YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → YouTube transcript (reisEL_D7xc)

YouTube transcript (reisEL_D7xc) — Transcript

21,040 words · 2,920 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00I've been marketing for 13 years. I
0:01built and sold nine companies. I sold my
0:03last company for $46.2 million to
0:05American Pacific Group. I've also
0:06written two books on marketing that have
0:08sold over a million copies. Here's 13
0:10years of marketing advice that will make
0:11you more money. Piece of advice number
0:13one, start with low prices or even gasp
0:16free. The reason that I say that is
0:18because if you start there, then you can
0:20go up. It's very difficult to come down.
0:23And in the beginning, you want to get
0:25flow through the system. And so, it's
0:27totally fine to start at free and then
0:29start bumping up from there. And so,
0:30I'll give you three quick examples and
0:31then I'll show you how to do this
0:32tactically. So, when I started my first
0:34ever business, it was a online personal
0:36training business. This is 13-plus years
0:37ago. And when I started, I didn't know
0:40anything and I was so afraid to charge
0:41people money to begin with. And so, but
0:43I did want them to pay something cuz I
0:45wanted them to be invested cuz otherwise
0:47people don't follow through with their
0:48workouts or their nutrition plans, etc.
0:50And so, I said, "Hey, just donate to the
0:52charity of your choice, whatever charity
0:54you want to. In exchange, I will then
0:56train you for 12 weeks." And so, people
0:58would donate, I think it was $500 or
1:00$1,000, it was their choice, to a
1:02charity of their selection. And by doing
1:04that, I actually got my first 13 or so
1:05customers just by making posts and DMing
1:08people that I knew. And it didn't feel
1:09weird cuz I was like, "Hey, I'm doing
1:11this kind of nonprofit thing. I want to
1:12help you out if you want to lose weight,
1:13and you can feel good about it, and it's
1:15a write-off." And so, they were like,
1:16"Oh, this is pretty cool." But the thing
1:17is is like that was the first time I
1:19ever did it. And then from there, I
1:20said, "Huh, would you guys be willing to
1:22pay me now after we finish this 12
1:24weeks?" And a lot of them were like,
1:24"Sure." I was like, "Yeah, I'm the
1:25charity now." Uh and so, after I did a
1:28good job, they were willing to do that
1:29and refer me customers.
1:31The next business that I did this with
1:33was Gym Launch when I actually started
1:35uh flying out to other gyms. So, I used
1:37to do turnarounds and I did that for
1:392-plus years where I'd fly out to a gym,
1:40set up all the pricing, do the
1:41marketing, all that stuff. And I did it
1:42all for free. And I did it that way
1:45because I didn't know how I could sell
1:47those gym owners and what I the deal
1:50that I made was I only make money if I
1:52make sales. And I'll front the cash for
1:54the marketing. So, like they took zero
1:56risk on. And I would do everything
1:57including pay for my hotel, my flights,
1:59my my my food, my rental car,
2:01everything. And but being able to do
2:03that, it allowed me to get way more
2:05yeses quickly, test out the system in 30
2:07plus markets that I had, which then
2:08eventually led me to licensing that
2:10system to 5,000 plus locations. And that
2:12was the company that I that I sold to
2:13APG.
2:14The third uh time that I did this was
2:17when I started my software company
2:18Allen. And so, when I started the
2:19company, I was like, I need to get some
2:21case studies. I need some testimonials.
2:23I need some I need some stories to show
2:24successes, right? And so, I think a lot
2:26of people who are in the beginning think
2:27this is only a beginner thing. But even
2:29if you're a big business owner, when you
2:30start out a new product or a new
2:31division, um starting with free
2:33customers just makes a lot of sense. And
2:35it's for four reasons. One is that free
2:38customers become customers who become
2:40paying after the period as long as you
2:41do a good job. So, it makes money in one
2:43way. The second way it makes you money
2:45is that they'll also refer you customers
2:46cuz you do a great job, they'll just
2:48send you other people. And that can be
2:49contingent on why you do it for free for
2:50them. The third is that they'll leave
2:52you testimonials and reviews. So, those
2:54reviews and those testimonials also you
2:56advertise and you can get more customers
2:58from them. And then finally, whenever
2:59you do stuff for free, I do it in
3:01exchange for feedback. I say, "Hey, tell
3:03me what I could do to make this better."
3:04And again, it's not saying like tell me
3:06all the ways I suck, it's just saying,
3:07"Tell me how I can make this better.
3:09Tell me how I could make it worth it for
3:10you to want to stay and continue to
3:12pay." And ideally,
3:14the easy test of knowing whether or not
3:15this works is that they actually stay
3:18and pay afterwards. And so,
3:20it's the easiest way to get going on any
3:23new product and I think so many people
3:25start trying to sell stuff too soon
3:27without enough proof. And in the
3:29beginning, you suck. That's why it's a
3:30new product, a new division. And so, I'd
3:32rather not ruin my reputation saying I'm
3:34giving it away for free, give the reason
3:36is that I'm brand new at this thing or
3:37I'm trying this new thing out. And that
3:39way I'll get a little bit of grace, and
3:40then that way I can make the thing
3:42better in an iterative process much
3:43faster with way more people cuz I'm
3:45giving it away for free or at cost. And
3:47then once I get those massive success
3:49stories that they feel like they owe me
3:51because I've done a great job, then I
3:52can market those and go at full price.
3:55So, here's how you actually do this
3:56tactically going from starting at low
3:58prices to moving all the way to where
4:00you want to be, which is high prices
4:01with big premiums, right? And so,
4:04what I'd say is after you have your
4:05first test case study batch, so call it
4:0710 or 20 people depending on the size of
4:09your product or your services, after
4:11that every five I just go up by 20%. And
4:14so, let's say, okay, I started at zero
4:16and I have a marketing agency. I might
4:18say, okay, the first the next five I'm
4:19going to do for a thousand bucks, right?
4:21And then from there I might say, okay,
4:22the next five I'm going to do for 1200
4:24bucks. The next five I'm going to do for
4:261500 bucks. And you just keep going up
4:28by 20% until the conversion rate times
4:31the price goes down. So, that way you
4:33can just calculate the total amount of
4:34money made off of X number of sales
4:36calls. And by doing that, you'll be able
4:38to see, okay, here's the sweet spot
4:39where I sell the most amount of units at
4:41the highest potential price. So, my
4:42company Gym Launch that I sold for $46
4:44million, that company, you know, at its
4:47peak before I was selling it, we were
4:49taking home over a million dollars a
4:50month in personal income.
4:51But, that's what a lot of people think
4:53happened the whole time, but it wasn't
4:54like that.
4:55The actual very first business that I
4:57started in fitness, I actually gave away
4:59my services for free. I actually did it
5:00as a non-profit for charity so that I
5:02could get clients in the door and test
5:04out whether my stuff actually worked and
5:06that I could deliver services. And when
5:08you're having the conversation with
5:09those first few people, whether you're
5:10doing it for free or you're going to do
5:12it for a big discount, you say, "Hey, I
5:13plan on going to this price point, but
5:15I'm willing to do it for free in
5:17exchange for X," which is usually a
5:18feedback feedback for me and a public
5:21testimony if you're comfortable doing
5:22it. And by having those two things, then
5:25one, you guarantee that you get the
5:26feedback, which is the thing you need
5:27most, but you also can get the testimony
5:29that you can leverage. And then finally,
5:31you can also tack on a referral if you
5:33want to. Again, I'd say the testimony
5:35and the referral should be contingent on
5:37you doing a good job. You say, "Hey, if
5:38I do a good job, would you be willing to
5:40do these two things?" If they say yes,
5:42then you're good to go. The fourth one
5:43was just, do they actually want to buy
5:45at full price later, which will be the
5:47real test how good you were. And I think
5:49the bottom line here is that when you
5:50start out, you're not that good. And
5:52even if your ego is like kind of
5:54convincing you that you are good, which
5:55I think is silly,
5:57just even imagine 2 years from now that
5:58you're going to be much better than you
5:59are now. Well, that guy is probably way
6:01more experienced. So, give that guy a
6:03running start by starting free now and
6:06then building momentum into it. And I
6:07have this saying that I repeat all the
6:08time in my team, which is create flow,
6:11monetize flow, then add friction. And
6:14so, it's like you have to run water
6:15through the machine. You have to get
6:16flow into the system to see where it's
6:18going to break so that you know what
6:20real actually looks like rather than
6:22just trying to get rich on Excel. The
6:23second is the framework that I use for
6:26scaling advertising or scaling marketing
6:28in any niche: more, better, new.
6:31When you're starting out, more is almost
6:33always the answer. And so, I remember
6:35when I was
6:37thinking about getting into content, I I
6:39paid someone who had made, you know, a
6:41lot more content, had a much bigger
6:42brand. I said, "Hey,
6:43what should I be doing?" I like, "What
6:45should I do to make my content better?"
6:46And he's like, "Dude." He's like, "You
6:47don't need to make your content better."
6:49He's like, "You're just not making
6:50anything." And so, what he did was he
6:51pulled up his profile on LinkedIn and he
6:53pulled up my profile on LinkedIn. He's
6:54like, "I posted five times a day. You
6:56haven't even posted." And then he pulled
6:58up Instagram and he pulled up my
6:59Instagram. He's like, "I posted two
7:01times a day. You posted once a week." I
7:03was like, "Man." He's like, "Okay, let's
7:05pull up YouTube." And then my YouTube.
7:07And he just went platform by platform
7:08and he showed that he was doing 3x, 5x,
7:1010x the volume that I was. He's like,
7:13"Dude, you just got to do more."
7:15And that was just like very like I felt
7:16embarrassed cuz I just paid all this
7:18money to have someone just look at me
7:19and just say, "Do more." But hopefully I
7:21can save you the money and just tell you
7:22you probably need to do more. And the
7:24interesting thing about this is that I
7:26later on had like at the point now when
7:29we had maybe this is maybe a year ago I
7:30had five-ish million subscribers across
7:32all platforms. I had a friend of mine
7:34who's a billionaire who wanted to start
7:35getting into personal branding. He said,
7:37"Hey, man, can you check out my
7:38Instagram and see what's, you know,
7:40going on and why why we're not growing
7:42as fast as I want to. And so I said,
7:44well, before I look at it, I was like,
7:45how many posts a week are you making
7:46across all platforms? He's like, oh, got
7:48that nailed. He's like, I'm posting once
7:49a day. And I was like, dude, I was like,
7:51we post 50 plus times a day.
7:53And he was like,
7:55got it. He just was like, you don't need
7:57to say anymore. I understand. Because he
7:59had had it enough experience in other
8:00realms to know that like, oh, all of the
8:03things in volume that that that work in
8:04sales, that work in customer success,
8:06that work in product in terms of
8:07iterations, the same concepts apply to
8:10advertising and marketing. Like, you
8:11just need to do a lot in order to figure
8:13out what works so that you can do better
8:15later.
8:16Now, what's interesting about this is
8:18that this also applies on the paid side.
8:20So, I remember there was a chiropractor
8:21chiropractor agency that approached me.
8:23They were doing about 2 million bucks a
8:24year. And he was like, hey, man, I think
8:26I've saturated Facebook.
8:29And so I was like, and this is when it
8:30was Facebook, not Meta. And I was like,
8:32what do you mean? He's like, I just
8:33think I've saturated the chiropractor
8:34niche.
8:35And I was like, this is a $10 billion a
8:37year industry.
8:39And you feel like your $2 million per
8:41year agency has saturated Facebook. I
8:44was like, how many I was like, do you
8:45know of any other chiropractor agencies
8:47that exist? He's like, yeah, there's
8:48loads. It's like, you know, there's
8:50hundreds of them. I was like, okay. So,
8:52explain to me why every sale that is
8:54keeping all of them in business is
8:55somehow not sales that you should be
8:57making.
8:58He was like, got it. I was like, right,
9:00you're spending 40 grand a month when in
9:02aggregate all the agencies that are
9:04selling to chiropractors are probably
9:05spending 4 million a month. And so, all
9:08of the spend that those businesses are
9:10able to make in your market is your
9:12opportunity. Is if you can outcompete
9:14them, you can provide better service,
9:15you can have longer LTV means you can
9:17spend more to acquire the customer than
9:18they can. And then you can eventually
9:20price them out of the marketplace.
9:21Because fundamentally, paid ads is
9:23actually an auction for attention. And
9:24so, people bid against each other for ad
9:26space. And so, if you can outbid your
9:28competition, you can have an ethical
9:29monopoly by literally bidding more than
9:31everyone else while still making money.
9:33And that's the crazy thing. And that's
9:35what fundamentally what you want to
9:36build in terms of the mousetrap of your
9:38business is how can I make more money
9:39from every customer than anyone else
9:40does so that I can spend more than
9:42anyone else can to acquire them. And so
9:43I had a I had a portfolio company CEO
9:46who's a good marketer, you know, come up
9:47to me and he was like, "Hey man, I think
9:49we really need to scale our ads." And I
9:50was like, "I agree."
9:52Um and I was like, "Well, how many how
9:53many pieces of creative are you putting
9:54out, you know, per week?" And he's like,
9:56"Oh, um well, I just record once a
9:58month." I was like, "Okay, fine. Then
9:59how many ads are you making per
10:00session?" He was like, "Uh we do about
10:0215. So we do about 15 new ads per
10:04month." And I just kind of looked at
10:06him. I was like, "Dude, when I was
10:08trying to go from your size to five
10:10times your size, I was making 35 a
10:12week."
10:13And like nowadays, we make way more than
10:15that in terms of content and in terms of
10:17the ads that we do like cuz I make ads
10:19for school
10:20and then I inform the ads across our
10:21portfolio. And so the big saying that I
10:24have that's like plastered on the wall
10:26that actually applies to sales and
10:27marketing is volume negates luck. Like
10:31if you don't want to rely on luck and
10:33rely on one of those 10 ads or five ads
10:35that you make to be amazing, you just
10:37make more ads. And I I can't tell you
10:39the amount of times that it just reset
10:41the bar and that's what I'm hoping to do
10:42with this video is like the amount of
10:43volume that the people who are ahead of
10:45you are doing is is not 2x or 3x more.
10:47It's oftentimes 100x more, right? Even
10:50that the 35 times uh four, I think 140
10:53pieces. The guy was making 15. It was 9x
10:58the volume of what he was doing, right?
10:59And some of you guys are making five ads
11:02a month or one ad a month and thinking
11:04that that's somehow going to be
11:05sufficient to get to your goals. And
11:07nowadays, and I'll explain later in this
11:09how my whole ad creation process, but
11:10just the big headline is that in the
11:12very beginning, you just need to do a
11:14lot more than you think you do. The
11:16second is once you've done more, then at
11:18what point do you start shifting to
11:19better? And the way that you can figure
11:22that out is when the return on effort
11:24for better exceeds one incremental unit
11:27of more. Meaning,
11:29if I've got one sales guy, if I add a
11:31second sales guy, then I think I have a
11:33high degree of certainty that I can
11:34probably double my sales by doing that.
11:37But when you have 10 sales guys, adding
11:39one more sales guy is the same level of
11:40effort as adding going from one to two,
11:42going from 10 to 11, but it's only a 10%
11:44increase. And so if I can increase the
11:47overall throughput of my entire team by
11:4820% or 25% by tweaking some sharp rate
11:52stuff or doing a headline split test or
11:54or changing CTAs on my ads, then those
11:56are things that would make me more money
11:59per unit of effort. And so in the
12:01beginning you usually just need to blow
12:03as much volume through there as
12:04possible. That's the create flow,
12:05monetize flow, then add friction. The
12:07The optimization steps really only
12:09matter when you have flow going through.
12:11And so you do more first, and then once
12:13you're big enough, better becomes a
12:15better return on effort. But once you
12:16then go through the better steps, then
12:18you usually have to go back to, "Okay,
12:20how do we do 10 times more than we are
12:22now? How do we go from 10 sales guys to
12:24100 sales guys?" And that's the thinking
12:26that you have to go through in order to
12:27start scaling in terms of orders of
12:29magnitude. And when you have so much
12:31volume, you're able to iterate so much
12:33faster. Like even us recently, we
12:35started making uh more content on
12:37YouTube. And we already noticed as a
12:39team we're like, "Oh, this is awesome.
12:41We're learning so much faster again with
12:43like we're literally putting out four or
12:45five videos a week instead of one video
12:46a week." And so we're learning about
12:47headlines and thumbnails and there's
12:49less pressure per video because we're
12:50like, "Cool, learn that. Let's move on
12:52to the next one." And so it allows you
12:54to just iterate so much faster without
12:55getting your ego and your emotions, you
12:57know, tied into it. Here's how I do it
12:59is I ask the question, "What would stop
13:02me from 10x-ing the business right now?"
13:04And if the answer is nothing, then we
13:0610x the business. Now, most times there
13:08is something that would break. Like what
13:10would break first? And so as soon as we
13:12identify what is the first thing that
13:13would break if we 2x, 5x, 10x, we then
13:16isolate that thing, put all of our focus
13:18towards fixing it, and then we do the
13:20increase in volume.
13:22And that is how we continue to
13:24de-constrain until we go to the next
13:25bottleneck, and then de-constrain that,
13:27and then grow into the next bottleneck,
13:28because we have a fundamental belief
13:29that all businesses will continue to
13:31grow until their point of constraint,
13:32and then they will grow no further. So,
13:34you identify the constraint, relieve the
13:35constraint, and allow it to grow again.
13:36Growth occurs as an aftereffect of the
13:39inputs you put into the system. Now,
13:41once you've done as much as you can,
13:43more, and you've done it as well as you
13:44can, better, when you can't do any more
13:46any better, you start and trying
13:48something new. And the thing that the
13:51reason that I have new last is because
13:52the cost of change of doing something
13:54new is guaranteed, but the return on
13:57something new is not. And so, I like to
13:59say that is a big warning for the fact
14:01that the vast majority of entrepreneurs
14:02want to spend 80% of their time on doing
14:04new stuff when really they should spend
14:0690% of their time doing more and better
14:09of what is already working for them. The
14:11only time you do new stuff is when
14:12nothing is working. So, when you're
14:13starting as an entrepreneur,
14:14everything's new, and you keep trying
14:16and keep trying until something works.
14:18Once it works, you have to unlearn the
14:19whole experimentation idea, and then you
14:21have to go, "Great, I need to do as much
14:23as I possibly can, and do it as well as
14:25I possibly can." And so, it's a
14:26different mindset that you have to get
14:27into, but that's how you start scaling.
14:29Now, what point do you start doing
14:31something new? Well, if you've already
14:33said, "Okay, I can't I can't do more for
14:36a very clear reason that there's a big
14:37cost." Like, sometimes there's a huge
14:39incremental cost past a certain barrier.
14:41You're like, "Okay, I think we really
14:43are You know, let's say you're a local a
14:45local gym, all right? If you're a local
14:47gym and you're spending, call it,
14:49$10,000 a month on ads, you're reaching
14:51every single person in your radius
14:53multiple times a week. And so, that's on
14:55one platform. And so, you're like,
14:57"Okay, in order for me to scale this,
14:59it's not really about doing more or even
15:01doing that better. It's like, I've
15:02saturated the crap out of the eyeballs
15:04here." Well, that's when doing something
15:06new will yield a higher return. You'll
15:08get a better return on effort. And so,
15:10that's where like, "Okay, maybe I'm
15:11going to start doing an outbound, or
15:13I'll start doing the paid ads, but just
15:14on another channel. I'll start running
15:16YouTube ads. I'll start running Google
15:17search ads. I'll start running
15:19um I'll start running
15:20display ads. I'll start I'll start doing
15:23direct mail pieces. I'll start radio
15:24ads. Like there's a number of things you
15:26could do in terms of other channels, but
15:27they would be new. And so this is the
15:29thought process that I have when I
15:30approach that, which is if you could
15:32double the sales of your company and it
15:34would take a year, would you do it? But
15:37you had to wait a year before they
15:38doubled. Most people would say yes. If I
15:40said you had to invest, call it half of
15:43your profits in order to getting your
15:45business to double, would you do it?
15:46Yes, that'd probably be a really good
15:47return on return on investment. If you
15:49would put half of your profits and you
15:50double the business, you're getting a
15:51200% return. That's awesome, right? And
15:53so the thing is is that people start
15:56something new and they spend one month
15:57of ad spend and they say, "Ah, it didn't
16:00work. I lost money. Why would like I'm
16:01going to stop." But the reality is that
16:03it's going to take you 3 months, 6
16:05months, sometimes 12 months to get the
16:07that return to actually pay off. And
16:10what I mark is progress, not the dollar.
16:13So it's like, "Okay, first are we
16:14getting clicks? Okay, we're getting
16:15clicks. Okay, are we getting opt-ins?
16:18Okay, we're getting opt-ins. Are the
16:19opt-ins we're getting the right type of
16:20people that we're looking for?" Okay,
16:22yes. Or if they're not, then we start
16:23tweaking the messaging, we start
16:24tweaking the funnel until we get the
16:25right people. Okay, now we have the
16:27right people who are opting in. Great.
16:28Now can we get them on the phone? Can we
16:29get them in person? Can we get them to
16:31show up to some sort of conversion
16:32event, some sales event that we can then
16:33try and sell them something, right? And
16:35so you keep walking walking the dollar
16:37over the bridge until eventually it
16:38comes to the other side. But that takes
16:40money and that takes time and that takes
16:42learning, but it's a return on
16:43investment because if you do double your
16:47lead flow in a year.
16:49One, it doubles the business. Two, it
16:51more than doubles the value of the
16:52business because now you have two
16:54different ways to get customers. And so
16:56it makes the business more stable
16:57because if one of them goes down, then
16:59you still have the other one. And so you
17:00have a more stable business that's also
17:02bigger. Market advice number three, how
17:04to do better. And so this is double
17:05clicking into the better concept because
17:07this is especially for the bigger
17:08business owners. So if you're at a few
17:11million dollars a year to tens of
17:12millions dollars a year, like this is
17:13really going to start paying massive
17:14dividends. So number one is
17:16optimize front to back when it comes to
17:19marketing. So, that's the 80/20. So,
17:21David Ogilvy said famously, "After
17:23you've written your headline, you spent
17:2580 cents of your advertising dollar."
17:27So, he knew that 80% of people aren't
17:29going to do anything past read the
17:30headline. And so, he would put 80% of
17:32his effort towards those first few
17:34words. And the really experienced
17:36marketers who are watching this are like
17:38nodding their heads right now.
17:39The first 5 seconds, the headline, the
17:42packaging in my history of the 13 years
17:44that I've been doing this has only
17:45increased. I haven't even gotten to a
17:47sweet spot. They just continue to become
17:49more and more important in my mind
17:51because it's the frame through which
17:52everyone contextualizes what they're
17:54about to consume. So, one, it increases
17:56the likely they consume it. Two, it
17:58introduces the frame that they consume
18:00the advertisement or the promotion
18:01through. And like we now have such great
18:04data even across on the content side
18:07that like if we have two different
18:08thumbnails, you can literally see the
18:10average view duration go up by two or
18:12three minutes sometimes simply by
18:14changing the thumb that people click
18:16before they watch the video. It's wild.
18:19And so, how people the frame that people
18:21consume the content in has a massive
18:23impact on how effective it is. Now,
18:26I'll tell you a quick story to show you
18:27just how how important this is. So, a
18:29friend of mine
18:30Dean had this massive advertising
18:32campaign. And he had written a new book
18:35and he went on Larry King Live. And so,
18:37he wanted to use the Larry King
18:39interview to
18:41advertise the book. And so, he shot the
18:44whole interview and he basically wanted
18:47Larry King to introduce him in a cool
18:49way to make him, you know, sound cool of
18:50course, you know, and like he would
18:51laugh if I was if I'm telling the story
18:53now.
18:54And so, he knew that the ad was killer
18:56and so, he ran it.
18:58Spent 250 grand and nothing came back.
19:01And he was like, "What's going on? Like
19:02I know this
19:04I know this ad's a killer. Like what's
19:05happening?"
19:06So, he went back through his old history
19:08of ads and he looked at the top
19:10performing ads he'd ever done. And as
19:11soon as he started watching me, he
19:13realized that he missed the hook, that
19:14the hook was wrong. And so, he flew
19:17Larry King back out. They He paid him
19:20again. They set up a whole new set again
19:23just to re-record the first 30 seconds.
19:27And so, they re-recorded the first 30
19:29seconds with the hour-long interview,
19:31and then re-ran the infomercial, and did
19:34a hundred million in sales.
19:36And so, when I heard that story, I was
19:38like, this is why that the first 5
19:41seconds, the headline, the hook, is so
19:43important, and that's what I spend now a
19:45disproportion of my time on. And people
19:47are listening to this, and you guys are
19:48nodding along, but you're not You're
19:49still not getting it cuz it's not real
19:51for you. It took me forever to figure
19:52this out. When we make ads, and I'll get
19:54into my ad creation process later,
19:56um
19:57you have like I I I do 10 times the
19:59effort on the first 5 seconds.
20:0210 times. Actually, 10 times. So, if I
20:04have an hour, I would I would spend 55
20:07minutes
20:08on the first 5 seconds, and then 5
20:10minutes on everything that's after that.
20:12Like, that's the proportion of how much
20:14time I'm spending on just getting that
20:16first part right. I'll give you a diff-
20:18a content example of this. So, I was
20:19invited to this
20:20uh content creator thing
20:22um with all the, you know, top guys.
20:24Probably 10 guys there. Uh the lowest
20:26guy in the room was me, and the next
20:28lowest guy was at like 10 million plus
20:30subscribers only on YouTube. So, they
20:31just had me there cuz for entertainment,
20:33who knows. Um and and I remember one of
20:36the guys had about 15 million
20:37subscribers, and he was pissed that this
20:39other content creator had basically
20:41copied his video, and and the copied
20:44video had done better than his, like,
20:45three times more. It got like 30 million
20:46views, and his got like 10 million
20:47views.
20:48And
20:50the main guy there, who had several
20:51hundred million uh subscribers across
20:53all his channels, was like, let's pop it
20:55in. Let's Let's roast it. And so, they
20:57press play on the video, and 5 seconds
21:00in, he stops the video. He's like,
21:01"Dude, you didn't confirm the thumb."
21:03He's like, "The headline and the first 5
21:05seconds weren't confirmed." He's like,
21:07"I don't need to see any and he just
21:08walked out of the room. And so this guy
21:09had spent weeks, you know, making this
21:12thing, obsessing about every detail of
21:14it. He had a 20-page-plus brief on how
21:16he was making this video and he missed
21:18the first 5 seconds and that was the guy
21:20who had the multiple hundred million
21:22subscribers was like that's it and he
21:23just walked out and got lunch. And so
21:25when I saw that I was like, wow, like it
21:27just reinforced how important this was.
21:30And recently just at a micro level, one
21:32of our portfolio companies is at
21:33eight-figure-plus business. Um
21:35we simply changed the headline on the
21:39landing page, like we did nothing else.
21:40We kept same ads, just changed the
21:43headline. We increased booking rate by
21:4562%. Now here's what's crazy is the
21:48opt-in rate remained the same, but
21:50simply because of the frame of the
21:51promise in the headline, 62% more people
21:55chose to book calls for that business.
21:57And so it just shows you that how you
21:59frame what people are then going to
22:01consume has a massive impact on how much
22:03value and how likely they are to take
22:05the next step. So here's how you do it
22:07in terms of optimizing 80/20 front to
22:09back. So number one is assume that they
22:11have no idea who you are, what you do,
22:13how it works, they're in a rush and they
22:16have a third-grade education. All right,
22:17so clear beats clever, deletion beats
22:21explanation. And so what you want to do
22:23is you want to try and make it as short
22:24as humanly possible and then once you
22:25have it as short as possible, put it
22:27into a third-grade reading calculator,
22:28look at the grade level and keep editing
22:30it down until it's third grade. Cuz the
22:32thing is is you're not going to attract
22:34dumber people. You're going to make
22:35accessible to everyone. A smart person
22:37needs to use less brain power to ex- to
22:39understand simple language and it makes
22:41it understandable to everyone else. And
22:44as a reminder, 30% of people can barely
22:46read. And so this is like relying on
22:49them to have this skill, it's like you
22:51want to meet them where they're at. And
22:52there are some very rich people who can
22:53barely read. And so it has nothing to do
22:55with intelligence, it has everything to
22:56do with how they were educated, which
22:57has which may have no no connection with
23:01their purchasing power.
23:03Okay, and tactically what I'll do is I
23:05probably I'd make about 50 hooks every
23:07time I start recording ads. So, I have
23:0950 hooks that I've written down that I
23:11think are awesome. And then I have three
23:13to five meat pieces of an advertisement
23:15and then I do one to three CTAs, meaning
23:17call to actions at the end. And so, that
23:19means I have way more on the front end
23:20in terms of effort compared to the one
23:22the three to five and the one to three
23:24that I do on the back. And that's
23:25because I know that that's where all of
23:26the effort needs to go cuz that's where
23:27all the returns are. And here's the
23:29here's the difference and this is why I
23:30say from you optimize advertising
23:32specifically from front to back because
23:34it's very rare that you're going to be
23:36able to double or triple or quadruple
23:38the amount of throughput you get uh in a
23:40funnel by optimizing the back end. If
23:42you have a you know, a 30 you know, call
23:44it a call it a 50% show rate. Okay, if
23:46you get it to 75% that's massive, but
23:48it's a 50% jump and that'd be a massive
23:50increase in show rate if you did that.
23:52But, I can absolutely get CTRs from 1%
23:55to 4% by just optimizing the hell out of
23:57the front end. And that's a 4x increase.
23:59That's four times the throughput that
24:02goes through the entire funnel. And so,
24:03I put my effort there because you can
24:05achieve 100% 200% 300% increases on the
24:07front end whereas it's much more
24:09difficult on the back end. Now, for sure
24:10you want to optimize those things, but
24:11if I'm going to allocate my effort, I
24:13want to get the biggest bang for buck.
24:15So, when you're making your hooks, I
24:16call it a call out. So, I'm reading page
24:18136 from my book.
24:21A call out is whatever you do to get the
24:22attention of your audience. Call outs go
24:24from hyper specific to get one person's
24:25attention to not at all specific to get
24:27everyone's attention. So, let me
24:28explain. If someone drops a a tray of
24:30dishes in a party, everyone looks. If a
24:33child yells mom, then the moms look. If
24:36someone says your name, only you look.
24:38But again, they all get attention. And
24:40so, I try to make my call outs as
24:41specific as possible to get the right
24:43people but broad enough to get as many
24:45of them as I can. So, pay close
24:46attention to advertisers use call outs
24:48especially the ones targeting your
24:49audience. And so, what I'll do is I'll
24:51look at all the ads from other
24:52competitors who are targeting that same
24:54audience as me. And the ads that are
24:56running for long time, I know that that
24:57call out is working well. And so, I will
25:00write down all the call outs that I see,
25:01and then I will write out the words that
25:03I know my customers go by, and I'll
25:04either start with a problem that I think
25:06that they're struggling from or a
25:08question that I think that I know that
25:09they'll say yes to, or I'll simply state
25:11moms in Nevada, homeowners in Clark
25:15County, right? Very clearly calling out
25:17this is for you. And that's exactly what
25:19you want the person to say when they
25:20read the headline or hear the call out,
25:22this is for me.
25:24And the more specific you get, often
25:26times you'll be surprised. You think
25:27that going as broad as you can is going
25:29to increase the number of opt-ins, but
25:32when you get really specific about the
25:33type of customer you're really trying to
25:34attract, you will often find that
25:36they're like, "Oh, I wouldn't have
25:37responded to the broad thing, but this
25:39one's just for me." And you get more
25:41people in terms of qualified leads in
25:43the door by being more specific. Piece
25:45of advice number four, LTV to CAC is the
25:47only thing that matters. And if I had
25:51only one metric that I could find out
25:52about a business, if I only had one that
25:54I could pick, it would be the LTV to CAC
25:56ratio. And let me tell you a quick story
25:58that will kind of drive this home. So, a
26:00friend of mine owns a bow manufacturing
26:02business, and they do, you know, 20 30
26:04million bucks a year, so relatively
26:05large business, established. And he was
26:07like, "Hey, we're trying to get into
26:09paid ads." Now, they had all these
26:10distribution relationship, but they want
26:11to open up this new channel. And he
26:13says, "Hey, you're the, you know, you're
26:14the marketing guy, right? So, can you,
26:15you know, what what would you do here?"
26:17And so, as I was explaining the the
26:19process that I that I the strategy that
26:20I wanted to outline for him, he was
26:22like, "Well, what's the benchmark I
26:23should be looking at in terms of leads?"
26:24And I was like, "Dude, the benchmark is
26:26irrelevant. It everything just comes
26:27back from what's gross profit." So, he's
26:29like, "Okay, so what's the average gross
26:31profit on a bow?" I'm making this up.
26:32Say it's $500. Okay, so if we get leads
26:35for, call it, 20 bucks, and we know that
26:37we can get one in five leads to buy a
26:39bow, then it means it cost us, our CAC
26:42is $100, and our gross profit from
26:44selling each bow is $500. So, it cost us
26:46$100 to make $500 of gross profit, five
26:49to one. Awesome. And so, fundamentally,
26:52is $20 a good lead cost? Well, yeah,
26:55he's getting five to one. If it was at
26:56$10, uh then he'd be getting 10 to one.
26:59And that's assuming the same ratios. And
27:00so, it just depends on what percentage
27:02of customers you convert and at what
27:04price point you're converting them at.
27:05CAC to LTV or CAC to LTGP. So, I use
27:08LTGP to be more specific. Lifetime value
27:10is just the amount of gross profit you
27:12make from a customer over the lifetime
27:14of them being a customer of your
27:16business. CAC is the cost to acquire a
27:18customer, which is the all-in cost,
27:20including sales, marketing, software,
27:21everything, to get somebody to give you
27:23money. And so, the CAC to LTV ratio is
27:25simply how much money it costs you to
27:27make more money. It's the foundational
27:29economic unit of any business. And so,
27:32making sure that you know how much money
27:33it costs you to make money, that
27:34fundamentally feels like a very
27:36important metric in order to scale the
27:37business. And over time, as long as you
27:39don't have uh some big capital expenses
27:41in terms of scaling your business, that
27:44fundamental return that you get will
27:46reflect the compounding growth of the
27:47business provided you don't have other
27:48constraints to growth. So, for example,
27:51if I have meals that I sell for $10 and
27:54it cost me $9 to package and ship them
27:57and deliver them, then I have $1 of
28:00gross profit per meal. And so, if
28:02someone buys 10 meals for me, I'm not
28:04making $100, I'm making $10 in gross
28:07profit. And if the average person buys,
28:08call it, five weeks of meals, then I
28:11would make $50 in lifetime gross profit.
28:14And so, the only way that I would want
28:15to be able to acquire customers is that
28:16the cost to acquire a customer in this
28:17example, I don't want to have probably
28:19at $15 or less. Cuz you can't do it at
28:22even because then there's no money left
28:23over to do everything else in the
28:24business. And so, the rule of thumb is
28:26that you want to have at least three to
28:27one on LTV to CAC. But again, LTV is not
28:30lifetime revenue, it's lifetime gross
28:31profit, right? And that's what people I
28:33think a lot of times mess up is they
28:34don't even know what their gross profit
28:35is, and then they spend blindly.
28:37So, I'll tell you a fun one. So, if
28:39you've seen Starbucks advertise, now a
28:41lot of them they just use their
28:42storefronts as their advertising at this
28:43point, but they make about $14,000
28:47in LTV per customer. And so they can
28:50spend absurd amounts of money to get
28:53customers in the door. Like even if it
28:54cost them $500, they're still making
28:5728:1 on the money they put in. And that
28:59is why that company's been able to scale
29:01to the moon in terms of the number of
29:03locations. And so I will say that the
29:05all the money that I've made in my life
29:07that has been the crazy money has come
29:09from crazy LTV to CAC ratios. And so the
29:12smallest ratios that I've made crazy
29:14money on is 30:1 all the way up to 100:1
29:16to 200:1 returns in some of the
29:18businesses I have. And so those those
29:21windows don't stay forever. And when you
29:24do have one of those, you just want to
29:25dump as much money into that machine as
29:27you possibly can because a lot of wealth
29:28is made in very short punctuated periods
29:31and then sustained by long periods of
29:33maintenance where you're getting 5:1,
29:358:1, 10:1. Those are fine numbers. But
29:37most of the time when you're at 10:1, as
29:39soon as you start scaling it, it might
29:41drop to 5:1. And so I actually end up
29:43seeing the bigger the ratio is at the
29:45beginning, the more indication it is
29:46that I can scale profitably. Because if
29:49I'm let's say spending, you know, $1,000
29:51a day and I can get 100:1, then I know
29:53that I'm probably going to be able to
29:54get to $100,000 a day and get 5:1,
29:58right? And so that's the idea is like
29:59how can I how can I scale this up? And I
30:01care about absolute return, not relative
30:03return, but the CAC to LTV ratio gives
30:06me an indication of how much room I have
30:07to blow this thing out of the water. The
30:09easiest way to calculate what your
30:10lifetime gross profit is is look at all
30:13the customers that you sold over the
30:14last year, look at gross profit. And if
30:17you don't know what gross profit is,
30:18it's just the cost of goods sold
30:20basically the price you charge minus the
30:22cost of goods sold, which is whether
30:23it's if it's services, then it's the
30:25labor that you use to provide the
30:26service. If it's a widget, then it's the
30:28cost of the widget and the shipping
30:29associated with it. So the cost of goods
30:31sold minus the revenue and that left
30:33over is the gross profit. And so you
30:35say, "Okay, I had 100 customers this
30:37year. I made this total amount of gross
30:39profit this year." You divide that
30:40amount of gross profit by the total of
30:42number of customers. That'll give you a
30:43broad brush stroke of what you make per
30:46customer. Now, that'll always
30:47underestimate it, especially if you have
30:48a recurring revenue business, because
30:50they're going to hopefully have some
30:51people who buy again and again over
30:52time. But, I would always rather be on
30:54the safer side and underestimate my
30:56lifetime gross profit or lifetime value,
30:58rather than overestimate and potentially
31:00lose money. If I want to then take that
31:02number and say, "Okay, well, what am I
31:03willing to spend per customer?" then at
31:05most you want to have a third of that
31:07number. But, for me specifically, I want
31:09to make sure that whatever I collect in
31:10the first 30 days, I want to make sure
31:12that I collect that back from customers.
31:15So, if I'm Let's say I sell something
31:17for 10 bucks a month, people stay for 10
31:19months, and there's a 100% gross margins
31:20to make this simple. So, I make 100
31:22bucks in gross profit. I want to see if
31:25I can find a way to make $10 back or get
31:28my CAC back in that first 30 days. And
31:31so, sometimes it means having a one-time
31:32upcharge up front so they can offset the
31:35cost of acquisition, so then the
31:36remainder of the customer relationship
31:38can be profitable. And if these concepts
31:39about scaling, like LTV to CAC, are
31:42interesting to you, we just opened up a
31:43new workshops division at
31:44acquisition.com for companies that we're
31:46not invested in. If you'd like us and my
31:48team to help you personalize kind of
31:50applying this stuff to your business,
31:52you can go to acquisition.com, click the
31:53scale button, and you can see if your
31:54business qualifies. Otherwise, back to
31:56the video. Piece of advice number five,
31:58my ad creation process. So, I've been
32:00running ads for 13 years. And I'm saying
32:02when I say running ads, I mean like I've
32:04been making ads or directly influencing
32:05ads that have been run across my
32:07portfolio or companies that I directly
32:09owned or founded for 13 straight years.
32:11And so, I have this process pretty
32:14nailed. And I haven't really ever gotten
32:17too far away from it, partially cuz I
32:18like it a lot, um and I've gotten just
32:20pretty good at it. And so, this is how I
32:22do it. So, number one is that at all
32:25times I'm collecting data. What I mean
32:27by that is like, if I see ads on
32:28Instagram, I see ads on YouTube, like I
32:30have no pre-mic accounts on any
32:31platform, cuz I want to hear the ads. I
32:34want to hear the hooks. I want to hear
32:36what they're doing to draw attention.
32:37And I like using that stuff because I'm
32:38also a business owner. So, the people
32:39who advertise to me are the people that
32:42are going to try and hook my attention.
32:43And so, I can still use that stuff to
32:45get to my avatar. And so, if you are
32:46your avatar, the ads count double for
32:48you. And so, I I I I screenshot, I
32:51record the stuff that I find
32:52interesting. And I add it into one
32:53folder. Then, when I get to my ad
32:55creation process, which is I do once a
32:56week, I then sit down first thing in the
32:58morning and I do these the same day I
33:00record. So, that's just a piece of
33:01advice that that has worked well for me,
33:03like cramming for the test. I cram for
33:05my ad sessions cuz then everything's top
33:06of mind as I go into the day. And so, I
33:09pull up all my swipe files of all the
33:11things that I want, like my inspiration
33:12from. The second thing that I pull up is
33:14all my historical best-performing ads.
33:16So, I look back 1 year, 2 years, 3
33:18years, sometimes at all my best ads. And
33:20I drink those back in and and I watch
33:21the first 10 seconds, watch the first 30
33:23seconds to see, okay, how was it
33:24capturing? What was the angle? What was
33:25the hook here? And then, I start the
33:28actual hook creation process. Now, 40 of
33:30my 50 hooks that I'm going to write out
33:32are going to be stuff that is tried and
33:35true. I'm not going to try and reinvent
33:36the wheel. We've already spent zillions
33:38and zillions of dollars. I know that
33:39these hooks, these entrances work well.
33:42Now, 20%, the last 10 is where I get to
33:44use all my inspiration and other ideas
33:46to try and experiment on. But, most
33:48people flip this. They try and do a
33:49little bit of the stuff that worked and
33:50then they have lots of new ideas. I'm
33:52telling you, I've done this a long time.
33:53It's way more efficient to just do more
33:55of what worked and then leave a little
33:57bit experimentation so that if some of
33:58those things stop working over time, you
34:00have this fresh batch that you've been
34:02trying out that then can become the
34:03control that you try and beat. So,
34:05citing back to the 80/20 concept of you
34:08put 80% of your effort into the hooks
34:10and 80% of your effort goes into stuff
34:12that's tried and true and 20% for the
34:14things that are new. All right. So, I
34:15make about 50 hooks. So, 80% of that is
34:1840 hooks and 20% of that is 10 hooks.
34:20So, 40 out of my 50 hooks, I do for
34:22things that I already know have worked
34:24in the past.
34:2510 hooks I save for my new creative
34:27ideas. And so, that's for the
34:28inspiration stuff that I see or or that
34:30I come to that cram session that I want
34:32to get out. From there, I then have my
34:34three to five angles that I'm going to
34:36write that's going to be educational or
34:37some sort of value that I'm going to
34:39deliver or some sort of belief that I
34:40want to break or some sort of list or
34:42steps or stories that I want to tell as
34:43the core meat of the ad, some sort of
34:45proof I want to demonstrate, and then
34:47finally just a quick CTA in terms of
34:48call to action. But the majority of my
34:50effort is all on the 50 or so hooks that
34:52I'm going to write, 40 of which being
34:54recycled versions of things I already
34:55know work, and 10 being net new. And
34:58this sounds boring, and it is boring,
35:00but it's also what works. And believe
35:02me, I have tried to change this process
35:04a lot of times. Like, this works.
35:07Let's say that you have your a mega
35:10winner. And these happen. And this is
35:11where you get This is the This is power
35:12law. Like that top 5% makes 95% of your
35:15income. Like you we run all these ads to
35:18figure out which is the one ad that can
35:19sing and just crank and print money. And
35:22so what I do is I I use something that I
35:24call the kaleidoscope process. I've
35:25never heard anyone else sell it, so I'm
35:27owning that title. All right. And so the
35:28kaleidoscope process This is how you do
35:30it. Is that let's say you've got a
35:31winning ad. So I had an ad at Gym Launch
35:33that actually the now president Kale
35:35made when he was a a customer of him in
35:38front of his gym, the gym being full,
35:40and his wife's next to him, and he's
35:42like, "You know, 6 months ago, I was
35:44working a full-time job in order to pay
35:45rent at this gym, and my wife was
35:47pregnant, and we had and I had a
35:492-month-old, and I had no idea how I was
35:51going to make ends meet. And then here
35:52we are 6 months later, the gym is full,
35:54it's completely outsourced, and I've
35:56already got an offer for $250,000 on the
35:58gym. If you've ever been worried like
36:00take the jump, just follow the process,
36:01it works." Right? It's a very simple ad.
36:03But it murdered. It absolutely crushed.
36:06And so, rather than say, "Wow, okay.
36:08Well, that was nice. Let's try and do
36:10that Let's try and get somebody else to
36:12say that." We took that and we squeezed
36:14the living life out of it. And so here's
36:1510 things that I did to get more out of
36:18that ad. So one is I changed the color
36:20of the backgrounds if I can do that,
36:22right? Or backdrops. Is there a way that
36:23we can record that ad with a different
36:25background or a different background
36:26color like if you had a green screen.
36:28Second, is are there different props
36:29that we can introduce that ad? All
36:30right, so can we show stuff? Can we Can
36:32we show visuals or we can show physical
36:33props? Three, can we just reenact it?
36:35Just say, "Hey, Cal, can you just do it
36:37again? Just literally do the same ad,
36:39different t-shirt if you want, same
36:40exact thing, just do it again." And if
36:41you're the one making the ads, you just
36:43do your best-performing ad again. You
36:45can four, reorder it. So, we took the ad
36:47that was already the original winner,
36:49and we just re- rechanged the order up
36:51of the ad, and it still converted. The
36:53next things we added visual filters. So,
36:54think black and white, think sepia,
36:56think high contrast, low contrast. These
36:58are all different things that made the
37:00ad look different than it was, but it
37:01still delivered the same message. The
37:03next one was visual effects, right? VFX,
37:05like doodads and and wizbangs and things
37:07like that that you can add to, again,
37:08make it look different.
37:10The next is changing fonts and captions.
37:12So, it's like if we had a font style
37:14that was one way, we just changed the
37:15way the font style looks. Another is
37:17that you can change the pacing or the
37:18speed of the video itself. You can
37:19actually do it at 1.2 or 1.5 and have it
37:21go through or slow it down at portions.
37:23You can add music to it. Um there's
37:26another one, right? You can also use the
37:27same hook, which is like we knew the
37:29hook from that first ad obviously
37:30crushed, and then just say, "Hey,
37:32re-record it again. We'll use the same
37:33hook and use a different back." Right?
37:35And so, all of those are different ways
37:36that will take a winner and then 10x or
37:38100x how much that winner gets us. And
37:40I'm telling you, if you if you take one
37:42thing from this video from advertising,
37:44squeeze the living hell out of the
37:45winners. So, marketing advice number six
37:47is that there is only four ways that you
37:49can let other people know about your
37:50stuff. And so, think about this like a
37:51four-box. You've got one-to-one
37:53conversations and one-to-many, which is
37:55broadcast, right? There's the two styles
37:57of communicating. You either communicate
37:58to a group of people or one person
37:59individually. And you're either talking
38:01to people who know who you are or you're
38:02talking to strangers. And so, if you
38:04cross that, you've got four ways. You've
38:05got one-to-one to people who know you,
38:07one-to-one to strangers, one-to-many to
38:09people who know you, one-to-many to
38:11strangers. And if you look at that in
38:13terms of what that is in advertising, it
38:14means this is warm outreach, cold
38:16outreach, making content, which is
38:17one-to-many to people you know, and then
38:19running ads, which is one-to-many to
38:20strangers. And so, those are the only
38:22four things that you can do to
38:23advertise, to let people know about your
38:25stuff. And basically, if you're not
38:27spending your day doing one of those
38:29core four things, you are not
38:30advertising. You are not marketing your
38:32business. And so, sometimes it gets you
38:34have to get it to that simple when you
38:35look at how many hours per day am I
38:37spending letting people know about my
38:38stuff, most people spend zero zero zero
38:41per day letting people know about their
38:43stuff, and then for some reason they're
38:44curious as to why their business isn't
38:46growing. Well, no one knows you exist. I
38:48was at a conference I was at Gym Con
38:51recently, and I asked the audience, "Who
38:53here wants to grow their gym faster?"
38:55Everybody raised their hand. And I said,
38:56"Okay." And these are all small
38:57businesses. So, these are most of the
38:58guys here are doing I would say $500,000
39:01a year to $3 million a year. So, these
39:02aren't massive businesses. They're
39:03normal, you know, one location, three
39:05location, five location owner operators
39:07of service-based, you know, training
39:09businesses.
39:10And I said, "Okay.
39:11Who here is spending the first 4 hours
39:13of their day
39:14promoting their business, either doing
39:16cold outreach, making content, or
39:18running ads?
39:20Who is spending the first 4 hours every
39:21day on that? Literally, no one in the
39:25audience had their hand raised.
39:27And I was like, "This is why you're
39:28small." Like, this is it. Like, it was
39:30mind-blowing to me that that was what it
39:31was. And so, if you're if you're making
39:34less than call it a million, maybe $3
39:35million a year, like all of your effort,
39:38the the first 4 hours of your day, which
39:40if you have to wake up early, awesome.
39:42If you have to stay up late to do it,
39:43awesome. I don't care, but you need 4
39:45hours that you're dedicating because you
39:46got to you got to do the job of
39:48promoting, and then you got to run your
39:49business. But, if you're just running
39:51your business, you're never going to get
39:52ahead.
39:53So, if you want it to grow, you got to
39:54force it to grow. You have to force
39:56people to find out about your stuff, and
39:57you do that through advertising. I
39:59recommend this so violently because
40:01small businesses need to do more.
40:04And in the beginning, they just don't
40:05get enough leads. So, fundamentally,
40:07like most businesses, if you just had
40:08more leads, you would make more money.
40:10Now,
40:12realistically, and I'll get to some of
40:13the some of the specifics on this, is
40:15that in order to get more leads, you
40:17need to be able to do so profitably,
40:19which then comes back down to the
40:20business and building the business back
40:21to front. We advertise front to back, we
40:24build the business back to front, and
40:25I'll get to lots of details on that in a
40:26second.
40:27But big picture,
40:29you just need to get, especially when
40:30you're starting out, you're at 500 to a
40:32million, you know, less than 3 million.
40:33And those are big numbers. I don't say I
40:35don't mean that to demean it, but I want
40:36you to build massive enterprises that
40:38make huge impact.
40:40You have to get more flow through the
40:42system so that you can learn how to
40:44improve the product so that you can
40:46build a better back end. And then you
40:48basically you promote and you stay at
40:50that level of promotion until you tweak
40:52this and nail it. Then you go back and
40:54scale it. And so one of our sayings
40:55internally is nail it, then scale it. So
40:57nail the back end, you do enough
40:59promotion to get flow in, right? Then
41:01you monetize, then you create fiction.
41:03That's when you tweak the hell out of
41:05it, and then you can go back and say,
41:06"Hey, turns out we can spend five times
41:08more to get customers." Then you scale.
41:10So I'll give you my quick back of napkin
41:12scaling framework for this. So when
41:15you're at zero to six figures, you sell
41:17one product to one avatar on one
41:19channel. That's it. No shiny object, no
41:21multiple channels, no trying to scale
41:23yourself out of it. You're just selling
41:25one product to one avatar on one
41:27channel. When you go from six to seven
41:29figures, you scale you sell one product
41:31to one avatar on one channel
41:33consistently. Because in the beginning
41:35you're super volatile, right? You're not
41:36you're making a sale this week, not next
41:37week, then this week again or the next
41:39month, whatever. It's super volatile.
41:41When you get to seven figures, it's more
41:42consistent. You just you you get it to
41:43be reliable. So when you go from seven
41:45figures to eight figures, you go one
41:48avatar, one channel, two products. That
41:51means you have an upsell, you sell
41:52something else.
41:54And then you do that consistently,
41:57right? That's what gets you to eight
41:58figures. That's what gets you to 10
41:59million bucks a year. And if you want to
42:01go to, you know, multiple eight figures,
42:03then you start going two channels, one
42:05avatar, two products consistently. And
42:08so over time, this is how I've seen I've
42:10just seen this pattern. Now, can you
42:13find somebody who disobeys this pattern?
42:15Sure. AG1 has one product, one avatar, a
42:17zillion channels, right? So, yes, there
42:20are ways to break this rule. But, when I
42:21look at by and large, the vast majority
42:24businesses, they follow this structure,
42:26and they mess up along the way until
42:27they follow the next step. And you'll
42:29notice that scaling up to eight figures,
42:31and even sometimes a little beyond that,
42:33you're still only focused on one avatar.
42:35And I'm going to talk about this in a
42:36lot of depth in one of the later advice
42:37points because it's super important and
42:39this may be one of the bigger unlocks
42:40you could have in the business.
42:42Marketing advice number seven, state the
42:43facts and tell the truth. This is
42:45probably one of the most repeated
42:46phrases besides volume negates luck that
42:48I have internally to my business. And
42:50so, I remember when I was at that same
42:51little meetup with uh the super
42:53creators, and I was I was talking to the
42:55the the guy who had the the most, you
42:57know, subscribers there, and I was like,
42:58"Yeah, you know, like we don't really
42:59like this whole clickbait title thing."
43:01And he looked at me with disgust, and he
43:03was like, "You absolutely make clickbait
43:06titles." He said, "You just back it up
43:08with truth." He said, "So, it's crazy
43:10clickbaity." He said, "But, it also
43:12happens to be true." And I remember when
43:13he said that to me, I was like, "Shit,
43:16that's that's real."
43:18And it's funny because that was a
43:20concept that I have in terms of uh paid
43:23ads, but I hadn't thought about it in
43:24terms of content. And so, it's so
43:25interesting how some of these principles
43:26just apply across across domains, but
43:28like sometimes you have to relearn the
43:29same lessons, which I hate doing, but I
43:31did it anyways. And so,
43:33the problem is that most businesses
43:35don't track results. And it's because if
43:37you don't track, you don't care. Now,
43:39they don't track partially because if
43:41they it's kind of like ignorance. Like,
43:42they know they don't deliver good
43:43results, and so if they track it, then
43:44they'll have facts and truth that they
43:46will be proven that they're delivering
43:47bad results. But, the first step is
43:49tracking it. Because once you start
43:50tracking it, you can improve it. And
43:52measurement as intervention is actually
43:54a scientifically proven method to lose
43:56weight, to improve sales, to improve
43:59anything you want. You can literally
44:00simply tracking it, not trying to do
44:02anything else, but simply tracking your
44:04weight, simply tracking your close rate,
44:06simply tracking your ad performance will
44:09improve it because you're just putting
44:10attention on it. And so, if you don't
44:12track, you don't care. Now, once you do
44:14start tracking it, you can start doing
44:16things to actually improve it beyond
44:17just measurement as intervention. And
44:19so, when you do that, lo and behold,
44:21your stats get better. And then, you can
44:23state the facts and tell the truth and
44:26have that truth be wildly compelling.
44:29And so, real talk,
44:31part of the reason that GymLaunch to
44:32this day has still not been beaten or
44:34dethroned as the the the largest company
44:36in that space is because we still have
44:39better stats and better results than
44:40anyone else does. The average gym who
44:42goes through 12 months of GymLaunch
44:44makes over 100 plus thousand a year in
44:46added profit by using the systems we
44:48have. That's just what it is. And so,
44:51like if someone if it makes sense for
44:53somebody to triple their money, then
44:55they make the they make the purchase,
44:57right? It's It's I like to take a lot of
44:59emotion out of the sale. Like if this
45:00makes sense for you, if this return
45:01makes sense for you, then do it. If it
45:02doesn't make sense, then don't do it.
45:03Now, the risk they take on is what about
45:05the bottom 20%? And so, the nice thing
45:07is that we track that. So, the bottom
45:0820% average $40,000 in additional
45:10revenue. So, they basically broke even.
45:12And so, it's like that's the bottom. And
45:14so, like if if if that's you, then it's
45:16like, yeah, you worked and you basically
45:17broke even. That kind of sucks. Now, I'm
45:18not talking about the top 20% cuz this
45:19guy's at 500,000 plus per year. But, the
45:22thing is is that if you track the stats,
45:24then you can promote the stats and you
45:25can do so truthfully. They go from
45:27unsubstantiated claims to substantiated
45:29claims. Like one of the things that I'm
45:30most proud of in school, uh school.com,
45:33which is the platform for people who are
45:34trying to start their business, this is
45:35this video is mostly for people who
45:36already own a business, but if you're
45:37trying to start a business, um 30.44% of
45:40people who finish their first month make
45:41their first dollar online. Like I'm
45:43super proud of that. And we just rolled
45:44out this massive new thing um to
45:46basically make it even easier, even
45:48faster to do it. And right now we have
45:4835% more people actually succeeding
45:51there. So, I think we're going to be at
45:52a little bit over 40% now. Um so, I'm
45:54super stoked about that. But like,
45:56unless you measure, like if you don't
45:57track, you don't care. Here's the
45:59tactical steps.
46:00Collect data
46:02first. So, you implement a data step
46:03where you collect data from people day
46:05one, day 30, day 60, day 90, at the end
46:07of the program, or whatever your
46:08implementation is.
46:10You track data throughout. Number two is
46:12you keep improving things until the data
46:13becomes compelling. And number three is
46:16how do you actually present that data?
46:17So, there's four variables that matters
46:19when you're presenting the data. Number
46:20one is the percentage of people, whether
46:23that's the median, the average, or the
46:24percentage overall of people, that's
46:26number one, who two achieve X outcome,
46:28three in Y time or after X attempts, and
46:32four under Z conditions. And so, it's
46:33like we get X percent of gyms, so as
46:37whatever is the average average gym, so
46:38right, average gym owner makes
46:41an extra $100,000 per year in profit, so
46:43that's the outcome,
46:45after their first 12 months in GymLord,
46:48right? And so, those are the conditions,
46:50right? And so, it covers all four of
46:52those. So, so when you're making these,
46:56you want to you want to hit all four of
46:57those things when you're explaining the
46:59data publicly. And I will say that the
47:01fewer conditions you have, the more
47:03compelling it is. Because for example,
47:05if I said,
47:07uh the average gym who spends $10,000 a
47:10month and has 10 employees and uh has
47:13two two methods of acquisition and a
47:15large group training and a small group
47:17training achieves the like I'm by the
47:20time I even get to that, you're like,
47:21whatever, right? And so, you want to you
47:23want to strip away and really like I
47:25would rather have a fewer condition
47:27statement that has lower results me
47:30personally than a higher result one with
47:32more conditions.
47:34Marketing advice number eight, say what
47:35only you can say, show what only you can
47:37show. And this is one of the other isms
47:39that I have internal to my business. And
47:41so, if you're the only triple black belt
47:43in Ohio for Muay Thai, then say that
47:47you're the only triple black belt in
47:48Ohio for Muay Thai, right? This is
47:50talking about the things that you have
47:52done rather than telling people what to
47:54do. It's how I versus how to. And so, my
47:57my concept for making amazing ads and
47:59making amazing content is two steps. Do
48:02epic stuff, talk about what you did. And
48:05so, you can out out come people or you
48:08can out work them. So, it starts with
48:10the out working and then the out working
48:12creates the out out coming and the out
48:13out coming is a much shorter headline,
48:15but the out working them still works,
48:17right? I can start by saying, "Hey, I I
48:20put I wrote these two books." Writing
48:22two books would be an out working thing.
48:23Like, anyone could do it. There's no
48:24outcome, but hey, I wrote these two
48:25books. But then if the books are good,
48:27then I get the outcome, which is that we
48:29sold over a million copies. They're
48:30still number one and number two in
48:31marketing to this day multiple years
48:32later. And so, the idea is that first
48:35you do the work and then you get the
48:36outcome, but most people want to say
48:38epic stuff having done none of it. And
48:40so, you can get past the judgment of
48:42other people because you're not saying,
48:43"Hey, you have to do anything." I'm
48:45saying, "This is what I did." And so,
48:46the idea is that everybody wants a
48:49return on their time. All right? And I
48:50remember hearing this first concept from
48:52Erac, who's a YouTuber. And he said,
48:55"Dude, I made this thing where I went on
48:56100 dates in
48:58basically did an entire season of The
49:00Bachelor, but I did it in 16 minutes."
49:02He's like, "What a steal." And he said
49:04that to me and I was like, "Man, such an
49:06interesting concept." Like, he just took
49:09something that was really long and made
49:10it really short and he crammed it in
49:11there. So, value per second was super
49:13high. And I'll just give you this one is
49:14that it's not about seconds of value,
49:17it's value per second. That's what
49:19matters. Like, everybody has access to
49:21infinite information. So, you just
49:23saying I'm going to give you more stuff
49:24is not helpful. What you want to do is
49:25curate it and pack it and distill it and
49:28crystallize all the value in as tight a
49:30package as humanly possible so that
49:31their value per second skyrockets. And
49:34you can do that by saying, "Hey, I spent
49:3610 hours editing, you know, you know, I
49:38spent I spent 20 hours making a summary
49:41of this book and you can read the whole
49:43thing in 10 minutes." That's why
49:44summaries still always work, right?
49:45Because people want to get a a deal on
49:47their time. If they get the same result
49:48for a fraction of the time, it's always
49:50a good deal. By the way, if you ever
49:51want to sell to rich people, just
49:53promise the same result in half the time
49:54for twice the price. And even if you
49:56think about this video overall, it's
49:57like, well, I spent 13 years doing all
49:59this stuff and I'm trying to compress
50:00those lessons into whatever amount of
50:02time this video is, certainly less than
50:0413 years. And so, this is a great deal
50:07for the right person, for the right
50:08business owner who's actually trying to
50:09scale. So, how do you actually do this?
50:12So, if I had a marketing agency showing
50:15what only I can show, I want to
50:16demonstrate. And so, rather than say,
50:18"Hey, I'm going to get you leads." what
50:19I want to do is get them a sales call
50:20and I'm going to play what a live lead
50:22that I got for one of my companies, one
50:24of my clients sounds like. And I'd be
50:25like, "Hey, listen to this call. It's a
50:27minute long. Do you think you could how
50:28much could you take 50 of these a
50:30month?" Wow, so much more compelling
50:32than saying, "I'll just get you 50
50:33leads." They're actually getting a a
50:34fractionalized version. They're getting
50:36a taste of what it looks like to be in
50:38the future, right? They're experiencing
50:40the result vicariously through the other
50:41person. And fundamentally, that's what a
50:43good testimony does is they they put
50:44themselves in the shoes of the person
50:46who got the result and then they account
50:47they they put a discount on that and
50:49say, "Okay, how how likely is that for
50:51me?" And that's what I'm willing to pay.
50:53Now, if it were guaranteed, then all
50:55money-making opportunities would be
50:56worth it because, hey, if you spend a
50:57thousand dollars to make a hundred
50:58thousand dollars a year by buying this
51:00course, then everyone would buy it if
51:01they knew for sure it would happen.
51:03That'd be an amazing deal. The problem
51:04is that people apply a discount to it
51:06because of how unlikely it is for them.
51:08And so, we want to increase that
51:09likelihood by showing them rather than
51:10telling them, right? And so, agency
51:12example, that was that one. The software
51:14example that I have is this is why demos
51:16are so effective, right? That you want
51:18to see this Hey, you have a a video
51:20clipping software. Great. Do you have a
51:22video on you? Cool. Send it to me. We're
51:23on the phone. Great. I'm going to pull
51:24this video up. This is what we do to put
51:26the captions on and and shorten and find
51:28those moments. Click, click, click,
51:29click, click. Okay, so normally, how
51:31long does that take you? Well, it takes
51:32me this long. Well, watch me do it.
51:33Click, click, click. Wow, would that
51:35make your life easier? Yes. Cool. Boom.
51:37They go in, right? You're demonstrating
51:38in advance. And I'll give you a final
51:39one. When I was at my gym
51:41in Huntington Beach, it was my first
51:42location I ever had. I remember this I
51:44had a door-to-door sales guy who came
51:45up, all right? And this guy was a clear
51:47sale a pro. He was really good.
51:49Um and he sold me cleaning products. He
51:52really did. Like it's the it's probably
51:53the only door-to-door thing I've ever
51:54bought. And it was just cuz it was such
51:56a good it was such a good sale. And he
51:58had it down it's so tight. I think he
52:00was in and out in like 13 minutes. Like
52:01it was stupid. And so he just said,
52:03"Hey, I've got this stuff. It'll take
52:05care of any stain that you've got on
52:06this floor." And I had turf. And so I
52:08had gum that I got in the turf it was
52:09really black and like gone in there. And
52:11so he just took that thing and he poured
52:13it on the gum and he just got on his
52:14hands and knees he scrubbed it and it
52:15actually came out. And the gum was
52:16actually impossible to get out. And I
52:18was like, "Wow." Like he I didn't have
52:20to think, "Will this work for me?" He
52:21just did it in front of me on a stain I
52:23actually had. He was like, "Cool. Looks
52:24like you got 20 other stains. If this is
52:26worth it, it's a 100 bucks for this
52:27stuff." So I paid 100 bucks for some
52:29cleaning supplies, but it was totally
52:31worth it, right? And I ended up using
52:32that stuff for actually years cuz I had
52:33the he sold me huge gallons of
52:35it, right? Um and so again, it's
52:38whenever you can and don't say, "Oh,
52:39this doesn't work for my business." Try
52:41and imagine, "How can I make this work
52:43for my business?" Show them what what
52:45they will experience and do it in a way
52:48that no one else can do it. And so for
52:49example me, I the reason I say like do
52:52epic stuff and then talk about it is
52:54that you continue to live life every
52:56day. And so things continue to happen.
52:58And so you can use the things that
52:59happen that you're doing as the content
53:01that you're making. And the content will
53:03always be shorter than the amount of
53:04time it took for the thing to happen.
53:05And so we have a portfolio of companies.
53:07And so I share case studies on this
53:08channel of like, "Hey, here's how we
53:10added 40 sales guys. Here's how we, you
53:12know, increased, you know, we cut cut
53:13refunds by 2/3. Here's how we XYZ." And
53:16it's cuz we're doing stuff and then we
53:18just talk about what we did. And so the
53:19key point step one is do stuff and then
53:22step two talk about it. Everyone else is
53:24stuck in the step where they don't want
53:25to they want to figure out what to talk
53:26about, but it's because they haven't
53:27done anything. If you do stuff, you have
53:29more than enough to talk about.
53:30Marketing truth number nine, how and
53:32when to expand your market. There's five
53:33ways. Now big picture, the vast majority
53:35of people need to do way more with their
53:37current market. So just to give you
53:38context on this, I had a a guy who came
53:40out to a workshop and he said, "Hey, I
53:43I'm a coach who coach coaches, right?"
53:45And I was like, "All right, fine." And
53:46he said, "I'm spending, you know, I'm
53:47making 2 million bucks a year. It's a
53:48really saturated space, so I think
53:49should I go broader?"
53:51It's a general business. And I was like,
53:53"Dude, how many coaches coaching coaches
53:55exist?" He was like, "Zillions." And I
53:56was like, "Dude, I think you just need
53:57to get better."
53:58Because if you were the best coach of
53:59coaching coaches, then you would be able
54:01to take all of the market share that all
54:02of those guys have and it would come to
54:04you, right? Winner takes all if you're
54:05the best. And so, just to give you an
54:07example, and this is the one I gave him.
54:08I said, "Gym Launch. Everyone knows it's
54:10a gym company, but you don't know how
54:12niche it really is. So, one, we didn't
54:14work with personal trainers. Number two,
54:16we didn't work we do now, but we didn't
54:18for the first four or five years work
54:19with big box facilities. So, large, you
54:21know, facilities where you pay, you
54:23know, $10 to 70 bucks a month to have
54:25access to the the pool, the racquetball
54:27thing, the cardio area, the weights,
54:29basketball, whatever.
54:31We we didn't work with them at all. I
54:32call this facility leasing. We didn't
54:34use those. We didn't work with yoga. We
54:36didn't work with spin. We didn't work
54:37with Pilates.
54:38We literally only worked with
54:41micro gyms that did before and afters of
54:43weight loss and transformations. They
54:45had to do fitness and weights or some
54:47combination of those. That was it.
54:49That's a niche of a niche of a niche.
54:52And that business still cranks out 30
54:53plus million dollars a year. All right?
54:55And so, the idea here is that
54:58you want like the market, if you are the
55:01best, is still massive. You just need to
55:03solve the thing that matters most, which
55:05is being the best. Now, if you have
55:07solved being the best, there's five ways
55:10that you can expand. And so, I'll tell
55:12you what we did cuz Gym Launch has
55:13expanded. I told you now we do do big
55:15box, but there's five ways you can
55:16expand. One, I think about it like a
55:18pyramid. So, let's say you're in the
55:18middle. You can go up market, meaning
55:21you go to higher value customers. So,
55:23for us that would be health clubs, the
55:25big boxes like I was talking about,
55:27multi-location owners or franchisors.
55:29Those would be going up market, more
55:30valuable but fewer of them, like the
55:32pyramid. On the other hand, you can go
55:33down market. I could go after personal
55:34trainers. I didn't go after them. We
55:36don't go after them. But, if I wanted
55:38to, that would be a move that I could
55:39make. I would have to sell a lot more
55:40volume at a lower price and build the
55:42infrastructure to support that kind of
55:43volume. I could go adjacent, which would
55:45be, "Okay, I've got gyms. I'll do
55:47chiropractors. I'll do Or I've got gyms
55:49and I can do weight loss uh clinics,
55:51right? Or medspas or something like
55:52that." So, something that's adjacent
55:53that serves a similar avatar, but a
55:55slightly different business model. That
55:56would be adjacent. And the fifth way you
55:58can do it is that you actually go
56:00narrower. So, that was the fourth way.
56:01So, the fourth way is you can go
56:02narrower, which is say, "Okay, instead
56:04of all gyms or just microgyms that
56:07service uh before and afters, I say I
56:09only do, you know, uh
56:11ones that do weights. Or I only do ones
56:13that only do cardio, right? Or I only do
56:15boot camps. Or I only do semi-private."
56:17Like, I niche down even more. The
56:18alternative is that you go broader and I
56:20say anyone that's in health and
56:21wellness.
56:23And so, those are the five ways that you
56:24can spend. You can go up market, you can
56:25go down market, you can go adjacent
56:26market, you can go narrow, you can go
56:27broad. Now, despite me saying these five
56:29ways of expanding and everyone gets
56:31their juices, you know, their jollys off
56:32thinking about how they're going to
56:33expand, most time I'm going to start
56:35with that original story, which is that
56:36you can make 10, 20, 50 million dollars
56:39a year just serving one very specific
56:40avatar. And the vast majority of
56:42businesses, this is including portfolio
56:44companies that we purchased, I would say
56:46I would say more than half the portfolio
56:47companies we've purchased, we did this
56:49exercise and we made the avatar
56:51narrower. We got more specific, not
56:53broader. I learned this process from
56:55Vista Private Equity. So, if you don't
56:56know who they are, they're a hundred
56:57billion dollar plus private equity, one
56:58of the most successful private equity of
56:59all time. They focus on software
57:01companies. And I talked to their head of
57:02pricing and packaging and he gave me
57:03this one line and it changed my life. He
57:05said, "You want to know how we get the
57:07crazy returns that we do?" And I was
57:09like, "Yeah, obviously I want to know
57:10what you guys do." Now, obviously they
57:11do lots of things, but the one thing
57:12that he pulled out, he said, "We just
57:14know the company that we're buying's
57:15customers better than they do. And so,
57:17we get we go into the data rooms.
57:18Whenever you're doing an acquisition,
57:19there's something called a data room.
57:20You put all the data for your business
57:21in there so people can analyze it and
57:22make a decision about whether they want
57:23to invest." And so, we go into the data
57:25room and we analyze all their customers
57:28and we say, "Okay,
57:29we order them by who pays the most and
57:31who's worth the most." We say, "This is
57:33the 20% that does 80% of the revenue."
57:35And what they do is they look at what
57:36channels those people come in on, what
57:38offers, what marketing those customers
57:40do. And they basically stop doing the
57:42rest of the 80% and then they expand
57:45that 20% to be 100% of the business. And
57:47so by doing that, they can have the same
57:48size business but 5x the revenue.
57:51And arguably even more on the profit.
57:53And so just Pareto law, the the Pareto
57:55principle, 80/20 and they just apply it
57:57to the customers. And so right now, this
57:58is how you do it for you, is you look at
58:00all the customers you have up to this
58:01point, you look at the top 20% and you
58:03say, "Okay, what do these people all
58:05have in common?" And so I like to think
58:06about this in terms of psychographics,
58:07what do they think, geographics, where
58:09do they live, demographics, what do they
58:11look like, and then I would say like
58:12actions, like what have they done or
58:14what did they do to get this result. And
58:15so when I look at each of those frames,
58:17I try and eliminate as many variables as
58:19I can so I get to two or three variables
58:21that that clump all the best customers
58:23together. And then I make that in my
58:25marketing and I tell my sales team, "We
58:26only sell these people going forward."
58:28Because I know that these people are
58:29worth five times more or 10 times more.
58:30And then guess what is able to happen?
58:32We run ads for those people and then our
58:34LTV skyrockets so we can spend more to
58:37acquire customers and this is what
58:38allows you to scale by going narrower.
58:40And so the problem is that most business
58:42owners can't say no to fast money and so
58:44they never get the big money.
58:46And so I had two companies that came out
58:49for a workshop uh that we had and um one
58:52they were both agencies. It was a very
58:53simple example. So one was a generalist
58:55agency. They just did anybody who
58:56knocked on the door they would they
58:57would take their money. The other one
58:59just did professional services. So
59:00that's legal, financial, insurance, like
59:03those types of services.
59:05And the the generalist guys I said,
59:07"Okay, you have this big list of
59:08customers. I'm sure that there's a sub
59:09segment of those customers that you do
59:10exceptionally well with." They're like,
59:11"Oh my god, we crush it for IT people."
59:13And I was like, "Okay, cool." So what
59:15percentage of your customers are those?
59:16They're like, "8%." I was like, "But are
59:18they more profitable by percentage?"
59:20He's like, "Oh, by a mile. They're by
59:21far the most profitable." I was like,
59:23"Okay. So if your entire business" and
59:25they were really struggling in terms of
59:26infrastructure, they were like super
59:27stressed out, you could see it. I was
59:29like, "If your whole business was just
59:30those, do you think you would like that
59:31business?" And he was like, "Oh my god,
59:33that would be a breeze." And I was like,
59:33"Well, then we can build that business."
59:35And so, that means that from here on out
59:36you only sell those people. And over
59:38time, the slight the percentage of the
59:39pie that's those customers is going to
59:41continue to increase until eventually
59:42you can cut the customers that are not
59:43your main thing. And then, in a year or
59:452 years you've completely transformed
59:46your business into something that's been
59:47productized, you get really efficient,
59:49you get even better at it cuz you only
59:50serve those customers, you get better at
59:51acquiring them, get better servicing
59:52them, you get higher margins, and you
59:54actually like your life. And so, the
59:55same thing happened with the second
59:56agency where I said, "What are the
59:58customers you have?" And they're like,
59:58"Actually, we're really good at
1:00:00specifically family law attorneys, so
1:00:01like divorce attorneys." And they had
1:00:03all these other things. I was like, "But
1:00:04divorce attorneys you're really good
1:00:05with." And they're like, "Yeah." I was
1:00:06like, "Then just sell divorce
1:00:07attorneys." And because the thing is, if
1:00:09you just sell divorce attorneys, it's a
1:00:10multi-billion-dollar per industry. Like,
1:00:12there's no reason you can't do a hundred
1:00:13million dollars a year or two hundred
1:00:15million dollars a year just selling
1:00:17those people. And the same with the IT.
1:00:19So, the idea is like people start taking
1:00:21on more avatars cuz they think that's
1:00:22what's necessary to grow. But
1:00:24And I've said this before, but better
1:00:27creates bigger. Bigger creates bloat.
1:00:29And so, if the goal is to get bigger,
1:00:31you want to focus not on getting bigger,
1:00:34but on getting better, and then getting
1:00:35bigger occurs. Growth occurs as a
1:00:38result. Growth is not a goal. Growth is
1:00:40an outcome of inputs.
1:00:42And so, I'm telling you like it took me
1:00:43a very long time to understand this. So,
1:00:45I'm I'm trying to get like every
1:00:47entrepreneur has this ego goal of like I
1:00:48want to hit this a month, and I'll hit
1:00:49that a month, and I'll hit that a month.
1:00:50But the thing is just like you don't
1:00:51want to make the income the goal. If you
1:00:53do, it gets really hard to get out of
1:00:55that game because sometimes you take the
1:00:56wrong steps, you artificially inflate
1:00:58revenue, and then you increase costs to
1:01:00sustain that revenue, but it was the
1:01:01wrong strategic move. And but then you
1:01:03can't go backwards, you stay in the
1:01:04cycle forever. You don't want to do
1:01:05that. You have to think, "Okay, how do I
1:01:07make the core thing that I do better?"
1:01:08Because fundamentally, if this were
1:01:10twice as good as it is now, would I be
1:01:11bigger? Yes, because your customers
1:01:13would demand it. You get far more
1:01:15leverage by doing the same thing a
1:01:16hundred times than doing a hundred
1:01:18things one time. And so, the vast
1:01:20majority of businesses, especially when
1:01:21they're starting out, are doing a
1:01:22hundred things one time rather than the
1:01:24same thing a hundred times. And you get
1:01:25a hell of a lot better when you do
1:01:26something on the hundredth time. And so
1:01:27that means that you drive up your
1:01:29operational efficiency, you drive up
1:01:30your gross profit, you get better at
1:01:32your acquisition cuz your marketing
1:01:33messaging, your sales scripting, the
1:01:35results that you can promise, all those
1:01:37things get better. And now you're
1:01:39competing in a smaller pond so you can
1:01:40dominate everyone. But when people think
1:01:41small pond, they think that somehow that
1:01:43means that they're not going to make a
1:01:43lot of money. Like I said, Jim Wendler
1:01:45makes a lot of money and it's in a very,
1:01:46very, very, very, very narrow niche. And
1:01:48so you just got to be more specific most
1:01:50times and break the limiting beliefs you
1:01:52have around the idea that like, okay,
1:01:54well I just need to go from, you know,
1:01:55I've saturated chiropractors, right?
1:01:57I've I've saturated this with $2 million
1:01:59a year in revenue. Of course not, right?
1:02:01Every single other business that exists
1:02:03that serves your customer, the fact that
1:02:04they're allowed to be alive and breathe
1:02:06shows you how much opportunity you have
1:02:08if you were better than them. Number 10,
1:02:10provide value. Now everybody talks about
1:02:12providing value, what does that even
1:02:13mean? All right, so in in this book I
1:02:15talked about something called the value
1:02:16equation, it's probably the most cited
1:02:17chapter in this whole book. But I break
1:02:19down what are the elements of value. And
1:02:20so there are four. Number one is the
1:02:22dream outcome, which is what does
1:02:23somebody actually want? So if I were to
1:02:25offer like
1:02:26uh Daniel who's behind the camera right
1:02:28now, I said, "Hey, you can get in shape
1:02:30or I can make you a million dollars."
1:02:32Right? Making money for most men is more
1:02:33valuable than getting in better shape.
1:02:35And so the relative opportunity or the
1:02:38relative outcome will dictate how much
1:02:40money you can charge. That's why in
1:02:41general B2B offers are higher ticket.
1:02:43Now there are also fewer people who buy
1:02:44making money than people who buy
1:02:46consumer products. So you have about
1:02:471/10th. So 9% of people are business
1:02:49owners. Uh so you have a much smaller
1:02:50market. That being said, does the the
1:02:52the size of the market really matter
1:02:53based on the thing I just said? Probably
1:02:54not. But again, number one is dream
1:02:57outcome. That's what differentiates. Now
1:02:59let's say you've got two products that
1:03:00offer the same solution. So let's say
1:03:02the the the the weight loss example or
1:03:03the getting shape example. If I have a
1:03:05PDF for that and I've got uh
1:03:08liposuction, both of them promise the
1:03:09same thing, which is that you're going
1:03:10to get in better shape, you're going to
1:03:11lose weight. Okay, well then why is
1:03:12liposuction so much more expensive than
1:03:14a PDF that I could buy on the internet
1:03:16for 20 bucks? They both promise the same
1:03:17outcome. Well, there's three other
1:03:19variables. So, variable number one is
1:03:20the perceived likelihood of achievement
1:03:21or the risk associated with the
1:03:23purchase. So, risk would be the
1:03:24negative, perceived likelihood of
1:03:25achievement is the positive. And so, we
1:03:26want to increase the perceived
1:03:27likelihood as much as possible. So, if
1:03:29we had that liposuction and we've got
1:03:30one surgeon who's his first day out of
1:03:32medical school and we got another
1:03:33surgeon who's done 10,000 surgeries,
1:03:35which of these guys can price higher?
1:03:36Well, obviously, you'd want to take the
1:03:3710,000 one even though it's the same
1:03:38procedure and the same outcome. The
1:03:40perceived likelihood of you actually
1:03:41getting what you want, the risk
1:03:42associated is lower, and so you're
1:03:44willing to pay more for that guy cuz he
1:03:45has more experience.
1:03:47The third variable of this is time
1:03:50delay. The equal opposite of that is
1:03:51speed. How quickly between when someone
1:03:53buys and when they get the promised
1:03:55outcome. Now,
1:03:57if you do liposuction, it's like, great.
1:03:58You make the purchase and you go to
1:04:00sleep and you wake up and you're thin.
1:04:01Very, very condensed, which is why it
1:04:03has a lot of value, right? Whereas if
1:04:05you have to do all this eating and this
1:04:06exercising and not drinking and changing
1:04:08your diet and all this waking up early
1:04:09and being sore, all this like there's a
1:04:11lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of
1:04:13delay there in terms of how much time
1:04:15and effort it's time specifically is
1:04:17going to take to get the outcome you
1:04:18want. So, the faster it is, the more
1:04:20valuable it is. And then finally, you
1:04:22have effort and sacrifice or equal
1:04:24opposite ease. How easy can you make it?
1:04:26And so, if you're trying to think about
1:04:27this in in in simple terms, it's how
1:04:30risk-free can I make it? How easy can I
1:04:32make it? How fast can I make it? And is
1:04:33the thing that that I'm promising, the
1:04:34outcome that I'm promising, something
1:04:36they actually want? And so, if you have
1:04:38all four of those, you have something
1:04:38that people really want, they have no
1:04:40risk of doing it, it comes immediately,
1:04:42and it's easy. It's easy as pushing a
1:04:44button, you've got an incredibly
1:04:46valuable thing. And so, when people say,
1:04:48"Add value," what you want to think
1:04:49about is, "What does my customer or what
1:04:50does my avatar want to accomplish or
1:04:53what do they want to avoid?" So, you've
1:04:54got towards good stuff and away from bad
1:04:57stuff. And so, you say, "Okay, I can
1:04:59help you avoid this bad stuff risk-free,
1:05:01faster, and easier than otherwise." And
1:05:04the dream outcome, the good stuff, same
1:05:06thing again, is how can I help you get
1:05:07that good stuff faster, easier, and
1:05:09risk-free? And so, every time you make
1:05:11content or every time you make a PDF, or
1:05:13every time you make a lead magnet,
1:05:14whatever it is, or you make content, the
1:05:16whole goal should be to be useful. The
1:05:18whole goal should be to provide value.
1:05:19And you do that by helping them achieve
1:05:21their goal, which hopefully with this
1:05:22video I'm helping you market better your
1:05:23business by making it risk-free so you
1:05:25don't have to make the mistakes I did,
1:05:27get to your goal faster, and get there
1:05:28easier. So, the easiest way to think,
1:05:30"Okay, got it. Well, how do I find the
1:05:32problems that people are suffering from
1:05:34so that I can make it faster, easier,
1:05:35and risk-free for them?" Great question.
1:05:36So, one is any comments that you get in
1:05:38in response to content, that creates
1:05:40more content. This is the endless
1:05:42content wheel. It's like you make
1:05:43content, people have questions about the
1:05:44content, you make content about the
1:05:45questions, they have questions about
1:05:46those questions. The good thing is that
1:05:47problems never end and people never stop
1:05:48complaining. And so, as long as people
1:05:50stop complaining and people have
1:05:51problems, you're always going to have
1:05:51problems to solve, which is one of the
1:05:52nice things about being an entrepreneur.
1:05:54You like humanity, if you told us
1:05:56hundreds of years ago that we'd have the
1:05:57internet in our hands and we'd have air
1:05:59conditioning and Wi-Fi and all this
1:06:00stuff, we'd be like, "Oh my god, all of
1:06:02our problems are solved." But we have
1:06:03more problems now than we did before cuz
1:06:04we're more aware of the problems that
1:06:05that we didn't know existed before. And
1:06:07so, whenever you solve a problem, you
1:06:08create another one. It's the
1:06:09problem-solution cycle, it never ends.
1:06:10And so, one is you can look at that. The
1:06:12other is you can look internal to your
1:06:13business, which is what are the what are
1:06:14the things that people struggle with
1:06:15internal in terms of implementation for
1:06:17whatever the thing that you do is,
1:06:18whether it's a product that you sell or
1:06:19a service that you sell, there's some
1:06:21friction points along the way. And you
1:06:22think, "Okay, what are the friction
1:06:24points and how can I make it easier?"
1:06:25Number 11 is a fairly well-known
1:06:27marketing saying, "Give away the
1:06:27secrets, sell the implementation." The
1:06:29way that I think about this is make your
1:06:31free stuff better than their paid stuff.
1:06:33And that's an easy ism to say, but the
1:06:35real real is like you actually have to
1:06:37think, "If I give away something for
1:06:38free, I have to be willing to charge for
1:06:40it." And if you were willing to charge
1:06:42$100 or $1,000 or $10,000 for the thing
1:06:44that you give away for free, my god,
1:06:46must that be valuable. Yes. And what
1:06:48that does is it increases the likelihood
1:06:50of conversion. It increases the
1:06:51likelihood that a person consumes the
1:06:52thing and then buys the next product.
1:06:53Because what a lead magnet is, or what
1:06:55content is, it's a complete solution to
1:06:58a very narrow problem. And that's
1:06:59fundamentally how I think about this. A
1:07:00lot of people are very afraid of giving
1:07:01away value, but you shouldn't be. Give
1:07:04away all the secrets. Give away all the
1:07:05things that you do, and then if someone
1:07:07wants help with implementation, they can
1:07:09call you up. And this allows you to
1:07:10provide value to the masses, build your
1:07:13brand up, and then they use results in
1:07:15advance as an approximation of the
1:07:17results they're going to get after they
1:07:18purchase. All right? And so, even when
1:07:20you're marketing in terms of making
1:07:21content, I like to think of being okay
1:07:24with narrow
1:07:25because deep is where the dollars are.
1:07:27All right, so let me tell you let me
1:07:28tell you a couple stories about this.
1:07:29So, there was a lady who I just recently
1:07:32met who was doing just under a million
1:07:33dollars a year in profit. Profit from
1:07:375,800
1:07:39followers on Instagram. She had no other
1:07:41platform. She sourced 100% from
1:07:43Instagram. And this blew my mind. I
1:07:44mean, like I say this stuff, but having
1:07:46having that level like it was such an
1:07:48extreme example of tiny audience, big
1:07:51money. It it broke my beliefs even
1:07:52further than I already had them broken.
1:07:55And when I looked at her page, here's
1:07:56what's crazy. It wasn't like she had
1:07:58crazy deep engagement, either. It was
1:07:59like the post she would get would get,
1:08:01you know, one, five, maybe 10 comments
1:08:03on a great post.
1:08:05And she would get, you know, 10 likes,
1:08:0820 likes, 30 likes if it was a crazy
1:08:10one.
1:08:11But, 100% of her content was about how
1:08:15registered dietitians can more
1:08:17accurately bill insurance to make more
1:08:20money. It was a niche of a niche. It was
1:08:23literally like registered dietitians who
1:08:25bill insurance and how to bill insurance
1:08:28more effectively to make more per hour.
1:08:29That was her offer, and that's all she
1:08:31talks about. Her cheat sheets were on
1:08:32that. Uh and she talks about different
1:08:34insurance
1:08:35uh companies and how to bill each of
1:08:37them, the codes that you go that you
1:08:38plug in like like all this jargon I had
1:08:40no idea when I went to the page. But,
1:08:42for her avatar, I'll bet you that of the
1:08:445,800 people that follow her, 5,700 of
1:08:47them were registered dietitians who were
1:08:50trying to find out what they needed to
1:08:52do uh to make more money by billing
1:08:53insurance. And so, she was selling five
1:08:56to 10 uh little cheat sheets a day at
1:08:58like 99 bucks plus two to three high
1:09:02ticket people per week into her thing,
1:09:05into her association of registered
1:09:07dieticians that followed her process for
1:09:09billing. And so, I say this because I've
1:09:11also learned this personally. We used to
1:09:13make some wider content for about 6
1:09:14months. We did this We did this
1:09:15experiment. We got the data back. It
1:09:17turned out we got lots of views, but we
1:09:18didn't get lots of business owners. And
1:09:20so, we switched back to hardcore
1:09:21business stuff, which I love anyway, so
1:09:22I'm very happy about the experiment. And
1:09:24because of that, all of our stats are
1:09:26up. So, we have more opt-ins, more
1:09:27people buying books, more people, you
1:09:29know, going to work shops, whatever it
1:09:30is, more people applying to the
1:09:31portfolio, so we can invest in their
1:09:33companies. All of those stats were up
1:09:34despite the fact that the general views
1:09:36per video went down. And again, I'm here
1:09:38for the money, not for the fame. And so,
1:09:40I encourage you, if you can break your
1:09:42attachment to the ego metrics, like the
1:09:43likes and the views and things like
1:09:45that, and just focus on the bottom line,
1:09:47just get really specific on the avatar
1:09:49that you want to serve, and make content
1:09:52only for them that's useful. So, I've
1:09:54got a buddy of mine who runs a
1:09:55multi-nine-figure-per-year
1:09:57uh marketing company. And he makes
1:09:59content online. He has a personal brand.
1:10:01And he was like, "Oh, dude, my personal
1:10:03brand makes no money." He's like, "But
1:10:06And he goes super in-depth tactical like
1:10:08stuff. He's an SEO G, and so all of his
1:10:10stuff is like how to how to make SEO
1:10:11content, blog content, things like that.
1:10:14And his content gets like so few likes
1:10:18and engagement. And he has like charts
1:10:20and graphs and all this data to support
1:10:21all he does. He's obviously really,
1:10:22really good at this.
1:10:23But the thing is this, he's his lead
1:10:25quality that comes from him, he's like,
1:10:27"They're all Fortune 500, Fortune 100
1:10:29CEOs, executives that are like, 'Hey,
1:10:32you obviously know this stuff. Can we
1:10:33just hire you?'" And that's exactly who
1:10:35he wants. He wants He He makes it so
1:10:37complex. He gives away everything. And
1:10:39he says it. He's like, "I give You could
1:10:40just follow all my stuff and do it."
1:10:41Most people are like, "Man, this is too
1:10:43much work." And so, they're like, "Can I
1:10:44just hire you?" Which is an exceptional
1:10:46way to get customers.
1:10:48So, here's how you do it in three easy
1:10:50steps. One is you just give away your
1:10:52best stuff. Give it all away. If you
1:10:54have a low-ticket thing that sells to
1:10:55lots of people, and high-ticket thing, I
1:10:57would encourage you just give away the
1:10:58low-ticket thing, too. You're probably
1:10:59not making that much money on it
1:11:00anyways, and those customers are
1:11:01probably a pain in the butt. So, just
1:11:02give it to them. And you can even show,
1:11:03"Hey, I used to charge for this and I'll
1:11:04give it to you for free cuz I love you."
1:11:06All right? And by doing that, you make
1:11:07an exceptional thing, and you put really
1:11:09heavy
1:11:11uh effort into follow-up and calls to
1:11:13action within the within the content
1:11:15itself. All right? So, within the thing
1:11:16that you're giving away, you have CTAs,
1:11:18and you follow up with your team to try
1:11:20and ascend them in the next thing if
1:11:21they're qualified. And I'll give you a
1:11:23pro tip on this. When you want to make
1:11:25the CTA, make it about personalization,
1:11:28not about more. So, instead of saying,
1:11:29"Hey, if you want more stuff like this,
1:11:31go here." Say, "Hey, if you want me to
1:11:32help apply this stuff to your business,
1:11:34or apply this stuff to your body, or
1:11:36this stuff to your life, then let me
1:11:38know." It's personalizing it, cuz that
1:11:40is significantly more valuable than just
1:11:41more stuff. And what's crazy is that a
1:11:43lot of people use the things they give
1:11:44away as an afterthought. It's the last
1:11:46thing they think about. But here's the
1:11:47crazy stat, is that 99% of people who
1:11:50consume your free thing will never buy
1:11:51from you, which means that your
1:11:52reputation's getting made by the 99% of
1:11:54people, not the 1%. And so, if you want
1:11:56to improve your reputation in the
1:11:57marketplace, make sure the stuff that
1:11:58you give away for free is awesome.
1:12:01Also make sure the stuff that you sell
1:12:02is awesome. And if both those things
1:12:03sound like a four-letter word, which is
1:12:05work, welcome to business.
1:12:07And so, I talked earlier about going up
1:12:08market or getting narrower on the avatar
1:12:10that you want to serve. A lot of people
1:12:11have down-sells, and I think over time
1:12:13I've gotten less and less into having
1:12:14down-sells, and more along lines of
1:12:16like, if we have a lower avatar and
1:12:19we're down-selling 10% of calls into
1:12:20this thing that's paid, if 10% of people
1:12:23are buying something that's 1/10 the
1:12:24price cuz it's a down-sell, then it's
1:12:26going to change my revenue by 1%. I
1:12:28don't really care. It's not even worth
1:12:29the headache. I'd rather just give that
1:12:30away to hundreds of people for free,
1:12:32because if the cost is free, way more
1:12:33people will consume it, and then get a
1:12:34higher percentage people to buy my next
1:12:37thing, and I allow my marketing
1:12:39messaging to attract the higher quality
1:12:40customers. So, this is the last thing to
1:12:41go up market or narrower, and give away
1:12:43all the other stuff so I can create my
1:12:45more qualified customers. The amount of
1:12:47businesses that I know that one that
1:12:48we've invested in or do that we've
1:12:49helped
1:12:51simply make way more money by just
1:12:52giving away the thing that was their big
1:12:54headache that was a low ticket thing
1:12:55just so that they could focus on serving
1:12:57the best customers.
1:12:59Most times you'll make money going up
1:13:00market. Marketing advice number 12, all
1:13:03advertising works. It's just a matter of
1:13:05efficiency. I'm really I like I want to
1:13:08I want to drill this down people's
1:13:09throats. The amount of time I've said
1:13:10Facebook ads don't work for us. Google
1:13:11ads don't work for us. TikTok ads don't
1:13:12work for us. Direct mail doesn't work
1:13:13for us. Radio ads don't work for us.
1:13:14Content doesn't work for us. Outreach
1:13:15doesn't work for us. Fundamentally,
1:13:18if you have a qualified person on the
1:13:20other side and you make an offer to them
1:13:22that solves a key problem for them, if
1:13:24you can get them on the phone, you can
1:13:26make money, period. So, if you can
1:13:28rephrase the problem as I don't know how
1:13:30to make Facebook ads work for us. I
1:13:31don't know how to make TikTok work for
1:13:32us. I don't know how to make content
1:13:33work for us. I don't know how to make
1:13:34outreach work for us, then that becomes
1:13:35a problem that you can solve. Now, this
1:13:37is really important. So, I talked
1:13:39earlier about optimizing your
1:13:40advertising from front to back and
1:13:42that's true. But, when you optimize a
1:13:44business, you optimize it from back to
1:13:46front. And so, the back, the LTV, how
1:13:49much you make per customer enables how
1:13:52much you can spend on the front end.
1:13:54And so, you optimize the throughput on
1:13:56the front end, obviously, because that's
1:13:57where you get the highest returns, but
1:13:59the engine that you can spend on that
1:14:02depends on how much you make per
1:14:03customer.
1:14:04And so, you can either be really really
1:14:07really exceptional at lowering CAC or
1:14:09really really really good at increasing
1:14:10LTV and if you do both,
1:14:13you have huge arbitrage and that's where
1:14:14you make stupid money. And so, let's go
1:14:16through a hypothetical. Let's say that
1:14:17you sold something that was a billion
1:14:19dollar thing. Okay? If you have a
1:14:21billion dollars in gross profit that
1:14:23you'd make from one sale, you could
1:14:24reach a lot of people on Earth. And just
1:14:26to give you context on this, if I wanted
1:14:28to become a A-list celebrity, uh I back
1:14:31calculated what I believe it cost to
1:14:32become an A-list celebrity. It was about
1:14:3350 million dollars. And the way that I
1:14:35calculated that was I thought, "What
1:14:37person went from complete obscurity to
1:14:39no one knew who they were, obscurity, to
1:14:42omnipresence or some like that everybody
1:14:45knew?" And so, the simplest example are
1:14:48people who were no-name actors who
1:14:50become the star of a big Marvel hit. And
1:14:53so, what I did was I said, "Okay, how
1:14:54many of these have I seen? What was the
1:14:56movie budget?" Now, you have to divide
1:14:57that by the other characters in the show
1:14:59or in the in the movie. And between the
1:15:02big blockbusters, where we had to you
1:15:03think about like the Hunger Games girl,
1:15:05right? I can't remember her name right
1:15:06now, but that girl. Like, the marketing
1:15:08budget for those types of films, you
1:15:10think, "Okay, with $50 she went from no
1:15:13knowing who she was to being famous."
1:15:15And so, for $50 you can reach so much of
1:15:17America. And so, I use this as a
1:15:19hypothetical because if you had
1:15:20something that you sold for a billion
1:15:21dollars, you could spend that and still
1:15:22make 20 to one.
1:15:24And so, the idea is, yes, we optimize
1:15:26our advertising from front to back. We
1:15:27put our effort on the front. But, in
1:15:29terms of where our our our LTV comes
1:15:32from, we work from back to front so that
1:15:34we can spend more on the front end. A
1:15:36big problem in terms of efficiency is
1:15:37that oftentimes, if you are if you do
1:15:39start running ads profitably, for
1:15:41example, you reach some sort of ceiling.
1:15:43You're like, "Hey, we can't we can't get
1:15:44past $2,000 a day. Hey, we can't get
1:15:45past $10,000 a day. Hey, we can't get
1:15:47past $100,000 a day." Whatever it is,
1:15:48right? Usually, it's because the ads
1:15:50that you have aren't good enough to
1:15:51reach the next level of awareness. So,
1:15:53Eugene Schwartz in Breakthrough
1:15:54Advertising talked about something
1:15:55called Five Levels of Awareness. And so,
1:15:56they go from unaware, somebody has no
1:15:59idea who you are, what the problem is,
1:16:00or anything. They're just unaware. The
1:16:01next level is problem aware. That's
1:16:03where you see ads that are like, "Having
1:16:04trouble sleeping at night? Do you have
1:16:05back pain when you lean over?" Like,
1:16:07things like that. They ask open-end
1:16:08questions that make someone aware of the
1:16:10problem.
1:16:11Underneath of that is solution aware.
1:16:12"Have you tried this before? Have you
1:16:14tried this before?" This is where
1:16:16someone knows the solutions that
1:16:17potentially exist. Then you have product
1:16:18aware, which is them advertising you
1:16:20advertising your own product. Like,
1:16:21"Okay, have you tried like my product
1:16:23before? And let me talk you about this."
1:16:25And then finally, you have most aware,
1:16:26which is usually past and existing
1:16:27customers. And so, those are five levels
1:16:29of awareness.
1:16:30And so, most times, smaller advertisers,
1:16:32beginner advertisers, get returns
1:16:34marketing to most aware, right? If you
1:16:35email your list or you make a post or
1:16:37you send out message
1:16:38an email, right? Those are your most
1:16:40aware people. So, you can make sales
1:16:41from that for almost no money. One
1:16:42degree above that is like, okay, well,
1:16:44are there other people who are in the
1:16:45market? That's product aware. They're
1:16:46looking They're looking for something
1:16:48uh to solve a specific problem, right?
1:16:50Uh and they're aware of the options that
1:16:51are out there and you market to them.
1:16:52So, you have to be a little bit better
1:16:54to market to those people than to just
1:16:55your existing customers. Now, if you go
1:16:56one level above that, right, solution
1:16:58aware is that they know that there are
1:16:59people who are solving this problem.
1:17:00They don't know how they're solving the
1:17:02problem. They know that there is a
1:17:03solution that exists. And so, you have
1:17:05to have another order of magnitude
1:17:06improvement of your ads and the hooks to
1:17:08call out those people. And so, most
1:17:10times, the problem isn't that your
1:17:12market isn't big enough, it's that your
1:17:14ads aren't good enough and they're not
1:17:15specific enough to hit this next massive
1:17:18tranche of the audience. And I say this
1:17:20with our largest company um in the
1:17:22portfolio that is about $100 million a
1:17:23year and we spend millions of dollars a
1:17:25month in advertising and we go to the
1:17:27most unaware people. We go to people who
1:17:29have no idea that uh you know, this
1:17:31product or this problem exists. We
1:17:33actually have to make them aware of the
1:17:35problem and then we make them aware of
1:17:36the opportunity to solve it. And then we
1:17:37have to make them aware of the problem.
1:17:39We have to take them through all the
1:17:40stages of awareness in a very short
1:17:41period of time and that is come comes
1:17:43from a very well-crafted ad. And so, I
1:17:45have this saying that I have internal,
1:17:46which is that the size of the plane is
1:17:48directly correlated with the length of
1:17:49the runway. The bigger the plane, the
1:17:51longer the runway. And so, if you want
1:17:52to sell a very expensive thing or you
1:17:54want to sell a very cold person. So, the
1:17:56price and the the coldness or how aware
1:17:59the person is. So, the longest sale
1:18:01possible would be somebody who's
1:18:02completely unaware for a very expensive
1:18:04thing, right? The shortest sale possible
1:18:06would be someone who's very aware for a
1:18:08very cheap thing. And so, the amount of
1:18:10runway, the amount of selling, the
1:18:11amount of advertising that you have to
1:18:12do to get someone through these stages
1:18:13is directly proportional to those two
1:18:15things. And if you're having trouble
1:18:17scaling, it usually means that this is
1:18:19mismatched. You're trying to do You're
1:18:20You're sending a warm message to a cold
1:18:22audience or you're getting people on the
1:18:23phone who aren't prepared to spend
1:18:25a huge amount of money. They haven't
1:18:26been warmed up enough. And so, it's
1:18:28making sure that we're hitting each of
1:18:29these boxes for the audience that we're
1:18:31starting to target. And so, as you go to
1:18:33a new tranche of Let's say you go from
1:18:35uh solution aware to problem aware. So,
1:18:36that's a that's a bigger area, right?
1:18:38And so, think about this as concentric
1:18:39circles like a pizza. Like the area of
1:18:41the pizza, you know, like a pizza that's
1:18:42this big, if you could take an inch off,
1:18:44it's almost the same size as a as a 2-in
1:18:46pizza in the middle. Like the the
1:18:47diameter, circumference, whatever that
1:18:49is. I probably failed geometry. The
1:18:50point is is that um it just gets bigger
1:18:52and exponentially bigger as you go out.
1:18:55And so,
1:18:56this is a weird visual that I have for
1:18:58this. But, if you think about a
1:18:59watermelon slice,
1:19:01and at the tip there's lots of seeds.
1:19:03And as you go down, there's fewer seeds.
1:19:05But, you still have to pay the same
1:19:06amount to reach all these eyeballs to
1:19:07find the few seeds versus in the
1:19:09beginning when you have lots of seeds.
1:19:10So, your density of sales per thousand
1:19:12eyeballs goes down as you go to more
1:19:15unaware people. Because you're going to
1:19:16go to people who just simply don't care
1:19:18and never will care. But, you have to
1:19:20and this is where the LTV matters so
1:19:21much and the optimization matters so
1:19:22much. But, you still if you can be
1:19:24profitable in a larger tranche that's 10
1:19:27or 100 times as big, that's when you
1:19:29start really printing money. Right? And
1:19:30so, if you have call it 20 to one LTV to
1:19:33CAC in the beginning when you have lots
1:19:34of little seeds, lots of density of
1:19:35potential buyers, goods is really warm,
1:19:37really problem aware or really really
1:19:38solution or product aware, right? Like
1:19:39really high end. As you go down, you
1:19:42might drop to five to one in the middle.
1:19:44You might drop to three to one at scale,
1:19:46but you're at a hundred times the spend.
1:19:49And so, in that case, you're still
1:19:50making way more absolute return on the
1:19:52investment. Another way to think about
1:19:53this is like a golf course. And so, if
1:19:56you could only putt, then you're going
1:19:58to only make 6-in putts. That's only the
1:20:00top little seeds of the watermelon. But,
1:20:01think about how much more area if you
1:20:03learned how to drive and you learned how
1:20:06to hit a three iron. I'm not very good
1:20:08at golf. You can obviously tell. And
1:20:09then you hit learn how to hit a wedge.
1:20:11There's so many more shots that you can
1:20:12make if you have these other skills in
1:20:14your arsenal. And so, think about each
1:20:16of the levels of awareness as another
1:20:17club that you have to learn how to hit
1:20:19so that you can get more balls in the
1:20:20hole from any part of the course.
1:20:22Marketing advice number 13, we need to
1:20:24be reminded more than we need to be
1:20:25taught. And I think this is one that's
1:20:27going to break a lot of your beliefs.
1:20:28And so, I'm going to I want to really
1:20:29emphasize this one cuz it's important.
1:20:32Once you start making content, once you
1:20:33start running ads, and you start putting
1:20:35stuff out publicly, start advertising,
1:20:37you're going to get to a point where
1:20:38you're like, I feel like I've said
1:20:39everything that I was going to say. Now,
1:20:41remember, you continue to live life
1:20:43every day, you continue to do stuff, and
1:20:44you can talk about what you did, so that
1:20:45can break that. But, my mom said this to
1:20:48me once, and I I I always I always
1:20:49remembered it. She said, "The news never
1:20:51changes, just the names." And I really
1:20:53thought about that. It was like, there's
1:20:54always a rape, there's a war, there's a
1:20:56murder, there's a car accident. Like,
1:20:57the actual story doesn't change, only
1:20:59the names.
1:21:00And so, if you think about that with
1:21:01content, like, there is no new content.
1:21:03Like, the human condition has not
1:21:04changed for thousands of years. Like,
1:21:05the older the problem, the older the
1:21:06solution. And so,
1:21:08we're
1:21:10making content, and we're putting stuff
1:21:11out there,
1:21:13and when I think about myself, the
1:21:14things that I follow, like, I follow
1:21:16philosophy pages because I am okay
1:21:19rereading Epictetus's stuff. Like, I
1:21:20read his stuff before, and I read it in
1:21:22quote form again, and when it comes up
1:21:24again, I like to be reminded. I like to
1:21:26keep the stuff top of mind. That's why I
1:21:28follow those pages. And many people
1:21:29follow your pages for that exact same
1:21:31reason, is that the stuff you talk about
1:21:33is stuff that they want to keep top of
1:21:34mind. They want to be reminded of that
1:21:35stuff. And getting taught is much more
1:21:37difficult than being reminded, but
1:21:38they're equally valuable. Because if it
1:21:40changes their behavior, then you still
1:21:41did teach them. Again, you just reminded
1:21:43them. And what's crazy about this is
1:21:45that, like, the Friends show right now,
1:21:47if you've ever heard of it, is being
1:21:49watched more now than it was a few years
1:21:52ago.
1:21:53So, reruns. Like, people watch reruns
1:21:56because there's nostalgia or whatever
1:21:57reasons you want to pick to it, but
1:21:58people are willing to rewatch the same
1:22:00thing because they know how it ends,
1:22:01they know they liked it.
1:22:03And so,
1:22:05you can make the same thing again
1:22:06because also, your audience who's new a
1:22:09year later hasn't seen that thing. And
1:22:11so, if you make something new to them,
1:22:14even though it's {quote} old or reminder
1:22:15to your existing audience, your existing
1:22:17audience doesn't mind the reminder, and
1:22:18the new people never saw it to begin
1:22:19with. And if you want to have different
1:22:21ways of creating variety, even around
1:22:23the same topics, I would encourage you,
1:22:25instead of thinking of
1:22:27getting into trend hacking and talking
1:22:28about the news, talk about your news.
1:22:31So, it's about what are the new things
1:22:32that are happening now. This is the do
1:22:34epic stuff, talk about what you did. And
1:22:36so, this is where we tell new stories to
1:22:39explain the same concept because for
1:22:41that specific audience, you'll reach a
1:22:43different type of person or different
1:22:44avatar that still may be within your
1:22:46market with a story about a mother and a
1:22:48daughter versus a father and a son
1:22:50versus a military vet versus
1:22:52a small business owner, right? There are
1:22:54different avatars and you can tell the
1:22:55same story, but it happens to a
1:22:57different name, just like the news. And
1:22:59people still watch the news every single
1:23:00day, and then what we want is them to
1:23:02watch our news. You can tell the same
1:23:04concept like the value equation. The
1:23:06value equation I explained in my book. I
1:23:08also have a course on my site that I
1:23:09explain the value equation in a
1:23:11different format. So, think about it in
1:23:12terms of formats. This is written. I
1:23:14have an audio. I've got videos that are
1:23:16on my site that are in a course format.
1:23:17I'm mentioning it here now. I have it on
1:23:19whiteboards that I've explained it. I've
1:23:21applied it to services. I've applied it
1:23:23to education. I've applied it to
1:23:26physical products. I've applied it to
1:23:27software. And so, you can take the same
1:23:29idea and think how can I display it in
1:23:31new formats, new mediums, and new
1:23:33contexts. And so, when you have that and
1:23:36then you extrapolate on top the news of
1:23:37your life, even though you feel like
1:23:40it's saying the same thing, the amount
1:23:42that it takes to create something novel
1:23:44is very small. And so, I'll tell you the
1:23:45story that I think will wrap this up.
1:23:47It's the story of Henry Ford.
1:23:49And so, Henry Ford had in his office, he
1:23:51had his marketing person right next to
1:23:53him. So, he walked past the marketing
1:23:54department over and over and over again.
1:23:55And this is back in the day when they
1:23:56like didn't have computer screens. So,
1:23:57it was just like they had mock-ups and
1:23:59like big posters and things like that
1:24:00for whatever the next ad campaign for a
1:24:01new Ford car was. And so, he walked past
1:24:04this guy's office for 3 months. At the
1:24:06end of the 3 months, he was like, "Hey
1:24:07John, when are we going to stop running
1:24:09this ad? I'm so sick of it." And John,
1:24:11the marketing director looked at him and
1:24:12said, "We haven't even started running
1:24:13it yet." And so, the thing is is that we
1:24:15get so much sicker of our own content
1:24:17before our audience even remembers your
1:24:19name.
1:24:20And so, the thing is is that we assume
1:24:21that every person consumes every piece
1:24:23of content you ever put out. We put out
1:24:2450 plus pieces of content a day. I'm
1:24:26grateful if somebody watches one a week,
1:24:28right? And so, the idea here is that
1:24:30like you put out significantly more, but
1:24:31we have this assumption that everyone's
1:24:33paying attention and no one is. And so,
1:24:35we put out tons of volume with the hope
1:24:36that we catch one person on that one
1:24:38day. And you might have make I might
1:24:39have made four things about the value
1:24:40equation. Actually, you can give me good
1:24:42feedback, so this will be good. If you
1:24:43haven't heard about the value equation
1:24:44whatsoever in my content up to this
1:24:46point, drop a comment cuz I want to I
1:24:48want to prove that this, even though
1:24:50I've talked about it in a zillion
1:24:51formats, some of you guys didn't even
1:24:53know how to book, right?
1:24:55People need to be reminded more than
1:24:56need to be taught. And for those of you
1:24:58who don't know, the mission
1:24:59acquisition.com is to make real business
1:25:00education accessible for everyone. And I
1:25:03spent the last 4 years plus making
1:25:05content and hopefully giving away all
1:25:07the stuff you need to scale your
1:25:08business. And I love getting the
1:25:09messages and the stories that we do. But
1:25:10it would mean the world to me if you
1:25:12just share this video with another
1:25:13business owner who they can hopefully
1:25:15compress 13 years into however long this
1:25:17video ends up being to save them all the
1:25:19scars and so they can just have the
1:25:21lessons. Thank you.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of YouTube transcript (reisEL_D7xc) , generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 21,040 words across 2,920 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to choose a caption track available on the video.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, caption language selection, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.