD now I hope we go up by the time this is out, but like it's three grand and like people just get in, because when they get skilled up, they get skilled up, and we've got in.

Matt Lakajev: 9:11

At the moment we've got 660 people in our program in total in the school community, um, and then we've got one other offer as well, which is called seven figure creators. So it's kind of like invite only. I only work with 12 people now on purpose and there's no course content or anything, they're just. There's literally just two calls a week and we just get on and we just implement. That's it. So like I coach, like you know, a few different people, like one guy who's you know, he's been the CRO for like hundreds like so many different like sales companies and he's got about 120,000 followers. So I coach him. Like another guy who's the number one finance person us on linkedin but it's very much sales specific, but it's like an invite only thing and that's like that was the price of that's like 14 grand a year or something like that done and that combines it turned to 3.5 million so we've done like cash collected.

Matt Lakajev: 9:55

Now we've done 2 million. We do about 300 000 a month. So the past two months we've done near close to 300 000 a month.

Darren Lee: 10:02

Last couple of months what do you think is the biggest lever for that? What's the unique mechanism?

Matt Lakajev: 10:09

So why we've closed so much?

Darren Lee: 10:11

Most creators are broke right. Most guys on LinkedIn don't actually make the numbers Apparently like Justin Welch, mark Gray, you know.

Matt Lakajev: 10:19

So we can go deep here.

Darren Lee: 10:20

If I talk about our.

Matt Lakajev: 10:22

The competitive advantage that I have is a few things. One, I have a co-founder. So, like I do not believe in solopreneurship. Like the, the people, like you've always had Justin Welsh on here like irregardless of, like, whatever he does, he's just a unit. Yeah, he's like no one is as good as him. So, like I think you, you know he's had 25 years in the trenches and he's built two billion dollar companies two of them, yeah, two of them right and he's seen like how to uh, how to have multiple employees?

Matt Lakajev: 10:56

yeah, he's another level like and I think it's really hard because to get to his level there's gonna take 25 years, like to get to his level. So I think there's a. There's this kind of I think the word solopreneur has a is a great marketing wrapping around it. But, like I, I like you know, why would I like, if I get paid, like you know, two grand an hour to get on a call, why would I clean my own house as like kind of bad or bougie as that sound or like, why would I, you know, do all these things? It's like you want to outsource everything as much as you possibly can. So, like, I just think that, yeah, the solopreneurship thing is like not something, but I think what's helped us grow as co-founder is the total opposite personality type as me, but he's like an absolute genius.

Matt Lakajev: 11:40

That's the first thing, and the second thing would probably be it's our deep understanding of sales and psychology and how we're thinking from a longer time horizon than shorter. Because, you know, we teach small business owners how to generate leads for their business through linkedin, through organic content and dms, and the reason why a lot of small business owners can't sell it's just because they don't have enough leads. And when you don't have enough leads, you act desperate, you drop your price, you do things that you usually wouldn't do, you treat your staff badly because you just might be in a bad mood, but if you solve the leads problem, everything else gets solved in your actual business. So I've just had that fundamental belief since I started. So I just believe that when you're having conversations in the DMs with people or you have sales conversations with them, you always want to do what's right for the other person and the best fit for them.

Matt Lakajev: 12:37

Yeah, and the best thing isn't. Hey, saw your profile. You might be looking for Legion. I can get you 10 calls in the next 30 days. I will give you a refund of five grand and send your kids to Disneyland. Right, you can make these crazy promises, but like it's very short term thinking.

Matt Lakajev: 12:52

So I'm just like. You know a lot of people that jump in our program. We've been chatting, I've got a one-to-one coaching call with a girl next week and like people can pay extra money if they want to call me.

Matt Lakajev: 13:06

It's like an extra thousand bucks and she's been following me for a year, and so the competitive advantage we have is that every conversation I've had with someone like, I'm not hard pitching them, I'm only inviting them to work with me, and so we'll have a conversation for that long and when that? When that happens, if everyone else out there goes and pitches, they just cut down the market completely. If we go into this we talked about this before which was only 3% of the market is ready to buy right now in total, and the other 97% will probably be ready at some stage, they might be completely unaware that your solution exists or they might be close to that 3%. What all the lead gen bros do is they just go for volume and they usually don't understand psychology. So they just go let's just smash this list and if we do enough volume and we outreach enough people with these crazy promises and we send these loom videos of these audits and all this kind of shit, right Like they do get a few people coming in. But if you look at the market, there's only 3% that's ready to buy. Of that 3%, only about 10% will actually even respond to cold outreach period. So what you're looking at is 0.3% out of 100% and everyone that they don't end up selling to or chat to. They also completely break their trust. They burn the lead. They burn the lead, and when a lead's burned it's like, yeah, you can't come back. It's like when you smash something, it's like when you do something bad, like someone can't trust you for a long period of time.

Matt Lakajev: 14:36

And so, really, the magic trick of what I do differently is like when I chat to someone, I'll say like, hey, darren, what's going on? I saw you connected to my client, so-and-so. We just had a really great Zoom call last night. I saw you're also, you know, serving barley. I'm coming over here too, thought I'd connect and say hi, like that's the first message. And then the person's like, oh, I feel special, like this is actually really nice, no-transcript. And then someone's like, oh, I started posting because I saw this person. And then I say you know, oh, awesome, like that sounds like really cool. Yeah, I remember when I first started posting. It's like super confusing. And I I gave Sean some of these templates that help him get leads. You know, would you like me to send them to you? I'll ask him permission and they'll be like, yeah, I actually love that. And then I'll say, yeah, cool, use number three and seven, like. Let me know if you do do it.

Darren Lee: 15:32

Oh, by the way, Can you explain the asking for permission thing, because I can give you an example, too Most people don't understand If we really break it down.

Matt Lakajev: 15:47

The mistake that most people make is when they start a conversation, they're thinking what can I say next? That will get the person on the meeting. That's not the goal. The goal of the DM is two things. One is to make them feel special, as weird as that is. If you make someone feel special, as weird as that is, if you make someone feel special, it cements it into their long-term memory. They remember you forever and you're not considered a salesperson. That's number one. The second thing is you just get them to reply, and so that's all you want to do, and so you're micro-persuading people through what you're saying. Every single line is intentional. So if you look at any really good copywriters so you've had Lara Koster and Yasmin Alek on this podcast, right, you read every line of their post. It's like a hook. It's amazing, even their scripts, like I know Lara's.

Darren Lee: 16:37

YouTube scripts.

Matt Lakajev: 16:38

She told me personally they're so good. Every line on her YouTube videos she wants to be scripted in terms of psychology. Yep, I've, yeah, I've heard she like. I heard her on somewhere where she said I spent 12 hours writing this and I was like, yeah, I can see how you would have done.

Darren Lee: 16:52

I've been with her. When she spent 12 hours doing it, I've actually physically worked with her. It's crazy, and she'll just stare at the same fucking screen. Just make slight adjustments the same way that brett malinowski, yeah exact same it's.

Matt Lakajev: 17:02

So people don't treat their dms like that. That's the problem. So, like the dms are, like, you need to treat them the same, and so you don't want to just say pointless stuff. So every time I ever say anything to someone, it's like on purpose, and so the permission based thing is to make them feel like I'm doing them a favor, even though I'm like I'm just saying it because I want to create that feeling of goodwill inside of it's just a framing, yeah framing and positioning that you can say the same thing, but just how it's said, kind of like what your wife?

Darren Lee: 17:32

yeah, same my wife, yeah. I can't tell my wife to do something, but I can educate her as to why it will be beneficial that we did this thing yeah, and this was genuinely. We've spent five years together. I've had to do this for my different things. Yeah, because, whereas like someone like you who's just high logic, I'd be like, bro, let's just do this yeah, and we just we just go get it done and it's kind of like the mz that but understanding those points and I remember you mentioned a video saying that.

Matt Lakajev: 17:57

Understanding the pacing of the responder, there's this I've never heard someone talk about that, bro, there's so much like to do with it like. So everyone has watched chris voss's videos where he's the famous hostage negotiator and he talks about mirroring and matching their time. And so it's the same in the dm exchange. If your friend writes you like an essay, long message, venting to you, if you respond back with like cool, sick, they'll be like you, asshole. And so it's the same with the DMs. Or if they shoot you through bing, bing, bing, like three short messages, like my best mate Andy will say to me yo, dickhead, what are you doing? Come over. Like that's what he says to me. I'm like, yeah, what's up. And I, that's what he says to me. I'm like, yeah, what's up. And then I'll just like run through, you know. But if he sends me that and then I just come back with an essay, he'll be like is this guy like, really? And so in the DMs you want to match like what they're giving you. So if they respond fast, you respond fast. If they take a day, you take a day. And so you want to match their feeling because you kind of want to sell to them and they want to be sold to. But like you're, you're micro persuading them through, and so, like, I'll reach out, I'll give the person the free thing, I'll mention something to make them feel special, and then I'll say something like oh yeah, look, I'm just letting you let you know, dude, I've got to bounce, I've got to actually take my dog for a walk. Can I shoot you back a message next week? I just want to see how those templates went. See you bye. And so I'm just like what I want to distill in their mind is that we use heuristics as mental shortcuts. So, like, in our brain there's folders, and so when we see something, we like immediately folder it against something familiar. We like immediately folder it against something familiar. And so I'm like shocking this person with so much like trust and stuff that they don't put me in the sales bucket. I'm actually inside the bucket of a friend, and so there's an immediate trust. And if I make them feel special and if they go tell their partner, oh, I had this like amazing thing, you know, like if I want to go back home, I'll be like I met this guy in Bali so good, like we were recording this podcast. It's gonna stick in my memory and that's what you, how you make a good dm. You want them to remember it and most people don't think as deep with the dms because it's kind of like content is everything right, content is like the thing and like the dms are an afterthought. But it's's like you can just DM people and like make money with zero followers.

Matt Lakajev: 20:28

Like my business partner Steve we ran this as an experiment. He has no profile photo, he's never posted, he's never commented. It looks like he has a dodgy bot thing. He closes 100K in three months and then he wrote a book on sell by chat. He wrote the book. It's it's like a 10 000 page mini book and like he wrote how to do it. And he's like 10 000. Jesus christ, yeah, 10 000. So not 10 on page 10 000. Um word not page.

Darren Lee: 20:54

I was like jesus 10 000 word, 10 000 word mini book, but like it's the.

Matt Lakajev: 21:01

I think that there's an overemphasis or an overweight, like. I think content is. Like I love content, it's so good, like it's amazing. But I think there's an overemphasis on the content.

Darren Lee: 21:13

Well, people are princesses, so they think that the content is just going to do everything for them. It's right. And then it's like you know, a few of my friends are like, oh, like, I'm not going to speak, I'm not going to speak, I'm not going to. It's like dating, the best way to put it. It's like dating. Yeah, is that like there's a time to kind of not be super pushy and like try to get him to sign the marriage cert, but at the same time, someone has to instigate the dance? Yeah, so like true internet success of it. But I think the problem is a lot of these creators not even restricted linkedin, just in general, instagram and even youtube because youtube has a weird relationship with the audience is that there needs to be a conversion mechanism to get the next step and I describe it as if you imagine your leg, your knee, is the connective tissue between the upper, upper leg and lower leg without that, that there is no leg.

Darren Lee: 22:05

Okay, yeah, but most guys are too proud arrogant ego princesses to be able to add in the next step.

Matt Lakajev: 22:12

I would actually argue that it's not that Really no, it's fear.

Darren Lee: 22:17

But I mean, if you're, let's say, for instance.

Matt Lakajev: 22:21

The classic example is a LinkedIn copywriter who writes a post says my first two years when I wrote content, I made no money and now I made $3,000 in three hours and all I think in my mind was like why did you waste two years? Like it's actually fear, it's people. We're very similar. Like we've been chatting before. Like you will just outreach to someone and have no shame in so long I wouldn't care.

Darren Lee: 22:47

Well, I actually want to talk to you about the beginning of your business. You said you didn't make money. You lost like 180K in the first two years. Was it 18 months?

Matt Lakajev: 22:55

Yeah, that was like purely based off me. I'm not understanding business models.

Darren Lee: 23:00

Yeah, because for us it was like the opposite. Yeah, so I was working in revolut, you're working in zoom. I know we're jumping around, but yeah, basically when I I was just so fucking disgruntled with the startup world and I was just exact same as zoom, just like, yeah, so much pressure. Yeah, when I went like balls deep and we had a done for you offer yeah, so I just hammered lemless and sales nav and then I literally, I bro.

Darren Lee: 23:27

I got a 4k client. I would honestly say within like, uh, the three weeks, and then I actually got to the fucking infamous 10k amount in around six weeks, yeah, but then at 10k. This is irony, someone who was senior in product and revolut I was making more money. 10k, bro, 10k usd.

Matt Lakajev: 23:43

I was like in singapore, wow USD. I was like in Singapore.

Darren Lee: 23:45

So I was like fuck this, handing in my 60 day notice and then I just like but then? So what I did was just show people didn't just appear right. What I did was I worked in Revolut from Singapore till midnight every night and then I'd wake up at 6 with the sunrise.

Darren Lee: 24:01

it's weird I wake up on the sunrise every day and I would hammer, hammer LinkedIn and my email from six till ten and then go to the gym at ten, and at ten I would literally be peeling myself off my laptop booking calls, taking these most embarrassing calls ever, but I did it because I couldn't depend on the traffic on my podcast. The traffic on the podcast was good to get the online business bros, but it wasn't good to get the online business bros yeah, but it wasn't good to get the high ticket clients yeah. And like to this day, like I still like we don't do that anymore.

Darren Lee: 24:32

But I'm saying like if you're in a position you can pull the sales lever, the lever, while you pull the content, and you improve your funnels and the systems in the backend. Before we go any further, I have one question for you. Do you want to generate more leads for your business? Well, I've put together an entire system how anyone can use a podcast to generate more leads for their business and the best part is, you don't even need a podcast to get started. I've created an entire guide and framework for you to be able to get more guests, more clients, more customers, more people in your pipeline and generate more revenue. This exact system is available right in the description down below, and you'll be able to leverage a podcast to generate more leads for your business and be able to increase your exposure, increase your authority and increase your influence in your industry. So check that out right down below.

Matt Lakajev: 25:19

Yeah, I think I've got two stories that I think will really, because I really agree with you, and I've got the story myself where I did the same thing. But I want to show a comparison, because we chatted before this about like brand and personal brand, and we were chatting about someone who, like maybe isn't making as much money as they should be for their personal brand based on their follow account. And while I think brand matters a lot and an example to use is I worked at zoom video communications, so zoom the zoom during covid. So I worked there before covid, during and after. So before covid, zoom had no brand and I'd reach out to people and I'd call a legal firm in sydney and be like, hey, like you guys want zoom meetings and they're like, ah, we just meet in person, like we don't need this, like this was all the time like, and I was like, okay, because we don't have a brand either. Like they use people, use skype, that was the thing, oh yeah, and so like. And they're like we don't need to do skype meetings.

Matt Lakajev: 26:14

And then covid happened and then, like my dad's friends from high school he hasn't chatted to in 10 years would call me up, matt, we need to meet, license meetings for our thing, whatever, and everyone was freaking out. And then after that I could just email anyone. I booked 750 meetings in a year at Zoom and it seems really fancy, right. All I did was I just pulled out 80,000 emails out of the database and I sent an email and said hey, it's Matt from the Zoom Sydney office, I'm wanting to see if I can get on a call and set up your Zoom. That's a lot of scent and I booked like 750 meetings and like made boatloads of money from it. So like 750k, right.

Matt Lakajev: 26:51

So I booked 750 meetings in a year, but I closed like multiple millions of dollars like a deals, like I closed one of the biggest Zoom phone deals. It was in small, medium businesses history Like it was like most random deal ever. But it wasn't skill, it was just brand. That's what actually did it for us Interesting. When I left Zoom, though, I left and I went to another software company because they paid me a lot more money, but then a guy that I used to do deals with at Zoom. He owned another consulting company where he did telephone bill auditing and I used to team up with him on deals so he'd be a partner and he'd get a cut of the deal, and we became good friends and he's like dude, like come work with my company and like be a co-founder, you do the sales. And I did like the the other thing and I was like all right.

Matt Lakajev: 27:35

But then I arrived at a company which had zero brand I had. I did not understand marketing. We were called tele, which sounds like telemarketing dodgy, and our website looked like it was built on Windows 95. It was so bad and we both didn't have design skills and I, like the same tactics didn't work and I was like, oh shit. And so I was like, what do I do? And so I did something similar to what you did was I only knew how to cold call, so I just locked myself. We subleased a legal firm we had like because we thought we needed to be in office. So we had a legal firm and they used to have pod rooms and I'd lock myself in the room for two hours every day, an hour in the morning, an hour at night. I couldn't leave to pee and I just had to keep hitting dial, just, dial, dial, dial, like just, constantly. And I just. But I ended up booking, like like I think it was 150 meetings in about five months and we ended up closing like a million dollars of revenue that year and since then Michael's closed way more, but like. It was harder to do but it was possible. But the difference between the two was with Telesense I had to create the brand and the trust myself from initial contact.

Matt Lakajev: 28:47

So my script for a cold call would be like you know, I'd be like hey, bill, it's Matthew LeCabe calling from TeleSense. I know you weren't expecting my call. I was just chatting to another client, another partner, business of yours, my watch Anthony there, and he mentioned your name. I just want to check if you got a couple of minutes to hear the reason for the call. And they'd be like, oh yeah, I know, anthony, yeah, cool, sweet. I'd be like, yeah, cool, we're running this free bill audit for Aboriginal rural healthcare centers. Just like yourself, I just want to schedule a time when we can come in and actually do it for you. I know you've got a 10,000 and I'd name drop two others and I'm like, cool, lucky, free tomorrow at 9am or the next day. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, cool, we'll do this thing. And then blah, blah, blah. And then we'd lock it in and we'd have the meeting. But just from that script, that one script, I could create the illusion of brand through psychology, through a positive association with someone. He knew a thing that we were doing, positive association with someone. He knew a thing that we were doing.

Matt Lakajev: 29:46

You mentioned a lot about positioning. I said we have a special audit for aboriginal uh, rural health care centers. I just named it that right, it wasn't, we didn't do anything. Like it didn't, it didn't matter, but it's, it's.

Matt Lakajev: 29:53

The coming back to the point is like you don't need a brand like it's easier. With the brand 100 it's easier. But like the excuse that people have, what I truly believe is that they're just really scared of being rejected. Like they just have a deep, deep insecurity. And if someone gets into business and then you into business, like me and you, we're a high D on the disc profile and the personality types, we're both really high D. We're quite rare. It's not that common to have that and so what we do just automatically is different to other people. But like other people, like they will sit there terrified, like terrified to actually reach out to someone, even to send a warm DM to someone to like their stuff, and so they hide behind the content and they do content for a year or two, like as an excuse when they could just pick up the phone and just call someone.

Darren Lee: 30:52

It's ridiculous yeah.

Matt Lakajev: 30:53

It's ridiculous and the content itself, like the definition of, like the content marketing that I said is it's to enable you to have more conversations. Exactly that's like you do a podcast and people would listen to it and it's a really great podcast. It enables you to have more conversations. Exactly it's that's like you do a podcast and people would listen to it and it's a really great podcast. It enables you to have more conversations, like dude, that's great.

Darren Lee: 31:10

The biggest thing for me is that cause like, uh, some of my clients actually say it. They're like, oh, do you still need to be doing all the podcasts you're doing? And for what you think? Yeah, I do it because basically, when I message someone or I'm speaking to someone, they'll just search my name on YouTube, they'll see it and they'll go yeah, this is sick, whatever. And then I do it because I actually just enjoy it as well, right, but it's almost like we don't know how the levers pull in the right way. But the biggest thing there, you know this is James Camp.

Darren Lee: 31:40

He was sitting in that exact same chair and I was like I don't understand why someone doesn't do something like that, doesn't like pick up the phone and drop a message, right, because if I'm making zero dollars a month and we're in month fucking 14, right, what else do I have? Like, what's the alternative? It's the antithesis of the action. So if the action is the message, or if the action is to post, or if the action is to get better, forget the DMs for a second. I just say in general, it's like to build a better funnel or even to learn ads man, faceless ads, just fucking figure it out. If there's that which is to get the goal, and the antithesis of the goal is you being back with your parents and being like fat and lazy, why are you not doing something that brings you forward? I don't, I don't get it. And he said he has a lot of clients paying a lot of money to just won't do the action. And I'm like I. I personally, I don't understand that.

Matt Lakajev: 32:30

This mindset, it's just it. Like it's just a hundred percent mindset. Like, if I take myself back to my like what I cause. Like when I was 16, fuck all super lost kid was with a really bad crowd. Two of my best friends at school went to jail. Like, even though I look like I'm look, I look like I'm pg-13 right like you wouldn't think that you're a whatsapp?

Matt Lakajev: 32:52

yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, so like because I dropped out of school and I like lost myself for a long time and it's because I just didn't find my crowd and I used to go party like all that for ages, for so many years, and I'm living that now. But like I was so lost but if I reflect back to the mindset I had back then, like I wouldn't do the actions like at all and it took me till like I finally, in 2012, at the end I started crossfit and I started hanging out with like successful people. So, like one of my good mates, greg, he was like a ceo at 28, like weapon right. So the guy jj, we became friends with, he was the ceo of the huffington post in australia. Then he became, see, he was like big executive at ebay and then we started hanging out with these people and like we were kind of the same and I was like I had this other distinct sense of reality and I was like a shift where I was like, oh man, like I just used to think that all these corporate people, whatever, just like crazy, smart or whatever, like we're just all humans. But then I started going through that journey and then, you know, I started making coffee. I started competing in like coffee, art tournaments and stuff and travel around australia doing it.

Matt Lakajev: 33:53

I then opened a business with my brother, a coffee shop. We owned that for two years. Like we used to have, like you know, heaps of people coming in there. We kind of built a brand. I kind of came out of my shell a bit there as well.

Matt Lakajev: 34:02

But then after but I was still not like I was still playing video games and doing all that shit, even though I was like playing CrossFit and stuff like that. So I still didn't have direction. And then we sold the cafe and then I was like what do I do? And then my accountant was like you're pretty good at accounting, you should apply, you know, with my friend's account. And I was like I was like I'm 27. I'm not in the cafe game. I was going to open another big cafe but there's no money in it. So like my subconscious was telling me I can't do it. And I was like I can't, like there's no money. And so I went and interviewed, got the job, and I was like I'm a business person, I work in corporate.

Matt Lakajev: 34:38

Because for all those years I always thought like after a year I was doing full-time accounting and I was doing full-time university because I was just pushing myself, because I had this like proof thing because I dropped out of school and I ended up like literally having a breakdown and I had to move home with my parents for six months. So I was just fucked Like. I was just like it was just really bad anxiety. It was just so bad. From what it was.

Matt Lakajev: 35:02

When I really reflect back, it was because I was doing things that was totally against what I believed. So it was like I was. I was doing accounting and I was pushing through and I was doing full-time uni and I'd be like, oh, it's okay, I can like out crossfit or daily sunlight in the morning, the thing. And like I started reading this book by this guy called aubrey marcus and he's like own the day, own your life, think that's the book. And he's like this super hippie dude, but like he wasn't back then but um, started reading that stuff. But like it's all just, it was all just a bandaid from the thing that like I knew I should be doing, which was like the creativity and all that kind of stuff.

Darren Lee: 35:46

And so I like I have to change. This is fucked. And so how did you?

Matt Lakajev: 35:48

feel when you were back home, like what did you do for that six-month period? I still worked in accounting, because and I used to have to like get the bus with my brother just to work he worked in the city as well I couldn't even be myself and for the eight hours I was sitting there, like the type of anxiety I had is like there's like five different types. There's one called impending sense of doom, where you think you're going to die, and so you're just like sharp pain right in my chest. My hand would go numb and I always think I'm having a heart attack or a stroke or something like that.

Matt Lakajev: 36:11

Gosh, but it was like, when I really reflect back, it was because I was doing something that I was so against, but I thought I needed to because of society's norms. I thought I dropped out of school so I needed to go to university, like I needed to do the right thing, but my gut was telling me like it was like the wrong thing as well at the same time. And it's like a lot around, like you know, and so I think about my mindset pre then is like so different, and then I started searching. I was like fuck it, I'm going to do whatever. Like I'm just going to find how do I make as much money as possible? Like, how do I make as much money as possible, like, because I knew money was a ticket out, because money buys time, which buys freedom. And then I found sales and then I found, you know, I applied to heaps of jobs and then I luckily got a job at Zoom, like, which is awesome. And then I kind of found myself and then just worked 12 hours a day like a dog when I was there and just like found it.

Matt Lakajev: 37:00

But like I think back to that point and pre even breaking down, I was like there's no way I would do this stuff. So it's like it actually takes a certain something in someone's life to like if you go to any human on the street and you're like here's these 10 numbers, just cold call them, they'll like their heart will be going at 150 beats per minute and stuff like that, and they just won't be able to do it. And it's just so much of it is around like maybe someone hasn't come to that breaking point to be able to do it that hard, but it requires, like you to shift as a human. Like you have to like completely change into like what society is and you probably have a similar thing is like now, if you go back I think I heard you talking about it when you go back home, it's like you, you're chatting to everyone. You're like I feel, like I'm, I don't go.

Matt Lakajev: 37:44

Yeah, it's like you're like I can't, I can't relate yeah so I think just a lot of people like they're a lot of personality types, can't actually push for that, but like it just requires, like you need to kind of change as a person. But you all need to evolve right. You know where you are right now.

Darren Lee: 38:01

You know, I think, like the, those evolutions are more creative, though they're more enjoyable. Now you still need to break the shackles of what you believe, yeah, but like you're still evolving quite a lot.

Matt Lakajev: 38:11

But it's even like accepting that you can evolve. It's like a lot of people just like they'll just say I'm gonna go to the gym or I'm gonna do do it tomorrow and I'll just like make this excuse, like I. I just believe that most things come down to mindset and just like they haven't like the reason say I push hard is because I have this like deep deprivation in me. I was like, oh no, I'm gonna like there's it's like deprivation that causes it as well. But I think so many people just live this life of like mediocrity, but it just hasn't gotten that bad yet, so they just don't need to.

Darren Lee: 38:41

Have you read 10x easier than 2x? No, I haven't read it. What is it? You'll love it, man. Yeah, leaps are actually easier than trying to double your business. Yeah, but it's me, it's.

Darren Lee: 38:55

It's mainly a psychology and almost like a like a personal development book, more so anything else. It's more the person that needs to change. And now you might think like, oh, like, okay, 10x means I'm selling a course for an agency. It's not like that. The logic is like the person must want to make those quantum leaps. I didn't say the word needs, they don't need to do it. No one needs to make 10 million a year, yeah, but they. But they want to do it out of curiosity, genuine interest, and just basically like almost like a, like a love for what they're doing. Versus when you need something. When you need something, then you're going to act from anxiety, like stress, pressure, yeah, and then you're going to look barely, barely, to x your business at best. So the other aspect of that is like the gap and the gain. So great entrepreneurs who are looking to follow curiosity. I'm thinking of someone like Dan Martell. He lives in the game Game.

Darren Lee: 39:45

The gain is like oh look, what else can I learn? Oh, there's a child over here who's 14. What can he teach me about being?

Darren Lee: 39:50

present and he's always looking from a game perspective. The gap is all I don't have enough, or my sales team are shit. My conversion's only X amount, y amount. Therefore, they're still trying to grow their business, but they're not doing it in a way. That's basically like opening up to the whole world. And the last aspect then of it is the infinite game versus finite game. Right, if you're constantly thinking like I need this to work, it needs to work. It's like a football game it comes to an end after 90 minutes and then it all comes crashing down, whereas looking at it from an infinite perspective means check this sales call. It was shit. I learned a few things. Let's get better. I did this conversation on LinkedIn. It didn't go as well. Let's put another post up and let's start another one, because then you're never. You never have to make it because you've already made it and now it's just refined.

Darren Lee: 40:39

Dude the position you're at 33, myself at 28. Technically, we could start working for quite some time. Let's put it that way. So what we're doing is we want to do it and we're like fuck bro.

Matt Lakajev: 40:50

and we're just chilling on Saturday talking about this and I was like how are you doing this? For your offer. What are you doing?

Darren Lee: 40:55

here because neither of us need it, but we just want to do it and it's a huge shift. Buy that book before you leave, oh well, just tell me after and I'll remember and I'll buy it you have to get a book because it's a huge psychological shift and then with that, then your returns, asymmetrical returns, the stuff that actually was.

Matt Lakajev: 41:14

Saha bloom taught me that, yeah, years ago, yeah, uh, which was like, look, only in the asymmetry just sales yeah, as asymmetric, asymmetrical returns for instance yeah, it's, I think I really like the way that he actually put that there as well. Danzel, it's pretty cool I. The way I think about it is whenever I always like to reflect back on my past self and like how I thought, because I think a lot of people have similar experiences and they go through different things as well. But, like, do you remember going to uni or school? Or do you remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Yeah, yeah, so like, I really remember that.

Matt Lakajev: 41:48

So like, if you're dying of thirst or food, that's all you think about. So your, or food, that's all you think about. So your, your brain can only take up a certain amount of ram in it such a good point, and so like. So you've got just the basic health stuff and then afterwards you got security, and then you've got like financial security, like you're just your personal welfare and stuff like that. This is why, like a lot of you know, you see people online. They're just like, oh, someone who's in like poverty or whatever. They're just just like, oh, just get himself out of it at work, and it's like it's literally impossible.

Matt Lakajev: 42:18

Like it's actually, there's a reason why the only people that do it are the ones who have 150 IQ and like that's it, like it's literally impossible, like they actually can't do it, but it's because you're stuck, even when you're in a job. It's like you actually can't top out, like you can't move through the stages because you get the third stage, which is like social, and then you've got like personal growth and then self-actualization, right. Like you can't move through the stages and you can't actually get to the point, like Daniel Priestley calls it, like he calls it like the flow state. You can't move through the stages and you can't actually get to the point, like daniel presley calls it. Like he calls it like the flow state of like, where you actually like you're open and you creative and like you know I just like we were chatting like literally three days ago and I was like I'll just fly over six hours to bali and we just hang out and I was like I just I did not realize I was like yeah bro.

Matt Lakajev: 43:12

Yeah, my brother called me this morning at 6 30 am, which is 9 30 his time and he's like yo, we're driving to come rent a house. Like we'll come to your house, let's go get a coffee. And I'm in bali. And he's like what the fuck? Like? And I was all used to the podcast. I just want to get away and like chill and ride and stuff like that.

Matt Lakajev: 43:27

Who's been riding since I've been here as well which has been really fun, yes, and then like but I people are kind of like trapped in like these levels and they're kind of stuck. So they might get past the security level, where they're a bit financially secure or whatever, but then they get through like the social level and like that's where you see, like the social media, this I was stuck in the social level, probably in like 2012, like where I was financially secure but I just was wanting to prove myself with other individuals. So, like my clothing, like all this kind of stuff, like it really mattered and and of course, it matters to an extent, it's how you present. But people are just like stuck in this like level and they're like they're all they're thinking about is like impressing other people and they're stuck in this Instagram trap and stuff. But like, I actually don't think like it's so difficult to break out and actually get to a point of like personal growth and self-actualization unless you actually own your own business and you have actual freedom. Like, and if you look at so many people like, why are like, if I come, as someone said, this stat but the the amount of people that do ironmans or triathlons and stuff is like 100x in like 10 years. I don't quote exact stat, but it's it's an insane amount.

Matt Lakajev: 44:34

I remember listening to it like, why are there run clubs now and everyone's like rejecting dating apps and all this kind of stuff? Cause they're like they're trying to find this higher level of self-actualization. So they're stuck in this social part, but like they can't actually like break through because as humans, we're meant to be like creative beings. Like before I did my own business. All this kind of stuff right, like I couldn't imagine just like randomly sitting there and writing for three hours. Yeah, like, like it. Like you can't even like fathom it because you're thinking about, like I've got to do these things to impress other people, or I'm addicted to video games or like, and so you're actually like you're in a different level of like consciousness, I feel.

Darren Lee: 45:11

Anyway, or you're trading your time for whatever that may be so like at the weekend. You're what you're drawing, you're ironing your or you're trading your time for whatever that may be so, like at the weekend, you're, you're earning your shirts, you're doing your cleaning.

Matt Lakajev: 45:19

That's another level where it's like you know, when you can't control your income.

Matt Lakajev: 45:22

You can't control it Like you can't. That's why I love sales so much and probably why you love it as well. It's like you, you can work harder and earn more money. Like there's just I remember thinking, like when I grew up, like I'd say to like my, because my dad, he owns a small business, he owns a panel beading shop and he gave us the sickest life, like it was so good, but like he came from like an immigrant mindset, because his parents were refugees and so he was very much around like you do everything yourself, and like very safe and stuff like that, which I'm not against, it's like amazing.

Matt Lakajev: 45:51

But like I always used to think growing up I was like why are we doing the gardening right now? Like yeah, why can't we like, why can't we do other things? Like I don't understand, like wouldn't we want to do other things, to like build, build stuff, and so I never understood that. So I think there's this like the time trade money thing, but if you're in a job it's impossible because your income is stuck, yeah, and so like your brain doesn't think about it.

Darren Lee: 46:15

Yeah, you just can't expand it.

Matt Lakajev: 46:16

You can't even fathom it. And you like haven't even. Like if you say to someone, hey, like, if I think back to my past self, like where I used to be, if I said to myself, hey, spend four hours journaling on a Sunday, there's no way I would do that. Like I of course I would have had to see my friends, I'd have like I would like if I didn't go out I'd have a sense of FOMO because I was in the social level. And then, you know, past the point, you know, when I, when I kind of was in accounting, I really regressed down back into like straight up, like fear of my life or ending and stuff like that. So I went right down to the bottom. So when I was like so anxious for six months that I couldn't think about anything, I couldn couldn't think about anything Like it was like so you can't actually.

Matt Lakajev: 46:55

But I think so many people are just like, they're just stuck and they can't even like break out because it's like they can't fully express themselves and their actual abilities. And so it's like when you meet business owners, like we've been to a lot of masterminds, you've got a mastermind like all that kind of stuff, right we. All that kind of stuff. Right, we've got one. When you speak to business owners, it's like it's just, you have a different conversation. It's like it's like you're on another planet.

Darren Lee: 47:18

It's just because they're just trying to always prioritize time over everything else. And that's why, even like living in bali, we've housekeepers, we have, yeah, cooks, cleaners, everything. Just because I value my own time more and it's not like, oh my god, like I want to be paid as much's just that I just don't want to do those things. So it's like you move away from that bullshit. And then also, the thing about sales is the fact that I always say that you know, put yourself or myself in the fucking goby desert with a small cell phone, we'll find a way out, yeah, like we'll find our way out.

Darren Lee: 47:49

So I think that's why I kind of started that question, which was like how can someone not do it? Because the whole point with this is that you learn the skill and then you also what's interesting as well. If you look at podcasting, you learn how to communicate yeah, right, which is just like someone speaking. You listen, you listen. You'll find it's very interesting too. The big thing about podcasters is that, well, firstly, everyone's trying to beat chris williamson, no one's trying to beat themselves, but then, when they get past that stage, they're trying to say something intelligent. And if you're trying to beat themselves, but then, when they get past that stage, they're trying to say something intelligent. And if you're trying to say something intelligent, you're just genuinely not listening. You just you can't.

Darren Lee: 48:20

It was Rick Rubin that actually broke that down. It was like the way your brain works, it can't process and then articulate something new at the same time. So you're just physically not listening to someone. Yeah, so that gives you a good understanding of communication. So I was able to go into sales calls or I was able to do public speaking and read the room.

Darren Lee: 48:40

I do a lot of workshop stuff. I can just see if someone's fucking bored for the most part, but then you can articulate it, and what I'm trying to say with this is that you learn a skill of like communication, psychology, sales, and then it's like okay, I want to learn copywriting. Well, I don't know how to write, but maybe it's like all this stuff over here and maybe I can apply these principles yeah to over here, yeah, and then we get the content and the sales in place. Now I want to ask you about the funnels on it, because you, you speak a lot, but most people don't actually have funnels or even know what they are. How much of that was awakening to you when you started working with people that they just don't understand the backend Just fucking don't.

Matt Lakajev: 49:19

I just it depends on what level of business they're at. So if we're just starting out, they shouldn't build a funnel. They shouldn't Like if you want to build a business like $10,000 a month, just pick out the phone and call people. You know, like literally, like it's literally, like you don't need a funnel or anything like a lot of the time, like things are just excuses because, like, we feel good when we build stuff.

Matt Lakajev: 49:46

So when I started our business, so I like I didn't. I thought first I need to build everything, then I need to sell people in and then, once I sell these people, and then then I've got to get new leads. And so that's how logical how you think about it, that's how you build a business. So because I lost $180,000 in the first like eight months because I just went out, I bought HubSpot Enterprise it was like $15,000 a year.

Matt Lakajev: 50:09

I had all these staff and stuff and I was like I just I rented an office thing, it was just one for me, but like it was just all this stuff that I bought, but like it was just like literally pointless. Like but I just thought you needed it. But like that, when I really kind of balled back to it and then like I just realized and I was like, oh, actually it's the other way around, like daniel priestly talks about it, where you know the first thing you solve is leads, then sales, then you build something, then you build the thing, and I was like, oh, wow, I got this so wrong.

Matt Lakajev: 50:37

and so, like a lot of people where I think I do think funnels and stuff matter, but like every single post you make on socials or every dmsn is a mini funnel in itself yeah it's like it's all metadata that you're leaving in places where people are coming back to you and so, like most people, when it comes down to like funnels, it's like if they're just starting out like you just gotta talk to more people. Like the, the the biggest problem with people starting out is if you were on a bus right, you know, no one speaks on a bus anymore. Right, 20 years ago they weren't spoken the bus. If you said to them hey, just go talk to that random human, they'd be like no way, no way, I'm gonna do that. I'm so scared they they might think I'm an idiot. That's like the problem. That's the actual problem. They're too scared to put themselves out there for like any of their own reasons. But, like, once you get past that point and then once you start talking to people, like usually the only thing if I can get someone to just like like, I've got this one client, pranjal.

Matt Lakajev: 51:31

He was like he was 25, like and for four months, for four months on LinkedIn, he made no money, like, he made nothing. And he was like living in Canada. He's formerly from India, so he was like kind of doing starting there, he was trying to do his business thing and we started working together. He got a deal with me because I saw he was, like you know, super, like driven and I was like dude and he'd pest me with everything. But he just did it and 12 months later he's made 150 grand cash and he's like dude. I can't actually be in Canada anymore because I'm around these bad friends. I'm going to move back home to my parents in India for six months to build a business and he India for six months to build the business. And I was like about to go on his second holiday in Thailand.

Matt Lakajev: 52:16

But, like, I actually got on a call with him last week and we looked at his DMs and I read them. They were terrible. It was so bad. He pitched in every message and I was like dude, we have to fix this. He was taking meetings in his parents' bedroom spare room in the background with a cap on and stuff. And I was like, bro, you can't do this, for, like corporates, you're selling to nine-figure e-commerce brands. And so just the sheer fact that he just muscled his way there and he didn't look professional or anything, he just made it Just so, he didn't need anything. And now I told him I was like, okay, cool. When you get on a call, blow the background, wear a collared shirt and no hat. As as bad as it is, it really matters, um, and then because, like in the background it was like it looked hectic, his background, I was like dude. And then I was like okay, and then when you're speaking to people, just don't pitch in the first message, just talk to them three times before you do. And he closed like a massive deal the next day and he's like dude, it worked.

Matt Lakajev: 53:08

But like that, from the final side of things, I don't want to talk about that tactical stuff, but, like most people, you don't need anything. This stuff that's online. You don't need it. You just need you and a cell phone. That's it. Like you, just. You can. Just, like you know, if you want to sell to accountants or lawyers, just call your accountant. Like I just call my accountant Paul. But hey, paul, I'm thinking about doing this offer for accountants. Can I take you to lunch? I'll state place that you like and kind of just ask you questions and you're like, yeah, sure, let's go to it all right. Or if I don't, if I don't have an accountant, I'll call my dad and be like dad, do you know any accountants? Do your friends know any accounts? My family friends and I'd take, like five, an amount to lunch and, like I'm thinking about doing an offer for accountants, I want to know you'll learn more in these five lunch meetings and you'll like look, you've thought about for a year before.

Darren Lee: 53:52

Spent six months building something right.

Matt Lakajev: 53:54

You spent 12 months ideating the idea. It's nothing. And then you realize it was like this one tiny little piece that then ended fixed. And then after that, to get a client, you just say, hey, look, I go back to the account and I'll be like Paul, can I just work for you for free and just do it. I'll come into your office and I would just sell something that's like cheap. I'd say to the next person hey, I did this thing for Paul, we really liked it. Nick, do you want it as well? Like it's 500 bucks, I'll come in and do it in your office. And then I just do that and like and then I just keep going. And then later on, once I've worked with, like, you're taking care of your kids and your family and stuff, and so you just do that. And then, when you do it heaps of times, then you're like oh, I know the problems, I can start writing about it now.

Matt Lakajev: 54:44

But, like most of the, go back to the copywriters on LinkedIn super introverted, super scared to talk to people. They wrote online for two years. They wrote online for two years because, like, it took me two years to get my first client. Now I make three grand in three hours and you're like, dude, you could have got your first client in literally 10 seconds. You could have just like called your dad and asked if they had a friend. So it's just like, there's this, all this, you don't need this stuff.

Matt Lakajev: 55:05

But then when you have this stuff and when you are making money like if we're talking funnels, like most people should just have a straight lead magnet funnel, it's just, if I've worked with five or 10 accountants and I help them with this thing, then I'm just going to package it all up in something for free. I'm just going to put it on my profile and we say give me your email and then you can get it. And then I'll write content that talks about the problems that I'm solving the accounts. I'm going to demonstrate, not, like you know, talk about myself. I'm just going to demonstrate. And then if I do seven posts in a week, then on Friday, if I get five leads and every other day got zero, well, that post worked, so I write more. So the impressions don't matter. No, not at all. It's just and I've heard you talk about this a lot you can probably write content that'll get 20 likes, but you'll get five leads Because the talent is so small, right, that's the whole logic.

Matt Lakajev: 55:58

That's what you're trying to go after, right? Yeah?

Matt Lakajev: 56:02

So I think that's a big bullshit with the whole online space. It's hard because I don't think anyone means badly about it, but people will see they'll sell a LinkedIn growth course and they'll position around how to grow and get clients on LinkedIn and they're not doing anything that's like bad. But people going into it just have some type of an assumption that if they produce content they'll get clients and it's probably just because content is everyone's like. All in on content, content, content, right. And the other thing is when you put out a piece of content and you get 10 likes if you've had zero likes, you get dopamine, which feels like a reward mechanism and so. But the problem with like, yeah, you never want to like talk and tell everyone your goals like you kind of don't want to do it like I had.

Matt Lakajev: 56:50

I had breakfast with derrick sievers one time and he's wrote anything you want. He built this company cd baby, he's got this TED talk, it's got 2 million thingies and I had breakfast with him. We chatted for a few chats as well.

Darren Lee: 57:01

He didn't want to come on the pod because we're he hates pods. He wanted to come on it. Is that now that we're making it, we're more like make money online space. He was like, yeah, I have an email where he goes, I don't care about money.

Darren Lee: 57:13

The majority of my guests run content businesses. They've used content as the main element of their business to drive more revenue and build their influence online. We've been doing this through a podcast for many years. We have many guests, clients and even customers use a podcast as their main source of driving more revenue for their business and building their influence online, and we're offering a handful of spots to book in a call with our team to learn how you yes, you can leverage a podcast to generate more revenue for your business and drive your influence online. Many of our clients and customers start from nothing, but each one of them are action takers and they want to learn more about how to build a podcast and a brand right around their business. So if you want to learn more and you're really interested in building a podcast, check out the link down below and book in a free call with our customer success manager and he will guide you to how you can build and generate more revenue from your podcast this year.

Matt Lakajev: 58:08

Yeah, he doesn't like he's fucking hilarious, that guy. But like he did this TED talk and it's five minutes long and you can watch it and it's amazing, he. But like he did this TED Talk and it's five minutes long and you can watch it, it's amazing. He's like don't tell anyone your goals, because when you tell people your goals like out loud, it just doesn't happen, because then it creates this little thing in your brain. If you tell people, you feel like you've half got there. So people are like oh, I'm doing a new year, I'm going to shred 10 pounds or 10 kilos. Guys, I'm doing it, I'm announcing it on social media, I'm like doing this thing, telling all their friends, and then three weeks later they eat pizza again. Like what? It doesn't happen, because when you externalize it and say it, you feel good, so you don't do it.

Matt Lakajev: 58:56

But what happens with social media is there's this positive feedback loop that's created from this algorithm that's meant to manipulate people. That's the whole goal is to manipulate you, to stay on the thing. And so if you do a post, it gets a thousand likes. That means the platform got a thousand times attention, a lot of impressions. So they want to engineer that like they actually do. So they engineer the platform in a way for you to feel like you got a reward based off that. So that's why I really like the lead magnet funnel, because then you see, like did I get leads? And then there comes another dopamine hit that you get. Because you can never escape the dopamine hit of the platform. Even though I know it deep down into my core, it still affects me when I get low reach. It does to everyone, it does, of course.

Darren Lee: 59:34

It's a status right it's like an internal driver, but it's funny because the posts that linkedin push the most, yeah, are generally not ones that you want anyway. Right, they're not going to be very specific because, if you think about it, linkedin on their back end, forget about your content. They're going to put one that's quite broad in front of a broad audience. Yeah, so, even though you have a linkedin offer for me in the podcast space, if a bunch of fucking writers on twitter are seeing this podcast offer, they're gonna like it's gonna be non-congruent with linkedin as well as them. Yeah, there's a red flag. So what I always say to our clients because podcast is hard to grow, right is that if you had a million views per video, I would be more concerned because, then you're getting a random 15 year old right

Darren Lee: 1:00:17

it's just, it's just non-congruent, whereas if we get really specific and there's a lot of specificity then we know as a result that, okay, we're pulling in the right people at least. Yes, it's not a thousand leads, but at least it's the right fucking leads. Right, and you can leverage that off, like what we're doing now on youtube is I have like a Build With Me series and it's basically almost like an insight into, like our programs and it's a bit more specific. And then we're having a different thought on the back and, depending on where it is, some of it can go into Lead Magnus, which again can be a seven day course or whatnot. Or what I'm thinking you're doing tomorrow is just standing here and just doing a complete free course for youtube. Yeah, so it's like how to start, grow and monetize a podcast. It's three hours long. You may have seen some of them on youtube like a free course.

Matt Lakajev: 1:01:01

So a guy I know, brian mark he's. He did about 10 million dollars a year last year on instagram and he coaches people to become online fitness coaches. He said his biggest acquisition channel um is his youtube free, free training, free training. So have a look at his one. That's converting like crazy and that's what Iman does every year.

Darren Lee: 1:01:18

So every year he'll do like a 2025 business model.

Matt Lakajev: 1:01:21

Yeah.

Darren Lee: 1:01:21

And then every other video links back to that video. Yeah, yeah. And then you know, for us it can just be a link into the program which is a book of call funnel, or it can go back to points of leverage. Right, content has a high asymmetrical return when done correctly. Whereas if I'm talking about like the fucking four ways to optimize your fucking testosterone on LinkedIn and that takes off. Well, that's not going to help me.

Matt Lakajev: 1:01:48

Like, if we're talking about, just say, linkedin in particular, right, 99% of people are employees. They're scrolling LinkedIn when they're sitting on the toilet at 9.20 in the morning after they drank their double shot latte and they're scrolling LinkedIn because they don't want to scroll TikTok, because the person in the next stall is going to hear them scrolling TikTok. So they're scrolling LinkedIn and they see the motivational quote post come out where it's saying bad manager is bad, and they're like, yeah, fuck my manager. That's what's happening if you really break it down to it. Like that is linkedin. It's a recruiter platform like.

Matt Lakajev: 1:02:24

That's the reason why I like it, though, because because it looks, it feels like it's built on windows 95, which is right, that yeah, it's so shit of a platform that you know that no one goes to it, so it's not sexy and so, like no one wants to get on it. And that's why, like it's so good, because you think back to school, demand and supply, right, like you know. Just, you just look at the basic economics. When there's, you know, less competition on something as well, less supply, there's gonna be like more demand if someone's gonna find the thing like it's, and so you're. The reason linkedin's great is because you're competing against like the worst stuff ever and like it shows virality, because that's a lot of the people that are on the platform, because it's a recruiter first platform and it's an arm of Microsoft. I don't even know if they care about the platform. Linkedin, right, like, do they actually care? It's such a small percentage of their revenue. It'd be so much better if LinkedIn was independent, because then it actually progressed the thing.

Darren Lee: 1:03:12

Exactly.

Matt Lakajev: 1:03:13

At the same time. I love that. It sucks because, like you know, like I put out a lead magnet post last week, right, we wrote a book on sell by chat how to sell in the DMs and we created a sell by chat a prompt, which is a GPT that trains you on how to sell in the DMs, and it got like 3,800 comments now and like 135,000 impressions. And like 135,000 impressions and like that's enough leads for a year. Like lead magnets on LinkedIn I'll talk to you about it after how you can do one I want to show you as well, because I think that'll explode. True, but like lead magnets on LinkedIn right now are like the shit. Like that's how you get.

Matt Lakajev: 1:03:51

Like we had a client. He's like 23. He worked in his name's Keenan he works. He worked a a client. He's like 23. He worked in his name's keenan he works. He worked a job. He's like a junior, like he's like sells e-commerce stuff. But he was like working a job and like he joined our program because he wants to do his own thing on the side. He was trying twitter for ages. Like didn't work. He did like his third lead magnet got like 10 500 comments in total and he like stopped posting for four months because he had so many leads.

Matt Lakajev: 1:04:15

He booked 35 calls inbound off the post itself as well, but that wouldn't happen on TikTok and all these platforms as well. It's just such a different platform and there's no competition there. Everyone's like, oh, linkedin's dead, the reach is down, all this kind of stuff, and I'm like dude, the average earner earns three times as much as every other social platform. There's no people that troll you, like Twitter and Reddit. They don't just destroy you. The only thing people complain about is that everyone's overly positive. Sure, that's fine, but you can go to SalesNav and you can look at someone's profile and you can say I know how much money you have you can literally tell.

Matt Lakajev: 1:04:57

You can literally tell Like. You can go to someone's profile and you can be like did they work at McKinsey for four years and they go to this university and they left to become a consultant in a year. Well, they probably earned $200,000 a year for these four years. Like and then I can use a tool to personality profile them. But if you go to Instagram, you'd have zero idea.

Darren Lee: 1:05:09

And so everyone's Instagram.

Matt Lakajev: 1:05:11

Like what's the whatever the thing is the automated outreach Money chat? Yeah, fuck all this shit. Right, like, which is like really like Instagram works and stuff, but like LinkedIn is like the shit Dude everything works when you work right and, of course, it's just levels to the game.

Darren Lee: 1:05:26

What I always tell people is like you know, when they launched LinkedIn video all the podcasters I was like this is the best opportunity ever, because on. Youtube. You're competing with Mr Beast On LinkedIn. You're competing with Todd from KPMG Accounting and, like Todd's a fucking loser and he's one step away from getting divorced.

Matt Lakajev: 1:05:44

Right.

Darren Lee: 1:05:44

So the access you have is 10 times easier, so why would you not utilize it Right? And we've had our, so we've. So I've always ran everything off LinkedIn for years and it works perfectly. However, because for B2C it's Instagram is a big opportunity yeah, we, and my head of brand is from an Instagram background.

Matt Lakajev: 1:06:08

Yeah.

Darren Lee: 1:06:08

He was like look, dude, let's just start running up Instagram and I already have like 11 or 12k on instagram. Yeah. So I was like okay, cool, yeah. So I let him take care of it. So he's been six, seven months at it. We book a ton of calls on instagram, but this is the whole thing. Instagram is infamous for guys that are like bullshitters. Yeah, so you'll get on the call and it goes like yeah, bro, like all in, like I'm all in, bro, like where's the stripe link? All in. And we send it over and he's like yeah, yeah, yeah, just gotta get something by the door, my dog just took a shit. And then he comes off the call and then he like blocks, you see you later.

Darren Lee: 1:06:39

Yeah, so it's just infamous for like make believe yeah like guys, will generally waste your time and pretend that they're an entrepreneur for an entrepreneur and there's no way to to map it to logic.

Matt Lakajev: 1:06:51

Yeah, it's just you can't. You can't see where they go to school. No, like you can't see where they go to school. No, no, no, you can't see who their mutual connections are. Linkedin is like, it's so OP that like you can see, like into the person, like you can kind of just tell how much money they have and make estimates based off if you go to your explore page.

Darren Lee: 1:07:09

You'll find people from your high school and you're like this person's still making 40k a year. You can literally see it by their job, and there's a bunch of benchmarks. You can do with that as well, so it gives you a better insight. Yeah, is there anything else around there that I'm missing in terms of how you basically bring people from zero to six figures or six figures? I?

Matt Lakajev: 1:07:27

could. I could just talk through the process if you want to start to finish like a kind of course thing. Of course I'll tell you like one thing about linkedin though. Like like I did a post and I and I talked about like a lot of people were shitting on zoom and I was like I did a post and I was like fucking love zoom. I had great three years there. Thank you, eric you want, for making the company. Thanks for saving us along covet. Fuck you people for, like you know, shitting on it right, like who cares? They want to charge you 20 bucks a license. Now who gives a shit? Like they literally saved you during covet. Right, the world would have fell into shit. Like skype wasn't a thing like yeah, but.

Matt Lakajev: 1:07:55

And I tagged eric yuan, the ceo, and he dm'd me. He's a billionaire, like and and like we had like conversation back and forth and like literally, and he's like yeah, this is my personal email, like if you want to reach out and like, talk to me, which I'm going to do soon as well but like the access who you can get onto is like it. It's stupid. Like you can't message people on instagram and stuff and do that, and it's just. It's just a big dick fest on instagram. That's it. It is. It literally is like how many followers can I have and stuff like that, with linkedin, I'll get like someone dm me who's like 2 000 followers and they have like a 200 million dollar company. Yeah, and it's just like it. I'm just like perplexed by. I think it's just because the, the US, is that bad and people just think it's shit yeah, and people just think it's super woke, right.

Darren Lee: 1:08:37

They just think it's very like woke political and it definitely was, I think, funny enough, justin Welsh started the online business niche in LinkedIn. He started it, then you had people like Matt Gray jump on it and then like a few other guys and then that basically has created a flywheel for people to be comfortable with selling an offer.

Darren Lee: 1:08:58

Yeah, like it gave people permission they changed their bio to like I help x do y in z you know but he started that, yeah, and then it's funny because he's such god status that, like now, he's kind of like he's not already out of this or is he out of it, I don't know like I, like he's.

Matt Lakajev: 1:09:15

His business model is just different. Right, like he started coaching and everyone should start with a services-based business where you trade your time and money and you should coach and you should do things with people. Yeah, and then he just like leveled up, his content, got better and he was like I can sell courses now, starting to read, yeah I'm gonna be here for the night exactly, um, yeah, which is are you doubling down on youtube?

Matt Lakajev: 1:09:35

yeah, so I made like for like five months I made youtube content as well. Um, and it did really well. People converted if they went to the youtube and stuff like that. And then I met with a youtube consultant. He was like eight grand for an hour and I was like, but he's got like a million subscribers and he was a weapon.

Matt Lakajev: 1:09:50

I might do it, but I've just got other priorities first. That will just make us way more money first and then I will double down and 10x go onto YouTube as well. But like we just have some, we haven't even tapped out LinkedIn Like we literally can make. Like this is like my scenario that I'm in right now I have like 15,700 leads in my Go High Level thing which have all opted in for our lead magnets and like 35% of phone numbers, or 33% magnets like and like 35 percent of phone numbers they're 33 percent have phone numbers. They've given me their phone number. My lead man has a phone number opt-in. Now you're giving me a phone number and so like I haven't even like we we've generated so many leads on linkedin like I have unlimited. Like I can't work the leads. I'm hiring a sales team to work the leads like we don't have, like that's our issue it's trying to run a business.

Darren Lee: 1:10:34

That's the constraint.

Matt Lakajev: 1:10:35

It's a sales team working with leads leads Like we don't have, like that's our issue. That's the constraint. It's the sales team working the leads. That's the pure constraint. Like I was thinking about outsourcing the sales team to someone I know who's like a weapon, but like that's the constraint. And we've generated so many leads from posting for two years but from lead magnet posts like yeah, our list is like 16,000 people. It's like crazy.

Darren Lee: 1:10:56

Why it's like crazy? Why not give?

Matt Lakajev: 1:10:57

people an opportunity to buy off the lead miner Because I don't want to sell to everyone Like I don't think it's. Our program is correct for a lot of people People I don't like. The reason I don't like a lot of stuff that's like B2C, a bizzle offer right is like people take money from people who like it's not right for them, like literally, and so I actually don't let anyone buy online. They have to talk to someone from me and my team before they buy. You can't actually buy our stuff.

Matt Lakajev: 1:11:23

And so it also adds a level of like special. It makes it a bit special as well at the same time. But like I've thought about that. But then to engineer a funnel that you can sell something for that much money is also like really hard to do. And like I funnel that you can sell something for that much money is also like really hard to do, and like I've even seen people with massive followings and they can't do it and so it just requires, and so like the conversion mechanism of chatting to another human is like so easy to control. Like it's true, it just have the constraint on the business's conduct. Yes, it's contact, and so that's our constraint right now, which I'm like not unhappy about. We make so much money. Our partners are insane. We don't pay for ads. Like yeah, I'm living a good life, and like we're just now. It's just like all right, we're gonna take it to 10 million this year.

Matt Lakajev: 1:11:58

That's like the goal 10 million profit this year yeah, to the end of this year and so like, because our margins are like just crazy high like, and so we want to take it to 10. But with the lead volume we've got, we just we just look at the kpis with like the amount chats we start, the leads we touch and all that kind of stuff, and we just know how many will convert. Plus, we're bringing out like a whole bunch of high ticket offers and we're bringing out this thing called growth mode, which is going to have software in it as well. But it's all when you have a community of people, they just tell you what they want and so we know what they want and need. And now we're just building all this stuff and so we're going to have a whole like setup that'll come out for people that will just have all their funnels and everything that just like preloaded and done, and they'll pay 20k a pot for that, like really easily.

Matt Lakajev: 1:12:37

And so we're kind of like hormosing it with the licensing model, like with gym launch. Like that's what he was able to do. He went and sold for all the gyms and then he just like licensed it as an education model and then they went like bananas, like really quick because they sold it for like 16 grand or 42 grand a year. 42 rounds of the mastermind. Yeah, the mastermind it was 16 grand a year 42 grand was the mastermind.

Matt Lakajev: 1:12:55

Yeah, the mastermind, it was 16 grand a year for like to get in up front. So like that's our kind of main goal right now. And then think about YouTube. It's like, yeah, it's good. But I was, I went deep into it and then I realized one day I was like this is a distraction, it's just like I wanted to do it because I got the camera set up at home, I got all the stuff it helps. But like I know the constraint, like right now. And so one day I was like I was I was watching a video that, um, I can't remember who it was, and I heard someone went to one of paul mosey's conference conferences, um, in vegas, and they just said we only fix one problem at a time.

Matt Lakajev: 1:13:31

And I was like what am I doing with a to-do list with five things on it? Fuck that, there's just one thing. So so I just like went, I'm just going to do one thing. And Steve, my business partner, was like you focus on all the tech stuff. I'm just going to focus on selling more, like that's it. And we're just going to build the team and like scale and just focus on that. So you're building the team, sorry along, and stuff like that as well, and then scaling it you know it just takes a while to like bring people and train them up and stuff.

Darren Lee: 1:13:58

Yeah, of course, and it's also very difficult to bring in killers.

Matt Lakajev: 1:14:00

it's like with the leads that we have. When I look at other people's conversions and stuff like that we have enough leads to be doing like 20 or 30 million dollars a year, like, like that's like. If I look at other coaches the amount of leads like I'm in a mastermind with all the coaches who do 20 million a year and like like give each other information and they're like dude, you have so many leads Like I'll do a lead magnet post that like a one I did last week and like 3,800 comments, like it's like, and like 70% of them, or like a crazy high amount of ideal clients. So how can you solve the bottleneck issue? You just have to hire more people and just train them and put in systems. Like that's literally it. I can just text time, so I just like I interview heaps of people, bring them on.

Darren Lee: 1:14:40

But it's just sales reps.

Matt Lakajev: 1:14:41

Yeah, literally it's just reps and just doing the reps, that's it.

Darren Lee: 1:14:45

And then for your fulfillment, how do you?

Matt Lakajev: 1:14:48

manage to fulfillment with. There's no fulfillment. Is there a community? We have a community. We've got group calls. You post in the community, you can DM me, and I've got other coaches in there as well. We've got three people from LinkedIn who are coaches and I have two calls a week that are meant to go for an hour and a half, but I stay on there for like three hours each time because people just keep asking questions. So I just stay on there. And then I have a higher ticket community which we haven't even started really monetizing yet. Like we just brought in like 10 people and it's just like super bespoke and there's two calls a week. So that's like for me there's like three plus one and a half. That's like nine hours of calls a week.

Matt Lakajev: 1:15:22

That I'll do. We don't take any sales calls or anything like that. It's just sold through. Like we sell like 35% probably maybe 30% is just guesstimating through email. It's just through running offer campaigns. Like I'll just say, hey, we're going to be working with a small group of business owners next month to help them build a LinkedIn lead generation system for their business. Would you like to join us? Send that once a month, get a bazillion people come back. Hey, cool, how ready are the offer? Doc? Let me know if you're in or out. And because I haven't pitched the person for like ever and I just invite them, if they get the email and are interested, they just turn off. But they've been marketed to for like 12 months and they've got all the value, all the lead magnets, and then they lose a big client. Now I thought, yeah, I'll do it now, and then they just join. So I think I think a lot of people overthink things like on, like the way it needs to be done. So I'm sorry.

Darren Lee: 1:16:13

Sorry, so people get the sequencing wrong, like they think that it's like it has to be this and then this, and then this and then this.

Matt Lakajev: 1:16:19

I just a lot of people, just like you know. I don't know it depends who we're talking to, but yeah, that's our issue. Like the leads is the problem, like initially and building the systems built in the systems, that's super interesting man.

Darren Lee: 1:16:33

Yeah, yeah, and if you think about it, that's why the coaching model is so fucking clear, because the systems aren't even that complicated If you compare it to like a done-for-you components right? No, it's not.

Matt Lakajev: 1:16:43

We tried done-for-you LinkedIn like two years ago and like November, so it was like a year and three months ago and I like seven people because they wanted it.

Darren Lee: 1:16:52

They all gave me the money. It's easier to get people to put the trust in you versus the trust in them and I refunded everything after three weeks.

Matt Lakajev: 1:16:58

I was like I'm not doing it anymore. I was like, fuck that I'm not doing this. This is too hard, like no way. Because the amount of complexity that's and you mentioned before the expectation of I still probably wouldn't do it now like I would still I'd do a hybrid coaching, one-to-one that's what our high ticket is now.

Darren Lee: 1:17:22

Yeah, you know. So it's like it kind of goes back to like, again, traffic, how much traffic you can get, how many leads you can get, how many that are qualified, like what's the laps? You need these appointments, presentations and sales to be able to get that really going, because I think, like in our education side you know our offer's 20k right. So, we don't fucking need that many people.

Matt Lakajev: 1:17:43

We need the right people.

Darren Lee: 1:17:44

Yeah, so that's why, and then for me, then, like the acquisition can be organic and then or we can put flames on it by going outbound. We're not actually going because we're not going outbound to cold. It's important.

Darren Lee: 1:17:57

here, the only thing that's doing is people are coming inbound, where we're testing ads on IG and then seeing because, like the, basically because we have good production, because we're not potatoes, the cost of running ads for us is super low. Yeah, Because the qualities are so high, um, and the positioning is good. So what's the mechanism to scale that up? Because, like I know but I know quite well Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole they have a similar business model with us, which is like hybrid coaching, basically.

Darren Lee: 1:18:29

Um and Dickie's the same age as me he's 28,. Same background in finance. Yeah, and the difference is when I met him, which was about 8 months ago, we were doing 100k a month and he was doing close to a million a month. Yeah, wow and I was like bro, what's the difference?

Darren Lee: 1:18:46

and he was like honestly, man, the only thing that was different for him was the sales team and the ads, yeah, and the ads yeah. And the reason being is because the offer works. The CAC is kind of low, ltv is pretty high. I think they only have one offer, which is $8,500.

Matt Lakajev: 1:19:01

They have $6,500 and $8,500. And they have a mastermind though, don't they? That's probably more expensive.

Darren Lee: 1:19:08

I don't really have a mastermind.

Matt Lakajev: 1:19:09

yet yeah, I've seen them doing personal events like online videos and stuff. So I would I would guess that's like 20 grand maybe. What's their next maybe?

Darren Lee: 1:19:16

if that's included in that. But, um, so that was the conversation. He was like the only thing that's different is the sales team and the arts, so that there are two things that I'm basically trying to figure out, because if there's no fulfillment in done with you, it's easy to ramp that up. Right, do you know what I mean? Because, like you know, you said there about the, what I said to you about the constraint in the business, yeah, it's funny. Like the theory of constraints is amazing, right, because constraint in the beginning is leads, yeah, and then the next constraint then is qualified or unqualified.

Matt Lakajev: 1:19:46

Yeah.

Darren Lee: 1:19:52

And then it's like your product sucks, yeah, so the product is really good. And now? We're trying to reverse engineer it backwards.

Matt Lakajev: 1:19:58

What is your constraint then? What do you think it is?

Darren Lee: 1:20:02

We've rebuilt the sales team several times. The team we have now is really good. The guys are B2B sales guys, so they did like you know I couldn't do Zoom. And then we have an ig team, so we we fixed that. Now, working with iman, our sales metrics are really fucking good, yeah, so we eventually finally cleaned it all up so like we have everything from show race. You got a dashboard with everything in it. Got a dashboard that we built ourself.

Darren Lee: 1:20:31

Now, it's not fucking super beautiful. But, dude, I got quoted the most crazy prices, you know the HubSpot 15k. That's what I was getting quoted for, the simplest shit ever. So now that's taken care of. So sales management is taken care of. So now we know that we can get good leads in and even like the call functioning positioning is good. The other thing is I think we're just trying to work out the ads for IG just because it's an opportunity. That's kind of it, bro, I guess leads is always a thing right.

Darren Lee: 1:21:04

But why I'm hesitant to say leads is a problem is because the time of podcasting is so small that we are already constrained by the size of the time.

Matt Lakajev: 1:21:13

Let's say what's the perfect ideal client for you.

Darren Lee: 1:21:17

Depends on the offer If it's in core, so the agency. It's a seven to eight figure business who want their podcast just completely taken care of, like. Could you build a list of these people? That was our first offer. We already have a list of them.

Matt Lakajev: 1:21:29

No, but like I mean, could you build a list of everyone you can sell to in like the world, Like? Let's say, is the TAM like 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, or is it like oh, you mean in one list.

Darren Lee: 1:21:40

Yeah, well, you know, in theory there's 300,000 active podcasts, okay, and then of that 300,000, then with the split, who's like absolutely fucking broke right, which is probably like 40%, yeah, and then our low ticket, but our incubator offer could capture a proportion of them.

Matt Lakajev: 1:21:58

If you get in front of these people, like, can you sell to them? Like are you pretty good yeah.

Darren Lee: 1:22:02

Can you talk to them?

Matt Lakajev: 1:22:02

We've already got two Like as in, like when you speak to them like hey, having a conversation, like you know they're paying points, you know what they this is me in 2020 like dumbass, no idea what I'm doing.

Darren Lee: 1:22:13

A little bit of cash in my pocket from my 9 to 5. I want to build an online business. I need to understand what a podcast I'm using a podcast because I want to like, build my network and shit, and then, at the same time, then I want to be able to build an offer in the backend. So we're just injecting an offer. Do it. You're a social guy. You don't want to spend your time like writing or whatever. Just use a podcast, same shit, because then we'll the.

Darren Lee: 1:22:40

Yeah, basically, that's it in a nutshell, without getting too complicated. Yeah, so that's why the. That's why the education piece for us done by my mate, tom, was a huge unlock, because it was what happened was people, as you said, people want it done for them, but then they're like Jesus, fucking Christ, it's 5k a month. Yeah, so then it's like alright, so this is an and else statement. Everyone that's in the else goes into the incubator. Yeah, but then what happened then? Was we get we've gotten really good results from people. Yeah, that they were like I don't want to outsource it. And then that's when we brought in Apex, which is just like okay, you're making 30k a month. We can get you to 80k a month or 100k a month by adding in some systems and sales. Yeah, gotcha, that's interesting.

Matt Lakajev: 1:23:24

I would just if I was in. I come from like the cold outreach background. So what I like, if, like I've been doing, like I've been doing this now, like with podcasts, this is like. So my cold outreach activity every day is like to outreach to get on podcasts. That's like. So I'm just using that skill now. And so, like I did that, to get on Christo, I spent two hours writing a post. I watch one of his videos with Yasmin Alec, so I did a pitch post and I called DMD and I got on his podcast and I was like cool, like I was like, so it's like using that skill. But like when you got a small kind of like 10, it's like you just if you look at like lookalike audiences, so like who's a client of yours, that's been like had just an insane ROI that you know you can just easily help other people and then just you just find that person and then you just like find the 500 identical people and you just like reach out.

Darren Lee: 1:24:12

Well, we have them, so we have like the old guys who are like super wealthy yeah, and we have those good testimonials and case studies. Then we have the young guys who are 19, 20, who are just crushers yeah. And then we have the guys that are in the career change 30 to 40 bracket, who've done the 10 years in their solo entrepreneurship business. So we actually have three different buckets and, depending on the prospect, we'll position the testimonial in the right way.

Matt Lakajev: 1:24:39

I mean, like you can like back when I was at Telesense, the company, I just called people up and be like hey, I know you got this company, I know you got all these problems, I know you got this bill. We do a free audit inside. We essentially had a. As he talks about, the best type of lead magnet is a services-based lead magnet. You actually do something for them. Like you get on a call and actually do something for them. Like I got a client that's like crushing right now with this. He just he does linkedin lead generation like me, so he gets to copy what we do, which is amazing, but he's just does it for the german market and so like. But his, his thing on his profile is like I'll give you a free LinkedIn profile analysis and everyone wants that, and so, like reaching out and having like a services that's how we built that other company and just get on.

Matt Lakajev: 1:25:22

And the whole goal of the services lead bank is just to build trust with them, to show that you're not a fraud and you're like holy shit sometimes, yeah, when I think about niche, like real niche, I always think about like, like. Sometimes you just go direct like to them and just because and you you can say something in two minutes that they're like I agree with everything you said. Yeah, that's correct and that's. But you can only do that when you know the niche so well, you know them better than yourself like that's the only way you can do that. A lot of people can't do it because they just have no idea they're chatted to yeah, they're selling fucking SEO to nail salons.

Matt Lakajev: 1:26:00

They just chose these niche industries For no reason.

Matt Lakajev: 1:26:05

A lot of small businesses as well that I see this all the time. That's why they really, really struggle is because they've been in business for five years. They started from a few referrals and just from pure inertia of existing. They grew. So they never got lead generation right. Their actual service isn't that good, but they just existed and they just were there and apparent and they had a saying we're in business and they got business. It's. It's why I used to go to a networking group called b and I an in a networking group called BNI, an in-person networking group. It's like a big cult thing, right, I do CrossFit, bni, I'm all in the cults, right. But all the businesses they've been there for 20 years and they got all their business through referrals but the actual businesses that they had were not good Like they. Just it was just. This is why most people just don't market enough. That's why they can't grow. Just because they turned up to a networking event two hours a week and they had a KPI where they had to give a certain number of referrals. And they had a KPI where they had to. You have to do one-to-ones with other people to give them referrals. Their business just grew because they just turned up and existed as well.

Matt Lakajev: 1:27:14

And I think a lot of people, when they go down the route of like they've just had especially when I look at people who have an older business for a while and I'm like, I'm like I don't know, like because they could have just got there through inertia, through referrals or whatever, just because if someone gets a referral, they just want to make a decision and buy.

Matt Lakajev: 1:27:29

And so a lot of small businesses they're like they'll ask their family and friends, like do you guys know an SEO agency? And they'll be like, yeah, I speak to this guy who's never done anything before and they're like I get along with you, we went to the same school together, cool, and they'll just never fix the services. So there's all these mediocre businesses, but they don't know that because they've never had to sell from cold or they've never had to do outreach. You know, your shit's good if you can outreach to people or do content and actually do sales. And a lot of the businesses they are stuck in this thing but they don't even know. That's the worst part. And then when they realize, they're like oh shit, they actually realize what happened.

Matt Lakajev: 1:28:11

So it's a whole swath of businesses doing that which is so like they can't do the like you could do the outreach or that, whatever, because you just know like, but a lot of people just have just kind of. They're kind of like working a job in a business. It's kind of like they just created themselves another job. Yeah, that's a good point and they just build this system.

Matt Lakajev: 1:28:29

They work with any clients, they take any lead that kind of comes with them. So they haven't Probably the right word is they haven't productized their service. That's probably the right word and they're just like a glorified, really good consultant. It's an expert in a lot of things Instead of going into one thing.

Darren Lee: 1:28:45

That's why, for me, it's so crazy that people sell stuff they don't know about. I physically just will never understand it. And it gets like, oh, I'm going to work on this offer or this agency or whatnot. So you don't truly understand it. That's why, you know, you asked me like how much do I know about the industry? Yeah, it's so easy to write emails and just look for hand raisers. Like, yeah, like, dude, you can do like semi-automated, semi-personalized, so half messages with a bit of spin taxing, and then be like are you fucking struggling to grow your podcast? Are you super underwater with this? Happy to send you over? Like again, it's a free, free audit, free review, whatever. And it's funny because you might look at that and be like that's so fucking stupid. Everyone can send those emails. But you would be surprised with how much responses you get yeah, so we're like, yeah, dude, like running a podcast sucks.

Darren Lee: 1:29:31

I thought it was gonna be fun and I spent most, most of my time doing admin. I'm like, ah, yeah, let me send you a video on how to automate that, or how to like streamline that or make it more simpler yeah, so I think, like the few, like the business of the future, like that is one that's a super adaptive right.

Darren Lee: 1:29:44

So, like all these ai tools that come out, we're on them 24 7. The reason why we can have so many clients is because we're just constantly checking what's new, productizing the thing. But it's because, like you know, the guys are like oh, ai is going to replace your business, it's going to replace if you don't fucking keep up with it. But a lot of these guys just won't. They don't stay on top of it, right for their own stuff, because, like we don't stay on top of our own stuff too. There's definitely more stuff we could that make things way more efficient, way faster and better quality, should I say, for people, and then just position it and like people are happy to buy stuff, people when it fucking helps them that's a moral of the story.

Darren Lee: 1:30:22

Same with you, right, you walk them down to the dms they know that, okay, this is. This is either a new opportunity or it's a pain. Yeah, and they both light up different parts of the brain. Yeah, you know for different reasons yeah, different reasons.

Matt Lakajev: 1:30:34

Yeah, vitamin and pancreas.

Darren Lee: 1:30:34

Yeah, but even at that, right, if I'm like, oh, like celebrate chat, oh, I haven't explored like that, someone can at least open their mind to it because they can see the opportunity.

Matt Lakajev: 1:30:42

Yeah, definitely, I think we can go down the rabbit hole of like so many problems that actually happen as well. But, yeah, you can, unless you're like obsessed. I'll actually just talk about, say, positioning, because we talked about positioning a bit before this. I think. Just initially, people, they just get their positioning wrong and they just try to be everything to everyone and they become nothing to no one.

Matt Lakajev: 1:31:05

Yeah, and it's like the easiest way to just sell more is, if I do b2b lead generation on linkedin, I'm just gonna say I help sydney-based financial advisors do b2B lead generation on LinkedIn. I'm just going to say I help Sydney-based financial advisors do B2B lead generation on LinkedIn, and the scope of what you do gets smaller. But what happens is people automatically assume that you can help them and even though it's the same information and I lost a deal to someone and the only difference was that this guy said I help recruiters on LinkedIn. The guy who does it didn't even post on linkedin like at all. Like that's how strong positioning is. And the other person see my content heaps like they've gone funnels, they've used this stuff about, but he but this guy helps recruiters. That's like when you talk about like leverage, it's like just doubling down on like positioning is like disgustingly like such good leverage because you don't want to like. But I think people try to go too broad because they're scared of, like you know, pulling people out, but like it works against you, dude like.

Darren Lee: 1:32:05

I had a conversation with jay klaus he's on the podcast in dubai and we talked about this it was that our underpockets are off where he said that his biggest risk to his business creator science is people that are super specific, because he's helping them with like an email, linkedin podcast, youtube, um some other shit, but there's like seven different verticals so therefore he can't go super deep on either of them. Yeah, when you, when you that's the problem, though.

Matt Lakajev: 1:32:30

like when you start broad, you can't go back, like that's the issue it Like when you start broad, you can't go back, like that's the issue. It's like you've got to start. Like if you start small, like I read this book around positioning I can't remember what the author was, but it was brilliant Like, and she just talked about how they went up against, like Salesforce as a CRM and like they just couldn't beat them, even though they had these better features and I features, and there was this like one tiny feature that was really good for vc firms, and so they just said we're a serum vc firms. And then they just exploded like it's just a.

Matt Lakajev: 1:32:58

it's it's because, like, as humans, like we're, we're trying to put things in folders in our brain yeah and so we just we're trying to look for something that like matches something else or makes sense to make an easy decision. And if there's like 10 people online that say I help founders build personal brands on LinkedIn, it's like the worst thing. You possibly say, like it's just, it's not a niche or a position, and it's like just, don't do it, like you should just. Or someone will say I do it with coaches, but they're never supposed to do it with coaches. It's like you've got to chat to the person like first, like to actually do small tweak. Like our client who's german, when he comes up against me, he wins. He's like, oh, this guy doesn't know german, he can't, he can't write a dm, I don't know in german.

Darren Lee: 1:33:39

And they'll be like oh cool, I get it dude, we have a, we have a client like that. There's b2b sales, yeah, call, calling. Yeah.

Matt Lakajev: 1:33:44

In a german market yeah, this at least is oh, that's just so hard to call into. Yeah, but he fucking loves it, he crushes.

Darren Lee: 1:33:51

So, as a result, he trained sales teams.

Matt Lakajev: 1:33:53

He could probably just because the german market's pretty harsh, but like it's a stereotyping, but like you know, they're usually yeah, but like they're just super direct, they're just like, hey, this is a cold call, like is it a good time now? And I'm just probably saying like that.

Darren Lee: 1:34:07

But as a result, he crushes it. He does like, uh in-person training and uh like he can do four or five gigs a month, yeah, and he's happy out it's.

Matt Lakajev: 1:34:16

It's just like there's this big fear. It's like around like niching down, but like people are like so scared to niche down. It's like dude, you don't even have a business. Like like, what are you scared of? You haven't made money. A lot of people like I produce content for six months, no one saw it, no one remembers anything. Like if you produce some post, some post, it's like a faceless YouTube channel. Do you know what the channel is called? No one knows what the channel is called. It's like there's nothing that's associated with you. So, like and like, if someone is scared of niching down, just write three separate offer documents, pick the three niches you want, reach out to the three niches and on your offer docs say for financial advisors, for accountants, for this, and just write the document with the heading. Be different, just the heading.

Matt Lakajev: 1:35:02

Don't actually even write the inclusion Don't change anything, just the heading and just see which one you sell to and which one you like working to and then just switch to that one, like if you're scared about actually doing it, about actually doing it. But it just it's like if I was going to start again I wrote this like really long post in our community about it If I had to start again from $0 and I wanted to make a million dollars in six months, this is what I'd do. I wouldn't even use LinkedIn. I would just pick like the smallest niche Sydney Financial Advisors and I just go to in-person networking events and I just help. I would be like I only work with these people. Sorry, and just because when you say you only do this one thing, the perception that you can only help that person goes up and you charge 10 times as much money. So there's just this like. There's so much like I help. This is the classic one I help founders get clients on LinkedIn.

Matt Lakajev: 1:35:55

I help busy busy uh professionals and it's and it's like like you're you're just swimming in the sea of everyone else, like there's no point in differentiation, and then you click on their profile. It's like I can buzz light year and you're like I don't even know what's happening right now. Like it's and it's like how is nick, my old boss, who's the 50 year old accountant, even accountant even going to relate to you? Yeah, like adult and a lot of people, just they don't even have professional. I'll talk about this.

Matt Lakajev: 1:36:20

One thing that really matters with LinkedIn is your profile has to look professional to the person you're selling to, and one of the biggest mistakes that people make is that just their photo, their profile photo, looks like bad quality and it makes you look like a kid, like such simple things that you could change.

Matt Lakajev: 1:36:42

Like I've seen some people's banners that look like they did it in, like word art, like it looks, and it's like we have a free LinkedIn profile kit. I can go to my YouTube. It's free, you can do your profile. We have 21 things in there. You can redo it. Just even like these little things where someone like puts like their photo and it's got like a ring around it that's like pink and they've got and I'm just like dude, no one is gonna take you seriously. It's like like it just even these such small things where it's like an immediate, heuristic turn off. It's like just get a camera and get your parents or whatever, or your friends to take like a good quality photo with you, like looking professional, and even that as positioning is like so, like it's so basic to it.

Matt Lakajev: 1:37:23

Another thing is like okay, so let's say I'm struggling, I can't get clients right, niche down, say I help, we've got a client who does I help financial planner, financial advisors, generally on LinkedIn. Just say that Change your profile photo to just make it super professional and do not comment on any personal brand people's posts ever, because they all think it's spammy. And go find the top financial people who, like the CFOs who post on LinkedIn and comment on their stuff. Like, if you're going to spend two hours a day commenting, don't comment on the other personal brand people's posts who tell you to comment on their posts, because it's a pyramid scheme. All the money just goes to the top. It literally is You're spending hours of your day to pump this person up to make them feel good, so they make heaps of money to sell a LinkedIn growth course and the person who's selling it. It's not their fault because, like, they're just actually trying to help people at the same time, so it's no one's fault. Like, if you really want to think it down tactically, it's like when I had that call with Pranjala, our client, I was like dude, the eight figure e-commerce brand is not going to buy something from you. When you got a cap and you got your bed in the background because you look 24. Like, and I'm, because you look 24. And you're at a disadvantage. You're in your parents' house. I'm like dude, you got to look professional, even these tiny things. But I think people are too. I don't know if the word liberal is bad, but you get judged by the way you look online and people get to a certain level where they can wear whatever the hell they want, but there is a certain level. But before that you got to play everything to your advantage, like everything possible. So like professional headshot. Don't make the color anything crazy like. Don't use random words. Don't try to fit a million different things into the banner. Just make it super clear what you do and just say I help, I help us lawyers. Get leads on linkedin, like whoever it is, and just be specific. That will generate you like. I've tested it with clients. It's exploded because of it. Because I have a client, marina. She writes a post with the hook here's how financial it plan is.

Matt Lakajev: 1:39:23

In Australia, you can get leads on LinkedIn 15 likes, five leads come in. It's like because the competition is so low but everyone feels this social pressure to look cool on linkedin. It's like I've got to come in on the big creators post to look cool. I would have my profile to like. It's kind of like we're coming back to like you know, going to the pub and stuff. I'm like wearing you good good, good shirt and stuff like that. It's really like weird. You've kind of got to like get out of it like it's and, but it actually matters. It's like you know some, a lot of people. They're at a massive. If you're young, if you look young, you're at a disadvantage on LinkedIn. People won't take you seriously, business owners won't. So you have to dress yourself up in a way to make yourself look old, because I remember when I was like 20, people I just looked so young, like little things that matter but no one speaks about it and it's just like dude if you just change that it's just the optics yeah you know positively and negatively.

Darren Lee: 1:40:17

But that's even the reason why, like your appearance doesn't matter and even like where I'm going through my training right now, just doing like another big dieting phase, and I was like I actually want to get leaner so I just look sharper just for my and it's. It's such a small thing but again like how you do one thing, so you do everything right.

Matt Lakajev: 1:40:34

Let's talk about this, right, because this is another thing that I just can't stand. Like people are like, like the dressing up and stuff like that right. Like, like my partner, her family, my partner's Indian, her family runs a big, a big, a big business, right. And so, like, when I go out with them, they've got a certain level in their community that, like, I have to wear a suit. We went to an indian concert in sydney and because their sponsors were on the front row, I have to wear a suit. But because that's the level of like status, and so when I was even coming here, she's like, what are you wearing? And stuff like that. And I was like, oh, whatever. And she's like, no, you gotta wear the rolex. But like, but the thing is like, you even notice that as well, but and it and it's not.

Matt Lakajev: 1:41:12

When it's a flex thing it's like, then it's bad, but sometimes it's like. It's like how you hold yourself together, it's the frame, it's how you hold it, it's confidence. It's why working out matters so much.

Darren Lee: 1:41:26

It's like so, for example, like I don't drink anymore. I was a super D-Gen and I was like partying, drugs, all that shit when I was a kid, but then now I don't drink anymore. But then you get to the point whereby people are like oh my God, you're going to feel super awkward. And now I have like a different level of confidence.

Darren Lee: 1:41:41

And again, it's more like the self-actualization, not saying that I'm there, but it's like. That's like another level of just like being comfortable in yourself, which is like I have the confidence that I can hold a fucking conversation with a guy, yeah, for 20 minutes and same with that. Like you wear the watch, the watch doesn't like where are you?

Matt Lakajev: 1:42:08

yeah, it's like it's really.

Darren Lee: 1:42:10

You have to live up to that character, bro there's a weird, a weird one as well.

Matt Lakajev: 1:42:13

I was having a conversation with ChatGPT today and do this all the time, and so this is my biggest life hack that anyone should do ever you should use the microphone extension with the ChatGPT, but you shouldn't do the one where you have a conversation with it, where it talks back to you. You should use the speech to text, and so you should have the best quality chat gpt the best one you can get and you should have conversations with it all the time and you should tell it everything about you. So you should say these are my personality types, these are my tendencies, and over time, it gets to learn you and everything about you. So when we have a discussion back and forth, it knows what I'm like and it can give self-assessments based off that as well. It's so crazy that after a while, like it knows all your personality types, your iq, your deep prop, like everything it can tell you, and it can tell you what to do next.

Matt Lakajev: 1:43:00

But we're having a conversation this morning I was, oh, what was it about? Now I lost it. I'll come, I'll come up with a better point. Okay, we're having a conversation this morning and I was like writing at the same time, like on my ipad, so like I'm writing stuff to put content together at the same time, as like on ChatGPT as well, and like I lost the point.

Darren Lee: 1:43:22

Complaint. I lost the point. It'll come back.

Matt Lakajev: 1:43:24

It'll come back. We've been recording for like two hours. Dude, that's all right, it'll come back.

Darren Lee: 1:43:29

Did you have an offer before where it was like ai?

Matt Lakajev: 1:43:33

so our company was called unlock ai before yeah, worst name ever, but whatever, it sounded cool. Um, so this is when I didn't have my co-founder or we kind of made the branding thing and started. He's more a consultant. He wasn't co-founded then as well. Um, but, um, yeah, we had. It was unlock ai, but it was the same thing, the same business, like linkedin generation, but we help people kind of write content with ai and then also do using ai tools, and a lot of the magic trick was like how to talk to chat gbt as well and people like this is crazy. Yeah, so it's kind of like an ai era. Since then, I'm like against writing content with ai, so I've kind of like totally pulled back on that as well so you wrote everything natively like whatever, like I've done some posts that I I but like, or would you refine the posts you have?

Matt Lakajev: 1:44:17

what I know that you honestly like 99 is like written by me, like all written by me, because the writing process is like a distillation process of your thoughts and ideas and so when you write, it allows you to distill your thoughts and ideas and expand on them, like as you're going through at the same time, like I was writing this morning and like I came up, like I was having conversation with chat gpt, and I came up with an idea like through this, through sell by chat, and there's a there's, there's a thing called the benjamin franklin effect where if you ask someone to do a favor for you, like, then they and they do it for you a small favor, then they automatically trust you more, because you don't do a favor for someone unless you trust them.

Darren Lee: 1:45:04

So it's like.

Matt Lakajev: 1:45:05

It's like a hack and so I was like we're having a conversation, we're like deep down into it and then, like this suggestion popped out was I'm writing at the same time, both at the same time of like I can use that in a sell by chat strategy. So, like what I'm going to add into the DM discussions is say, oh, you're having a conversation with someone. You say, hey, oh, by the way, like I've actually got this post coming out tomorrow. I want to actually check. Can you actually ever read through it Just to tell me? I want to know your thoughts. Does it resonate?

Matt Lakajev: 1:45:30

Because you're a mind to a client I'd really like to know in your thoughts. If they do that, then they just automatically trust you more and stuff like that. But that insight that I had like wouldn't have happened if I wasn't having this discussion and like writing at the same time. I had a lot of other insights as well. But like you just it's like you're writing itself when you write, but also use chat GPT for ideation. It's like you've got like the smartest person in the world next to you, like, and you can kind of talk to them at the same time and you can also paste in your entire conversations.

Darren Lee: 1:45:58

So I often do if you wanted to like paste in tonality, but like is the tonality off Am. I too pushy, am I too needy?

Matt Lakajev: 1:46:05

It's also like it's hard, though, because it's trained off like the internet. So, like sometimes it's like the context of it is off Because you have to have a great LinkedIn post. It's going to be shit.

Darren Lee: 1:46:14

But what I've so less with the post. Well, you can do for posts, but, if you like, did a CSV file of all your posts. Yeah Right, this is my writing style, this is my tonality, this is my humor, and so on. And then here are some excerpts of my chats. Knowing this and knowing me and knowing my values, my values of x, y and z now review this current conversation you have, and then it will be like, okay, it's too pushy, it's too needy, or so on, to for it. Right, because you can, if you can feed it so many of your own content.

Matt Lakajev: 1:46:44

So my business partner we built a gbt that does this for sell by chat. So it it does work like pretty well. So it's like a the. The secret to the prompt is it's not a gbt. He wrote the sell by chat book because he sold 100 grand three months with no profile photo or anything. So he knows a bit about. So I chat plus. He talks to me 24 7.

Matt Lakajev: 1:47:03

He wrote the sell by chat book and the prompt is just putting in the book. It's the prompt, so we just put the whole book in it and just say that's the actual prompt. So if you get to the prompt page in the book it's just the book copied and so we just copy paste the whole book in and then it allows you to analyze it. But even then it's like the. When you there's something happens, when you're like when you're ideating and you're having a discussion and then you're writing at the same time where you progress and then build on your own thoughts, yeah, and unless you're like actively learning and teaching and doing things, you don't actually distill the skill and the memory and like are you're able to build on top of it, because you're lazy bro, yeah, and so like that's why I don't the ai content type of thing as well.

Matt Lakajev: 1:47:48

It's like I think it's okay if, like, you're good at writing and you can understand, like, what good writing is and stuff like that. But even then I've tried prompting for an hour back and forth and it still gets it decent, but it still doesn't get it to the same level of depth. It can't say things like this is why I'm not scared about AI beating out humans in DMs, because you can say things that AI could never say unless it lies. That's the only thing. So if I reached out to someone and say, oh hey, yo, yo, bill, I just saw you connected with Sean McHugh. I was just on a call with him last night on Zoom, he's doing a taco Tuesday night, which I was pretty excited about. I saw you were actually there, by the way. It's pretty awesome, I thought the way it's pretty awesome. I thought I actually connected with another citysider. Or if you checked out that new cafe regimen, it's got this sick chicken roll like I really.

Matt Lakajev: 1:48:36

I had one, had one the other day was amazing. Like you can't, yeah you. So what's going to happen with this? Wrap it back to dms and content is the stuff that's gonna go really well. Is going to be the stuff that ai can't do, yeah, unless it lies at the same time.

Matt Lakajev: 1:48:52

But that's why I think it's. That's why, right now, skills are so important, because, like a person who is highly skilled with AI is like a weapon. It's like my business partner. So we're building software. I shit you not. We have a software now that can pull out every single message you've ever sent on LinkedIn, every comment that's ever happened, ever anyone that's viewed your profile or anything, and it can analyze every single lead and it come back with a lead score out of 100 based on all your criteria, and it can tell you exactly who to reach out to. Like right now we have that and he built that. He's not a programmer or anything. Just through ChatGPT We've got one developer. It's like the speed at which you can do things, but the reason he's so good is because he's so smart and he's so skilled and he knows the logic, he knows what you're trying to build.

Matt Lakajev: 1:49:38

That's, that's yeah but he's also a weapon of design and copywriting, like all these things, and so, like the, it's kind of like ai is becoming this like accelerant of people that are really skilled and so, like this divide is happening with people even more, and so there's people who are coming in using the lazy route, but they're just going to get smashed Cause, like when everyone's got access to this. It's like the only people that can level up are the ones that are, so it's becoming like an accelerant.

Darren Lee: 1:50:05

It's funny you say that because I did something similar my emails. So I built a Python script in ChatGPT to analyze my emails to pull out the ones that were inbound leads for sponsorships. Some of them are like PC, they're not really like, Not real.

Matt Lakajev: 1:50:20

They're not warm.

Darren Lee: 1:50:21

There's people coming in, yeah, so to pull out, to pull in these people, then, when I did the offer, separate those people and then do a sentiment analysis on it, whether it's positive, negative or neutral, and from there then rate it and then, if it's good, segregate it. Yeah, so again, you have to understand like what am I trying to achieve here?

Darren Lee: 1:50:40

Because I could do that technically in Excel. You can build a macro to do that in Excel, but fuck doing that. So instead I just spent two hours doing it, and then I was able to get it done. Yeah, is doing it, and then I was able to get it done.

Darren Lee: 1:50:57

Yeah, so it's an interesting observation, right. It's like you need to understand what the problem is. You should solve same with the content, right? If you're a great copywriter, you can look at it and say like, okay, yeah, this actually did help, just fix one or two tiny things you need to know what good looks like, like that's like copywriting is like and sales that.

Matt Lakajev: 1:51:09

The problem with copywriting sales combined as a bucket right is, if you look at physics, it requires like three, four, five, six levels to get to the point where you can conceptually understand what's even going on. So if you watch a physics YouTube video, you're just like I'm lost, I can't do anything or I can't anyway. But if I watch a Tua Hormozi sales video or copywriting video, I watch the whole thing and I'm like I totally get all this. I understand it, it makes total sense, but there's a difference between conceptually understanding and application of it and then the dozens and dozens and dozens like probably thousands of micro skills that actually are actually around it, and so I see all these people.

Matt Lakajev: 1:51:49

Yeah, I see all these people like out there making these like AI content tools, and I look at their own content. I'm like it's never going to work. It's literally never going to work, because you don't even know what good looks like and you can't get the AI to analyze what good looks like. The only person that knows what good looks like is the true expert who's actually doing it, and so there's just a lot of people.

Matt Lakajev: 1:52:12

All these things like that will just never be good, but then what will happen is like the true expert will come in and they'll just destroy everyone because, like, they actually know like what matters and even like so many people like they talk to me and they're like I'm building this ai sales bot and all this kind of stuff like around best practices and stuff, and like I look at their sales conversation and their understanding of psychology and stuff like that and like if there's like one thing wrong in like the whole sales process, like you just can stuff the whole thing and there's like hundreds of things in it, and like they can't spot the one thing, like it's impossible. And so everyone's like, especially the AI content thing, especially the AI content thing people are building tools to do it. I'm just like man, the AI content isn't going to be the content that's going to be winning anyway. It's going to be the people who have the skill of writing can write stuff that AI can't write. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Lakajev: 1:53:04

But I think we go back to mindset and stuff like that. People are looking for the easy way out. It's like what's the Netflix way out? What's the Uber Eats way out, kind of thing. It's like, but you just can't win. It's like too hard.

Darren Lee: 1:53:19

It's a good point to finish on man. This is fucking great. This is long. This was like over two hours man.

Matt Lakajev: 1:53:25

I didn't realize the time it was fun.