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Kickoff Sessions
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Kickoff Sessions
#300 Ryan Clogg - He Scaled His Coaching Business from $0 to $70M (Here’s How)
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Guest: @RyanClogg
(00:00) How Ryan Made $70M in Sales
(03:17) Phone Sales 10X’d Their Revenue?
(06:59) Paid Ads, Funnels, and the Power of One Offer
(11:46) What Happens When Funnels Plateau
(17:27) Why Tracking Metrics is Important
(23:13) Volume vs. Quality: Challenges with Organic, Virality & Affiliates
(26:46) How to Build an Effective Sales System
(33:08) Internal Sales vs. Agency Sales
(39:04) How to Keep Your Closers Booked
(46:40) Optimizing the Sales Funnel
(50:11) Global Sales Ops Processes
(57:17) Paid vs. Organic Funnels
(59:53) Tracking Funnels by Source, App Type & Intent
(01:09:58) Why Margins Dropped Despite Growing Revenue
(01:13:36) What Broke the Business in Q3
(01:19:16) How Ryan Rebuilt: Habits, Health, and Mindset
(01:23:29) Why He Left Puerto Rico After 3 Years
(01:28:12) Building for Depth, Not Just Revenue
Did you ever think you'd make over 70 million from this business when you started?
Speaker 2:We did 72 or 3 or whatever it was technically through one VSL opt-in funnel. I know guys who do 15 million a month in info and they have completely dedicated funnels for different traffic sources. We do a bad partnership where we spend 1.15 million or something, make 100k back literal 1 million dollars straight cash burn. You stack all those up, not cool.
Speaker 1:How did you personally?
Speaker 2:like handle. Our jumps were essentially 100k a month, a million a month and 3 million a month, and this month right now is the highest and we're at four or plus right now.
Speaker 1:So let's kick off first thing. Man, I really appreciate this. So where I want to start is looking back at where you've gone now. Did you ever think you'd make over 70 million from this business when you started?
Speaker 2:this specific one. I mean, like in beginnings, now and again, so I'm a co-owner, not a co-founder. I was like number four or five on the team. Those guys, uh, you know, they started it before me the uh digital marketing co-founder right, there's like the expert marketer. I would say that, like in these info coaching businesses, it's like expert marketer and then at scale, it's like plus an operator and doesn't necessarily need to be three people, but it's three skill sets, right. So, um, they had the expert and the marketer. Um, and I mean they already had something going on. They were doing like a low ticket monthly app.
Speaker 2:They were trying to build it, like some of these other um click funnels companies, and I came in with like building sales pages, like literally building sales pages and like random click funnels and tech builds and just random shit for like two grand every like six weeks, like anything that spit out, like find a little bit of it, and one of the co-founders would like, you know, send me some cash, and it was like it's just fun and I was doing a bunch of other random stuff at the time for years, even while this was starting to grow. Um, but yeah, when we changed we, when we changed it over a call funnel. We're like oh, we know, this can at least be like a million a month business. Um, I model everything based off who exists out in the market already and people were doing one to three a month and we also weren't that tapped in, if I'm being honest, like we were not that tapped into the space and like I just knew a couple of people I bought all the the courses, I watched all the youtube videos, so I knew what people were doing like with call funnels. Um, but I just was like at that point we were doing info, we were making 30 40 margin, doing 10 million bucks a year.
Speaker 2:Once it got like churning and we're like cool, this is dope. And there's three of us that were partners and we're like all right, cool. Like so no, I mean I. And even when it started to get up into that range and I started to talk about it out loud, I would look at the all-time chart and be like, wow, yeah, that really does add up to 70. I don't know you know what I mean, because it was an extended amount of time too. These guys are like oh, yeah, two years, we've done X amount, we've done more, but it's been over years of granted. It was very light in the beginning, like as you see on that chart that's like.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's funny because, like a lot of the info businesses, they kind of bro scale, hack and cowboy their way to to it, you know. So, like how I think this is really important to frame. Like, how much of it were you completely like, not dialed in the beginning? So when you got to a million a month, right, bare in mind, a million a month is fucking, it's a lot of money, right. How much slippage did you have in the business? Like, how much margin for error did you have in the business to scale up?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean we were doing. We were doing phone call the entire time. We almost never sold direct to cart uh, ever. So, like a lot of these guys will do that, but I'm a huge fan of over the phone. I think you can have more slippage. I think there's more room for error. I think that if you get someone on the phone, you can change your offer real time. You can navigate any objection they have. Versus if you send them to a sales page. It's like it's one offer, it's all the copy that's on page, it's only the objections that you put in place. It's only like putting it on a sales page makes it like definitive, this is what they're going to buy through. These are the only things you can have on page and I'm not good at that. You know the other co-founder is really good at marketing sales copy like all of that world Um. So he was much better at that, um.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there was tons of slippage, like even to this day. I'm like oh yeah, like we know all these things. We didn't know then, but I can't imagine how many more things we don't know today. I can't imagine how much slippage, like the one of the biggest things. I just went to another event, whatever two weeks ago, and one of the biggest things I was like, oh wow, we are just not squeezing enough ad spend. And it's like, oh, people also email the list like different offers and they do this and they use a DM setting and then they'll use different acquisition models that are based on this and this, and their sales comps are this and I'm like, oh wow, like there's 2%, there's 5%, there's 10% and these sizes that's like mid to high, hundreds of thousands of dollars when you stack it up a month Before we move on any further.
Speaker 1:I have one short question to ask you have you been enjoying these episodes so far? Because, if you have, I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel to help more business owners grow their online business today. Do you think it's about more instead of refining, though? Because if you think about it, like what you have right now, or we even had at a million a month or 5 million a month, if you just refine that and squeeze that versus like opening up, like another acquisition channel, like how do you think that's?
Speaker 2:what I mean, not even opening more, like right now, we did 72 or three or whatever it was technically all through one funnel, technically through one vsl opt-in funnel and so like when you're saying, like back in the day of us doing, uh, you know, 30, 40 percent more, doing a million a month, basically, um, or doing a million a month, um, that was an info product, so there was no fulfillment costs and it was a lot of volume, so it was like anywhere from a thousand to 1500, like across. That time we changed the price and increased it, um, but we were doing a ton of volume selling an info product over the phone.
Speaker 2:And he said those economics are crazy nowadays because, like, if you told about, you know like that's a direct to cart product all day, um, or like a webinar product or a long form VSL like it that is, or an Ascension product even, and we just like didn't have the wherewithal to understand that at the time. Um, so once we started to roll in the direction, everything exploded and that's why we that up. It's because it couldn't take the volume anymore after we got to a certain point. So we had to roll out more acquisition models, we had to have more fronts for the acquisition. But now it's almost like I feel like I talk about it kind of publicly a lot, but I'm like, yeah, I want like one core lead funnel and one core buyer funnel. It's like the next step. It's like what For lead funnel? When I say that, I mean like VSL opt-in, a direct application with VSL, something like that. That's just like lead focused. And then one that's like a low ticket Ascension offer. That's a buyer funnel. So you have buyers that come in. I'm like we crack two of those and we can get to very sizable numbers, like five to eight a month. And then, yes, of course, let's layer more on, let's have diversification. Let on, let's have diversification, let's move that direction. But, like right now we have five or six on the front because we're like almost testing them all and it's like let's just optimize, like you're saying, let's just focus on one and get one to work, is like that. That's where my frame's at at least. So I, yes, I agree, um, and what I was saying about the squeezing it, exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 2:So not adding more fronts, but like a very simple example is like we have this lead funnel, that's the core one, so we send a ton of traffic to that. Let's say we get let's just use simple math let's say we get a thousand a day leads, just for simple math. Those, then, what percentage of them come in and get content every day. They get contextual uh automations. They also get emailed twice a day and they also get reached out to and like all these different like spots. Okay, so, like that all exists.
Speaker 2:But one of the things I wanted to this event is like okay, we're just pushing them to uh basically consume video content, maybe some audio content, like that's it, but, and yes, it's in different messaging pockets and yes, but what if we sent them? What if we also had a webinar that was to the list. What if we also sent the lead people to the buyer funnel through email? What if we also sent this and this and like things like that? We weren't doing this.
Speaker 2:Last week we emailed the list the low ticket like, as just like a, like a direct email, and it got, like you know, 30 purchases, which like, and it has its ascension rate and it has this thing. And it's like what if that was in cadence? And again, that's only a 1% or a 3% or whatever thing, but like you stack those up on what you're already paying for. That was us emailing our list, like that we already have. So it's like those things then compound because then now more eyes on that, then the ascension rate from that. Then that plugs back Like they all can play together, but you can still focus on like one or two core things in the front, right.
Speaker 1:So Dude, I love how, like you've been doing this for so long, your brain is just always computing it's like this.
Speaker 1:This has become like, so, like it's a curse of granted knowledge. I feel, I I feel like you've been doing this for so long at such a high level that you almost like don't realize. Don't realize it, you know, because for a lot of guys, or the majority of businesses, will sit way under that million a month mark. Right, so let's bring people through that journey, right? So you went from you basically were at like 20k a month when you joined, right effectively, and then you brought people up through the call funnel and then you swapped then from that low ticket like 700 product women's coaching, bear in mind, this is the most important part to high ticket.
Speaker 1:What was it? What was the kind of building blocks from there, from zero to 1 million, 1 million, 2 million. What did you have to let go of? Right, because I think that's the biggest thing and something that I personally find as well we have to let go of a lot of beliefs that got us to. You know, we've hit like 300 K, 350 K in a month. We have to let go of a lot of things that you know we used to do basically yeah, so our jumps were essentially 100k a month, a million a month and three million a month.
Speaker 2:Three was our previous all-time and then you include the renewal stuff and whatever that we did and it was like 3.7. And then this month right now, is the highest and we're at four or plus right now. So, yeah, um, which is great, which I'm, yeah, I'm excited about, but again, it was a lot of renewal again. So, new, all I all I'm focused on is new, which has been a deterrent in the past because we don't focus on the LTV side of things, which is the highest profit, which is the biggest margin, which is like all this stuff Right. So now we're focused on both. So like I'm not trying to discount it, but I also am really focused on the new because of all the things we're doing marketing and acquisition and changes and it's kind of like been the the big focus forever and like I still not fully cracked but the changes that were made through there. So, like you said, we were selling a low ticket thing, so like just the economics of what the offer were at that time. So when we initially started, we just like don't know any of this stuff and it's like so obvious now. Like, if I look back, I'm like, oh, what could we have done five years ago? It's like just crushes me. But like, initially it was a low ticket so it was selling, uh, recurring monthly app. Then we changed over and, uh, you know, co-founder called me and was like how do we take this thing to 10 million? And I was like let's do a call funnel. Like we were just shooting the shit. And I'm like let's do a call funnel. We're from this world of where we both bought the courses. I bought another course that was on how to do crms and another one that was like YouTube ads and I'm buying these like direct. By the way, uh, we bought one of them. That's not true. We bought one of them from the company, but the other one's like I'm buying, like he already had one personally. Like we're personally buying these things because the business has no cash, um, and it's doing a hundred K a month, but it's like we're spending only to acquire, so it's not doing a hundred K a month, like it has no margin, right? So I'm not even like fully part of the company yet. And then we move it over to a call funnel and we're selling an info product that was 500 bucks, then it moves up to a thousand, then it moves up to 1500. That's how, just paid through and optimizing a sales team, we're taking sales calls in the initial. We're ramping all the reps, we're doing the hiring. I'm doing office hours, an hour a day every day, like trying to teach them the tech because our sales reps were all customers of the product. So it's, you know, xyz, demo, um, like all that. And then going from one to three was changing the offer to be one-to-one coaching. So we just changed the offer to be like a coaching offer instead of an info offer. Um, and just that alone was the big uptick and we were cruising and actually had pretty locked in good margin.
Speaker 2:And then everything exploded into last year, into Q3 of 24, because acquisition broke. We hammered that funnel so hard. We had no backup funnels, we had no full-on marketing department. We were trying to do it through an agency. Cpa is rising, agency costs to run. All of marketing is rising. Everything was rising at the same time. So it started to squeeze and it cost to run. All of marketing is rising, like everything was rising at the same time. So it started to squeeze. Um, and it was like fine again. Like between that, a couple of bad partnerships and whatever it's like. We lost millions in CPA, slippage marketing department, slippage sales team. What we thought was good performance and like wasn't great performance. Like it was. It was getting new clients, but it wasn't like crazy KPIs, they't like super tactical um. And then, yeah, cpa marketing spend there and then some bad partnerships. We tried to do some things with ltv that we just took a bite out of the app, you know, just ripped us like over seven figures um that we made a deal with.
Speaker 1:So like yeah, can you? Uh, can you walk me through how you're running the front end? So like all the ads through the front end. So is 100% paid? Right? 100% of this is paid, you might as well say yeah.
Speaker 2:I pulled a high-ros report the other day and it's like I was trying to show the, because we're trying to lean into YouTube organic a little bit now. We have so much content. We have so much content but it's not optimized for like virality or first click or anything. So much content but it's not optimized for like virality or first click or anything Like you know, creating outliers, it's all middle and bottom of funnel. It's like info, it's educational, it's like very in that world, it's customer interviews, it's like stuff like that that exists middle and bottom of funnel. So once someone comes in with an ad, then they look us up or they see us or they get into one of our lead flows. We send them emails twice a day that are videos from there. Like the consumption ring is there, but it doesn't exist in a way to like new, new lead generation, right, um, so yeah, it's 99.9 paid so how, how the fuck do you ramp that page?
Speaker 1:so, like, how, what are you looking for in? Like the unique economics? Because what I love about you and this is what I, the first thing we met in in london right was like you're, you're, you're a data guy. Like you're a numbers guy, you're a data guy first, and then you are, let's do something based on the numbers. And that was so apparent to me, because that's why what I really want to allude to you knew how much were the purchases. You know what you were spending. You knew how much you're making on the back end. So, with all of this in mind, how, how do you, how do you have the confidence to ram so much ads on the front end?
Speaker 2:based on the numbers. So like starting light. Um, I talked about this the other day but someone xyz, I know was like, oh yeah, we want to launch this new one. I'm like here's the structure of the page, here's the, the structure of this, and like I can kind of start to get into like ideation and like copy mode of like oh, here's the big thing and here's like the USP, but like, again, that's not my, that's not my lane. Like as much. Like I know structurally how it needs to look, I know what pages need to exist, conversion rates, what show rates, what cash per call rates, what like I can tell you all that. But like now, what are the words on the page? Like that's not as much. My world. Like a little bit, but not as much.
Speaker 2:So when we did it? At what timeframe? I'm trying to think. So for the I bought two courses the one that I had bought and one that was in the product. I have a picture on X that it's a picture of a desk, like a dining room table almost, and I have two lamps with the shades off of them behind me over here for my lighting, and it's like a picture of this giant water jug or whatever. And it's like bought two courses and in a weekend we launched this VSL funnel that we then ran for. In three days we launched it. So I bought the course. It had the script on how to do it, it had what the page structure and flow is. It had how to do all the CRM stuff. I had set up all the zaps, built all the tech, like did all that. And then the other co-founders, like one is the brand face and like shot the actual VSL, shot the you page video, did those things, shot the ads for it. The other co-founders, like very good at marketing, so like was changing the messaging and like I got the script template, he adjusted it and we launched it.
Speaker 2:And you launch it at these low budgets. So you launch them at a hundred bucks, 300 bucks, whatever, a day and then you start to see what data comes through. So like, back to your question of like, well, how do you get the confidence to do it? It's like you have to run it, you have to make your best judgment on if it makes sense and then you very quickly can see some of the stats around it and like if you're truly on zero and cold and new, um, a lot of you got like I don't I'm not a hundred percent of the audience here, but like the London guys, for example, like all that crew, it's very organic. So when you want, when you launch one of these things, you almost have like puffed up stats because the algorithms find people who have already seen you or consumed your content which is not cold. That is not so like. It's almost like. I mean, it is better, it's almost like retargeting for you guys when you start them up, but it's direct response, versus a lot of the time it's all content that you guys have out there with some CTAs mixed in, but like what? The direct ad about a specific thing going to a page that has specific button on it, that's to do one thing like that's how you test it.
Speaker 2:So for us, when we did that, it was, you know, testing at XYZ. Calls were coming in at like at that time in life 50 bucks, 80 bucks, something like that and we're selling them a 500 thing over the $500 thing over the phone. And the math worked well even at those numbers, because it was so low budget, because the costs were so low, because they probably had some level of warmth, because we had some level of organic or had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a low ticket thing that just basically broke, even when you added up everything. And so now we were going to the range of like, oh cool, this does 30 to 40 points, and then we just started stacking the price. But if you don't know your numbers on things and it's pretty easy to know for me it's pretty easy to know is if you just track it off the jump.
Speaker 2:It's like how many let's use a VSL opt-in funnel? It's like how many ops do I have? How many applications do I have? How many bookings do I have? How many live bookings do I have? How many in the many do I have closed? And it's like what's your cost per across all those? As your ad spend starts to trickle up and like if you're selling something that's 20 grand, the economics need to be a lot different than if they're five grand. Right, because like your cost per call, the swings and what you can do there, you get a ton of feedback from over the phone.
Speaker 2:When you get people live on the phone, you can change the offer. You can sell them something with 10 coaching calls. You can sell them something with no coaching calls, you can sell them. You can sell them. I'm going to fly out there and you can come and stay with me in Bali for 50 grand or whatever and you offset all your ads. Like seriously, like that's the beauty of a call, you can real time adjust and at scale of room for error in a funnel like that, but yeah, you can real quick.
Speaker 2:See, I had someone message me the other day and was like oh, I got 500 clicks from paid to a DTA funnel. So headline VSL application and they had 2 apps and I was like Okay, fundamentally broken. You hear these guys talk like 3% to 5% is what your conversion rate on that page should be and it's like there's your true north. I know guys who have 30% of clicks apply from page, which is insanity and you have a sub 1% or whatever the math is on that. That is not. Something is broken how they're coming to the page. It may be. What are your variables? What does the ad say that gets them to this page? Once they get to this page, what does the headline say? What is the vsl? What's the consumption of the vsl? What's your page tracking say how many clicks to the application, how many started the application, and then we know how many filled out the application. Something is broken here, like so. Once you have the data, though, you can very easily scale into it Very easily.
Speaker 1:How are you tracking data? Is it all, hyros? Or are you hacking shit together with spreadsheets?
Speaker 2:Simplest answer just spreadsheets, let's say. But you're essentially logging everything. You just need to log everything. That's my view of data as it's shifted over time and how it actually works. You have all your data stored somewhere that's in a uniform, consistent way, and then you have viewers of that data which is like where you can do this across this and this range and this one versus this one, and all that stuff. But you like store it all in one place. So whether that's a sheet that stores it all in tabs, whether that's inside hubspot, whether that's what.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what hyros is. It's like it just stores all the backend data and then you just get to view it in a pretty way and like, oh, last click for scientific or this versus this, but it's all just like looking at like that's literally how data works. It's like one structured data set, a database, and then viewers of that data. So for for years we only use Sheets. Then we applied Hyros, but like Hyros is for the ad attribution, not the actual funnel economics. So that has now made its way into HubSpot. We're making a whole source of truth and custom data lake and doing all that now and then reporting tools on top of this.
Speaker 1:Dude, this is so crazy and I think, again, it's just such common knowledge to you as you've built out for so long. But I think the organic guys have a great advantage. I think when I moved into ads in the past year, things have just been easier. And I was laughing when you said about when you're selling high ticket because we just need a couple of the 20ks to close a month for it all to check out. Yeah, we literally joke about it being like if we just get a few, like two or three of them, everything will check out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, literally, you know, and obviously the ad spend is like you know, it's basically nothing compared to what you're doing. Now I guess we spend a lot of marketing on the production of everything and the episodes and the videos and YouTube and short form and the team and design team and everything. But that's the way I'm looking at it, right, because, like we are our lowest product 6k. So if we're, if we're complete dumbasses and that's why I said about slippage slippage at the end of the day we can still have a very profitable month off of paid on its own, whereas organic is still going to be 85 of things. So is your advice there for the organic guys to just scale the shit out of it and just learn it basically organic yeah like as in you know a lot of.
Speaker 1:So all my audience 25, 35 first time, second, second time, business owners, agency info guys a lot of guys are heavy on youtube, which I promote, yeah, and their own brand. They build up that equity. How I describe it as this? Actually you'll find it fun. It's quite interesting. We have the hot audience, which is easy to sell sell to right, it's food, shooting fish in a barrel and then you have the warm audience and they've cold audience and your only goal in organic content is to move people from cold into warm and warm into hot, always because the hot like should close all the time, yeah, like one and two should buy, yeah. So my goal is just to pump the shit out of that. So the way I think about it, and the way I'm thinking about it recently, is I just need to get more people into the cold sphere and then leave them cook in the ecosystem and then they'll kind of gently move into warm and then gently move from warm into hot and then book in their calls and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's we do the same method, it's just we don't have the organic on the front, so it costs us more money to do that same process. But it we decrease the time.
Speaker 2:So, pay for a time, so like where you have someone who organically follows you and does xyz, then how long it takes them to then consume more content, then push themselves into warm. How good is your content optimized to push them to warm, to hot and then to convert, which is get on a phone with you or on the phone with you or whatever. And yeah, you have 98% show rates and 60% close rates, but like that's not volume.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, but like, like you said, like, oh, a couple, 20 Ks, yeah, but my belief is around, for, like I love organic, I think it makes a ton of sense is around, like I love organic, I think it makes a ton of sense. We just don't have it Like I would love to have it, I would love to have it. Um, a big thing with organic is when or virality happens you need something that is 24 seven available to purchase, join happen and like with us with the call funnel. Like there's volume restrictions. So like if someone comes in and like if we had an affiliate, or like a video that just popped off and just went crazy viral and all of a sudden we got a thousand applications in a day, there is nowhere for them to book because you only have so much volume. Like that's why paid is so evergreen and so consistent and so right If organic you have like these big waves, like it's potentially great, but you need somewhere to like push them into.
Speaker 2:So that's why these guys sell direct to cart offers, like low ticket, free communities, that then like because then you you capture as much of that as possible all the time, but then they're not like it's not one conversion focused. It's like you put them in a free group, or they opt in for this free thing or they pay for your low ticket or direct to cart thing that exists and you make another two grand, five grand, 10 grand a day, just off the low ticket or the direct to cart offer. And then from there you take those people and nurture and consume as buyers or as leads inside your ecosystem, not on an external platform, like you use it, whatever, which clearly also works, but like you own the audience, more so than them just being like a subscriber. You now have their email, you now have their phone number, you now have their Facebook profile because they're in a group, whatever it is. Then from there you ascend them into the high ticket thing, which is like a lot of your margin, a lot of your spot or, you know, in this case it might be. No, you know there's no advertising costs, just content. Uh, you know production costs.
Speaker 2:So, yes, I love again, I love organic. I just we have not cracked it. And same thing with when I look at like affiliates. I'm like cool, if I could like build in like a fixed CPA model that was call it a thousand dollars for easy math, like how do I do that in a way that maintains the quality and the consumption and all these things?
Speaker 2:Cause, if I, if I'm like, hey guys, send all these affiliates, we'll give you a thousand bucks per purchase. Now, send us traffic. They will book out our calendar in three hours, like I know Legion guys that spend like 300 grand a day Like they could fill that in two seconds. Is the quality there? Is that our ideal customer? Is it this? Is it that like unlikely? And because we don't have a system that is built like we have the low ticket thing, but even our low ticket then goes to two different booking widgets, because they book in with a setter, they book in with a client. There's still a volume restriction that you need to staff for on the back when you start to do stuff that's over the phone.
Speaker 1:Are you an agency owner, coach or consultant looking to scale your online business At Vox we help business owners scale their online business with content.
Speaker 1:We help them specifically build a high ticket offer, create content that turns into clients, and also help them with the sales process to make sure every single call that's booked in your calendar turns into a client. If you want to see more about exactly how we do this, hit the first link down below and watch a full free training on how smart entrepreneurs are building a business in 2025. It's a theory of constraints issue. Right, it's like there's always going. It's going to be in in that order, I think. Uh, it's ironic because I've just hired a new ads manager now to to sort out this shit. Right to to pump a shit on ads on the front end to in addition to the organic. But what I wanted to ask you was, when you move from that part of the cycle to the next part, which is a sales side, how, how did you build and scale like that sales team?
Speaker 2:because like our sales team, off the rip was clients of the product. So we would make a hiring post inside the community of like the, the paid community, and we'd be like, hey, income opportunity, who wants to make money, basically just selling the thing that you love? And they, you know, in our, it's, ours, ours is 46 year old uh, women demo and they were jazzed to do it and it's a little bit less hours because their moms or grandmas or this or this or whatever, um, but they were interested in doing it and it was all 1099. So it's like who cares? Like they can work the hours they want to work and all that. We plug them into the calendars. Uh, you know, at that time we wereing them ourselves and we were hosting office hours and teaching them this. And I was creating Kajabi training on how to navigate Because there's a tech.
Speaker 2:It's like what's the tech, what's the sales skill, and then what's the product knowledge company, whatever, right, it's like, roughly speaking, and Cole Gordon is the G of this. So he would tell me there's probably 12 different things, but like, those are my three, like quick buckets. So they had the product knowledge, the understanding, the results, even of the exact product. They just need to learn how to like, use the tech and actually sell. So it's like in our brain it was like that's the easier one, cause they have such high conviction, they have such high product knowledge, they have all these other things. It's like let's just have demo to demo. They bought the product themselves. They literally got results as themselves, so why wouldn't they just be able to sell it? And that's how we did it. And we've had hundreds of sales reps at this point, hundreds, hundreds. Our last sales rep ID is, I don't even know, 400 something maybe, and it's been granted 5 plus years. So we've had issues. Team has had issues, like we've been through a lot of it.
Speaker 2:Um, but that was how we initially hired for it. And then now, once we made the shift from info to coaching, that's when things took a turn to like we need more professional sales reps. Uh, we need more. And also like, cause the conviction shift. They bought the info product. They didn't buy the coaching because the coach, it wasn't for sale yet.
Speaker 2:So when you start to sell this coaching now, all of a sudden you have this crew of like fantastic people and fantastic women. Right, but like they had bought this product. They had sold this product. Now they're going to sell this product, which is now more of a sales function, less of a conviction thing, because they have not also bought this thing, right, right, so the shift for that? But there's so many people like, depending on what your offer is, the market is overflowing with remote setters, remote closers, um, the biggest issue is generally like too high level of aggression, um to to you know, what offer are you on right now? What offer are you on right now? Cause they jump right now, because they jump, they're always chasing a new hot, sexy thing.
Speaker 1:Um, but there's some really, really quality people in the market for sure and I think it was interesting I think it was you that gave me advice on this when we were hiring two new closers. Recently we had the opportunity to hire someone with high ticket closing background and he went through all the programs and another guy who had corporate sales background, so b22B in the trenches, like multi-shredding type sales, and we hired both. Actually we hired both of them and the guy that had a corporate sales background has stayed on and the other guy we've let go. He had like a 44% close rate in his first month. The other guy had like six right when they were fully ramped up, and the reason being I think there's a few things.
Speaker 1:I think the guy from corporate sales, they understand the shit like phase Cause, like when you're in corporate, right, you have to bite your tongue. So he was able to sit through those lessons and it humbled them. People loved him on calls, like generally the general acceptance was that they liked them. Funnily enough, the guy's actually in the room next door to me and he just got off a call and the woman like was tanking him at the end of it. So I don't know, this is this is like an energy thing. Right, there is like a big energy thing and and also a connotation right, because, like when you were starting and selling that, basically like low ticket offer, the market sophistication was very different than what it is now. Yes, very much.
Speaker 2:So you know it's a different world, exactly what the market norm is at that point.
Speaker 2:I mean, the biggest thing that I heard like in there is, first off, just like hiring two people.
Speaker 2:I always say that I'm like you need to hire two for it, because if you just had think about, if you only hired the one, that was a six percenter and they were running it and they were doing it, and all you had to compare against is, when you sell, which you are always going to close higher, so but if your baseline is then, oh wow, like this isn't a good offer then, or like the marketing must be broken or whatever, because, like I hire a sales rep and they only can close at six percent, and it's like, but you hired two and you saw what the real baseline was, which is like, oh, this one can close 40 and this one can close six, so it it's like I need more people like this. Or here's the like I hear that all the time People at a closer and like, yeah, but they can only close at 10% and I close at like 60% and it's like okay, that's a person issue, not a marketing messaging issue. Generally speaking, generally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, and I think it goes deeper too with like all of your team. I yeah, man, and I think it goes deeper too with like all of your team. I think that's a beautiful part of what you've done is like you've built such a huge team. But I think, like sticking on the sales side again, like how, how do you, man? It's crazy. Like so you had all those reps that come in and out and some of them were like moms and shit. Yeah, how do you get them to like track their close rate and, you know, really dial into it like work with the sales manager? Yeah, how did you? How did you do it?
Speaker 2:we were at that point in time, we were the managers, um, so we managed them. Um, me and co-founder would get in the calls, we would host the huddles, we would do all that stuff, and we tried to do like 1099 managers. Like that didn't work. And then we actually ended up, uh, bringing the top closer in as a manager or like upgrading them to a manager, which is like the number one thing you're not supposed to do, and he did that and just did everything on fire, like it was just it was a mess. It was a mess. It was a mess. Um, so yeah, so not ideal there.
Speaker 2:And then we had to have like a culture shift. And then we had to. We like lost half the team because of it and we had to rebuild the team. And this is all when we were making that shift from uh, selling info to selling, uh, the coaching. I think coaching, um, so yeah, I mean, the evolution of that team basically went from there. So I just want to pull it up. So, yeah, we're in the 300s, not 400s, we're in the 300s of reps now, um, like id number, but we have ones that are. We have one, two, three, four. We have three of them that are within the first, you know, 75 reps.
Speaker 2:So like we have like, oh, geez like we have multi, three, four year reps that are from that era of they were customers and then became sales reps and then a lot of the newer ones obviously are not, but then they a lot of the time we'll buy it for themselves or so sales things Interesting man. Um, I talk about it. I had a Josh Troy on mine or whatever and that studio we were talking about and uh, if I I kind of was like pretty objective about this, but I do not think if you're trying to build a cashflow info coaching business that you've like should have a sales team internal, I think that people should use these agencies that crush with it, because it's it becomes, once you're in, once you're above 100k a month, once you're at 250 a month, once you're in those ranges, like just forget about it and like that's a super overgeneralization. But you can hire these agencies that all they do is all they do is their entire focus. And if you're not like a focus sales but like a Cole Gordon, terrible advice for Cole Gordon right, like he can do this better himself. He can do it at a better cost. He can do it better efficiency. He can do it with like better account, like everything. He can do it better. We are not the him. So, like, nobody made this offer to me back in the day and I always push people. I'm like, go to go to Josh and, like you know, do that Like. But he's one example and there's multiple of them where they have dedicated setters, dedicated closers, sales managers all this stuff for like a specific fee.
Speaker 2:So it's for 20% of cash collected on the front, roughly. Let's say, um, it is 20%. I just don't know if it's cash collected or if it's con. I think it's contract, uh, I think it's same month contract cash. So not full contract value, um, which is sometimes different. But we can just say, first, 30 day cash, 20% I think.
Speaker 2:But it is like you hear some of these guys I was talking to some of the guys at the event. I'm like what's your in-house sales team costs? Like oh, 24%. I'm like, yeah, exactly what's your in-house risk cost? Someone's like, oh, 23% or 28%. Uh, some of these other guys in the room are like 15. I'm like, okay, yeah, but how big is it? Because, yeah, you have your closer at 10, 10, 99.
Speaker 2:Let's say you have a setter that's three to five, keep going, keep scaling into this. And then now, what do you need for sales ops? What do you need for a setter manager? What do you need for player coaches? What do you need for a closer manager? What do you need for all this?
Speaker 2:Those comp plans start stacking and unless you're doing enough volume, it does start to get close to 20, 22, 25%. If you don't manage and the comp plans stack, so like you can build it in house for cheaper. You can build it in house for 15 points or 17 points or whatever, but like generally speaking, and then you're also managing the entire team, or then you hire a manager in place, then the comp goes up again. And it's like it becomes this thing that once you're doing volume especially if you're selling a lot of high ticket, um, depending on how much volume you're doing, like you need a relatively large team, whether that's three reps, whether that's eight reps then you need around let's say the same Some people do two to one setter to closer, um, some people go one to one, so like if you had five reps, you'd have 10 setters, right, because there's so much lead flow that they can just push and qualify and do all that.
Speaker 2:So you have 15, 20 people. How big is the rest of your company, five people right, like it becomes the biggest. It becomes the biggest part of your entire company, which means head count equals headache at some level. So like, like if you're not able to, you have an emotional week or two weeks which not gonna say it's not gonna happen with an agency, but like that's your only cash generation source, they decide to do this and this. Like it's crazy fuck man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that's that's really shifts my perspective on it. I actually have a different perspective on it initially. Which was my idea was I was fearful to use an agency because they didn't really give a shit about the brand. They gave a shit about sales, right, so they could say things or do things that would influence the sale but may jeopardize the brand or let me give an example.
Speaker 1:You can do that in house too. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But let me give an example. So I have a client right now doing 7 million a year and we moved them from an agency to in-house sales teams. We helped to build a sales team Setters, closers. Our thing for a long time has always been, you know, setting off organic content and then the closings. We've moved into that with them Now, that with them. Now, the reason why they wanted to do that is because the sales agency they were strategically moving around their best closer to the best offers and clients they had. So let's say, if that company was doing like, let's say, 400k or 500k a month, they would move it around and a new guy would come in. So this guy would come in super fucking green and they just had no control.
Speaker 1:I think it was around 20 to 25 percent in total that they were giving up for it. So of course there's pros and cons to absolutely everything, but that's what made me think initially was like, oh, like it has to always be in-house. But you've you've kind of shifted my perspective on that as well, which is like if someone can take care of it for you and they're not going to fuck up the brand, yeah, go ahead right yeah, because the idea I mean like listen, I'm here saying this and I mean quick number on this the team's back is 26, closers 24, so 50 plus management.
Speaker 2:What Right, what the fuck? And like again, and I'm very clear on the fact that there's some like and that's a bunch of new that haven't even started, that some need to churn, Like there's you know, that's not the net net number of like where we're going to land, to be at these numbers, like just saying um, but close to. And so I say that with that, I say that with W2 entire team, everyone's employed, everyone has, you know, base draws, everyone has 401k and benefit, like I took it to the end. So like to see the other side and the other perspective of it. That's like, listen, if I was running an info coaching, cashflow, focused business, profit, focus, like just that type of business, um, I could see it being in house and being lean and keeping, you know, just having a 10% and just trying to like really refine it and just have like some attraction based sales.
Speaker 2:What can you do? It's basically what can you do from a marketing standpoint that's organic or paid, that make their cash here, that makes it so it's lean and light and fun and like all that. But you start to get into like these volume things when it's like a lot of iteration. You really need like true sales, you need some of that stuff. Like you need your crm baked, you need like all your deals updated you have 300 deals a day that you need updated. Like you need admin and ops and like like that is real. So, all to say, if you could just focus on marketing and you could just focus on product and like Ascension and LTV and all that and not worry about this piece at some level, I think that's a really good trade-off for very likely what is the same cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man Less headache with less, whatever, like and again, you can play both sides. I literally live in the land of the other side, so like I can see both. If I was to do it again, I would still do this because of what we're trying to build. If I was, when I bet whatever, some info, coaching, cashflow, biz I very likely will. Just once you get to a certain range like yes, you want your guys in-house. Like you need to be doing 100k, 250k, whatever a lot of time for these agencies to even take you because you need to show the product market fit. You need to show that you have like consistent lead flow. You need to show that you have your economics back out for your 5k, 10k ticket. Like you need to show that works before you're like deploying this team because they won't even work with you like the good guys, like the big guys won't even work with you until you're doing those numbers so how many calls are you booking a day?
Speaker 1:a lot hundreds but. But where does it all come from? So, on the back of the $39 fucking ebook, and then the bump, and then the bump that's very low volume for us like how do you so? Okay, so you've probably 26 closers and they're all full calendars for the most part oh, yeah, we were booked out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we overbooked through the weekend on accident, which is like pretty rare for us because we try not to do that ever because it's just burning ads spent a lot of the time, but we like aggressively overbooked and you?
Speaker 2:you take off saturdays and sundays no no money for it, okay yeah, but when the volume changes, that's another thing. So like another benefit you get of w2 versus 1099, which we haven't even felt because we haven't standardized it. Like there's so many standardizations around the sales team that we're changing and rolling out now but like when you're w2 versus 1099, you can like mandate schedules and stricter stuff like that. When they're 1099, us world like you can't do that, like you can't tell them they have specific hours, you can't tell them they have specific things, because that like leans into employment versus you know contract. So when we wanted to start doing that, we, you know legally and because of everything, we were like okay, cool, it's time to move them to W2. They're no longer like gunslingers, it's like here are the tools and like work when you want. It's like we want a more consistent cadence.
Speaker 2:But another thing around paid is let's say you have 100 open spots throughout the week. It's very common to then have 50 open spots on Saturday Sunday or 30 open spots on Saturday Sunday, because sales reps same way, they want to have their weekend, they want to do their thing. It's a normal person, right. They want to work a cadence. So unless you have it like map to where it's actually 80 or 90 as your throughput and you move those shifts over into the weekend. If you're spending 10k a day across this, when it hits friday, you've been booking 100 calls a day because you're trying to get the efficiency. And then you're trying to book 100 call a day and now all of a sudden you book out the entire weekend on friday and you're burning cash on saturday into sunday, when now they can book into Monday, tuesday, the timeframe they're booked out as longer, so they're less likely to show. Like it's this whole economics thing of like where do you need to be?
Speaker 2:And that is nice, the beauty of paid, because you can kind of throttle it but like it's very difficult to have your ad budgets here and then here and then here and then here on a weekly basis, like very difficult. So you want to optimize for what's the number through? Or what other ways can you get bookings on the calendar or not? So that's what you're saying, like what are their funnels, what are their emails to the current list, what are their setter paths, what are their buyer funnels? What other things can you do to like maintain that percentage booking? So we have like a Google script that reads how many calendar availabilities are 30 days out day day. So, like I can tell you on what today today is july 21st I can tell you how many openings, open spots, I have. On august 19th wait, hold on.
Speaker 2:So you booked that far out no, I only booked 48 hours out, but I want to know availability so we can throttle spend interesting, okay.
Speaker 1:And then, because obviously there's hundreds of calls being booked, is all of your triaging done with AI or it's done manually? Manually, yeah, how do we Manually?
Speaker 2:So we have setters yeah, so setters confirm. So there's this whole flow of like Jeremy Haynes talks about back-end sales systems. So we have what's on the thank you page, we have what emails go out. We have what content. We have what ads do they get hit with inside the booking window. They can only book 48 hours out. Um, but we have a setter team that double dial voicemail text. Whatever tries to reach, that reaches them like instant, like within sub four minutes. As soon as possible, they fire into slack channel, they claim them, they dial them and they confirm the call. And that alone is like bink on your show. Rates huge, yeah, huge. Because they talk to them, they dial them and they confirm the call. And that alone is like bink on your show. Rates huge, yeah, huge. Because they talk to them, they qualify them, but they also will remove them from the calendar. If one they don't confirm or two they're not a good fit, they'll remove them because that's what we've had to do now with paid.
Speaker 1:As a result, we're getting a lot of bookings, but now they're not hitting confirm so we were just assuming that if they don't hit, confirm, and that's the first message we hit them with if they don't hit confirm, we're just assuming they're not going to show up, yeah I think ravi talks about that which is like if they, if they hit, confirm, there's like a 90 chance they'll show up or some shit.
Speaker 1:And then if they, then if they watch the, the following vsl you send them, then there's like it increases the close rate basically by 50 or something I have exact stats for you.
Speaker 2:You want to know some exact stats.
Speaker 1:And this is the thing right, because the difference between I can just, you know, talk from my own experience the difference between, like us doing 100k and us doing 300k is these small details, so I can't imagine the impact on the same volume on the same volume.
Speaker 2:If you're doing 100 right here, yeah you start. That's what I was saying earlier is like you get some three percent lift here, a five percent lift here at 12 lift here and whatever these spots.
Speaker 2:And the earlier you get those lifts, the more right, because if you get a five percent change on your opt-in page, that is, whatever the volume, uh, more valuable than five percent on your close rate. Yeah, right, because the throughput goes like like this right, like the earlier, it's a leverage thing, right, it's like the earlier you can make that little tweak, the more it makes its way to the back end, versus if you just didn't make it until the tail end, then it's like think versus this. So if you can make those adjustments because you're playing with all this stuff, so like here's exact numbers for this month. I have double screen thing going on here. So over here it's how many confirmed bookings? So how many setters dialed and actually confirmed them, not claimed them? They claim 100%. How many did they confirm? Of the ones they confirmed? They had an 83% show rate month to date, from cold, what? From marketing bookings only. So the marketing booking bucket is 82% show rate, but they only claimed 60% of the bookings. I'm sorry, they only confirmed 60% of the bookings they claimed, right, so they, so 40% of them didn't even answer, didn't even respond back after they made the booking.
Speaker 2:So now I have to work backwards and go okay, what is broken in marketing to make it so? 40% of so, if I'm getting 100 bookings, 40 of them are canceling. They're not responding. They're whatever. Because why? What did they try to apply for and book for that as soon as they booked? Now they don't want to.
Speaker 2:Did they Google something? Is there something on the thank you page that is completely different than what they thought that they were applying, right? Like where is the mental shift? Where's the frame break on why they applied and booked, versus once they've booked, that now they don't want to respond and you're going to have your whatever 5%, 10% that are just like shopper or like whatever. They are right where they're just not going to, but like that's a bigger percent. So we're like what's wrong with that no-transcript? And it was like think it was like oh, there's another 10%, like oh, there's another 10% and like some of these simple things. And like we had rolled out all those things on thank you page based on XYZ belief and it was correct for that belief or that theory and what we're trying to do. We're like, oh, it would make sense if we change this to this and like just making that shift was like this jump. And that was a week and a half ago, so it's like, yeah, so crazy.
Speaker 1:It's always a small changes. It's always a small changes, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like the fundamental thing. And then once you crack the fundamental thing, the fundamental offer, the fundamental whatever, it's like now how do you get throughput through it? How do you optimize around, cause, like even what you said earlier, um, the, they're not showing, they're not whatever, right In that realm. It's like the, the, everything's a funnel, everything's a funnel. It's like you have these different points and it's like okay, wait a minute. So it's the throughput through that funnel. If you had the most qualified person ever coming through, sure, generally speaking, your costs are going to go up because you have this application that's 30 questions, or like kicks out everyone if they're under these metrics or whatever. But like would that throughput just be higher? Could you have a smaller sales team, could you have two reps, because you have 100 bookings a day right now, but like could you just have 60 bookings a day, but almost all of them show and they're the exact ICP and quality. Like that's the game you have to start to play. But are those of those 40%, if you had a better sales team or if you had a whatever, could you close out of that range more because they're better sales reps or are they just not the ICP. So like what's the core thing? And then what are the optimizations to get 2%, 5%, 10%? But if you haven't cracked the core thing, which is where most of these guys are when they're beginner offers not good enough, the uh, how they're displaying or showing the offer isn't good enough, how they are communicating it in the VSL, their King tech is broken on something like.
Speaker 2:There's so many of these things. That's why I'm always like start low budget, start low budgets, cause like shit will break your data comes in. Now obviously you don't know your numbers. Like you can't scale into not knowing your numbers. Like fix your numbers, like all that stuff. So like start small and test and test and test. Not like overnight, cool, I'm gonna spend three grand a day in budgets or work with one of these guys that have done it and they generally take percent, so they take whatever. But like once they crack it, you're like oh, and I'm kind of back and forth on that, because once you do that, it's like what do you leave them and then you just took all their stuff. Like people play that game differently. But I don't know, I don't really play that game.
Speaker 1:But dude, I think an observation or lesson I'm learning right now is like I just need more fucking volume. Yes, like you know, as like we have the team, we have a great with great product, get great results of great testimonials. We just need to ship more volume, and that's what we're doing with our new uh ads agency. Uh, but we've had a few, as you say, like tech issues.
Speaker 1:Uh, this is dumb shit, right, it's always dumb shit just always just it's just such dumb shit, but like, yeah, at the end of the day, I just need to stop being a bit of a princess and just ramp this shit out of the spend because, like all of this stuff is actually in place, there's this setter calling thing. I need to do, we do we discuss?
Speaker 2:we're based, obviously, international, it's whatsapp triaging um, it's like 80 effective yeah, I mean like again, like our market's all us, so we don't touch whatsapp. But like when I was doing this stuff and joining uh iman's thing consulting quantum, now like that was, uh he was reaching out to me in whatsapp and like I literally like I had it on my, my phone and I was like saw it and I was like what is this? Cause I literally had no communication on WhatsApp. And like then I I was one of the people who I wanted the offer enough I understood enough that when I then saw that, I was like okay, cool, I'll just change where I communicate. But like, if you're doing volume and you're doing this, like you want to play to where they are, so like me number or whatever, like probably would have been better for them to reach out to me on sms, probably like iMessage, right, but iMessage again, much different than green bubble sms, that land of like what all the automations and tools use interesting.
Speaker 1:I have no idea about that, right yeah, when iMessage, you get.
Speaker 2:You get blue text. So like if I get like uh, if I get sms they come in green right. So like if I go to texas back, it get like a. If I get SMS, they come in green Right. So like if I go to Texas back, it's like a green bubble. That like shows, like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and then like versus iMessage shows like when someone's typing and like can send this and that and like you can go back and forth. So like iMessage is like more real of a person.
Speaker 1:So, people, it's more like a parcel, yeah, and like you can go back and forth.
Speaker 2:So like iMessage is like more real of a person, so people, yeah. So like that's this whole other software game and you want another lift and like this other thing is like people have softwares now that send blue messages and or people get their entire sales team iPhones like and now I'm talking us market a lot, but like that's a whole another game, but that's another just five or ten or thirty percent lift. We rolled it out and we got two and a half times the show rate I'm sorry, not two and a half times show rate, two and a half times the response rate, which then had the throughput further. Because now, if you're getting responses this early in the funnel, how many now more of them come through and book Right.
Speaker 1:So it's like oh, bro, when you're running these calls, the sales calls like like respectfully, like the women you're selling to are like 46 year old, like kind of desperate housewives, right. So like how do they know what a sales call is like, fully transparent? Do they know? Do they know like they're getting in for like a 45 minute session? Yes, they don't.
Speaker 2:So like the framing of ours is not like oh, they don't necessarily sometimes. So like the framing of ours is not like oh, like you'll see the guys who do, and I like it a lot honestly but like you'll do it where it's like um, how do I frame this? But bait and switch or some shit. Yeah, we don't bait and switch, but there's like guys who do the. Here's exactly what my offer is. Uh, like um, dan, daniel, um, I, daniel, um I'm blanking, I don't know how to say the last name, but like he'll do it where it's like here's the VSL is basically just like a sales script or like a walkthrough of like what the product is. Here's the exact offering, here's how much it costs, here's this and this. Now, like book, a call below, here all the offer, benefit. Like here's all this stuff and it's such a good offer that he can just use it as the marketing. So it'd be like literally a loom of like here's the doc, here's what's included, here's what you're buying, click here to apply, and then they know that they're applying to literally pay for this thing and you're like sales reps, cashier, right, like at mass volume or like B2C. That generally doesn't work unless it's so good of an offer that it makes sense.
Speaker 2:If you're just trying to sell someone direct, so you have to shift the framing. It's like there's a consultation. This is like me seeing if you're a good fit for our program. Even like, yes, we talked about the program, but it's more about like, is this a good fit for you? Or, you know, would it work for you? Um, let's do a consultation, let's do some discovery, let's like, figure out some things. Uh, a lot session thing came from was like let me see if we can help you. Let me see, let me hear about what your problems are. Let me give you this value If you show up to the call, like, oh hey, if you show up to the call, you're going to get this and this and this and this Takeaway is direct from the call, whether you buy anything or not, right?
Speaker 2:So ours is more in that world than the other camp of like, here's exactly what you're applying for buying and doing right now, which is going to have, generally speaking, a much higher call close rate, much higher. They have all the education, they have all the information, they know how much it costs. Like, what objection are they going to come? You didn't see that it was 25 grand. You literally applied on a page. You clicked on the end of the application. Hi, I know that literally people do this on the end of their application. I know that I'm applying for this and this I will show for my call, and I understand that this is a heavy financial investment. Check the box. You're going to tell me that person who shows up for the call isn't much more educated, much more ready to make a purchasing decision than the other.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what we do.
Speaker 2:I would say I love that they all work, they all work.
Speaker 1:It's obviously a lot less volume, right, uh. But what I mean is like if we get 10 qualified calls a day, like that's like very, very good, right, like very, very good for us. Um, but the form, bro, like the form is getting into stanford and the reason being is because our client success managers it was because we, like you know, fucked up our own thing in the beginning like this is like last year our client success managers were taking the calls, so the more we'd sign, the less time we'd have, and the more time we'd have, less time we'd have with the less calls we could take. So it had to be very screwed like a very tight one, and now that we have like proper closures in place, it can be a little bit more open. I'm just thinking now, if you look at ravi's right, like ravi has like fucking four questions. It's like will you show up how much money you're making? How can I help you?
Speaker 1:that's literally it yeah he's like are you ready to go? Okay?
Speaker 2:ravi's stuff and then, yeah, I mean his all then is lead scoring, it's confirming, it's, there's the post stuff that happens. And again, now almost I just did a video with him and just put it on my channel last week and he was talking about how they're doing size and it's almost exclusive. I think it's exclusively organic. I'm sure he does. I mean, for a long time I know he did a lot of paid um, but like all the stuff he pushes right now, no, he does do paid. He does do paid a little bit right now, um, but he'll send those. He.
Speaker 2:One of his ads is a screenshot of high-ros dashboard. I'm like only people who know high-ros know what that is and literally the entire thing on like last click or first click or whatever it is, is like YouTube video, youtube organic, youtube organic, youtube organic. And he's showing that so many of his high tickets like 8K, 16k, 18k are all coming from his YouTube organic so he sends them to. Last I looked but he sends them to a DTA funnel. So headline VSL application on page testimonial wall. They apply to a DTA funnel.
Speaker 2:So headline VSL application on page testimonial wall. They apply through they book on the phone call. They have come from organic, like I love a DTA funnel for organic, I think it makes a ton of sense. It allows them to have more consumption if they want. It allows you to pitch the offer specific on what they're applying for inside the video right, versus trying to send them through some other thing or some full opt-in funnel that you need for cold because they need all the consumption they can't apply. They have to go through all like jump through these hoops there versus organic.
Speaker 2:The assumption is they have XYZ consumption already. They're already 80% of the way through. Now they're clicking in for whatever the offer is, and then you're briefing them on what the offer is and apply below, like that's the methodology around it. And then, yes, of course you can be like oh, by the way, if you just want two sales reps and want to do 10 calls a day, like, but they're crazy, qualified, amazing.
Speaker 2:Now turning on ads all of a sudden tomorrow to cold, true cold, not people have seen your face, which is not going to be in the beginning. Generally, usually with the algorithms, but like, or with targeting or whatever you want to call it. But trying to run paid direct to that exact page, generally speaking, is not going to work. They don't have the consumption, they don't have the frame, they don't have any of that stuff. And now all of a sudden, you're going to ramp them to this page, the apply buttons right there. They can instantly apply. They don't even have to watch the video above you have no idea if they've watched anything prior and now you're just going to want them to apply. Like the framing of it's different, the consumption levels of a different, the friction is too low, like there's too many of these things for someone who's cold, who has no idea which who you are generally levels of awareness right like levels of awareness of your audience.
Speaker 1:What, what do they know of you? Because I know that, like the way ravi structures it, I had a podcast when I'm on. This was like he has like every one of his links for every one of his youtube videos all tracked and so on, and then it is going to that straight landing page and then straight to book from there. At what point would you say like you can over track data or would you always over emphasize it?
Speaker 2:just curious from an observation perspective like you're doing too much yeah, like I'll give it a given example.
Speaker 1:So our new ad agency guy, he was kind of saying like we could calm down a small bit on tracking fucking every source from everything, just because like we'll have a meltdown in the beginning ourselves personally. But then if you look at like ravi, like every single video I would, would not agree with that? In what way? Sorry?
Speaker 2:I mean just like, foundationally speaking, like I don't know why you wouldn't Like, of course, at some level, like there's too many data points and too many like because you're tracking data so that you can make better decisions, plain and simple. So yeah, if you have 5,000 touch points and all this stuff and like it's not telling you a story or you can't make a decision based on it, like, yeah, but if it's automated, tracked, sit in there, like why would you not store the data? Because you can't go back and store that data. So my opinion on it is store as much as possible, Just understand. What are you making decisions based on? What are the core metrics you're actually focused on? Because you could literally track. Let's say you have 100 YouTube videos. You could have 100 tracking links. But you want 100 tracking links because if you don't, and then all of a sudden you get all these bookings, you're like where are they coming from? And you don't know because you didn't set it up for what, why would you not if you already have the awareness of like, oh, I need to track these things, or oh, this should be set up? Same way that when I say like, if you're running paid a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:I know guys who, specifically, I know guys who do 15 million a month in info, or it's like 12 to 15 million a month in info coaching, and they have completely dedicated funnels for different traffic sources. So like, not so okay. Imagine this you have one DTA funnel Okay, you're running organic at and you're tracking high roast or whatever, all your different links. You know which YouTube video they came from, okay, but they're all going to one lander. Now you're going to implement paid First off.
Speaker 2:I would say, have a different one for paid right, cause you want to be able to know that it came from paid. You can do UTMs, you can pass it through the form, you can do all this stuff, sure, but, like again, very likely you're going to want different context, different consumption, different something with paid versus organic. Now, to take it a step further, when you have this paid one, I know guys who run Facebook, YouTube, whatever, and those will have different funnels, entirely the whole thing. So they'll have a different landing page, they'll have a different application page, they'll have a different booking page, they'll have a different everything for Google versus meta, versus whatever, because at scale, that tracking conflicts so much, which is crazy well explain how it conflicts because it'll pass back to different.
Speaker 2:It'll pass back to both oh, because you're using the same page as coming again so the pixel data gets skewed where it thinks it's google versus meta versus whatever, and like again. These are like. These are like scale problems, not launch, not beginner problems, but like that's a real thing, to where, if they're coming in, or they hit this funnel and then this funnel and then this funnel, which one is it tracking?
Speaker 2:yeah right and like oh, hyros just solves it by just sending whatever, and it's like yes and no, but like it wouldn't even conflict if they were on their own, dedicated because they only did hit this or they only did hit this, and those are unique to themselves and I guess if people listening who aren't fucking making 70 million dollars like.
Speaker 1:The simple track for this is like you can just use different booking links, like for iClose. We just have one we have? We have youtube linkedin instagram.
Speaker 2:Get on with it for now you know, yeah, but now imagine if you want to go a step further or earlier, and you wanted it for the application and you wanted it for the lead and you wanted it for the whatever, but 100%.
Speaker 2:Right now we have four or five core booking links that are tracked, like you're saying, that are tracked differently. We have a DQ versus a normal one. So we still will accept bookings that are disqualified because we want the volume and because they still do close. Um, that are disqualified because our financial qualifier is not like tried and true, like if it's like somebody who's like oh, I only accept clients who are making over 100k a month, right, like that's not our world. So we'll have people that would land, that aren't making 100k bucket, that'll still close for us and that's like just an example. Um, but we don't fire the pixel on that, so it goes through a different booking link, it goes through different pages. They don't have any scripts on page, they don't fire a facebook or any events like any of that stuff and we route them fuck question for you on that.
Speaker 1:So a lot of our clients you know, like their their fitness people relationships, a lot of relationship clients, um, and just like they're they're fitness people relationships, a lot of relationship clients. And just for context, I don't know how much you know about our business, like, but we're helping them grow their business with content, organic. And then we've had to heavily train them on sales because we were growing the shit out of their accounts and helping them, whether it's done for you, done with you. But the biggest thing was people couldn't close the door, let alone a six k pay for it, so we had to teach them sales. It was a huge component of it. So there's content sales and I asked that because a big issue a lot of people have in the kind of personal development health space is that financial qualification question is how do we say this elegantly to not scare away people?
Speaker 2:because you can tell it's huge and b2c how do you?
Speaker 1:how do you do that delicately? I'll just give you an observation. The way that we do it for ours is like obviously we have a current revenue, future revenue, but then we also say like, look, we're looking for how much did they've available to invest? What's our capital requirements? Because we're trying to fit them with the best product yeah, so ours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how I would do that, or how we're doing this, at least, and then how it apply it to. That is, how much have you invested in your relate? How much have you invested to try and fix your relationship in the past? How much have you invested thus far in trying to solve this relationship?
Speaker 2:problem zero one thousand, one to five thousand, five to 20, 20 plus. Like what's the number? Like what have you paid in therapy? What have you paid to other coaches? What have you whatever? Because the first thing you're going to get is the people who are in the X, you know whatever. Those people are, generally speaking, like qualified right, like they have the direct financial means. That's what I was saying, though the zero to one Ks might be someone who, like they're in the biggest pain point ever because they've never even close to solve this and they can still afford it. But the people who have already spent tens of thousands or whatever, like a way, way higher percentage of those people are already going to have the means. So, like it's like a, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's like a back-ended way to figure out the question, instead of being like how much money do you make? How much is in your checking account? What is this and this? That's one world of how to do it. The other world of how to do it is just soft credit pulls. So you get name, email, phone number, whether it's on your opt, your application, your whatever. Then you use a tool Lead Fi is a good one. There's two or three of them and it pulls their soft, pulls their credit API. Three seconds hits your CRM and then you can either route them based on it or you can just have the information for when your sales reps talk. And now in your CRM you have how much access to borrowing they can get through a BNPL. You have what was their income. You have what is their. All that stuff.
Speaker 1:That's not like known elsewhere in other countries, as far as I know. So as long as you, have.
Speaker 2:So I guess I guess maybe I don't know if that's worldwide, I mean definitely based on like, based on these other things I don't think it is worldwide dude.
Speaker 1:I'm fully transparent, or, unless I've been living, it's a definite thing around here I don't, we don't use it because our ticket's not high enough.
Speaker 2:So I haven't used it because it doesn't make sense. But like anybody I know that sells something that's over 10K generally uses it.
Speaker 1:So it's like a credit score. You can check your credit score effectively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're basically pulling it from the credit bureaus and it's like how much? What was their income last year? Basically, what is their like rating, what is their this, this, this, and then you can route them based on that. You can completely DQ people based on it. But, like that also runs into an issue sometimes if it's like your spouse, like you know, has people single file or this or this. It's like you know, the wife says that she may, or on paper, makes like 30 grand, but, like you know, the family income is 500. Like you know, there's still issues in the data, but it's cleaner than a subjective. How much have you invested in the past? But that one works for us a lot. So, like the math for that, we'll then route people based on that two top reps as well. So, like people who answer the higher numbers, go to the top reps because they're the highest likelihood to close.
Speaker 1:Would you? I have so many questions, dude, but would you, even on that specifically, is there any scope for asking them like what they actually do right in, like looking at?
Speaker 2:not for our offer so.
Speaker 1:So how do you know when to cancel them? Like, how are they unqualified?
Speaker 2:they based on the financial qualifier directly. That's like the only direct one we have right now. Uh, that'll actually like just automatically dq them um, but then dq one, still land on the calendar, so we still take all the calls. The only time you're going to take someone off the calendar is if they don't confirm, if they don't answer would you not have a question that says like you know, investing carries x amount of x amount of weight.
Speaker 1:Whatever I have the resources, I can get the resources. I do not have the resources. Do you have a question like that?
Speaker 2:we used to in the og days, and then we ended up yanking it and like, again, we play more of a volume game. Um, we play more interesting, but again not to say that's the right way to do it. Like even when we're talking about in your model, like I was like, oh, have a 7 to 12 minute video or whatever, that explains what the offer is exactly, talks about how much it costs, triple, confirms them in the application that they understand the cost, and you get 10 calls a day, but you close eight of them. That's just a different model. Like they both work. They both work, but like think, you gotta think. Like the entire funnel scope.
Speaker 2:So it's like if you're paying for ads, this is where costs are right. You're paying for eyeballs, so your cost is here, and then it's just a division problem all the way back. So it's like now how many of those people opt in? Okay, if it's 20% divided by 0.2, now what the cost per click was or whatever. Now it's like now you have your opt-in cost or your lead cost, and then what percentage of those people then apply? And it's 30% divided by 0.3. And it's like now it's this is what your cost is per app and you start to go down this thing all the way to what is your cost per sale. It's the only thing that directly, directly, directly really matters. Like, of course, there's 19 other metrics you can look at, but like what's your cost per sale? So if you have a 20 K thing or a five K thing or a one K thing, like the economics of what this can be changes right and what you can.
Speaker 2:So if you have the whole framing and the messaging congruent with you're applying for this specific program, here's exactly what this offer is, exactly what this is. That's like Hormozy's whole model is like if you have a better offer, you get more clicks for the same eyeballs. You get more opt-ins for the same clicks. You get more booked calls for the same opt-in. You know what I mean. Like everything goes up because the offer is better and more in alignment. So it's like if I'm like, oh, this whole thing's free, this is free, this is free, you get all this amazing free stuff and all of a sudden, now it's paid, it's like like incongruent, incongruent, but like you have to thread that line on. How do you do volume but also understand that like's like here's all this free shit you get. But then if you want you know, personalization, accountability done for you, like all these pieces done for you, like that's where you start to go unpaid or you just consume all the free stuff fuck man.
Speaker 1:This is, yeah, this is so interesting. It's just a complete different school of thought. You know it really, from what?
Speaker 2:I'm, and neither are right or they're both right.
Speaker 1:Well, if you think about it right, like how much money you've made, the margins you have, yeah, I've talked about this in public.
Speaker 2:But like the margins are not good right now. Someone made a video and was like, oh, on stage I said 10% and it's like not necessarily true, but like when we were, because we got so big with team size and because we're all paid, it's a big, it eats the PNL a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. So like when we were doing info only, we didn't have fulfillment costs and the margin was really. Or like the CPA was really good and we had no fulfillment cost. So it's like piece of the PNL pretty tight and good, piece of the PNL damn near non-existent. Right Like there was no direct fulfillment cost and then the margin was good in this land and we also had everyone 1099 because they were just gunslinging sales reps that worked whenever they want and did whatever they want. So like they were classified as that again margin saver. So like in that land. Yes, it was like 30, 40 points. Once we started to scale into into the coaching, it was still around like that 30 ish. And then when things started to break, it was like all of us or I guess, margin more so uh, it was going like this and going like cool. Now it's 25. Now it's 20. Now it's like 15.
Speaker 2:We've made this huge partnership error.
Speaker 2:We did all these things and, like we got railed last year Cause we just didn't know, we didn't know we aggressively ramped into everything and had this big vanity metric number of oh cool, we did 30 last year but we technically made more dollars in profit but margin took a big dive as, like a percentage took a big dive.
Speaker 2:Now, when we were trying to eat out of that and like get back to normal, we like gutted everything, only doing a million and a half a month. We have a massive team. We have only ad spend that we, we only have that we can generate clients right now, cause we don't have an organic engine. So you add those two up overhead plus all the spend, it's like we're breaking even basically at a million and a half Now that we're like whatever up to 3 million it making money and then now that we're in renewal season, plus this, plus this, like so we have ltv back end money and then we also have, you know, cpa coming down and we're getting more volume, so it overtakes the overhead. Now it's starting to make, like you know, we're at four right now, like it's making solid money. Like again, like five, seven, eight, ten are like the targets.
Speaker 1:I want to be at 30 plus in order to scale so again, I always have 100 questions when you talk because you, you say so much, things are so valuable. Do you think that, like the model you have right now checks out to get you to like 10 million a month? Yes, so what is the constraint of you getting to there? What's actually the reason why you can't?
Speaker 2:right now sales is the number one thing. So the conversion like the leaky bucket that exists there, um to where, if you get 100 bookings a day, how many of those should close it's not backing out. So that's like a team structure. We just got a new chief of sales. That started last monday, so seven days ago. That is a whale in the space. Um, so like full belief over there.
Speaker 2:How long does that take to implement? 30 days, 90, 90 days, whatever? Like that needs to be fleshed out and, in the interim, making money throughout it. Obviously, once that is ready, then it's availability and then it's marketing making sure it can fill their calendars consistently with qualified people. Right now marketing does not have its own income generation bucket, like it doesn't sell direct to cart, it's literally just generating bookings, so it can't make its own money. So, like, once sales is ready, marketing can fill it and then, once that, I bucket those as acquisition.
Speaker 2:Once those live over here in acquisition, my entire goal is to go live in product retention, renewal. What else can we sell them? And I have big plans over there on how that is going to work. And that is like the crazy margin that's you're selling to your customer base now, that's you're continuing to sell them more things. You're selling them other things like I have big plans over there but I just didn't want to lose focus of, because if this like didn't work, the whole company doesn't work and do so I have an acquisition.
Speaker 1:Then focus on ltv for us is how I've been looking at it sorry, and you touch on this lightly though, but what was the reason for a breaking? Like I know you had, like the partnership issues and stuff like this, but like no, no, partnership was fine at that point it was more so around.
Speaker 2:Partnership was fine. If I can give praise right now, public whatever to like the co-founders who built this, like again, and like all the praise, like they are product market fit. They were all the initial like oh my god, I remember we went. I met them in person for the first time after working for months in bali, flew out there, met them in bali, had a way yeah, they had a um.
Speaker 2:They were out there for probably four or five months and then, would you know, bop to singapore, um. But they invited me out and I had been doing like page builds and random stuff for three months, six months, somewhere in that range, and just worked, worked digitally never met in person before and uh, invited me out. I flew out and I stayed with them for like a month out there and then COVID hit and then I flew back and zipped out like right when it hit, so it was whatever. That was like 2020. And it was all low ticket game. We did that. But I literally remember sitting in there and like the uh co-founder brand face all that shoot. I mean they literally recorded like nine iterations of a VSL and hundreds of ads from like morning to night, like they are grinders. They are like they are what made this created. It came up with the name, the ideation, the product market fit, all that stuff. So like rock on there.
Speaker 2:What happened later, when everything started to do its thing and then took off and was doing you know three million a month and up into the right being 15 things honestly, if I could be honest with you but like everything was leaking, everything was breaking at the seams. Marketing, cpa was increasing. We had a very lean marketing team and an agency. So the agency is like trying to do X Y Z things, trying to do X Y Z things and all on the paid side. So they're doing all the paid, all the creative, like all the media buying and all the creative, and they're 13% of something I had spent. We're spending a million bucks a month. We're paying them 130 grand a month to run this shit and CPA is going like this. So like it's costing more to acquire a customer and we're paying these guys this huge dollar value. So it's like not good and all.
Speaker 2:In the end, it was because we were ramming it into this one acquisition funnel, which was this one opt-in funnel that couldn't take more. It could, like it needed to be cooled down and run at lower budgets and have other acquisition methods, and we didn't have them because we didn't have the wherewithal, we didn't have the understanding, we didn't have the whatever. So we're ramming it into here. We also kind of have our foot off the pedal, cause we're like this is great, who cares? Like we weren't taking it as seriously. Then you bop over into the product side and product has always been really good. Product has always been brand quality, brand quality, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But it was like fulfillment of the contract. So it was like you signed up for a year and us to get you this result, and like we're going to gung ho and do it and client wins, channel fires off. But it wasn't framed in a way that this is like year forever or like having anything else to sell them or anything like that. So we didn't have to sell them. It was just more of the same, and even the more of the same wasn't optimized. Coaches don't want to sell, so we didn't have a backend sales team. We didn't have other offers. We didn't have any of that stuff.
Speaker 2:So it's like you stack those on top of each other. Where LTV is coming down, the cost is going up. We shift everyone to W2 to be this big business. Now costs go up again. It's like we've we do a bad partnership where we spend 1.15 million or something. Make a hundred K back, literal $1 million. Burn straight cash burn. Like you stack all those up. Not cool, couldn't fill calendars. Now fire the marketing thing, try and hire a new one. Like it was a shit show coming out of like Q3 or coming, yeah, roughly out of Q3.
Speaker 1:Of like q3 or coming, yeah, roughly out of q3. So like a right, like two months from now of last year and dude, how do you, how did you personally like handle this?
Speaker 2:I, my world of this and like connection to this? We this was an info coaching cash flow business for a long time. The focus was that it was we all have other interests. There's so much horsepower that almost like too many chefs in the kitchen sometimes of like the different partners and the different players and key people in the company. It's like we have to do these big numbers for this to even be exciting for us, because there's so we're like, so like I'm interested in this over here, other founders interested in this over here. Oh, it's making a bunch of money, people like, but their feet kick back. Like the leadership level, like where we were sitting with things. Who's on the team? How are they incentivized, like all of that?
Speaker 2:So when it started to do that, we already had all the cash in the checking, we already had all this stuff, but like it was just slowly pay for itself, dwindle slowly. So we had like this reframe set up who's going to drive this? How is it going to be? Like XYZ way, my involvement actually increased, as you can tell. My involvement then increased in XYZ way and other people kind of like stepped a little to their world and their role, like, okay, I'll own this, oh, I'll own this, I'll own this. And we're like let's take this into a massive business so that none of us have this like, oh, I wish I was going to do this other thing. Or I wish like I could make so much more money over here or somewhere else or doing this. We're like let's do it all here or here, and I talk about this like I'm going to continue to do this info coaching stuff.
Speaker 2:Do this Because it supplementally in supplement helps the main business. When I go to these events, when I talk to other people in info coaching, when I hear you talk about stuff like that, I'm like, oh, what's an interesting offer we could have. I'm not going to go play over in software or real estate or something, but I'm going to have the info coaching core thing and then I'm going to have the main info coaching business. That's going to be massive and both of those tied together is like fulfilling an interest, fulfilling a network, fulfilling and financial in all those ways. So now it's like let's sprint. So like in that time it was kind of like gray, I was trying to kind of figure it out. I was moving, I was like doing all this other stuff, I was like it'll be okay.
Speaker 1:And then we're like let's do this and now fast forward fuck and like even yourself personally, when things are going really badly like how did you?
Speaker 2:I made videos. I want to one day I'll do this. You look at the stripe chart and it's like 1.45, 1.5, 1.55, like whatever, and I started making those daily videos. Then I have videos on the channel where I'm like oh yeah, we lost 30 grand today, or I think it was 30 grand over two days. We lost 15 G's. We basically spent like I don't even remember the exact math, but let's say we spent 60 grand.
Speaker 2:We made back like 35 G's, like true cash, which we have never been that bad and low, ever, ever, ever, like it's one thing if you're getting like one X row as. It's another thing if you're literally losing money at like the size we're at and the stuff. Like it was not good, um, but I was making videos every day throughout that Cause. I was like I understand what needs to happen. Even today, it's like I know what needs to happen and now it's just like execution.
Speaker 2:And, of course, there's stuff that I don't understand or stuff that'll break, or like I'm very, very aware that, like I don't know everything and like we, I just know from what we've been through and like the pieces of like what the next, what needs to happen right now, and then we can worry about the next problem, but, like, right now, this thing can be solved for. So, yeah, I literally have videos that are hey, we lost 30 grand today or in two days. And then you know, we did it, we had six. Yeah, I don't know if I shared in that chat, but we had like a 600k day, like yeah, how do you still maintain your fitness yourself?
Speaker 1:through this? Because, like, obviously you can work forever, right? Yeah, man, because like you could. Obviously there's so much shit going on that you could spend all your day on this days in the sales problem, all day in the fucking content problem, in a hr problem, but then you've obviously maintained like a good standard of living. Like you're fit, you're healthy, like young, looking Like that's. It's a very unique position that you're in, right, like how have you fucking balanced everything?
Speaker 2:Um, again, there's a lot of horsepower in the team so I can sit here at this day, uh, at this desk and work 16 hours a day and like, oh, I'm in this and I'm in this and I'm in this, and like I did that like when I was doing the youtube videos and the and main co, and like the side like try and do all that. Like I was like, oh, I'm at this desk 16 hours a day, like that's my inefficiency, my inability to delegate work on the main thing, focus. All that stuff, like I'm not saying that I was actually properly doing that, um is the first thing. So you're almost like stepping on people's toes and like micromanaging and getting in the way when you're doing that at like where we're at with team size and stuff, with the personal health and whatever thing. I seriously I'm at this desk probably 90 over 90% of my day, no matter, like for sure. Um, it's just like what interests me and like I am honestly actively trying to figure out other things that I can like do a little differently. Because, because, seriously, like it's like it's probably not the most efficient. I'm like very clear that it's probably not. It's not the right way to do it, um, because I'm not working on like these crazy needle like I know the needle moving things in current state, like what I think they are and like they need to be executed on, but at some level, like I can only kind of give the opinion on it and not directly do it, or like build out these. Even when I do that, drop things in channels, it's like annoying, like I need to have them go into a project flow. What's the priority? They need to work on this first, then this first. Like they already have all these funnels I'm talking about. Hey, squeeze this random thing over here that I know will be a one percent lift, but like chill, like I'm, like it almost annoys team.
Speaker 2:And then literal physical. Uh, I stopped partying a year and a half, two years ago. Like I'm done on that a hundred percent. Like that was a big part of my life. That was when I would stop working, I would just go party, um, and I stopped doing that. So, like, health becomes instantly 15 times easier when you do that. And then I forever have always gone to the gym, every single day, always. So just lift heavy shit, just go to like, like dude, I was just playing a fitness only forever, like it's plenty to lift heavy stuff and do that.
Speaker 2:I. Once I got back here, um, there was a bigger, nicer, like lifting style gym. I joined that for the first time that I actually joined like a real gym like that. But yeah, seven days a week I do that. Now I'm trying to do cardio because back when I lived somewhere warm which I don't right now and I will soon again um, I would go on walks a lot and like consume a lot of like audio, either podcast or audible and stuff. I would walk five to ten like all like big miles a day and get all these ideas and get cardio in. And now I don't do that at all. I never leave. So I'm like I need to start like running or doing something. So just, I literally bought running shoes yesterday or two days ago where do you live?
Speaker 2:uh, I'm in midwest, in mich in, uh, in michigan right now, where I'm from, um, but I just because when I did the puerto rico thing for the last three years, so when I was done with that I was like what's the easiest next, whatever family, friends, girlfriend, things like let's go back there.
Speaker 2:But then I lived through winter and lived through winter like it was like a terrible thing, but like when I lived here during a winter and like it's just not my speed speed, like I just I like my son, I like my stuff, I don't, I don't need to be here, like I can fly into here and do the family stuff and the friend stuff and do all that. So I'll go somewhere warm in the States next. So a Florida and Arizona, texas, something.
Speaker 1:So you think you're not going to stay in Puerto Rico, cause I kind?
Speaker 2:of. I already pulled that plug.
Speaker 1:That's funny. You say that because that like puerto rico to two guys in europe is like dubai right, like a lot of my friends went to dubai and then they're all like out of it. Yeah, and it was interesting because I had that decision to make about two years ago and I was like, because I'm married, right, and I was like my wife was like I'm not fucking going there, she's not going to stay in a fucking high rose building, and then that made me think about.
Speaker 2:I was like well, I, I also don't want to do that forever and all of my friends have moved like I would say, 90 of them have left yeah interesting yeah, when we went to london, um, our media buying guy, um is a legend and he knows a bunch of people out in that in that world and he introduced us to uh, tyler newman. And tyler newman is a legend and he's a real estate and he does like all this stuff in London like super cool, nice guy. We hung out with him a couple of times while we were there for like two days and uh, he was talking about that. He's like all of my friends have since, like that were here, that were London, that were whatever, have gone to move to Dubai, it's like kind of dwindled because those people have now all moved. So for him and for like people like that, like you almost double whammy, get the benefits. Like of course you lose out on the things that you have in your home state, country, location, whatever, but like if all your friends are out there and it's like this money making capital in terms of and what you keep and and like true, the taxation, like all of that stuff. Like maybe it does make sense for the PR thing. It's kind of like a it's it's different, it's it's different.
Speaker 2:So it's like I didn't do a great job of like networking. I'm like very intro. I want to sit at my desk and do my thing no-transcript, have like a frame. I didn't have like a mission and people are down there for money, right, like yes, it has beautiful weather, yes, it has beautiful stuff, but like majority of time like they're down there for the money, um, which also brings out me included, like an interesting type of person. So I didn't network well enough. When I was down there, I had a couple core friends that was like cool and we'd basically just party together and like that was it and we'd work or we'd like go. You know, everyone works 12 hours a day and then connects every other weekend or something and it's a casino or this or it's this and like just a bad era for me, honestly, and like just for money.
Speaker 2:That's where you take it down to like that was my comparison with the london thing and these guys moving to dubai. Like they have their friends there and they're making money and they're doing this stuff. Like that's a little bit different than like just doing it for money. And if you're just doing it for money, there's a ton of guys who have been there and then have moved and have talked about this. There's a ton of guys who have done xyz, where it's like at some level to save 30 points or whatever.
Speaker 2:25, 30 points. Yes, you could like look at it as like a sacrifice which is not even sacrifice. Beautiful place, it's beautiful this. But like the time that, because you got to be there over half the year, like all that stuff straight off to just like living here and just making more money and just being close by proximity and networking and being able to go to all the events and do all the stuff you want to do, like it's just kind of like you're. A lot of people will say this exact. It's like you're like you make money so you can have freedom and instead you're reducing your freedom to have more money.
Speaker 1:And it's like the math equation is broken such a good point, dude so, and also the person that you become as a result of doing that. I'll finish up on this note. I remember seeing a video from charlie morgan which was like if you save an extra million dollars for being in dubai and you spend that million dollars on like cars and watches you may as well just spend that money on like the tax and then work harder and become a better person.
Speaker 1:Yes, like what you're spending the money on is fucking bullshit right, I met them.
Speaker 2:I met some great people when I was like a couple, like there are super cool, cool business people, there's families down there, there's like a lot of that. So, like I definitely don't want to be like, oh, it's like that. It's different than what I've seen of Dubai, where it's like a little bit more like everyone's got the crazy cars and the watches and whatever. Like it's sure, it's kind of like, kind of, but it really is like not that same in that way. Um, so there are great people down there, but it is you're making a decision to do that.
Speaker 2:My whole thing was like, oh, I'll do it for three years, I'll crush it, I'll, whatever. And instead, for three years, business was breaking. We weren't fully focused on it. I wasn't fully focused. I was being an idiot, I was partying, I wasn't in a good place in my personal life, like my existence.
Speaker 2:It was like come back, be a better person, stop being an idiot. You know, get over that. Focus on the business, take this business to a new level. Do these other things? Focus on this one thing. Like all of those things all happened at the same time. So just for that, like I'm eternal grateful for like the decision to do that. But if you want to do a three-year sprint and keep 90% your cash, 95 of your cash, like there's a model where that makes sense, yeah, and it did make sense for me at the time because I would have been I was 25 to 20 or 24 to 27 or whatever, like I was if I would have hammered it like it would have been great investment for three years, young enough, all that. Now it's like if I did it, I'm 28 right now. I'd be like 28 or 29 to 30 something and like I just don't know that I'm willing to make that type of move when you're 28, that's crazy, I'm old in the game you're not.
Speaker 1:You're not that old man. I'm 29, I'm old in the game 28. Well, dude, I want to say a big, big thank you to you. I feel like we could do fucking another three hours. Let's run another one.
Speaker 2:Let's run another one I think I like how you were talking about that and I think we only got a third of the way in because you were marketing, then it was sales and like fundamentals the whole thing.
Speaker 1:But really it is like we could talk all day about of course, of course, man, sales, marketing, then product fulfillment, then ascension, then that, of course, yeah and I think, I think, to be honest, like I'll be going back to America soon anyway, right, so, whether it's going to be East coast, new York, miami, just for doing a shit ton of recordings towards the end of the year, maybe actually um, that will be awesome, dude, but I want to say a big thank you. You're an absolute fucking legend. I'm very grateful that I've met.