Rich Ad Poor Ad: Recent Episodes
Funnel Dash
It's like Which Test Won but for ads! After auditing $1,000,000,000 in ad spend we're pulling back the curtain to help advertisers scale. Join us each week as we teardown today's most elite advertisers ad campaigns to discover Which Ad Won! Sharpen your advertising skills each week and build your swipe file of campaigns that are making these advertisers RICH!
How Automat.ai is able to add 10% of revenue year after year to their clients businesses
We dive into the early stages of PayKickStart and this biggest pain points in the beginning.
How creating custom content and landers for different buyer personas have changed the game at scale.
The creative framework Viscap Media uses to create KILLER converting video content for Direct Response Brands
How Colin made the jump from slinging services to building an equity portfolio of ecommerce brands on the rise
We dive into the fundamentals of what's needed to create a coaching program and how to differentiate yourself.
How Matt is scaling up his real estate investing portfolio by owning 70+ single family homes.
The winning ad creative format that has been used for months that works perfect at scale.
Breaking records in sales with Nehal from AdPros whether it's revenue or new customer growth.
Different parts to the business to pay CLOSE attention to when it comes to marketing dollars in and out.
How Brennan has launched 3 different brands ALL around print on demand | The marketing strategies you can use for different times in the year | Managing cash flow being in the manufacturing business
Vinnie is the co founder of Phytage Labs, a 7 figure business. He is also part of 4 other large brands and part of their board. He dives into internal processes to keep in mind of a large corp and the importance of teams and employees who help specific parts of each biz. We dive into certain areas that break such as product return rate and how it can DESTROY and BLEED out money for business.
How to generate MILLIONS of video views with MILLIONS in revenue | Ingredients to creating the perfect video or ad | Setting budgets and expectations for quality produced content
We dive into the exact campaign that spent over $500k in ONE DAY. Ads that work super well in specific themes or dare we say... pandemics?!
Key Take Aways: Ever wonder how subscription companies generate over $100m in sales? Let's ask Paul! We dive into how he crafts subscription boxes and how he creates compelling offers ready for scale. How a big $250k mess revolved all around traffic. The importance of understanding the logistics vs marketing.
Key Take-Aways: Learn the EXACT ARM5 Ad Program that Josh uses to consistently generate 5-6x your ad spend. How to identify bottlenecks in funnels and how to optimize. Why keeping multiple lines of credit is a POWER MOVE for when you need to scale.
Key Take Aways: How to find your ideal target audience as fast as lightning. How to create solid ads with relevant copy and creative. Why you SHOULDN'T jump the gun early to scale. The cash flow hack Adam uses to be more considerate and careful with ad budgets.
How a simple tool can boost your customer LTV like crazy for your Shopify store. How to create compelling direct response creative for SaaS companies. How a poor placement on a podcast made Dennis really think about ad placements. And creative ways to diversify your income.
Ever wonder what it takes to have a high converting webinar for high ticket offers? Well good news for you! Joel is the head honcho at The Webinar Agency who focuses on webinars for their clients. With multiple of his clients generating well over a 4x return, this one is one you DON'T want to miss!
Looking to step up your copywriting game? BUCKLE UP BABY! Jason is a legend when it comes to writing copy and goes in depth on his course and some actionable takeaways you can implement for your business today.
After building multiple 8 figure brands, David chats on what made his ads so effective and RICH even with massive budgets. We also chat on the importance of company culture and collaborating with partners to get you to the next level personally and business wise.
We dive into the high ticket luxury industry with Zarak who spends 7m+ every year for his clients. We check out his BEST ads and WORST ads and why they made it or broke it!
Ever wonder what kind of ad templates set the biggest brands up for success? Tune in as we have Rory Stern as we dive into his MASSIVE accounts on how he tests different copy angles to really draw out quality traffic that converts.
We dive into THE premier newsletter for DTC biz's. Pilouthouse also manages like 25m/year. We dive into his podcast and what makes it successful, how he developes content that converts. How his old business got vaught up by spending too much on guests for events. We also dive into building equity with a partner vs going on and taking exisiting equity. Super interesting concept.
After spending $100m+ a year, we dive into the exact strategies Samir uses for his clients to scale them rapidly across Facebook, IG, and YouTube. We dive into one of his brands Summerboard and how creating a financing option was the push needed to take them to the next level.
Ever wonder what it takes to have an everlasting ad you can use for months on end across multiple channels? Tune in as we dive into the exact formula Keith uses for his business as well as his clients to generate well over 7 figures.
We dive into a DEEP conversation with Ron Lynch on how he was able to generate over $4 billion in sales for the brands he's worked with. How he was able to form partnerships with massive brands like GoPro. And how he's changing the world in 2020 creating Intellihelp, a group of 80k people across 8 continents by creating a support system.
On this episode of the Rich Ad Poor Ad Podcast, we have Jeff Lerner the CEO and Founder of Entre. We dive into his $1.5 million dollar monthly spend and how he made the change to do things that really matters to him. We also dive into his book funnel, how he disqualifies leads, and creates strategic upsells. And to add the icing on the cake, we chat on relationship marketing and the importance in todays world of digital marketing.
TAKEAWAYS
What caused an ad’s Google Search numbers from organic to skyrocket from 0 to 50,000 a month and generate 1 BILLION impressions.
How a $1M ad spend on a single video ad brought in over 5M views.
What YouTube’s “external entity linked annotation” feature is and why it helped a 1 hour+ long VSL totally crush.
The lesson of the “maintain buying power” lady and building wealth by growing a portfolio.
What companies are spending 40% of VC funding on -- it’s not on employees.
TAKEAWAYS
How he got 947,000 views in an hour on TikTok for just sitting in a chair.
What the TikTok Creator Fund is - how to qualify for it and how it can add up to serious money.
The high cost of not being ready to go viral at a moment’s notice.
Why he only spends one hour a day running his business and how you can too.
How companies like Adobe are maximizing high level employee productivity by outsourcing this kind of work.
TAKEAWAYS
Why appealing to aspiration rather a person’s desperation is a more powerful sales lever.
How taking the moral high ground keeps helps profits and preserves your sanity.
His fool-proof client negotiation strategy for performance based payment -- if they bite, it’s right.
When and why to work for 100% free.
Plus the highly effective low-tech way to focus-group your customer base on the cheap.
TAKEAWAYS
Why you have to start with a live webinar before you even think about automating -- and which platform to use when you do.
How to create the two core beliefs you MUST convey to your webinar attendees that will let you cale to the moon.
Why a low webinar conversion rate of 15% is actually great.
The key factor is for getting a 400% return on a webinar inside of 30 days -- it has more to do with the price than the product.
Why you need to get your offer 100% dialed in and how to do it in 60 days for less than you might think.
Check in for a chat with UK e-comm agency owner and Ireland’s first Facebook Marketing Partner, Gil David about the ins and outs of managing $5M to $6M a year on ads for e-commerce clients and brands including Telefonica, Kaspersky, Eton Shirts, Heidi Klein, Mous, David Meade Mindreader.
We’ll see how he squeezes every last penny out of successful copy and video that did well over 7-figures. Figure out the epic failure of a Fivver flop. And get his insights on the financial basics of staying in business during tricky times.
TAKEAWAYS
- Why iterating on what works is huge -- and why so few have the discipline to do it.
- The anti-ad content advertisers tend to put at the bottom of a funnel -- and why you shouldn’t.
- What you MUST do with 25% of your revenue if you want to be viable long term.
- Why the client/agency dynamic is deadly and how to deal with clients on these terms instead.
- How to blend performance-based revenue with a retainer and still make out like a bandit.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
www.linkedin.com/in/gil-david
www.twitter.com/@Gil_RunDMG
A serial entrepreneur specializing in helping 7-9 figure companies scale faster and more profitably with paid traffic, Max Finn is President of Unicorn Innovations, a customer acquisition agency that has generated hundreds of millions in traceable revenue through online paid traffic for some of the world’s largest brands. Prior positions include serving as CEO at Startup Drugz, CMO at Quantum Media Marketing, Head of Digital at Kevin Harrington, COO at Loot!, Advisor at KultureCity, SEO and Social Marketing Specialist at NAI Global, Analyst at CREOpoint, Student Consultant at Social Ventures Partner Rhode Island, Managing PArtner at GST Media, and VP Director of Business Operations and Finance at MOHKAlife. Finn is a graduate of Babson College where he earned a BA in Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management after transferring from Emory University -Goizueta Business School.
Tune in to this talk with e-comm and affiliate expert, Max Finn,President of Unicorn Innovations, a customer acquisition agency that has generated hundreds of millions in traceable revenue through online paid traffic for some of the world’s largest brands.
We’ll see how he’s flying the flag to scale ProudPatriot.com to $15M a year selling Donald Trump bobbleheads. Suss out the response-generating secrets of video surveys. And go behind the scenes on what burst promotions are and why they work.
Then he’ll talk about how high value individuals can boost their net worth by diversifying their portfolios by buying e-comm brands or getting equity.
TAKEAWAYS
How top of the funnel video poll ads can generate micro-commitment and highly profitable 4% to 5% click through rates.
Why choice doesn’t always depress response -- and how the power move of presenting multiple problems and solutions can pay off.
How to make a mint printing money by selling it for more than face value.
Why free + shipping offers have flopped for them.
How the “loss pool” concept is changing the game for agencies who want to edge into performance marketing.
RESOURCES/CONTACT
https://www.maxwellfinn.com/
https://unicorninnovations.com/
Guest Bio:
Kia Zomorrodi is co-founder, creative director, and partner at Bacon & Eggs Media, a digital agency that creates and distributes converting social video ads that drive sales for ecomm brands. Before that he served as an Account executive at Virool, Client Associate at Wells Fargo Advisors and A Marketing Associate at MIR3. He also co-founded and served as CEO of Noble Life Apparel. A graduate of the University of San Francisco, Zomorrodi earned a BS in Business Administration, Finance, and Marketing.
Takeaways:
- How an “off-brand” pitch man stole the show and brought in big bucks.
- Why funny works better than fear -- even for the most morbid products.
- How to sell crazy creative to clients who bring their own ideas to the table.
- What to do to make sure videos go the distance and can work on any platform -- including TV.
- Why blowing $20K on production doesn’t make sense for brands with ad spends below this benchmark.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
Baconandeggsmedia.com
Kia@baconandeggsmedia.com
Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Uh, click-through rates was three times as high as the product ads. Uh, they brought their CPA down 35%. Um, so overall the numbers are great, but also just the, uh, what it did for them as a brand and recognition wise was huge.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
[inaudible] you're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
All right, everybody. We are back on this fine Friday afternoon. We have another episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast, or we kind of dive into, you know, what's working what isn't working and some nice financial tips. We got your host today, Dylan Carpenter in the house. What is good, everybody. And we have a very special guests behind the scenes of some big brands when it comes to awesome video production likes, you know, tristano.com, traf hot sauce, and a very specific client. We're going to be talking about today. Imperfect produce. Now, if you've seen these guys, they slang on ads. Of course we're dealing with Mr. Kia Zomorodi. Hopefully I didn't slaughter that too much, but man, thanks for jumping on this.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Hey, of course, man. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Hell yes. So I mean the brands you work on, everybody's got to have seen these ads at some point, these bad boys are spending shoes, six figures, man. But go ahead and give everybody a little bit of background of kind of how you're attributing to this. You know, what y'all are kind of doing over there? Bacon and eggs media.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah. So my personal background is I've always been kind of into video making as a kid. I was always doing kind of the sketch comedy stuff, uh, running around with a camera throughout school college. We were doing these college videos. A lot of stuff, few stuff went viral can say a lot, but definitely back in the days it was exciting and then got into programmatic ad buying at an internship, uh, while in school in San Francisco. So, um, yeah, we were running all this content for brands spending, you know, upwards of like a hundred, 200 grand on these campaigns with these terrible creatives. I, me and my partner was just like, man, you know, we've been doing this video stuff and make really funny, great content that people love. Why don't we start making this stuff for brands and you know, start making commercials out of it. So, uh, that's what we started doing. And at first it was very, just branded funny videos for companies. And once you started media buying for it and seeing what worked, it kind of transitioned into what it is now, or we make, uh, entertaining, engaging videos are informative. Uh, they sell and they work really well in the media buying funnels.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Oh yeah. And I mean, shoot, when it comes to acquisition these days, that's the key to everything. So I mean with these types of videos, they're just so disruptive. And my gosh, I feel like they got a flood of the Gates with the new customers.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah. I mean, they're fun to make, but they're also disruptive. They are eye-catching people will remember these ads. They want to watch it. They want to share, they want to buy from him most importantly.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Oh yeah. So I mean, when it comes to this rich ad segments today, this one's gonna be pretty juicy. It serve an awesome, you know, brand called imperfect produce and y'all may have seen these ads, but I mean, we've got a guy who's inked up piercings, you know, looks like he could have just walked off fricking, you know, prison almost more or less, but you know, he's kinda diving into these produce that are just very odd shapes. I'm assuming that's kind of what the business all about more or less, but go ahead and kind of dive into this video for us. We're going to have this in the show notes for everybody to check out and you've probably seen it, but go ahead and rip it apart for us. [inaudible]
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah. So kind of how it came about. We were, we were working with them to just, this was like one of our early projects and they, they just wanted like some very clean product videos, uh, you know, just something to show the brand. And then what they do is they sell imperfect produce for this kind of price, you know, things with like, like eggplants with like arms coming out of it. Or it's something a little bit weird when people don't normally want to buy out. Uh, so they came to us, we were doing the, the, we were planning out of the normal product stuff for them and we're like, Hey, you know, we should do a funny spokesperson ad. And they were kind of hesitant about it, but we had pitched them these crazy ideas. And one of them was, uh, originally it was like, Hey, let's get this like intimidating Terry crews type guy.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Who's just like, and Jack talking about like how much he loves produce. So, you know, just catch people off guard. Um, and we had all started auditioning people for this role and we got this guy, his name is [inaudible] and uh, you can see in the, in the ad he's, uh, he's just pretty much like this cholo dude. Uh, he's this Mexican guy, nicest guy in the world, but he basically, I mean, that looks intimidating. It opens up on this guy, who's tad it. And this, this actor was just in the tax collector was Shyla boss. So he's like plays all these, like, I don't want to say typecast, but he gets all these rules. So the ad opens up on this guy and it looks intimidating, but he basically like flips a switch. And he's this really nice guy talking about how he loves his fruit season, it's vegetables and you shouldn't judge, uh, things by their appearance.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Um, and then this ads just like completely went viral. Um, if you, if you look at the Facebook comments, like every comment is about, you know, how much they love this ad, how much they love this commercial. So we had delivered two imperfect produce, both, uh, the product ads that we did as well as this one. And this one just like completely blew things out of the water. Uh, click through rates was three times as high as the ads. Uh, they brought their CPA down 35%. Um, so overall the numbers are great, but also just the, uh, what it did for them as a brand and recognition wise was huge. And it's funny I'll act and was telling us like we had, there was some funny lines in there about like a strawberry summer salad. This guy told us he'd be walking around in LA and people would be yelling at him like, Hey, look, it's Mr. Strawberry summer salad.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Oh my gosh. That's yeah. I mean, how many views did this have across everything, you know, four or five. And I had to have been a ton of that.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
They had we, so when we do these campaigns in the, there's always like the main ad, but, uh, there, and we chop up like so many versions of this. So it, I think, I mean, some of them on their own, we're doing five to 10 million and then there's iterations of that Oregon millions of views. Um, so they had launched a bunch of different versions of this, you know, and sometimes you want to put all the social proof to one video and just rock that one forever. Uh, other times, you know, we had all these cuts and we had different scripts. So I think a combined view count of probably, you know, upwards of 20 million
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Man. That is, that is nuts. And I mean, did y'all see a huge uptake or, or did you even kind of see these numbers of just kind of new customers or is this more of a video that went viral?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Um, well, so they, most of these brands we work with now will have internal buyers. Uh, so we hand things off to them. But, uh, so I don't know exactly, you know, what, what the numbers were as far as how many customers came in, but I know they were really stoked on it. Uh, so yeah, we're, uh, we're probably going to be rocking one of those soon. Oh, heck
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah. Brand or same
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Style, I think same style, probably same character. Um, it's, I mean, this was like something completely different and off-brand for that, but I mean, as far as the character wise and type of content, but overall, you know, the, the aesthetics won brand, the messaging was on brand. Um, it was just a very unique, uh, creative and it worked really well
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Because you mentioned it was a little more off-brand earlier, it was this kind of more of a risk for them to take or do they kind of put their faith in you? I'm, I'm kind of curious. Cause when it comes to these bigger brands, I mean, it's very easy to stick to the norm and kind of be boring and consistent, but this is just very, you know, complete one 80. It seems like for their kind of actual more, you know, positioning as a brand.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah. And I mean, this was one of our earlier campaigns and I think we, it was part of, it was us just being like, Hey, we're just going to bite the bullet. Like we have we're shooting this anyways. Why don't we just shoot this, uh, this funny ad as well. And they were, they were down to take the risk and it was kind of surprising cause this, this was the concept that was definitely the most edgy of all the ones we've pitched to them. Um, so yeah, I think they just took the risk and they're like, Hey, if it works, it works. If not, you know, it doesn't have to see the light of day. We'll just run the clean, safe stuff, man, this
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Is a total rich ad here. So I mean, for y'all listening, if you're trying to boost that, click through rate website, traffic, get some new customers and have a killer video that gets millions of views, you know, who to call eggs and bacon, bacon and eggs media shaky.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah. You, you gotta run with the bacon first.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Um, how long has it, how long has it been around actually though?
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Um, we've been doing this seriously for about two years. So, you know, at first it was kind of out of college. Like let's just have some fun and make some videos on the side. Um, and then when we saw the traction started to pick up is when we seriously, um, started making moves towards it and working with the e-comm brands and really, uh, niching down on, you know, what it is that we do. Because if you look at like some of our early content, we were like, one of our first campaigns was for this, uh, Indian dating app. And it was just a viral video about almost like a guy code type style of, you know, it was a girl talking about, you know, how did my parents find all these dates for me? Like this is crazy. Where do they find these guys? And then it cuts to this crazy fantasy scene of like an auction and this and these Indian like auction man is basically selling off suitors through this room of parents.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And it was, it's really funny. They're like talking about this guy, who's got this PhD and the parents are just like going crazy. They're trying to auction for this guy. So that one went crazy viral, but we notice, you know, that's, it's fun to make these funny videos that organically go viral, but the way the landscape changes on Facebook and now you gotta pay all this money for people to see your content, you know, we started transitioning and it's now more Dr. You know, we also want people to buy the product. Um, so that's kind of where we made that move and that's kind of where we've been for two years.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Oh gosh. Yeah, man. It's, it's, it's been cool. Cause I had to have seen this maybe a year ago and I remember Josh from, you know, tri snow posting that video y'all did for them as well. So I mean, I've been seeing, y'all creep up on the radar more and more. And man, it's just been super cool to watch how y'all kind of grow there.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Oh, thank you man. It's uh, it's been a fun process. I mean, this is like, this has always been a hobby of mine. Uh, I had just, I had just converted some old tapes I found as a kid and it was crazy seeing I did this. Uh, it was very weird, but I put on a wig and I was at cross dressing at like 11 years old, making a hair, making a shampoo commercial for a class project, which was like super random. And I totally forgot I ever did that, but I'm like, that's crazy how, you know, life comes full circle. I was making these crazy videos for a school project and like the sixth grade now here I am making these crazy videos, but for, you know, huge e-com brands,
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Oh man, it's wild. And you always hear about these stories of these bad-ass entrepreneurs and you know, business owners who didn't even know, but they had little subscription, you know, models when they're like, you know, having a lawn service when they were 12. And so it's so cool to kind of see how, you know, his shapes because I mean, yeah, goes full circle there. I like
Speaker 1 (11:54):
To, I like to joke around that, like me and my buddy first where the original Postmates or the original Instacart, because we, uh, had, uh, these gas scooters and we were buying groceries for our neighborhood. Uh, so the first thing was like, uh, uh, cabbage. We bought some lettuce from my mom and she still owes me a dollar for that lettuce, but I'm like, we, we were the first like Instacart.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Gosh. Yeah. I mean, shoot it don't you wish you could have monetized that back in the day. So, well heck yeah. I mean, y'all gotta go check this out. Bacon and eggs, media.com, check out the videos. They're super sick.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
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Speaker 3 (13:50):
Check it out@funneldash.com. Now, while those are some killer rich ads, we're going to dive into a super poor ad. Now this is one that found surfing the web. Um, it's very depth oriented thought. It'd be kind of fun for a Friday. So ahead. Hadn't check out your messenger and I want your first thoughts, cause this is an actual ad that's running.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Okay. I'm just opening a guarantee. Acceptance for ages 40 to 85, no physical exam required. Is this a joke?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
The amount of stuff. Oh yeah. Go bring it up.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
All right. So at first I'm thinking guaranteed acceptance for ages 40 to 85. Does that mean like if you die, you can, you're guaranteed accepted. Uh, but now I'm realizing that it's just like more of a life insurance plan. Uh,
Speaker 3 (14:46):
It doesn't caskets to buy in the beginning and then it kind of threw me off because we have the learn more and the call now. So there was just so much going on and not to mention the best part, all the watermarks. I mean, oof,
Speaker 1 (15:01):
That is, I thought this, I thought that the watermarks and maybe like what you did to share it, but that's this is on the actual ad.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
This is an actual yeah. A sponsored ad. Yeah. It's, it's, it's pretty nuts.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
There's like multiple watermarks on it too. There's a shutter stock one and then there's side productions. So they really both, I guess all the companies wanted to make sure we knew whose photo this was.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Right. I might even be noticed that side of productions at the beginning. If you're hearing this right now, outside a guy, but this is rough.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It doesn't, it's so confusing at first. Um, and yeah, I mean, you can't even tell what it's for plan star for $9 a month. I guess maybe it's a life insurance it's fear sells, but this isn't like anything that's too scary or even descriptive enough to tell what it is.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
You know, I wish they honestly had that plan starting from nine bucks a month. I think it'd be kind of fun. Or did I have plans starting at six bucks a month where you can kind of have some nice jokes about being 60 to under, you know,
Speaker 1 (16:14):
This bit, the bullet and then six bucks a month or that,
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I mean, Hey, you only live once. Right. But yeah, this is the definition of these very ads you roast on the podcast. So it's a good way to ease the mood a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
No physical exam required. That's nice.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah. For life instructor,
Speaker 1 (16:34):
We'll be right on the brink and you can go get yourself a life insurance policy.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Do you skydive daily?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Do you find this ad?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I feel like Facebook's like knows I'm looking for these now. So I think about 70% I put out I'm actually getting hit by them, but I'm in a ton of groups. We're all just, you know, host, Hey, y'all post some of the ads you've ever seen it all screen grab those. I think this was one that somebody else grabbed. Um, but it was just so good not to roast, to be honest,
Speaker 1 (17:06):
It's really good. And I feel like you could still do something really humorous with, uh, even even a morbid subject like this. Um, but you know, people want to stay safe and serious. So they come out with a really ad like this. You can joke about it.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah. And I'll be a hundred percent honest in this scenario. I have ran ads for, you know, a place that does cremations and the amount of like, they're surprisingly pretty cool with me. You know, having a funny jokes or a, Hey, our deal are hot, hot, hot, you know, I mean, if you can have fun with it, why not?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
She needs to do, I mean, people get, they're going to die one day. Like why not make a joke about it?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Exactly. People are on Facebook are changing more and more to that. The negative feedback, you know, super hot, but Hey, it's in the boost. My ad Wars, I don't really care.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Totally. I mean, that's something we see a lot too is, is how much, how the comments are different than these years compared to prior, uh, some content that we run we'll start seeing like the crazy, uh, I don't want to say social justice, warrior comments, but you know, similar that you don't get prior. And it makes you think about, you know, maybe being a tad bit more safe with what you're on or at least thoughtful about it.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
It's getting a lot, you know, worse and worse these days cancel culture. I mean, the last thing you'd want to have, you know, if you have an ad that's going to be really disruptive and plot twists and ends up offending a ton of people and goes viral later and everything. So, you know, I used to be, you know, negative feedback was sometimes good on the ads, but these days it's, it's, you know, 20, 20, it's just that weird
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And scare. What is that?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
This poor ad is, you know, terribly poor, but let's go ahead and, you know, take a page out of that. Rich dad, poor dad book, dive into some more financial fundamentals, some tips out there. I know you were kind of mentioning some super juicy, you know, stuff before we even kind of, you know, went live on the podcast. Here are for the recording more or less, but let's kind of dive into some financial tips. I know you have a super interesting kind of background there. So go ahead and release the beast and kind of provide some insights for those out there.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Sure. I mean, so when you do these creative productions and video productions in general, they can be pretty costly. So a big thing that we learned early was you can't be like buddy, buddy with clients and be loose about invoices and payments or else they'll just screw you. Um, so, you know, early on we, you know, we're loose about it, you know, pay when you can. Uh, and, uh, we w what we were trying to do is take a lot of performance deals, you know, we'll fund the production for the right company and, you know, pay us off when you, when you, uh, start selling. And we did that with a, uh, an Indiegogo campaign, and this guy had this awesome product and we're like, screw it. He doesn't have the money, but like, well, let's just fund it ourselves, which in theory is, is good.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
And we'll do it at this point. But when you're early on and you don't have the cashflow, the guide, didn't the product never launched. And it's been two years. So we were just in a hole, you know, 10, 15 grand, uh, at that point. So that's when we learned, you know, enough of this, like net 30 when you're starting a big project, uh, we need to make sure all of our costs are paid prior. And even now we'll try and 60% to start the contract. And we don't have, we don't have to pitch anymore for a projects. I think where we're at, we don't have to, you know, give ideas before starting a project. We make sure all our costs are covered. Cause productions are costly. I mean, can spend up to 35 grand just producing these videos. Um, so that brings another thing is you want to make sure everything is budgeted to a T and what we've, we've had this really intricate, um, pretty much video production, budget template, and every line item is accounted for.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Um, so then when we start to do another project for a similar brand, you know, we'll whip up the last one and say, okay, so we have four grand for a location fees. We have a thousand bucks we can spend on talent. And it's really about making sure every line item is accounted for everything is budgeted for it's estimated even lunches. So you go over 150 bucks for lunch, you got to jot it down or else it's coming out of someone's pocket or some margin. The other big thing we learned, uh, cashflow is important. Make sure you get paid ahead of time. Uh, don't be too nice with clients. Um, and, and it's, I guess you get the luxury of when you start building your brand name, you can be that way.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yeah. I mean, for these clients, do they come to use, like, know, Hey, we already have this in mind, or are you pretty much coming up with the whole concept from scratch?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Uh, we're pretty much coming up with the whole concept from scratch. So they'll come to us and I'm pretty much, we're only working on referral word of mouth these days. We don't run any ads for ourself. Uh, we don't really do any outbound. Um, it's all referrals, word of mouth, uh, from good projects we've done. So they'll just come to us and be like, Hey, you know, we really liked this project. Can you do something for us? And, uh, and we'll go from scratch and we'll pitch, you know, numerous high level concepts to them. And they'll say, Oh, I really like this crazy idea. You know, the God of wine, which we did for snow. And, uh, they'll just let us run with it. Some clients really want to be hands-on, which is cool. You know, we go back and forth with them on the creative. They'll have great ideas too. And some clients are just like, Hey man, just deliver me the final video. Like, I don't care what the script says. I don't care about these lines. Just, you know, you know what to do, and we trust you guys, like, go get it done.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's the best scenarios there. I mean, your furries.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's great. And it's, it's almost like when you it's, it's the more successful brands that are like that, like snow and Josh. I mean, he understands like when you hire a big agency, you don't need to micromanage them. So that was a very, it was pretty hands-off and he was, and he was trustworthy. I was like, Hey, you guys know what you're doing? Um, I'll, I'll approve some things I need to be improved, but for the most part, you know, take it away. And he showed up on set and we got, and he loved what he saw. He loved the idea ahead of time and yeah, that one came out great.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Now I'm going to throw a curve ball OD HSA. It's, it's kinda financial late, I guess. Um, but I mean, when it comes to a big brand like snow versus, you know, maybe somebody who's spinning out 10 to 30 K a month on ads, is your service, you know, feasible for them, or are you really sitting on those six figure ad spend kind of accounts? Um, cause I'm kind of curious on what is it going to kind of turn into to say, Hey, if somebody's spending, you know, 30 to 50 K a month on ads, how much should they be spending on, you know, creative development or, you know, video production like this?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I think that's something we've been trying to come up with like a formula for, uh, but it's, I mean, it's, it's hard to come up with an exact number, but yeah, if you're, if you're spending, you know, 10 to 20 grand a month, it doesn't really make sense to spend another 20 grand just to produce content. Uh, I think there is a level and once you start getting to the 30, 50 grand, um, it makes sense to spend 30 grand on a campaign. You, you need to look at your numbers and see, you know, how much, how what's that realize and what does it have to be to pay off this campaign? You know? And, and at some levels it's really easy, you know, let's say you're spending a hundred grand on a campaign and you're doing normally two X, even if the content bumps you up 2.5, you know, that's 50 K two that pays off the campaign.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Um, so yeah, I mean, we have companies come to us that spend 10 K a month in Australia. It'd be like, it doesn't make sense for us to spend 25 grand on a campaign. Um, you would have to end these. The thing is that the content that we produce is, is scalable in the last long time we've owned. We've been running some of these ads for 14 months, so you can really stretch it out and pay it off a long time, but you have to be ready to put money into these campaigns to, uh, you need to have the spend behind it, um, to yeah. To see the return and to pay it off. Um, so yeah, with these six figure companies, it's, it's super easy. I mean, even the smallest uptake and realize pays off the campaigns in a month and just produces dividends after that. Um, but you know, the smaller stuff, I would say anything under 15 K uh, you know, start small. Maybe you don't need a huge campaign, but you can do the UGC stuff. You can do a small 10 K campaign 5k content creation and, you know, get something that works. And then eventually, you know, do the big Polish dad. Um, it's also a big brand play. And if you're not at the point where you need a huge brand play, then maybe it doesn't make sense to do it right away.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
That's where I was kind of going, gonna lead to next. I mean, for, you know, the individuals who are coming to you for their first, you know, video, like this is a more of a brand awareness videos, and more direct response is a, you know, something they want on the homepage or something with an ads what's usually that kind of firsts, you know, huge video that create for, you may have some insights on that.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah. I mean, it's just like, Hey, make us some money, make a video. Um, but I think it depends. I mean, there are clients that they're at the point of scaling and they don't, they might not have the best content yet. And they know they could crack it open with like the right creative. And those are very much, you know, let's make something that is very Dr driven. Um, and, uh, and, and, and is also brandable. Cause all these ads are in the end, they're brandable, they're crazy. And they're weird and people remember what they are and they have a positive feeling on the brand. Um, but some of them are, you know, we want to make sure that it also boosts the creative compared to what they're currently running, but then there's companies like snow that already they're crushing it, you know, like how much better can we do with this campaign?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And those are big, you know, brand plays. Um, so you want to make something that, you know, people who are seeing this skin tie know the product of this really fancy ad with this crazy nice house and these crazy characters and this lady who can whiten her teeth, even though she's married to the God of wine and they're memorable. And also these, uh, when we produce these, uh, campaigns, um, they can be used on a lot of different platforms. So not only can you use it on YouTube, Facebook, but they're all going to connect to TV now. Uh, so that's a big thing too, you know, with, with big brands who have the budget to put it on TV or connected TV, they can all be repurposed for, uh, different platforms.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
No, that's the best part is, I mean, even if you have, you know, a minute video, you can snip that. And so, you know, nice little 10 to 15 second clips to, you know, utilize for wherever you want to put it. So that's definitely a snazzy angle there.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Totally. And that's kind of, and at first it was, you know, how nice can we make these videos, but now it's more of, you know, how many of these videos can we make at, you know, at a, at a high level, at a high quality cause, um, you want to make sure you have a lot of different cuts of these
Speaker 3 (28:14):
man, this has been super juicy. Well, I mean, how can anybody find you? What do you got cooking in the kitchen next? You know, let's update the people.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
I think if you just go to our site, uh, bacon and eggs, media.com, you can hit us up there. You can, you can email me Kia at bacon and eggs, media.com. Um, yeah, I mean, I would say hit me up on Twitter. I don't have a Twitter yet, but apparently it's popping again. So maybe I need to delete my old college tweets and get back on it. Um, so I would say, just shoot me an email, happy to chat with anyone. Uh, you know, we love working with cool, interesting brands. E-comm brands direct to consumer rad. So yeah, it'd be fun to chat with anyone.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Hell yeah, man. Well, we saw what it takes to make it rich had a very ad and some sick finance tips, man, so much. [inaudible] appreciate it. Thanks for jumping on today.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Good stuff. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich, add more at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich ed [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or ed.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
Founder, CEO and Director of Video Results at Viewability, Tom Breeze is a YouTube video ad expert as well as an author, consultant, and investor. After earning a BS in Psychology and Communication at Eastbourne College he went on to earn another BS as well as a MS in Psychology at the University of Leeds, Post graduation, Breeze began consulting for Inside Performance and started TomBreeze.com a company that focused on helping people become confident and competent at public speaking.
TAKEAWAYS
Why what works on FaceBook rarely works on YouTube -- and how to adapt one to successfully run on the other platform.
Discover the 3 core components of a successful YouTube ad campaign -- and which one is most essential.
The surprising psychological differences between a “check out shopper”, an “in-store shopper”, and a “window shopper” and what you must do to convert each of them.
How to use video to harness the power of unconscious desires to get people to buy something they might not have even been aware they wanted.
Plus why YouTube videos are going to epic lengths -- like 30 minutes plus -- to convert viewers into buyers.
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In this episode, Tom breeze breaks down a winning YouTube ad. That's driven over 4 million views, Tom spending over a hundred thousand dollars a day and is 100% performance-based and is actually fronting the media and the advertising cost for his clients and getting paid a CPA and a commission. It's a beautiful model. Absolutely love it. If you're an ad agency indefinitely, take notes on Tom's model. If you're an advertiser or a brand looking to open up YouTube ads, Tom is the legend. All right, let's dive into it. So, um, when we broke this down, we, we look at this first act in the video cause it kind of continues on from that burning guitar, uh, moves into, uh, Tony around the campfire. And the, the idea being is that that come fire scene at night, when Tony is talking to you, you kind of want to be
Speaker 2 (01:07):
[inaudible].
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad, poor ed podcast. This is your host, Zach Johnson, and on today's show, we've got the founder and CEO of viewability, the agency and training company that specializes in YouTube ads. I think Dylan, this is the first, uh, I think YouTube ads like media buyer and expert that we've had on the show. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty pumped.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So this will be a breath of fresh air. Don't you think? Oh yeah. Video is so King. So, I mean, I'm so pumped to dive into this, especially being YouTube because it's, it's a foreign language for me, that's for sure. Well, I mean, what's also unique about, uh, today's guest is that, you know, he truly is a pay for results and performance-based, um, you know, in, in the, in the world of thousands of agencies, uh, very few actually, uh, deliver on this, um, most are, you know, a base fixed retainer and a percentage of spend, uh, at best. And, uh, I think that, um, these guys literally are fronting the media for their clients and getting paid out, uh, on a CPA on a, on a commission basis. So, uh, he definitely, uh, is worth his weight and what he has to say about YouTube ads. So I'm pretty pumped to have him on the show without further ado, Tom breeze, welcome to the rich add poor add podcast. How are you doing
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Very good. Zach and Dylan. Yeah. Good buddy. How are things
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Good, man? I, uh, not only are the first YouTube ads, but you are this second, uh, media buyer, an agency in the UK that we've had on the show. So congrats.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
There we go. Okay, perfect. Yeah, I expect it now.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I love it, man. Well, you know, for anybody that's been around in spending any meaningful amount of money on advertising, I think that, you know, they've heard of you, uh, through one form channel of another, um, and you spoke at digital marketers events. You've obviously, you know, wrote the book, uh, but tell everybody a little bit about what you're up to most recently and, uh, and what you're up to these days.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah. So, um, the agency's going from strength to strength. So that's been a big part of our growth. Um, we've kind of kept our head down and stayed in our lane for quite some time. So we, in the past, we've kind of dabbled a little bit with Facebook ads and that sort of thing. And we know we can do some good work there, but we realize now like probably about four or five years ago that like YouTube ads is off thing. Like that's just what we know really well. And we just go deeper and deeper into that world. Um, so I still thought like we're learning tons every single day and we just apply that learning to all clients all the time. So yeah, we're lucky to be performance based because it means we really do follow it. We partner with our clients as opposed to be an agency where you're doing the work for a client and the scenarios we get are such that we can, we can be in a position where we fund tests and things where we can kind of say, right, well, let's, let's dump a load of money into that test and see if it actually works or not with a client would never get a sign off on that.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
We can do that. Um, and it allows us to learn so quickly. So yeah, we're, we're focusing on kind of diving deep into creative, how we can turn creative into more of an SOP and more predictable because sometimes it feels like it's like dark magic that people can create these amazing videos and how do they do it? And I come from a very psychological background. So I'm always looking at kind of what makes people tick, what makes people go, yes, I want this thing. Um, and how do we structure that so that every ad we create is able to do the job and get conversions at scale as well. So yeah, we're always testing, always finding new things. We've just started doing a lot more in the kind of training and consultancy space as well. So yeah, we're kind of hoping that your viewability becomes the home of YouTube advertising and we just got our heads down, working hard on that.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Awesome man. And how much ad spend do you guys advise on manage and really oversee you think on an annual basis these days
Speaker 3 (05:51):
An annual basis is difficult? Oh, I could probably run the numbers, but we, we kind of oversee around about a hundred thousand dollars a on YouTube advertising. Um, in terms of advice, I'm always like trying to spend more, that's kind of the, uh, the advice I give to most people. Um, and if you can get YouTube working really well, it's, it's a great platform to scale on, like it doesn't work for every industry at scale I must've met, um, you can get it to work for most businesses, but there's gonna be certain industries and certain niches that you can work in that really do scale very well and predictably as well. So, um, when you kind of work in those spaces, it's not difficult to start spending 15, 15, $20,000 a day, um, at scale and at profit as well. So it's, uh, it's, it's a great platform to be on and yeah, you can, you can spend a lot of money on that profitably and we're very much direct response focused.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
That's awesome, man. Yeah. I mean a hundred K a day is, is nothing to scoff at on in terms of YouTube ads and volumes. So congrats on being able to hit that level of, uh, uh, level of scale. Well, let's, let's dive into it, man. I want to know what's working now. I want to know what is this rich ad that we're going to be diving into today?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, so this ad is actually from one of our clients we've worked with for a long time. Um, Tony Polecastro, so he teaches guitar online and there's no one really better. Um, and, um, when it comes to running ads on YouTube, it's, it's kind of it, you've got to keep an eye on what actually works on the platform itself. Like I think a lot of people are advertising on various platforms bit like Facebook. And I think the classic story at the moment is a brand is doing really well on Facebook. And then they don't feel quite so comfortable on that platform or having all of their eggs in one basket, so to speak. So they're going to look into diversify and they look at YouTube and think, okay, well that's the next obvious place to go? And then it becomes, well, Facebook and YouTube are just not the same beast.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It's a very different platform altogether. Um, and so it needs that different approach. Like a lot of the time I tend to look at the three core areas of, of getting a YouTube ad campaign to work really well is like the offer itself, um, which is kind of bounced to the, the positioning of the offer and the margins and the mindset really behind it, the actual ad creative. So what are you gonna do in the actual video ad itself to make it really pull the numbers it needs to, and then also the kind of the campaign types and how to make sure that you're structuring your targeting and your campaigns in the right way to, to really grow and scale. Um, so that's kinda like the three areas we tend to look at. And when we look at bringing in, uh, Tony Polecastro Castro's guitars online, which is a sort of his habits on onto YouTube, we really need to start thinking about like what it takes to, to get someone to convert.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Um, which sounds obvious, but like with YouTube, you do tend to find that you've got a very, very different audience. So with YouTube, you tend to find people that are going there because they're looking to know something or do something or buy something. Those are the kind of three core search based areas. And then you also have like interest based audiences as well. Um, and so when you know that you can think, right, well, depending on what audience we're looking to target, you can create videos for those different audiences. So I tend to kind of break down the audience too, and I try and get really into the psychology of it by imagining the top of the person in front of me. Um, so the, the way I look that is to say, well, there's three different types of customer on YouTube there's. And I think you'd like, if you imagine, if you had an, a bricks and mortar store, for example, and people coming in, so the store you're going to have what I will call them, checkout shopper.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
They're the people that were kind of product under their arm looking to actually just make the purchase. They've got credit card in hand. They may have a few questions to the sales rep just to say, Hey, what's the guarantee on this again? And they're just looking for a little bit more assurance. Sure. They feel comfortable with that purchase. And that's kind of like the checkout shopper and that really, that kind of comes down to remarketing. So getting back in front of people, you already know and make sure you're targeting those. And when you're kind of focusing on that audience, you don't need to have the big, great, big attention grabbing headline to the actual ad itself. It's more just build that relationship with them and just make sure they feel comfort. Uh, cause that's what you're doing real life. And that's kind of how I think about YouTube.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Um, you, then you have like, the second audience would be like the in-store shopper they'd come in store. They probably know they're looking for something, but they still don't know what to buy just yet. They're more, they're looking for a solution to a problem, but they don't know what solution might be right for them. And that's what they will talk to a sales rep. And those in-store shoppers can be targeted with things like search based, targeting like placement targeting, keyword, targeting custom intent targeting or in-market targeting. And, um, those people are looking for those solutions. So that will kind of mean that if you're talking to those people, you would talk to them because if you're a sales rep, you're just going to try and be helpful and give advice and value so people can make better decisions. And obviously if you're doing that, they're going to want to take your, um, take your advice and go with what products you would be recommend.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Um, and then you've got looking at the next audience, which is like the window shopper. I consider it like those are the people outside the store looking in and thinking, okay, this might actually be quite interesting. I'm somewhat interested in this, what this product, what this store has to sell, but I'm not ready to go and buy just yet. And with that sort of interest based audiences, you can, you can use like custom affinity audiences or affinity audiences on, on YouTube. And they can be really dialed in based on people's the URLs that people visit, all the apps they have on their phone or the places they go in real life. Um, you can, you can target people based on that type of, um, data that Google have. And for those people, those window shoppers, you kind of need to grab attention. It's a lot more kind of attention grabbing headline type videos, grab that attention, bring them in, um, and begin that customer journey there.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They may not go and buy right there. And then, but it's great for brand awareness, getting to know who you are and then start looking at that conversion, um, journey for them. But then when you, when you know that, and you can, you can think about that targeting. It starts to mean that right now we know what sort of creative to put together because we know who we're talking to and kind of how we want to talk to them. Um, and that's where you get a lot of ads on YouTube that just missed the Mark completely because they're trying to just put their message in front of people, but not really start with the user's questions. They start with where they're at, because if you start there, it doesn't make the videos a lot more powerful.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Um, all right. So talk to me about the video ad itself here, because like in the very first like three seconds, the guitar is literally getting lit on fire, which definitely is grabbing your attention. Um, but it's, you know, you really thought it through because it's a three and a half minute video, right. It's not something that was just like, I've seen these ads all over Facebook, right? Like Dean Graziosi and, and Russell Brunson did the book funnels where they were just lighting their books on fire. Uh, but you really evolved off of it. And, uh, something's working because there's 4 million views. So like break this down for me.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah. I mean, we weren't, we were obviously aware of the Dean Grasiozi in the, um, Russell Bronson book funnels and things like the book is on fire. It's that popular type thing. Um, we, we came at it from a different angle, um, and happened to come across like a good pattern interrupt to the very beginning of the video. But like the messaging was, is like, what are the words that come up? Um, kind of say like your guitars as useless as plywood basically, and you might as well burn it, um, with where you're at right now. That's what it feels like for a lot of people. But the, what we're looking to do is, is make sure that as quickly as we can, we try and grab people's unconscious desires. So these are the things that they may not be aware that they really really want, but if we portray them and show them, they're like, yeah, yeah, that's what I want.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
That's what I want. So, um, when we broke this down, we, we look at this first act in the video, cause it kind of continues on from that burning guitar and moves into a Tony around the campfire. And the, the idea being is that that campfire scene at night, when Tony is talking to you, you kind of want to be him. You want to be in that scenario, you want to be like, Hey, I would love to learn how to play the guitar so I can sit around a campfire and impress the girl. And I can, um, be with my family or be with my buddies and have a few beers and play the guitar and just like, just enjoy that moment for what it is. And it brings around a lot of community, a little bit of status as well. It kind of brings that identity out from people like, Hey, I'm also a guitar player.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
That's pretty cool. And what we like, what we're trying to emulate is that in that first scene, we kind of, there's three things we want to try and unlock. Really. We want someone to think as soon as they see that video, they want to say, I want to be that person doing that thing and feeling that emotion. Um, so when we, you can even apply this to things like Ty Lopez, his ads, where he's in the car, in the car with her, or in the garage with a guitar, it's like you see the cars and it doesn't appeal to everybody, of course, but you kind of, your unconscious mind is drawn in by the fact there's this cool cars and lots of wealth being shown. And that was consciously like, that's not really, for me, maybe unconsciously, you're still like, that's, that's kind of what I want though. And your unconscious can't stop that desire from happening. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
There's all. I mean, there's also another component to this, which is, uh, Eric Carlson uses, uses this phrase or, um, use this phrase called the concept of use right? Of like there's a ton of ways you could benefit from guitar lessons. Right? Like whether somebody wants to start a band, somebody wants to like, you know, play a weekend gig at a bar. Um, you know, at FunnelDash like we had this, this dashboard tool that like, could have been used in thousands of different ways. Right? Like it could have been used to automate client reporting. It could have been used to like, just get to know your bet, the numbers better. But like the dashboard ultimately was most popularly, like across all customers was really being used to audit their clients, his ad spend. And here, I don't know, uh, Tony's audience like as well. However, I got to guess that the lion's share of the audience, like the number one use of his lessons is for the outcome and the use of being able to play, you know, that like whatever Weezer, YouTube, you know, YouTube, someone like, you know, on a Saturday night at the beach, right?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Like that's, um, this, this concept of use in addition to everything you're saying Tom, which is the desirability aspect of it all.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah. And one thing I would even kind of bring into here as, I mean, shoot, I mean, I know back in college, the amount of times around a bonfire and somebody playing that guitar, I mean, I feel like y'all just made that picture perfect moments where it's like, that could be me, you know what I mean? So I think right on the head there.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah, exactly. Any ad we're creating, we want to have that feeling like, Oh, you want to be that person. Cause as soon as that happens, you kind of you're drawn in. You're like, Oh, I want to be that person. So we've just written another script for, um, a new client who's in the piano playing space. Um, and now that all of our clients are musicians by the way, but, and this just happens to be another client. Um, and we've got her, she's like an amazing at playing piano, like won all these awards and the top like Steinway stuff. And so she's got so much credibility, but we're starting out our ad off with her playing the piano, a Steinway, beautiful piano in the mountains. Um, we tried to do it on the beach, but we got to the mountains because of weather. And that sort of thing is more difficult by the, um, and the whole reason, like with drone footage and things like this, it doesn't, it's a bit of a production, but it doesn't cost a huge amount.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Um, not like, not like the top level media kind of creatives. We're kind of, we like to try and keep things on a budget as much as we can, but like we have that, um, scene or being shot soon where it's like the drone footage and her just kind of losing herself, playing a guitar or playing the piano in the mountain side, there's a striking image and it grabbed it like breaks your attention. Cause you're like, you don't really see that very often, but immediately, like I want to, if you're into, get into wanting to play piano, you're like, I want to be her playing piano like that in the, in the mountains. Like I want to have that complete creative freedom. I want to have that feeling of like, just getting lost in the music because that's kind of what they crave. They crave that kind of creative freedom and being able to play the piano unconsciously and just be in that flow state.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
And so we're kind of showing that really quickly in the video. So it makes you just drawn in immediately and then we can start getting onto the scripts. Like I always think of storyboard first, get the visuals. Right. Cause that's the first thing you see and then the script afterwards. Um, and then that then compliments the storyboard rather than the other way around. I think a lot of people go script first and then try and storyboard it afterwards. But um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I tend to focus the other way around. Yeah, that is awesome. You're amazing. You're amazing. And he said that God is so different. It's, it's super nifty to kind of even think about, I love this. Oh my gosh, nifty. Really, really, we're going to say the word nifty on the rich end port. But
Speaker 5 (19:29):
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Speaker 1 (20:49):
Uh, let's talk, it wasn't poor ads. I mean, I mean, uh, I know you're, you're killing on YouTube ads, but you got to have some losers in there of like, Oh, we hear us. We have our fair share of loses for sure. Yeah. Break, break down this poor ed man. I want to know what, what doesn't work. Yeah. So with the, with the poor at, um, we were kind of, we didn't
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Confident with it going in any way, but we like to test pretty much everything we can and sometimes clients will say, Hey, this is working ridiculously well on Facebook for us. And we should use this on YouTube. Um, now not to say that the concept of the ad that you might have working really well on Facebook won't work on YouTube. There's some of the concepts of work, but it's been done in such a way where it just doesn't really fit the YouTube space. So a lot of like, so this ad here that we're talking about here is like, um, we've kind of cut the left-hand side. Well, first of all, it's a Facebook ad try and be repurposed into a YouTube video ad. And normally when it's like square or vertical video, we try and replace that. Cause obviously on YouTube, a lot of 69 by nine space, and you don't have text above the video or comments underneath, you literally just have the video playing as a we've gone on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
There's not like a social element to it as more like running a TV ad. So when we get given like a vertical video or a square video, we have to kind of fill in the sides to make it make sense. And um, so we, we, we thought we'd be clever about it by saying right with that space that we need to fill in. If we're to move that square video to the side, we've got a load of space on the left-hand side. We thought we'd add in some testimonials and the reviews and a headline in there. And so we kind of like bring the, bring the farm back to Qatar and like a 4.9 out of five stars. It's kind of held there during the ad on the right-hand side, it's basically like a testimonial. Um, and someone like saying great things about the product and we don't got a bit of voiceover going on as well, but it was, it was very much what works on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Let's try and apply it to YouTube, like a testimonial ad. And even if we ran it as a remarketing ad, it still didn't work very well at all. But cold, it was just dreadful. It just doesn't work at all because it wasn't really written for YouTube. You gotta remember like people on YouTube looking for answers, looking for help. And they're not necessarily looking for stray away testimonial of your products. It's like, that's not necessarily what they want to see immediately. Um, they wanna know that you can provide value and help to them. And based on that, they'll continue the journey with you. So it's just a different platform and those ads very rarely work. And so yeah, this, this ad is basically doesn't even show anybody in the video. You can't even connect with anybody in the video, just literally just shows. Um, I mean, it's in hindsight, it's so easy to review right?
Speaker 3 (23:35):
To say, this is why it was so bad, but when he's like, like if I ask, I had to kind of say why it's not going to work, it'll be so much more difficult. Um, but, uh, yeah, the ad just bond, basically it was, I literally went through the account and found the worst ad and I was like, yeah, this is the worst ad we've run. Um, but you can kind of see why it's, it's just not, um, it's, there's nothing really going on. That's compelling. And it it's more just, um, the, the ad is trying to just show a testimonial on that. Testimonial is not going to pull the numbers we needed to.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Yeah. This is a complete one 80 from the original average and that's wild. Cause yeah, I was like, this is, this is someone I would totally use on Facebook. The authority 700 reviews, the call to action, click the link below. I mean, this is super Facebook ad oriented. So I mean taking it to YouTube. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm learning more and more on what YouTube is now.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
The, the, I mean, one thing we did find that works really, really well with that, um, is, um, and we kind of did this quite a few years ago now. And so everyone seems to be doing it, which is, which is cool. I love that. Um, at the end of the video, what happens on YouTube? Sometimes it's like people listen to everything, every word you're saying, like everything you're saying, they kind of want to listen to everything because the viewer retention on YouTube is huge. So we're getting all these video, has it been longer and longer and longer? We're kind of testing like 30 minute ads at the moment. It's pretty crazy. Um, but the, at the end of the video, because people are listening in to everything you're saying what a lot of people do is just, don't finish off the video until you finished talking and then it like stops.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
But what happens on YouTube is like, if you let the video run out it, then nowadays it actually adds a little bit of a call to action. But, um, you, it just used to just load up the video you're about to watch. So, you know, when YouTube you're watching like a pre-roll ad, uh, you can be watching that video. And then, um, at the end of the video, um, th the video you're meant to be watching, um, like the pre-roll comes in front of the video, you're about to watch then, then when the pre-roll ad finishes, it just loads up the video you were meant to be watching. Um, and what ends up happening is that people were ready to click. They wanted a click, but they were listening to everything you said. And then by the time you stopped, they didn't have enough time to actually click to the website.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Um, and so we added like an extra eight seconds onto the end of each video that we did, and just, it was kind of, we call it dead time, but we did a countdown timer from eight seconds out to count down to zero. And by adding that extra scarcity, we noticed like our click through rates, um, on some of our ads, like bumped up by like 35%, it was like 30 to 35%, uh, just by adding a countdown timer at the end of the video. And it was just edit thing. It wasn't anything just, just a quick edit thing. Um, and yeah, it's just not all of our ads are just improving just by doing that. That's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh, good. Old countdown timers. They'll never fail when in doubt, add a countdown timer. Oh man. That's awesome. Well, let's dive into this next segment. I, you know, you've got an interesting perspective here that, that I think you're going to bring to, you know, really understanding, you know, the, the nuances and, and having a really solid control over your finances, especially when you're the media, uh, for your clients. So you gotta have it dialed in not only on the tracking side, but also in how you're, um, you know, getting paid with, with, with clients, right? Like, what is that like? What goes all into that? Cause you're spending quite a bit on, on media there on behalf of your clients. And if, um, I don't know, like a few episodes prior, we were just had a talk media on Eric and he was talking about how he's seen a lot of agencies, like get in trouble with this situation where they're floating media for their clients and then their clients end up not paying for whatever reason. And then they're out, you know, sometimes like seven figures, um, and an, or at a minimum they're like significantly like hurting on cashflow because they're constantly bloating their, their clients spent. So like, I want to break all this down, not, yeah. Uh, so first start, I guess, by just telling us how you structure your, your, uh, your contracts with your, with your clients.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah. So the, the contracts, but it's okay. So like, if we go one step back, like we're all performance-based and we like to have that sort of relationship with clients one, because it sets up the client relationship rights. Um, we have to qualify clients really carefully. Uh, so we know we're working on the right projects that we can make money from. Um, but also we need to make sure we there's a level of trust there. So we don't ever have like long long-term contracts with clients. It's never, like we say, Hey, if you sign up with us, you're signed up for 12 months, 18 months, whatever it might be, we literally like, Hey, if you want to stop the ads, just stop the ads, just pay up and we're good to go. So like that, that, that would be the end of the contract. So we're kind of constantly proving our worth and making sure that we are doing a good job, obviously.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Um, but it's very difficult to not do a good job when you're, performance-based because it's either working or it's not, um, it's not working. We don't really have much of a relationship there. Um, or you have to try and fix things or call it a day. Um, and we, haven't got a hundred percent success rate. We probably run about 80% success rate with projects we take on. Um, and so we try out some things, sometimes things work, some things don't work and that's just the way it can be and we're getting better and better at qualifying. Um, so we kind of know the niches that work well. Um, but when it comes down to the relationship we have with clients, so we don't, we do all the creative work, we spend the money on the ads, um, and they pay for results. And so the way we structured that typically is normally one of four ways.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
So it's either going to be a cost per lead model or a cost per sale model. Um, or it can be a, um, a rev share deal or profit share deal. It's, it's different for every client, but we just find it kind of a deal that works well, uh, for the client. They feel happy with it. We can kind of lock it in and we know we can scale. And that's kind of how we look at it when we, um, when we do it, we, we spend the money, we track things ourselves. And obviously we track things on the client side as well, and make sure that those numbers are not, it's not too much discrepancy in those numbers. We always go with the client numbers at the end of the day. Um, and then we basically invoice how it, like, say for example, it was, um, $5 a lead let's say, and we got a thousand leads.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Then we ch we invoice the client $5,000 and hopefully we can get it in for less than that. Um, those numbers are arbitrary by the way, but, uh, you get the point and the, when we work with clients in that way, if we start to really scale, then we just have to start invoicing a little bit more regularly. So we don't just invoice on a, um, on a, uh, like either a monthly or every two weeks, we'll start invoicing every week. Um, we, we can only float for a week, uh, without having too much of an issue. So it never goes, um, quicker than the invoices are very rarely less than a week, but it means that that means we can keep on top of things. And, yeah, we've got burned a little bit in the past has been a few times where clients have had problems and haven't been able to pay, but when you're a week out and it's not the end of the world, um, well I say it's not the end of the world. If clients are listening. Yes, it is the end of what we want you to pay. Um, but you can, the risk and reward of, of running campaigns like that is that we, we worked out that we're much better off being a performance-based agency than not being a performance based agency, even with that risk.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah. That is, that's pretty awesome. And so what have you done to really, in terms of like spending at the card level, right? Like, do you guys just throw this all on like one Amex across all your accounts and then like, you know, like, like how do you really set some threshold there with your clients at certain levels of scale? And, um, you know, cause you're, you're not really like a full blown affiliate, right? Like you, you pretty much are using all their creative assets and they're kind of giving you some limits on, you know, how much they can handle or can't handle.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, there'll be, there'll be budgetary concerns every now and again with clients that kind of comes down to the filtering thing. So sometimes clients will say, look, we don't want to spend more than 250,000 this month, or more than a hundred thousand or whatever it might be. There's different clients at different levels. Um, we, we tend to love to work with clients that say, Oh, if you can get it in for that price keeps scaling. So like online businesses tend to work very well with us. Um, especially if we get paid on a cost per sale model, Laura, uh, red share profit share deal because they literally can't lose money. So they're just like, well, just keep scaling. And they've not got any problems with the mentoree most of the time. So the, uh, those ones are just will scale and continue to scale as much as we can.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Um, when, when we're doing the actual finance of it, then yeah, it goes all on one annex. Um, and we have backup cards. Should there be ever a problem? Cause obviously we can, we need to spend pretty aggressively. Um, but we just need to make sure that the buying power on that, on that account is strong. Um, so we have the Amex there, um, but we could easily put it through on just a normal card or bank card if we wanted to. Um, in fact, we're starting to look at different ways of doing this because obviously being in the UK, we have some clients in the pound Sterling, some clients, some dollars, um, some lines on us, um, Ozzy dollars and some on us dollars and some even Canadian dollars. Um, and so when we have all this different mix, we have to deal with currency conversion as well.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Another level of complexity. So the way, the way we do that now, and it's only been more of a recent thing, we've been making the switch because our Amex points aren't quite as valuable as they once work. Cause I used to use it, the travel and everything. Uh, and that was really valuable to just get either business or first class flights separately where all the time and just keep on using the points, not even worry about it. Um, but now that I can't travel anywhere with COVID at those points, just racking up on that, I don't think I'm ever going to about to use these points.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
So now
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I'm looking to you for advice by the way. Um,
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah. Their ad card native advertisement here.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Um, so now we're looking at saying, well, actually there's quite a few associated fees with using the Amex. And, um, and there's the benefit that was once there kind of isn't there like it was before. So, um, and with all the currency conversion, we're now looking at using something like transfer wise or the borderless account to say, Oh, we can take in money. Like we can have a us bank account taking money from clients to that us bank account. And then it never leaves that currency. And then use that to also pay the, for the Google ads. So there's, there's no currency conversion happening. Um, but that's been, that's only been recent because of the borderless account, like in the UK, even if you have a USDA count in the UK, um, it, for some reason the U S banks are really archaic. They just don't want to play internationally very nicely in the UK. Like we're all used to it, but the U S banks just don't make it easy on them. And you guys,
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Oh man, this is just making my life so easy here. I'm just going to just kind of like take this little snippet and send it's all our international clients. I mean, like there's so many things I want to talk to here at number one, you know, creating a us EIN and a us bank account is this is actually really simple. If you live overseas, you just need a registered agent. And, um, there's actually a company that'll do all this for you for like a couple hundred bucks. And, uh, and then basically that'll be your operating account for all your us clients. And then what we do is that becomes, um, at that point, we then get those folks signed up with add card and the payment source of the card becomes that operating account in the U S and art of the, uh, the other aspect of what you're talking about is really, uh, agency use case where there, you know, you're fronting the media.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
And so virtual cards is like the way to go here in terms of like keeping things like super clean at the accounting and at the card level. So you would, or you should, in my opinion, you should create and spin up a dedicated virtual card for each of your accounts and each of your clients to track what the exact spend is versus just kind of throwing it all, um, on one card and then just using, uh, pretty much ad account level stuff to kind of do all the accounting on the, on the backend. And then in terms of like value and maximizing the value of what you get on that spend, right, is I have a ton of thoughts on because you points is essentially, if we just look at points, they've just been this currency, right? All it is is like, we're not going to give you a back.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
You can get better than cash back when you get points. And really Amex in the UK is like, not even all that great. Um, as, as like what it is here in the U S but even still in a pandemic, like points is kind of a currency that like travel points is not worth anything. And so, um, art of what we've been talking with high-level media buyers is like, how can you maximize that, that value in terms of those rewards and benefits into a currency. That's not going to just depreciate or have no value, but into a currency that's ultimately going to like, appreciate or gain in value while also having some tax advantages, you know, along the way. And, uh, we will send you this link to, um, an episode of this media buyer that spends 35 million a year on ads and plays the point game religiously.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
But then he sells the points in exchange for Bitcoin. And he just has like massive holdings in Bitcoin. And it's like a way better flexible currency. It's going to increase in value over time. And you still, uh, you still get the tax advantages of no, which are way better than just like cash back, going into your operating account and then, you know, getting taxed when you want to, uh, distribute. So, uh, that's why we're building out a Bitcoin back, you know, feature on ad card is for these high level media buyers that are spending seven, eight figures. And you're sitting on, you know, like 6 million if I go to the points guy, and he's just saying like 6 million Amex points is worth like what, like 2 cents right now is what it typically is. You know, that's like 120 grand of, you know, that 120 grand of like Bitcoin that could potentially five or 10 X it's like way better than 120 grand in points that like, isn't going to be worth anything in the next, you know, 24 months, um, at all. So I'm done with my native advertisement for ad card, but those are three reasons why Utah sign up, but you, these use cases are common, right? This is not, this is not like specific to you. Uh, but you just did like three layups here for me. And
Speaker 3 (39:00):
What else do I need to say to do this thing?
Speaker 1 (39:02):
No, I mean, it's just so rare when you get like three labs, like at best, I'll get one. Um, but you we're like just a triple company. You should sponsor this for me. Um, anyways, this is great. I'm on
Speaker 3 (39:14):
When I'm in, count me in, just tell me what that that's
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Amazing. I mean, I do think that, you know, getting to a point where you can play the role and have the upside of an affiliate while using the brand assets, uh, is, is really like the cat's Meow it's, it's great, right? Like the worst part about being an affiliate is not getting to use any of the brand assets and having to front the media and then, you know, tracking is, you know, is even more challenging. Um, but you, you pretty much have the best of both worlds there. So congrats on, um, really dialing in a winning model. Uh, if I had like a dollar for every time I had an agency talk to me about what their business model should be and how they should charge clients. Um,
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah, there's so many ups upshots of like doing it this way. Um, but at the end of the day, it's just the best relationship for the, for the client. You know, like if they know that they can't lose with their agency and the agency is a hundred percent in because they are invested in, they can only win when the client wins, that it means like the, the clients in the perfect situation. Um, and if we start there and then work out how we can structure that to benefit us in the best possible way as well, then everyone just is on the same page and we're growing and scaling. Uh, so yeah, it's, it's, it's a great place to do it. And there's so many other benefits as well. So you can, you can get to the point where you learn an industry so well, um, because you're just in it every day and you're making good money from it.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It's almost you build these assets predictably valuable because once you let's say, if we're going to be a good half an hour video, that's performing really well. Um, that's a video that then you just put on your YouTube channel, it's got 4 million, 10 million, 15 million views or something immediately. It starts ranking and you get all the organic, um, kind of ranking from that as well. And that just, isn't a good niche as well. You start getting some really good traction in that capacity. So you get all these extra benefits of running your campaigns like this. Um, but yeah, it, it starts with making sure the clients in the best possible place. And then you just know you're in a super solid place. And that's why we have clients who've been with us for five, six years, as opposed to some of our employees come on. They're like, Hey, so how long do you kind of keep a client for about five years? And I'm like, all right. I thought it was like 18 months tops. I was like, okay, cool. It's a different relationship that we have.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
That's almost agency. That's, that's wild. I mean, I remember, I feel like even a year ago, I love the eighties. I was talking to you. Their attention was shoot seven to eight months. I mean, you got that in the bag there, so that's, that's, that's perfect. Yeah. It's good. It's and it's this kind of stability, right? It's like, I want to make sure that we have an agency we're not kind of looking over our shoulder and being like, Oh, this client's going to leave us anytime soon. It's like, no, we've got to kind of, we're in it with them. We're going to win it together. So it's much better place to be, um, breeze, everybody. I love it, man. You just totally rock this, this episode of rich dad, poor dad podcast. Tell everybody a little bit about, you know, what, you're up to next, how they can get in touch and, and how we can support you. Yeah. So, um, if you want to find out more, we've got Tom breeze.com, which is our training and consultancy site. That's going to be growing and building shortly. Uh, we also have the agency site, which we've been talking about, which is viewability.co.uk. And, um, I think I'm going to be working on next, is working out how I can send all these points into bit Bitcoin. That's the, that's the next step for me?
Speaker 3 (42:46):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
Oh, there you have it, everybody. Thank you so much, Tom. Appreciate it. Thanks guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich poor [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review and I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book. Learn more about the book, go to rich ed.com to leave a review that a rich ad for at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
President and CEO Warren Jolly at adQuadrant -- one of the world’s leading digital advertising firms for 7-, 8- and 9-figure eCommerce brands, has been an internet entrepreneur since he was 16 years old. A full service agency, the firm has represented more than $100M in ad buys and has been recognized as one of the Top 1000 Facebook Marketing Companies (out of 4 million). Clients include: Thomson Reuters, eHarmony, ProFlowers, A Place for Mom, Caesars Entertainment, Ivory Ella, Telebrands and others.
A prolific investor, Jolly backs a variety of companies including hims, Bolt, Bear Brands LLC, Ellmount. He is the co-founder and an investor at Intelitics as well as serves as a Limited Partner at Unlock Venture Partners and Next Play Capital.
TAKEAWAYS
What incredibly powerful old-school sales angle that’s a BIG no-no on Facebook is totally cool on Snap.
How to avoid being overlooked by the platform’s advertising-savvy audience by using these kinds of visuals.
The functional reality of why you need to resist the urge to use cute copy in the platform’s “Discovery Headline”.
How much you need to spend to find out if the platform is a viable vehicle for your business (it’s a lot less than you think).
Why you shouldn’t gauge Snap success by the data you get on Google Analytics --- and what you need to do to REALLY understand what’s going on.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
https://www.adquadrant.com/
@warrenjolly on twitter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrenjolly/
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast, we have the one and only CEO from adQuadrant, Warren jolly. Who's responsible for spending shoot 80 million plus in 2020 for their clients. Hell. Now on this one, we dive into some super different, you know, rich ads and poor ads in the Snapchat game. We dive into, you know, how to create compelling creative call to action specific offers. So if you're doing snap, you definitely kind of want to jump on this because it's super relevant and it's not like any other platform and understanding attribution, the tricky one. If you need some tips, make sure to tune in you also kind of deal on how Warren looks at a 70, 2010 on his investments. More or less kind of continues to bring money in and acquire new deals to expand its portfolio and kind of keep the business booming and innovated. So make sure to tune in this. One's super awesome. He's a legend in the game. So make sure to tune in, um, this brand was able to do a tremendous amount of revenue because of the price point, be the demographic that they really appeal to, which is that younger women cohort and see the investments that they've made into a post-click or landing page and site experiences to be really fast and really focused on, um, fewer steps in the funnel to actually drive the purchase. And that's really, really important on snap.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich ed at podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with Mr. Dylan Carpenter. Dylan, are you excited to talk paid media?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, man, especially snap. Yeah, we haven't had any Snapchat, you know, individuals on, so this should be a super good one.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yes. Yes. Well, today is a legend in the world of paid media. Originally got his start in, in the affiliate marketing world and now runs an agency for almost last seven years called ad quadrant out of LA. These guys are gonna manage upwards of $80 million in media spend this year. And I know that today's guest is an absolute expert when it comes to attribution and tracking. And we're going to dive into some of the trends on how to stay on top of that over, over this next year. So Dylan, you ready to, uh, ready to get into it? Yeah, man, the hype is real is real. Yeah. So today's guests to work with some pretty, pretty big brands as well in their agency over it at quadrant, obviously, uh, most of you listeners probably know, uh, the brand snow we've had Josh on the podcast. Uh, they've also worked with general assembly, fashion, Nova UNTUCKit and uh, budget blinds and some other pretty big spenders. And uh, yeah, I'm, I'm excited to have on the show Warren jolly. Thanks for being here, man.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yes, sir. So tell me a little bit about what you're up to these days and, uh, and what you're rocking over it. Uh, ad quadrant going into Q4.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah. We're trying to solve and crack the code on attribution for the entire world. That would be nice. Uh, we're, we're really, you know, a paid media house that focuses on growth and strategy and strategy being the underscore of everything that we do. You know, our belief is that performance marketing and paid media is just heavily commoditized. You know, Facebook, Google, et cetera, is making it super easy for marketers to place ads, but they don't help you solve through the deep challenges in terms of really understanding the effectiveness of that. What that platform is, is, is doing holistically to your brand, how to think about creative on a per platform basis and really be, be great at kind of solving that storytelling challenge for users that are viewing your brand for the first time or potentially the 10 time. And so we spent a lot of our time thinking about how to tie all these pieces together for brands that are looking to achieve kind of hypergrowth.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Uh, and, and, and for us, that's, you know, three to 10 X growth over the next two to three years and brands that are able to achieve that are really at the cutting edge of not just testing, but thinking about these challenges of more meaningful, deep way. So that's kind of where we come in. And for me personally, I'm also an investor. So I partner with early stage companies, uh, directly and through a fund to help them, um, mentally get access to capital. But again, kind of make sure that we're being deployed in the most effective manner to drive that trend, to that type of growth trajectory that I highlighted earlier.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
That's awesome. So is this the, uh, unlock venture partners? I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
That's one of them. So unlock is, um, uh, you know, the investing thesis is really focused only on companies that are based in Seattle and LA. And that really has, you know, where, where we see the opportunities, obviously every investor, every venture capital firms focused on Silicon Valley and it's very, you know, Uber competitive there, but there's great company that's coming out of LA and Seattle that, um, you know, the Kleiner Perkins of the world and the Bessemer ventures don't really focus on. So, um, that combined with where everybody is focused from a partner perspective geographically, it gives us access to some really interesting, um, businesses. And so we invested in companies like Dolly, which is sort of the on-demand, um, resource for moving. Uh, we've invested in a company called fight camp, which is the Peloton for boxing. So there's really a host of interesting, uh, direct to consumer businesses and brands that we've been able to, you know, very enough to partner with, um, beyond MK.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah. It looks like you invested in bolt that's that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah. Yeah. Bull is a built-in, you know, amazing business, really bringing kind of that Shopify payments, uh, ubiquity to all, all e-commerce retailers. So making the process of checking out as a consumer, really frictionless, irrespective of what, um, CRM or shopping cart solution they're using. So it's, it's, you know, we've seen really incredible results with retailers like American Eagle and a host of others that have implemented bull bull and seen conversion rates go up drastically.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
You're one of the only agency owners I know that is even remotely participating in some type of a, of a venture. Right. I think like, ha we had hoc media on here, but like their venture arm is like a million dollars. It's like a million, $2 million. It's like tiny, tiny, tiny, uh, um, venture arm. What made you one want to get into that space? Um, most people lose money in that world and uh, yeah, like H how did that all happen?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, so, so candidly, you know, we started at quandrant by accident. We're not, I'm not an agency pedigree guy, nor is my co-founder. Like, that's not what we thrive off of, but we, we, we solved it. We, we started the company to solve the challenges, right. That existed back in 2015 as it related to, you know, figuring out these new channels, getting Facebook to work at scale, et cetera. But as we did that, we started to encounter a lot of brands that had great products, um, you know, seasoned leadership, really passionate entrepreneurs needed help with marketing, but also had that void on the financing side. So for, for me, and for us as investors, we have, we have this opportunity to not only, um, you know, kind of deploy capital into what can be a great business, but also be a creative about it. And that's the key, right? If you're able to put money and control the outcome or influence the outcome of that business, that's far more powerful than just being a check writer. So we're writing a check in the business and we're making sure that our marketing is executed effectively backed by a really strong team and a good core quality product that's solving a real problem for, for users. That that combination is what we identified as the real opportunity. I don't think it isn't wrestling without, without the piece around the creativeness.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Now is it just equity or do you do debt investments as well? Only equity. Awesome.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Cool. So let's get into it. Dylan, take, take us through this, uh, this for Chad porridge segment.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah. Warren man. So thank you so much for the slides. You made it so much easier, but as mentioned y'all this is our kind of first rich ads, snap section, more or less. So Warren, can you kind of give us a 30,000 foot overview of kind of, you know, how this rich had impacted how it performs so well and kind of what made it work?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah. So before I do, I think it's probably best to talk about kind of the two main, main ad units on snap. You've got story ads and snap ads, story ads are in the discover tile when you open up snap and you're looking at like celebrities and influencers, you'll see a bunch of different tiles in the bottom. And then snap ads are just the interstitials that sit between friends stories that they post on the platform. So what we're looking at here as a story ad, right, effectively there's, and by the way, if you guys want, you can, um, you can Dylan, if you'd like as well, you can scan the QR code whenever and you can see the ad itself is really a prime example of the effectiveness of UGC. Right? If you look at the top ad, that's raw, it's relatable, right? It lives in discovery feed.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
It's got a thumbnail, but you can see that that when a user scrolls over that, they're seeing, they're seeing a girl with acne on her face, right on the top tile. And they're seeing an after on the bottom. And the nice part about snap is a lot of people don't know this. There are a lot friendlier with before and afters, then Facebook and other platforms. So you can be really raw with your users. If you have a brand that's in the weight loss category or fitness or skincare here in this instance, and make that kind of create that raw relatable experience using your creative, the ad that lost was very sort of polished, right? You've got, um, you know, it looks really clean, it looks pleasant, but it's just too professional, right? Even showing the product shots of the actual, uh, the clay, the clay mask, and this instance, it just did not perform nearly as well as it did having kind of that raw visceral image also copy on snap, right?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
You don't have the same canvas that you have on Facebook. So you've got one headline it's called a discovery headline. And so hitting on the value prop and coming across super confident is really, really key. And so in the, in the ad, that one, it says clear skin with this a hundred percent money back guarantee. That's a heck of a lot better than the ad, that loss that said, ladies, this will make you fall in love with your skin, right? Both are, you could argue are compelling, but when you're clear, you're upfront, you're direct about what the customer's getting when they respond, um, on snap, it just tends to work tremendously better. And one thing that's really important though, to remember about snap for all marketers, snap is still the most ephemeral platform, right? So when you talk about add user intention, user attention, and how to engage and keep that user's attention on snap, you really, really have to be effective. And as a front about capturing that attention, because users are just swiping at it at a rate that's unprecedented compared to any other platform,
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And how long did this rich had taken to make? It's so simple and sleek, it's gotta be three, four seconds. I, I know you kind of test it on a creatives, but any idea how long has kind of could have taped to kind of show some perspective of how easy it is to kind of make an ad pretty much
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Five minutes, right. When we're talking about that specific guy, because again, I mean, you, you know, a lot of brands and, you know, media buyers are listening to this podcast, potentially always have this conundrum of, well, I don't have a bunch of resources, right. Really what you need to study and understand is the ad units and creative specs on a per platform basis. And then just make sure you're repurposing it based on those specs, but also what policy at the platform will allow you to do or not do. In this instance, we knew that snap has a different approach towards before and afters, then let's say Facebook does, Oh, that makes total sense. And it's wild from a media buyer's perspective that poor ad, I mean, it looks pretty slicked where you would probably think that would outperform the rich ads. So it's pretty interesting, kind of how it all pans out there and how relevant, you know, the creative has to be for that specific platform.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
For sure. I think one thing though, that's consistent across the board on, you know, on any platform and you're seeing this even on YouTube, which I think we've never seen in the past as much as we do today is just the advent of UGC like users, you know, everyone talks about banner blindness and the old days, like, I, I think there's, there's social ad blindness, right. In a lot of respects and people can start to delineate between, you know, what's not, and they used to be very clearly versus what looks organic. Um, and now the approach towards UDC is just go rawer than you've ever been in the past. Right. That's really what we tell brands that we partner with. And it tends to, it tends to really work. Oh yeah. And the, I mean, the metrics speak to it itself. I mean, y'all spend 13 K on that rich ad with a 2.5 X basically.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
So I mean, that's pretty killer versus, you know, that poor ads, you know, y'all spend a good six 50 with a 0.5, basically. How do you, when did you kind of determine that losing ad is just not working pretty immediately to kind of tone the budget down? How do y'all kind of go about testing the creative and then realizing this isn't working? How much more time should we give it? How much more, you know, budget should we allocate to it, which y'all's kind of thought process around that. Yeah. So, you know, we're, we're very, this is one ad in one geo just in the UK, right? So we, we tested over 20 geos, uh, with this brand and we just, you know, we follow the principle of, of, of leading metrics versus lagging metrics, right? So when we, when we're looking at leading metrics, we're not waiting for CPA and ROAS, we're starting to identify a creative that we believe is resonating with users in the platform, based on that initial story open rate, which is, you know, you click on that thumbnail. And then the next metric is in story swipe up rate, which is once you're in the story, right, are you swiping up and going to the actual brands landing page? So we're using that as a proxy to start to determine, okay, if we're running 20 concurrent tests, you know, which ones actually have the viability to stain. And we'll, we'll just go ahead and fund that one, um, you know, in kind of full maturity, if that makes sense. Oh, most definitely
Speaker 5 (14:27):
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Speaker 3 (15:46):
Now I got a juicy question for you. I love the CPMs on, you know, Snapchat is somebody who was looking to kind of test it out for their brand or business. What do you think good budget to kind of test is really with, you know, how low the CPMs really are. Yeah. So it's a great question. You're going to get a different answer from everybody who buys on staff. Um, one thing about snap that you need to know about though, is they have something called goal-based bidding that you have to unlock, which is unlike Facebook, right? I can start a Facebook campaign today and optimize towards a conversion pixel or its purchases on snap. That takes a little while to get to, and it takes a certain number of conversions, which is generally, you know, in, in the few hundred range, it's not the 58 per ad set that you might think are, you've heard on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
But what I like to say is, if you talk to snap about this, they're going to say, you know, test our platform with, with 30 to 50 K in the first month. No, you should know. And part of that, by the way I believe is, you know, they're trying to increase their earnings, which kudos to them. But I think as a smart buyer, you should know within five to 10 K if snap is a viable platform for your business and be your strategy or on creative and user experience is actually viable for snaps user base, and both are equally as important, right? Because you were a, you know, a $1,500, uh, television on snap, just not going to be as successful as you would be in this instance where, um, this brand was able to do a tremendous amount of revenue because of a, of the price point, be that demographic that they really appeal to, which is that younger women cohort and see the investments that they've made into a post-click or landing page and site experiences to be really fast and really focused on, um, fewer steps in the funnel to actually drive the purchase.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And that's really, really important on snap. As I mentioned earlier, users have that highly, a femoral mindset. So you can't take them through a bunch of hoops to get them to actually purchase if you're an e-commerce brand as an example. Oh, most definitely. Now with these metrics, I think, you know, you were talking to attribution earlier, so I think it'd be good to kind of with the audience, how do you all kind of really gauge, you know, what's working, are you looking at Snapchat, Google analytics? How do you kind of go about to reporting on the Snapchat side of things? Yeah, so we, you know, snap is one platform where attribution, I think is really the hardest. What happens is if someone, um, even just swipes up, but they don't load your website, Snap's going to count that as a click. And you're never going to see that in GA.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So we, we absolutely look at what the platform says, but we take it with, with a heavy handed grain of salt. We look at GA. Um, but also just looking at GA in the instance of snap is really, really challenging because a lot of users on snap don't end up converting on, on snap as a first touch, but snap is the point of discovery for the brand. So we'll see those conversions happen on either a different device or a different browser. And so trying to knock that story back to GA is also, uh, also frankly, really a challenge. We look at different attribution windows on snap to understand, okay, what is the right credit view to give our platform? But what we really do, that's been successful in terms of attribution is doing snap in a holdout study fashion, where we're only running. Let's just say, it's a brand that targets the entire us.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
We'll just take potentially three States or one state, depending on the size of their influence in that state and only run snap ads in that one particular GL we'll customize the creative that speaks to that geo really make it an effective strategy. And then we'll, we'll baseline that geos results, um, against what we've done with snap on, in that holdout capacity. Right? So anytime we're launching a new channel, now we do this, we've done it with connected TV, we've done it with tick talk and it helps us understand that. What, what is the actual incremental lift that the business has seen compared to what the platform reports and that helps us get to like a multiplier that we apply on any of those ongoing future spends to be able to deduce what the real impact was from that? Oh man, you're leading me to my final question here. Heck yeah. So man, I just got sidetracked. I'm loving this man. Um, all right. It'll come up to me at some point, right.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
You just got all hot and bothered hearing.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
I totally got it. So yeah, whenever you kind of launched snap, you mentioned, you kind of look at the growth across, you know, the whole business as a whole. Now, whenever you see, you know, I'm sure you're driving a ton of traffic with Snapchat. Do you ever see, you know, correlations to where you have to ramp up the retargeting on Google or snap or even Facebook just because you're driving so much traffic with Snapchat, it's be kind of pretty cost-effective. Yeah. I mean, CPM arbitrage, you talked about it earlier, right? So when we think about like the snaps and the Pinterests and the tech talks of the world, CPMs are a fraction of what they are on Facebook and Google. So absolutely like we're not, you know, our expectation on these platforms that are more discovery oriented, if you will, is that, you know, we're going to see unprofitable results on platform from a pure, if we just purely look at on-platform prospecting and retargeting, and we've done that deduction exercise that I talked about earlier, right?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
So we understand that. And what we, what we really try to do in every campaign is tagging teams properly. So we can be target the traffic that actually does reach the site and understand I'll look back window. What is our true aggregate return from SAP as the first touch, right? As well as the sorry, first touch, no conversion. And then, you know, in isolation, what the platform was able to do for that audience that we're prospecting retargeting on there. And that combination is how you really understand what does it snap doing for my business at an aggregate level. Right. And how do I try to tell that story that's true or as close to the truth as I possibly can,
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Man, this is a good one. Y'all all right. So we dove into some rich house, pretty hardcore. We dabbled a little bit in the poor outside, but go ahead and focus a little bit more on that poor outside. So, I mean, when it comes to the poor ads here, what are some of the common characteristics here typically? Yes.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
You know, I think again, when you, when you really break down staff and you have this like limited canvas, as well as timeframe to capture the user's attention, um, anything that seems to polished anything that seems, um, like you've repurposed an ad from Facebook or from YouTube or the staff tends to not really work. I mean, if you, yourself, as a user, go through the discovery feed on snap and you look at, you know, whatever influencers or celebrities or brands that are marketing there, you'll see right there. And then there's the images and the creative is really thought provoking, or it's kind of gives you that, you know, what the heck is this type of reaction. And so like addressing creative in that capacity, which in this poor ad was not done. It was more of like a professional photo shoot or professional influence or shoot, I think is really number one, creating that relate-ability, which is lacking also because, you know, frankly speaking a girl who has acne, it doesn't look like this girl, that's the poor ad, right.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
A lot more like the girl in the rich ad. So, you know, people on snap, especially the younger demographic are a lot wiser to creative and advertising. Then the older demographic is so, you know, making sure that if you're targeting 25 to 35 year old woman, that your ads look and speak and feel like them is absolutely paramount. So I would say, start with relate-ability in mind, make sure imagery is really raw. It's visceral, it's UGC in nature. Um, and you know, again, you can see this poor ad that both from a, from an imagery perspective, as well as kind of the headline, it just really didn't hit the nail on the head to keep users engaged long enough and ultimately manufacture that intent necessary to drive the purchase.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And, and you would really think, you know, that 30% off that sense of urgency would kind of do some wonders, but it goes to show, Hey, you got to test it really gauge what works.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah. And I think also, you know, one of the things I left out was just to have a compelling CTA, right? You're trying get this high add audience to convert, make sure you drive them towards the action that you're, that you're, you're actually proposing. That's
Speaker 4 (23:54):
That's the, that should be a course right there. I'm pumped. Well, y'all know what time it is, Zach, it's your favorite time of the whole show. Go ahead and take it away. All right. So let's dive into some financial principles for, and I, I think that, uh, we've talked through a couple different things before the show, but the way that you think about, you know, managing, um, you know, investing in a new initiatives, uh, in your different businesses is very similar to how a media buyer might actually, uh, run an ad account. So I'd love it if you could share, uh, how you look at that and how you manage that. And also just how you came up with that principle.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
So the core of the principal is really, you know, obviously I admire it. I think all of us can respect what that Bezos has built with Amazon. And the fact that he still thinks about Amazon as being, you know, in, in that day zero environment, like our first day of business is really helped drive so much of their innovation and change. And when you're trying to bootstrap a business, which I've always done historically, I really haven't raised outside venture capital for companies I've, I've started until very recently. Um, you've got to really be capital efficient and you have to be almost kind of ruthless about, about, you know, saying no to ideas that just are failures, right? So you generally start a business and you've got an initial way to generate revenue. You signed up every customer under the sun. If you're a services business, you just say yes to everybody that becomes kind of your 70% of what keeps you in business or allows you to sustain.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Then you have this 20% window, which is really about how do I grow out, above and beyond myself, right? And that 20% is creating a moat and defensibility around your business. Ultimately, that's really, really important because if you don't have a moat around your business, really don't have something that's defensible. And if any competitor comes in with more capital or a slightly better team, they're gonna crush you. So that 20% is about creating moat and investing in areas that are going to be defensible. And then you have to have this 10%, um, that's about hypergrowth ideas, really wild, hairy experiments that you constantly in a disciplined capacity fund, both with time and money. And that once those 10% bear fruit, it goes into that kind of 20% boat and defensibility bucket. And once they've matured into, Hey, this is actually viable. I have more than five customers or whatever it is that'll pay for this.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
It goes into your core 70%. And that's how you bootstrap, in my opinion, or a core principle behind bootstrapping a business from zero to eight figures or nine figures in revenue, but always maintain that discipline and not, not getting complacent because, you know, you're 70% it's going well, right? And you don't need to worry about competition or you don't need to worry about innovation. And so really the idea is it's a 70, 2010 rule and it helps you, you know, kind of innovate outcome as it relates to what else is happening in the ecosystem. And guess what, if you're in a category or three that doesn't have, um, innovation pressures or competition, then it's not really business worth being in, in the first place. So that's kinda how I think about growing companies and how to think about kind of investing in creating that discipline.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Okay. So let's just say I produce a million dollars a year in profit, and you're saying in terms of I, or are we talking about profit year or are we talking about like, okay, we're going to take 20% of that invest in initiative, 10% of that. It's going to go into, um, you know, crazy experiments or are you more just like baking this into how you operate, you know, the businesses, you know, from a top line? Cause I,
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. Um, it really is. I mean, there's, you know, businesses tend to start one of two ways, right? You you're either out you're raising money and you have investors that are writing a check to fund an idea, or you've bootstrapped the company to a certain size. So first example, it would just be off the balance sheet of what money you've invested. And that would be kind of your, your, your, your core, um, approach from, from absolute day one on the second, it's really about taking profit and headcount that you can reallocate, you know, out of that you take that a hundred percent. That's initially gotten you in business and start to shrink it down to 70 and think about your allocations that 20 and 10. So if I were to start a business today and I raised money from investors, let's just say I raise $5 million.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
I would, I would have an initial idea and initial, um, value proposition, which is why I got funded in the first place, but guaranteed whether I like it or not, or anyone believes it or not, I'm going to be pivoting as I learn more about that idea and actually validate the real hypothesis so that all of a sudden same thing, not a hundred percent that I thought I would be doing would that 5 million bucks is going to pivot. And as I pivot, I'm pivoting into what I learned from that 20 and 10 portion of the, of the prorata exercise, right? Same thing. If I've shopped the company, I've been to want to figure out ways to grow faster than I've been able to grow historically. So I start to think about that allocation and where should I be? How do I create my initial loan defensibility and then follow on how do I start to think about, you know, those wild experiments that are going to potentially deliver hyper growth
Speaker 4 (28:58):
And what have been those for you and in the agency business? Like what, what has been some of those 10, those 10%, uh, you know, investments and tests that, that have now kind of got rolled into the core 70?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Yeah, that's a great question. So, um, one of those has been, you know, building out, building out a full creative studio, right. Um, when we started again, an agency or creative or brand background, that's not, that's not my DNA. Um, but, but taking that bet early and saying, you know what, we're going to, we're going to take the lead on creative now brands that we partner with, not expect them to take the lead and provide us with, um, you know, useful assets. That was one example are venturing to take talk early on. Um, you know, uh, last year was an example of that 10% where, um, you know, there wasn't really a pixel, uh, direct response. Wasn't really kind of a talked about thing. There wasn't an auction, but just saying, you know what, we're going to figure this out because we believe that this platform is here to stay. And that there's a really interesting opportunity for brands to diversify their and in a unique way. Um, was it that, that paid off massively for us? So you, you know, being really aggressive about testing new channels and testing new services internally, um, has helped us, you know, innovate, grow and remain, remain very profitable, but be able to create value in the ecosystem. And that's really how you're able to do that, right, by thinking differently and challenging that status quo as, as fast and as tremendously as you can.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
That is awesome. I love it. I love it. So let's talk about, you know, what you do as an agency owner, you know, from kind of switching from operator to investor hat for a minute. You, how, how, how do you look at, um, getting the most amount of leverage out of your investing activities?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah. Um, so for us, it's really interesting, right? I mean, the, the, the no-brainer that we realized is we come across a lot of brands where there's great products, great operators, you know, tenured entrepreneurs, they need help with marketing. But when we really start to unpack the business, what we realize is they've overfunded in certain areas. And they're, they're, they're, they're, they're sort of overleveraged right as a business and as an operator. And so Mo great marketing alone doesn't solve that problem, but being able to become a partner of theirs, you know, finance help finance the business as well as be a vendor, allows us to do a couple of things, right? Hey, we get to take equity in the business. Um, E we get to, you know, charge for services and see, we get to make sure that the equity that we're taking in the business by investing cash is a creative.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
And we get to sort of mitigate downside and influence upside because writing a check, but we're also helping the business shore up its growth efforts, right? Maybe they're thinking about going into retail or wholesale, where they should be a hundred percent DTC, or they have a hundred percent DTC presence, but they're marketing and creative and kind of tech stack is really ineffective. And those are relatively easy things for us to fix. That could be, um, you know, frankly, real force multipliers for the business, from both the top line revenue perspective, as well as profitability. So we look, we look for businesses where we can be highly creative, and I also don't believe that anyone should invest, uh, or write a check into a business that they fundamentally just really don't understand, because if you don't understand that you can't be creative and oftentimes if you don't understand it at some point in that journey with you as an investor, you know, something, or someone's going to pull the wool over your eyes, and by the time you figure it out, it might be too late. And I can speak from firsthand experience, um, and saying that. So I've really learned to kind of identify ideas that, that, that, that I get that I believe in that I can be, be along for the ride on a bit more than just a silent observer.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I love it, man. I love it. Well, this has been
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Awesome. I've actually really enjoyed the sip. So what do you think, Don? I want to get some snap stuff after this. Yeah. Oh, I love it, man. Well, Warren, this has been an amazing, uh, podcast really appreciate you sharing about so many different aspects of what you're up to and really appreciate some of the disciplines that you've put in place and how you managing the business. Tell everybody a little bit about, you know, what else you've got going on and how we can
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Yeah. Um, I'll be at ad world. Uh, and I think what is it next week now? So talking a little bit more about, um, advanced attribution and how you can think about solving some of the challenges. If you're a marketer or a brand that's spending money on Facebook and YouTube and Snapchat, and really trying to develop an underlying proach towards managing all of this. I'll be chatting a bit about that at, on world. So come check out my session. Um, if you wanna learn more about what we do at quad renters, go to act quatre.com. We've got a bunch of case studies and more information about who we work with and who we service. But other than that, I'm happy to add value, answer any questions. Um, best way to reach me is, uh, on Twitter is that Warren jolly feel free to send me a DM and, uh, I'll, I'll get right back to you.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Amazing. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much. We'll definitely have you back on the show soon. Thanks guys.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
[inaudible]
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add for ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
The founder of Purple Leads, Purple Ad Lab, and Geek Out Education, native advertising expert James Van Elswyk is a digital marketer with 8 years of experience specializing in marketing, media buying, and growth optimization. His agency focuses on media buys across sites like RevContent, Outbrain, and Taboola for the solar and finance sectors, currently spending over $2M/monthon ads. Using his expert analytical and management skills, van Elwyk provides companies with highly-qualified leads, helps extend the reach of their marketing campaigns, and optimizes their internal and external communications – driving millions of dollars in profits.
TAKEAWAYS
Discover his step-by-step “secret sauce” process for optimizing campaigns internally at a much lower cost.
How to pick the best offers by ignoring margins and focusing on this metric instead.
Why targeting ESL audiences in the US using their native language pays out big time.
What to look at to know when to let an offer go -- before you really get in trouble
How to get paid upfront -- and why you should never get stuck floating cash for a client.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(James Van Elswyk Facebook)
(Purple Leads Facebook)
(Purple Leads Website)
(Purple Leads Linkedin)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode with James van Elswick, we dive into how he picks winning offers. How much is he willing to actually lose, to test out an offer and open up a new traffic source? Plus, we dive into how he's actually able to negotiate pre payment when it comes to running affiliate offers. It's an amazing episode. Plus you learn about how he's managing tens of millions of dollars on native, uh, networks like Taboola and Outbrain with symphony agency. And we also dive into the amazing events that he's running with, uh, geek out education, enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You gotta have a sticking point and you cannot become emotional with it, which is what I'm doing right now. You gotta be a lot more rational and you got to consistently pull all-time stats and not daily stats because losing a hundred dollars a day or $300 a day or $500 a day, whatever your tolerance is, it doesn't seem like that bad. [inaudible]
Speaker 1 (01:02):
To the rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich ed. Poor ed podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with the one and only DC. Dylan Carpenter. You excited. Hey Dylan. Yeah, man. I'm pumped
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Sneak peak earlier, but I'm kind of get out already.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Shoot. I feel like dealing. This is like a Dylan is so giddy about today's guests. It's just like, it feels like a little school girl. I am. I just love the grin on Dylan's face about, uh, I feel like we've, uh, Dylan's wanted them on for a while. So, uh, just enjoy doing we'll let you be, uh, just a listener, just so excited. I love it, man. I mean, it's all, it's all super legit because these guests, uh, has really brought in like, gosh, managed tens of millions in media, outside of Google. And, uh, really his expertise is in Legion and a native. He runs an agency symphony agency, which really specializes in native and also, uh, more notably in our community is the co-founder of geek-out education, which runs, uh, some of the most, I would say intense masterminds workshops, Hangouts. I don't even know what you'd call, uh, what they do, but it's so unique in this space. And I think it's, uh, honestly probably the most high level, uh, and elite, um, media-buying education that exists on the market today. And so, yeah, I'm pretty pumped down on today's guest. So without further ado, let's get James on the show, James,
Speaker 2 (03:05):
How you doing? Hello? And thank you for a Dillon. I appreciate your giddiness. That's always a nice welcome once a month, giddy and also the intro, Matt. I really appreciate the, your perception of the geek outs. So that really, uh, that's great. Thank you for having me on to chat with you guys.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, man. It's, uh, it's pretty cool. We, you know, we haven't really had anybody on the show that, um, has as much experience in lead gen as you, as well as a, so much emphasis, a focus on native, you know, we've had a ton of Facebook ad buyers and Google ad buyers on the show. So I feel like this'll be, uh, definitely fun, uh, to, to dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah. I mean, uh, obviously I've always been a big Facebook buyer as well, but just there was so much, there's still so much turmoil all the time that I just didn't feel comfortable with Facebook as a vendor, you know, like as a partner in my business when you're just going to randomly ban me and stuff like that. So we had already been big on natives and then we just focus moving back into it because it's more stable. So I love it over there.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's awesome, man. And you guys are managing a pretty, pretty hefty chunk of change in media right now on the agency side, I would say maybe post Q4, you might be hitting 25, 30 million.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
We're over, we're over 2 million month right now. And it's great. The clients that we run have, you know, cash or inventory or desire to do, you know, a couple mill a month. So it's just a matter of us getting them there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah. Well, that's awesome. And so for, for everybody that's not familiar with you tell everybody a little bit about, uh, symphony agency and geek out education and kind of give them
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Speed on what you're up to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean a symphony agency. I have a partner in media buyers in Israel, and then there's a second component, which is a creative agency in the Ukraine that handles like, uh, all of the dev stuff, videos, images, photo shoots, et cetera. Then the real data portion of things is in Israel. And it's with a real focus on, uh, native ads, whether it be Taboola Outbrain, Yahoo, Gemini, um, geek-out EDU is more fun. I don't think I've ever really made money on it yet, but I've made like an amazing network and building personal brand and just learning a ton. I think that was like the purpose. Like you'd kind of mentioned that geek-out was different and it's because like the, the seed of it, like the original impetus was just to create a community of people that wanted to geek out on this nerdy that our wives or girlfriends or boyfriends just didn't want to hear about.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Like, nobody wants to hear about clinics. My wife's like, I don't want to hear about clicks and I just want to create a place so that, you know, everybody could hang out and talk about what we love with full passion and it's, it's resonated, you know, people really enjoy coming. It's part learning part hangout. So it's something that I really, really enjoy. We got one this weekend, I think will be one of our best. We're doing totally different format. So there's like minimal PowerPoint presentation. And the majority of it is just the speakers opening up ad accounts and just letting people ask questions, like, why do you do this? How do you do this? What's the purpose of this? And just getting, you know, full transparency and letting like smart people dig into the campaigns of smart people.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. I love it, dude. I, I think that gosh, before geek out, I mean, where really could somebody go for that like high level media buyer focus? I like, I honestly, maybe there's like a ton of stuff that's happening out on the outskirts of affiliate world, you know, of like different events. He had to like go like once a year and you know, like not, not really here in the U S that's for sure. And, um, and so, yeah, I just feel like you really carved out a great spot and your events like aren't cheap, you know, it doesn't by design. Well, it's, it's not our events. Aren't for news. And like being a new is cool. Like I'm a new bit, like so many things in my life and I love being a noob and it's just part of the process, but we just figured if we make them expensive, a, the amount of value people get, they more than pay for it, just because like one or two things.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Like if you want someone to like open up the kimono and show you some gangster and you can apply that and copy and paste that when you get home, if you're already have money in, are already running at scale, you get that back. Right. So that was part of it. The second thing was we just kind of use it as a filter to keep people that aren't already successful out. And even people that can afford it, we interviewed the majority of the attendees before they come to make sure that they are at that level so that when everybody comes, everybody's good and it's not the best. Like I said, we don't make money on these things because of that. Like, it's not the best business technique to turn away people that want to pay. We believe like in the long run, it'll help the community be what we want it to be.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So we try to price them at a point that makes them a little bit exclusive. Do you have people that, that, uh, let's just say they can more than afford the ticket, but they're not really media buyers or they're really more business owners that are like just one James, just like show the way. Right. So like, how do you, how do you let those folks in? Cause they're, they're not going to provide a ton of value, you know, on the media buying front by opening up accounts. Yeah. You're, you're a smart on this one. So what we did this time was we, because we want the brand owners because you got, you want people to have the business aspects as well, right? Because like being a media buyer or being someone that can afford one of our events, you're obviously also like a pretty good business person or you work for a good business person. So we basically said, look, brand owners and agency owners. We want you there so much so that if you're not the guy pushing the buttons or the dials, just bring your guy like free, like just bring your button pusher so you can hang out and network with everybody and get ideas and do JVs and find out about different vendors, but bring your nerd so he can be in the guts and like take home the information that you're going to miss out on. You know,
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I love that. All right, let's give him this rich ad, man. I want to know what's working for you right now. I want to know, uh, I want to know the copy on or the angle on the offer. I wanna know the creatives. I want to know the affiliate link. I know we're, I don't know where to sign up. I want to know what the payout is on the contact, the email address I want to intro. This is what I want. This is all what I want. So,
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Um, let's see. We are running a lot of financial stuff. A lot of like the Gore financial type offers, which are amazing on one hand because they can afford really high payouts because their business is so well optimized on the backend. So we're able to get paid, you know, 170, $180 for someone to make a $50 purchase. Um, and there's a lot of learning that comes with this and us needing to change our system and kind of maybe I'll kind of segue that into the techniques we're using to make it work. So we have that. And then we're also running for e-commerce products. Some that have VSL, some that don't have VSLs, um, some like just way more traditional e-comm products that are like crushing on Facebook and they want to move over to native ads. So they get more reach or they're more omni-channel.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
So we've been running both of those, I would say right now, mainly lead gen died out for us a lot because of Corona and just the inconsistency of call centers. If they have staffing, a lot of this stuff with lead generation is dependent on people to answer the phone. And it's also geographically dependent. So lead gen kind of was a lot more difficult this last year than I had before. So we switched over to e-commerce also because you have the ability to activate international marketplaces. Um, what we really been working on, especially with something that has a expensive payout, like $150 payout or 200, even we're running an offer right now it's $300 payout per sale is that you just can't afford to optimize campaigns all the way out to a full conversion. So we've kind of created a new system internally to test and, uh, I'll give like basically a secret sauce here and how we do it.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So you give me a new offer and I'm going to write six angles around that offer, right? So it might be a XXX is furious. It might be thousands of people are doing this. It might be expert sound the alarm about X. It might be founder does this. So I'll take like six broad angles and I will write four headlines per angle and I'll write very, very small two paragraph landing per angle. And then I go through and if I have two ads out of four, so every angle gets four specific headlines. If I have two ads out of four ads hit, then I'll go to step two and start to optimize on that angle. Right? So now I move to step two and now I'm at the landing page part, right? So now I'm going to start to optimize landing pages for that angle.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I take a look at the landing page, click through rate and where it gets next level kind of intense is we've started to really optimize by time on page as cheap indicator. Like, because if the indicator that you normally, or the KPI that you normally optimize off of is a $300 conversion. Somebody staying on the page for 15 minutes in theory, worth X. So we basically build correlation between an ultimate conversion and all the steps that come before it. And then we start to optimize on early steps with the anticipation that those early steps will equal a later step. And this has helped us really decrease, um, the amount that we spend in the beginning, just throwing against the wall, like traditional style.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I feel like your whole, your whole stick James is like, I like pain. I like to make a media buying really difficult. And so I want to pick all the offers that are like better. You know, it's just like, like lead gen is like, I feel like it has its own level of like complicated. Like just, it's so much more complicated, so many more steps. I feel like these higher ticket offers that you're doing, obviously there's like so many more steps along the way. And like most people I meet and are like, what's the cheapest thing I can sell that has the lowest average order value. And like, let me go.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
This is like kind of the, the mistake that people make when picking offers. Right? Like, especially if we're going to talk affiliate side now, right. It's like, there's, there's two ways to look at it. Right? There's if you can take, if we're working on the assumption that we're going to get to a profitability benchmark on a Whitehead offer, let's say 20%. I like the fact that if something has a payout of two 50, my 20% is 50 bucks, right? So like I have a fat cash margin, just not a fat percentage. The downside of this is when optimizing something, especially like, do you want to feed the Facebook algorithm or whatever the cheaper conversions work out better. But for me, I really just look at the EPC. Like I don't really care what the payout is. I just want to know what is going to be my revenue per click.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
If it's a high payout offer, you know, a $300 payout, it's not converting very often. You're looking at like a 1% conversion rate. So it's like, you know, it's for me all about EPC. And when it comes to picking offers in an affiliate, like if I can give any type of advice here, I just don't run anything. I can't find an edge. Like if I don't have some type of inside tip, better pay out on on-ramp geography. Um, I need something that gives me an edge over somebody else. Otherwise I just don't run that offer. And I think that like, I guess year four of my career, I realized like that year I didn't get any better at media buying, but I got better at like my hit rate. I was better able to identify offers that could be profitable than I was before. Like I didn't get better. I just ran easier. And now I can look at it and see, okay, I have an edge and this isn't that hard. If I just do XYZ, I'll take it to another country or whatever. I mean, good business
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Practices, right? Like even if a business at all, that you don't have an unfair advantage on that.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Exactly. I like to snipe offers and I see running well in the United States. And then I spy and see they're not running well in Europe. And I'm like, okay, no, one's running this in France. I'll take what someone else has done. Take all of their hard work, all their landing page optimization, all their ads, headlines, whatever, translate them and just get the party started in a place that has a cheaper CPM. I think, especially now that the United States is getting while doing the prices are always getting more expensive. But I think that there's two things that are very valuable. One is like super hack, but it's a monster is a targeting in the United States, other languages, but in the U S so like targeting like Spanish speaking browsers running in the United States. Cause there's just like less competition in the auction because no, one's actually bidding on that.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And it resonates higher with people that speak that language. And then secondly, as I mentioned, taking it to other geos, like France, the cost per CPM and Frances 30%, what is the United States? But the payout is the same, if not more because it's in euros. So after the conversion rate, I could probably get paid more for something that cost me less to make. And the people are more susceptible to modern American style marketing techniques. So I think that that kind of geo stretching or whatever you want to call it activating outside geos is definitely stretching.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
James,
Speaker 2 (16:54):
You know, stretching felt nice that actually had a good ring to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
We're good. We're rolling with it. We're rolling.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Now. We're gonna keep that while it's on
Speaker 1 (17:03):
The show. So we get some like credits
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I'm sure I'd add something right now. You own it basically.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
That's awesome, man. So, so coming back full circle, I just took us down this path, this tangent you're testing for time on page for some of these higher ticket offers. Now, are we all talking about this in the context of symphony agency? Or like, do you run all your affiliate stuff through the agency?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
No, it's separate like, no, my affiliate stuff I run is purple ad labs, my, uh, agency stuff. I run a symphony agency and we run probably 50, 50 affiliate and agency basically. Like if an offer seems like super easy, I just pushed to take it as an affiliate. And if it's tough, I'll just run it as an agency. Now I'm just, I actually prefer running as an urgency in a lot of ways because it's like, I feel like there's more learning that I take from my partners that I can bring back to myself. Just, it's a better learning opportunity to work with someone. If you want to learn about a company that's run well, like working with a Gora for example, like it's $1.5 billion a year company, the learnings that I've been able to take away from them of what to do and what not to do have been like, probably worth more than what I've made. You know? So I, I actually prefer the agency side for this, but the affiliate side is fun because it's, you know, it's nice to like eat what you kill type thing, but satisfying. And if the offer's right, you know, then we, then we push it.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
So I'm always curious how people structure their deals and their clients and their partnerships on the agency side. Do you guys run it kind of pretty vanilla take a percentage of spend? Or are you guys getting a little bit more aggressive in terms of upside retainers?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, so, um, we do a minimum, uh, spend like a minimum fee regardless of what we spend, which basically goes to us, cover our copywriting. Cause like a lot goes into copywriting, um, and like CRO and dev, like we do a lot more than just by medium because we just don't know how to do it a different way. So like, I'm going to write the copy. I'm going to write the presale pages. I'm going to make the pre-sell page. I'm gonna optimize the presale pages. So I just don't want to do all that. And then I have a partner that's not getting me like a link to a Google drive, but you charge somebody a minimum fee, then they hustle for you. Um, so we do the minimum fee. We do a percentage of spend and then we bake in a performance bonus, which is based on maybe it's, [inaudible] maybe it's CPA goal.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
But the way that the easiest way to describe it is if somebody has a CPA goal, let's say of a hundred bucks and the spend is 50 bucks and my fees are 15%. I basically combined the two and I looked for 50% of the Delta. So if I come in under your goal, after my fees, by 35 bucks, I get a bonus of $17 and 50 cents. So it, it basically was actually built to negate the agency model, which is make your money by spending a lot. Whereas this model is still making me want to just be as profitable as possible for somebody. It doesn't always work because some people are like, look, I want you to max out my CPA. I just want to acquire as many customers as possible. And that's cool too. You know what I'm saying? We do that. Um, but I do like the incentivization on the bonus side. Um, and then on the affiliate side, I don't know if you want to save this for the, for the rich, not the rich add the financial piece of the thing. Um,
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I want to know, but hold that thought a little bit, because I want to know what do you guys typically target for your base retainer, your setups and your percentage of span in terms of
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Out of the gate, 15% spend 5k to 7,500 minimum fees. If you're like a startup, like you've never ran traffic, I'll do like 12 K 15 K minimum fees just because like you said, like I just don't have, I'll do it. But what ends up happening is myself and my team are like super committed to winning and we actually do know what to do to set up an altar from scratch. So what ends up happening is to get to the point where I can even run traffic. I become like an outsource COO partner explaining them, okay, you want to use this software and use this and use that. So I'm trying to kind of discourage, you know, unless the partners are really on it. You know, like if someone's like super on it and hustles hard, I might waive the startup fee. You know what I'm saying? I just can't stand building someone else's business for free.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And then what's the, w w what do you shoot for, in terms of like minimum level of spend, you know, like, is it a hundred cam on spend or like minimum,
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Or it's not what it is now. It's what it is. Once I get it rocking. Like, if you break, if you can't do a million a month, it's just not like, I only want 10 clients that each do a million a month, as opposed to like 30 clients that do, you know, a hundred grand or 200 grand, just because like, I can only do so much. And I'd rather just go for the juicy stuff and, and a company that's built to scale, et cetera. I'm not saying it like in a snobbish or picky way. It also really, again, depends on the partners and their level of hustle. Like if they're going to hustle as fast as me, where I asked for something and they turn it around the same day, it goes a long way. You know? Whereas normal customers are normal clients that they drag it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah. I mean, I think also that's a big lifestyle choice to have when you're running an agency sticking at 10 clients, going deep with those and really having win-win partnerships.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah. I can't be a. That's the problem. Like, like when I got into the agency thing, I just felt like a waiter. You know what I mean? Like, I, I live in Paris and like, if a client who's paying me wants to have a call with me at a reasonable time, like 12 Pacific, that means I got to talk to him at 10:00 PM, which is like, it's okay, they're paying me, but Hey, I need to get paid well. And B it has to be like, uh, yeah, like just a few people. I can't be everyone's. I don't like being in the service industry. That's why I like being an affiliate. Cause you're like your own boss. I don't like being a waiter. So I just try to keep it capped at the number of clients. So I'm not hustling around for bags, you know, this time.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
All right. All right, moving on. I want to know who wants to hire my agency now, right?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Pitch for an agency.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
This is your stick that you're like the anti I don't give a about you pitch on everything you do from geek-out symphony agency. I love it. I love it. So this episode is brought to you by funnel Dash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend in partnership with, and
Speaker 3 (23:46):
If you are an aggressive affiliate dealing with dozens of ad accounts, or you are in gray hat or black hat verticals, such as drop shipping CVD or other verticals where you're dealing with ad accounts, getting shut down, business managers, getting shut down, or even deep platform from platforms like Facebook and Google, then you absolutely need to check out FunnelDash as ad card. We give you unlimited free virtual debit and credit card. So you can have a dedicated card for every single ad account campaign. And you can attach any name and address in the U S you have complete anonymous entity on a card and at the card level. Plus one of my favorite features is that you don't have to pre-fund or even top off like most typical virtual card solutions today. So if this is you and you're operating these verticals, whether you're
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Agency or an advertiser, then check out ad card@funneldash.com, walk us through a poor ad, man. What's something that you're really excited about, uh, that, uh, that, that totally bombed. And you might be just slightly embarrassed to share, like every day, all day, we can't be profitable where the I'm going to kill it. I know I should kill it, but I can't get it profitable. Um, I have a campaign that I'm running on to Bula. We're probably like 35, 40 K into it. Um, we had a loss pool given to us by the advertiser, basically like, Hey, here's five K in losses and I'll touch on this later. But as an affiliate, I don't run things anymore unless I get some of my testing paid for like, I'm just not going to run completely on my own book. And, uh, yeah, I got a loss pool partners are great offers. Great. And I was on the phone this morning at like 9:00 AM asking somebody I respect to like, look at my campaigns, but I'm like, dude, I can't figure it out. Like I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
He got is this weekend. You're going to come up live it's okay. I'm great. I can't even figure out how to crack a killer offer, but like you built the community, that's going to help solve this problem for you over the next couple of days. Like do, like, I think that it's just, uh, look, I, I mean, I guess in some sense, I welcome it. I mean, if I wasn't failing so bad at this offer, I wouldn't have reached out for this intensive help. And when I did it, I learned like tons of stuff. Like I learned a whole new, like literally a whole new way to buy media that I didn't know about before. So I'm testing it today and this weekend, we'll see if it works and it's going to be like, I'll literally have to like update all my SLPs and stuff, you know, but it's, it's, I'm failing bad and not like my failing bad, but like, I've been an affiliate for a while. And I know when to push and when to cut and run. So I'm not someone that just like a noob just fights forever. And I'm literally, like, since I started chatting with you guys beforehand, I refresh that's like four times like, like what I need and they didn't look good.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
It's not nice. You know what I mean? But I'm that invested in it where maybe I've gone too deep. Another amazing fail is, um, amazing fail is when I really got started on Facebook was solar, um, which was a really big vertical for us. Right. We did tons of money on solar. We were definitely want to top producers, solar leads for over a year and it took me six months to figure out how to make it work. And when I went backwards, like I had probably lost like 300 grand before I got it profitable. But like, I was never looking at it like on an all time basis. I was just doing a day to day and I was so deep trying to crack it. And what's amazing about this is, is an, obviously everything changes Facebook all the time, but my theory back then was to launch like multiple campaigns and then figure out which one hit the best and then keep that one.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Right. So it was basically like doubling and tripling my losses losers, you know? And I didn't look at it until the very end that I was like, Holy, like this possibly like, I don't know, 150, 200 grand, you know? And I just wouldn't quit like this offer. I wouldn't quit. I'll never forget. I was at a hotel in Russia with my wife. And like, she was like, look, I think you just need to get a job. Like this is driving you crazy. Like, just stop with this. I was like, I will defeat this. You know? And, and that's like, honestly, that terrible point of view is how I feel right now about this failing campaign.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
We'll have you back on the show in a month and we'll see if you're, you're out a hundred Jesus
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yahoo, Gemini, another great example of failure. I lost $65,000 when I first learned that traffic source $65,000 to learn a traffic source gone. That was a heartbreaker when I figured that out because I don't pay attention because I'm so deep in trying to figure it out. But I never looked at the final laws until it's all done.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
So I feel like this is a perfect segue into our next segment, which is really some financial for two
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Principles, like what
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Not to do in advertising. And I feel like the first one here is how to really, you know, think about limiting your losses are James. We actually, now I think back our first interaction, I think you were doing a live stream and you were talking about, I think lead gen and solar. And I was just popping in the comments talking about like, how much are you willing to like lose on an offer? That's so expensive. Like solar is like, you know, you think like a $300 payout is a lot like jumping into solar. You can lose money very quickly as you, you experience, right? So what are some frameworks and perspectives that you can provide for somebody that is starting out new offers, opening up new traffic sources and how they can live
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Losses, terrible, terrible way to segue since I'm basically not doing it. Um, looking, you gotta have a sticking point and you can not become emotional with it, which is what I'm doing right now. You gotta be a lot more rational and you gotta consistently pull all time stats and not daily stats because losing a hundred dollars a day or $300 a day or $500 a day, whatever your tolerance is, it doesn't seem like that bad. But then when you, when you look at it and you're like, I've been at this for 45 days, $300 a day, I'm down 14 grand, that sting. So I think that's like a big, a big loss limiter. And also I think it's a nice, basically what I do now is, is I look at the offer and I say, okay, I'm down 5k. And I'm shooting for 20 to 30% ROI when I figured this out.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
So payouts 50 bucks, right? So let's say that I'm going to make $10 a sale, but I'm down 5k. Y'all got to make 500 sales to catch up. Will this offer allow me to make 500 sales to catch up? Will this make a thousand sales to catch up? Because like, when you look at it from a lifetime point of view to be probably you got to make all that money back. So I try to slow down and take a look at it a lifetime and see, what is it going to take to get me back out of the hole?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
That's killer lifetime sets
Speaker 2 (31:03):
All day.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
So let's talk about this next segment, uh, which, um, I think is great. Like we were talking before about, uh, you know, these tips and, and we're like, Hey, what are some principles for people that, you know, how they manage cashflow? And you basically, like, I don't have cashflow issues. I negotiate terms. I'm like, all right, let's talk about that. Right. So like share with folks how you think about negotiating terms. And I want to just jump right to on the affiliate side, it sounds like you're negotiating a loss pool up front, but I don't know. Maybe you could shed light there and then kind of land.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah. I mean, I look at a certain point, you've got to have leverage to negotiate this type of stuff. And I've had enough successes on offers that now people understand that investing in a prepay with me on our law school, it's, it's a good investment for them and that it's going to keep me married to it. And part of the reason that I am doing what I am with this offer, I don't want these guys that are actually my friends to be out that law school. Like I want their investment to have been worth it. Um, but it gives you, it definitely gives you a certain leverage point. I think the step that I had before that was when you're an affiliate and especially like in lead generation, um, with bigger companies. So not necessarily with a network, it could be a network, but like companies like you're selling the solar city, solar leads, they want to pay you like net 30 and everything else.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
But at the end of the day, like you need to value yourself and understand the value you can have to them that you're like a monster revenue producer for them. So someone says like, Oh, we pay net 30. And I'm like, I can't afford. I never say like, I won't. I say I can't afford, I don't have the money. Oh, good. Yeah. Like you gotta be like humble. You can't try to be like Mr. Baller. But I just say like, look, I'm not able to afford to float this capital for you. Like I just can't do it. And then a lot of times they'll capitulate and then I'll kind of be like, well, how much volume do I need to be? Where you can start to float me the cash? Or where do I need to be to get past their payment terms? And a lot of them, especially European buyers will completely stick and I'll be like, okay, well I just can't afford it.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
You know, they'll be like, no, it's the way we do it. So what I'll do is I will smash them for one week and then turn the traffic off and just say, Hey, I got to wait until I can get paid. And like nine times at nine and a half times out of 10, they will capitulate and make a payment. So I keep it going. And it just using that leverage to never be out of pocket and to really maintain your bank roll. Like it's, it's, it's dangerous with an unknown advertiser, unknown affiliate network to float that much cash. Because if you look at it, let's say you have like a great month. You make a bunch of money, let's call it a hundred K okay. A hundred K profit. You just put it in your pocket. And then in order to make that a hundred K let's say you spent 300 grand, well, you want to do it again the next month.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
So I got to flow 300 grand to make a hundred. If that person doesn't pay me last three months of cash. So is it really, this is like our entire business model ad capital. It's just floating people's steps. We're just taking these risks liberal, voluntarily. And you're making me sound and feel like a complete idiot in the past as well. When I didn't feel good about advertisers. And I don't like, like, I understand the fact that you don't have money until it's in your pocket. It doesn't matter. What's in your tracker. It doesn't matter. What's on your spreadsheet. It doesn't matter. What's in your brain. It's not yours until it's in your pocket. And I would figure out ways to kind of quasi by insurance. So like if I had an offer that I was crushing, but I didn't like the payment terms, or I felt bad about the advertiser, I'll just go to a network and tell them like, Hey, I have an offer.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I'm crushing it. You front me the cash and finance it for, you know, take 5% instead of 10 or 20. And just make an agreement with me that you will be the one that basically bankrolls me and buys the risk and I'll pay you 5% for it. So it's kind of like a way to make your own insurance. That's amazing. So on your, on your affiliate business and your agency business, what percentage would you say are prepaying of those deals? Those contracts as partnerships, what percent are pre-paying you upfront for that media versus where you're for the clients? I never put my card on the media ever. They put their own credit card. I won't run the deal. Like I'm not going to risk my own money for them to build a business and listen, because that's the other thing people don't pay in all reality, people don't pay.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
When I first got an elite game, it was 2008 and I was doing a lot of television, um, a lot of television ads. And I had a guy that was massive television lead producer. And he was floating all the major lenders and banks, net terms. Well, when all those banks shut and said, screw you, this dude was out millions and millions of dollars. And I was under the impression that banks they're completely reliable. Of course, they're going to pay you what I realized, like, no, they probably won't. And when bad times happen, like pandemics or whatever, it's very easy to make excuses. So I just, I don't know. I just recognize no, I'm never going to put my card on the account and float people unless they want to pay me for the loan because it's basically a loan. Like if I'm, if I'm putting my card in the account, I'm floating you 30 days that costs money, but my money can make money.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
So I never do that. And on the affiliate side, I just either get paid upfront or I start getting paid dailies. And once I do volume, I just say, look, I need to prepay, like I just to keep it rolling. I need to prepay it because I can't afford it. I love that prepay let's year for your first for talking about that on the show, man. And I feel like nobody asks for it. It's just a, but it changed the game in terms of your cashflow, the guys over at strike point media. I mean, they, they were on the show a couple weeks ago. They talk about how, you know, not so much in the affiliate space, but like when their clients started to prepay, it changed the game for them and their trajectory and their cashflow and their growth was when they changed those payment terms.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
And I felt like you can, as an affiliate, you get way more aggressive when you're on a prepay too, in terms of like the volume that you can push. So it, wasn't a killer James, your amazing guests. Thank you so much. Uh, tell everyone a little bit about, uh, you know, how we can support you where people can get in touch and, uh, yeah, I mean, it's lame, but the easiest way, even though I'm not on there ever is like Facebook messenger. I check it like once a week and I hit everybody back and it's the most direct way, um, symphony agency, the hardest, the hardest agency in the world to hire or really, really good. We just probably don't want to work with you. Do we kick? Well, that's a good, amazing pitch. And then, uh, geek out events, like really the, the, I believe the highest level learning workshops, et cetera in the game, we'll be doing another event in a month, either in LA or Miami. We're always like really poorly prepared until everybody last minute, but it still sells out super fast. So it works. Um, so yeah, hit me up on Facebook messenger. If you have questions, I answer all questions that people ask me about media buying business, whatever. I don't give a. It just might take a second to respond, but I will absolutely respond. So guys, thank you so much for, uh, having love it, man. I love it could want.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
I love it. All right. Thanks so much, James. Have a good day, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me Zack at FunnelDash com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or ed.com/review.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
CEO and Founder of SM Commerce and ZASR Digital, Depesh Mandalia is known as the “Facebook Ads Chef”. He’s invested nearly $50M year in profitable ad spend over the past few years. During the past decade has been responsible for over $100M of revenue generated and over $20M of profitable Facebook ad spend.
His agency helps 6-figure and 7-figure businesses scale beyond $10M while his training programs help entrepreneurs scale up faster, through Facebook ads and other channels by focusing on his Brand-driven, Performance Marketing (BPM) System.
A graduate of the University of Hertfordshire where he earned a BS in Computer Science, he also has a Diploma in Project and Business Management from The Open University and a Master of Business Administration.
TAKEAWAYS
Discover the ADA principal why it is an essential formula for creating ads that convert.
What the two most important lines of ad copy are -- and the horrible thing that happens if you get them wrong.
The importance of creating avatars that marry an emotional hook to a functional benefit.
Find out how to identify the 4 elements of a great ad -- and why the second on absolutely has to be backed up by data.
Understand the totally unsexy spend of cash buffers and why you can’t afford to skimp on them.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(Email)
(Depesh Madalia Website)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast, we have an awesome guest Depeche Medallia who was responsible for spinning shoot upwards of four $50 million in ad spent every single year. We dive into his background where he starting affiliate marketing, how he's diving into the real estate scene and diving into the kind of rich ad segments in four ads of understanding your audience, your offers testing, um, to kind of really make sure you hit it right on the head to where, you know, it's not rocket science on the media buying side. We also kind of dive into the super juicy financial side of things to understand, and kind of cash buffers, how to kind of set up your agency or business for success in the kind of a long-term make sure to tune in. You will not want to miss this one.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah. We talked to this e-com store from 800 K to 26 million, 18 months. Dude. I've never heard of anyone doing that before. And I said, yeah, we did it like 2015. It was cool. And it was like blown away. But for me, I was right in the middle of it and I focused on how stressful it was and how intense it was. And he's like from the outside of you even listening to what you're saying, and I started to share some stuff online, people site following, and I figured, you know what? Maybe people can use this and can benefit from it.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
[inaudible]
Speaker 4 (01:16):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliate brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad. Poor dad podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with a one and only Dylan Carpenter. How are you doing today, Dylan? Good, man.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
We got a legend of the game today.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Legend. That's right, man. Yeah, I, uh, I think today's guests, uh, gosh, has managed tens of millions of dollars in media and is really been one of the, I think most generous, uh, Facebook ad experts in terms of just be willing to open up the kimono and share a ton of insights. Um, but I think he said before the show he's managing over 40 million may 50 million a year in annual ad spend. Um, which is, uh, that's, that's no, that's no small feat. So I feel like, um, we're going to learn a lot today. He's also the creator of the BPM method, which we're going to dive into and, um, and it's good stuff. So what do you think, should we, should we bring them on the show, Dylan, the hype is real,
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Man. Let's go ahead and welcome this guy in
Speaker 4 (02:44):
All right, Depeche. Welcome to the show. It was a little guy's side of the, have you here, man? I, uh, I, uh, I I'm a fan. I, I feel like, um, there's very few folks that are managing the level of scale that you you've, uh, been fortunate enough to manage, but also really peel back the onion, but I'm excited to get into what's working now. I'm excited to hear about a rich ad. I'm excited to hear about, uh, to know that you're not perfect. Um, I want to hear about a poor at that you've tanked on. So we all know you're, you've got a in your armor, but tell everybody a little bit about what you're up to, uh, uh, these days. W what do you, what's got you excited,
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Certainly. So right now, um, you spread between running an agency, um, trying to figure out a training program and how to kind of best educate people on getting better with their ads and, and kind of, um, getting better, better results for their business as well. Um, we do some e-com on the side, also on the side, have a large family as well, which I looked after as well. So lots of things to keep me busy at the moment.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
That is awesome, man. Yeah, I think there, you know, for the agencies listening to this show that they would love to hear your journey from, you know, really, uh, doing affiliate marketing to then jumping into the agency side, to now really doing, uh, quite a bit of, uh, coursework and education. And, you know, there's some agencies that, that talk every single month and year about like, I'm gonna stop doing client work this year. I'm going to come out with my aunt program and offer. And it's quite a, it requires a ton of discipline to really be able to make that jump from, uh, you know, uh, agency owner, um, you know, performance marketer, affiliate marketer. We're always working on other people's campaigns, uh, to where you're really, you know, owning the offer yourself. So how, how have you been able to stay so disciplined and what advice would you give to the agencies?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So we, first of all, I've spent most of my time clients' side. So I've had a lot of experience of bad agencies and also learn a ton from good agencies. So by the time I started to transition away from consulting and kind of working one-to-one with different clients, into an agency world, I kind of knew what I wanted from the agency. It took us a while to get there. Um, you know, I'd say the first 12 months was a ton of learnings. There's a difference between seeing an agency from the outside and actually being right in the middle of it and seeing what it's about then it was a case of, so here's how we transitioned from agency to training was at that stage, back in 2017, I started to look for media buying training for my team. Now you'll know, even back in 2017, let alone right now, there are hundreds and hundreds of Facebook ads courses out there from people who are 18 years old, probably 12 years old, probably 30 and 50, who are all experts with their Lambos and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
And some of them are genuine. There are some really good people out there, but the majority is just disappointing. And I went through and I honestly liked to spend months and months going through lots and lots of these programs. I thought I can't, some programs had some good staff. A lot of them was just trashed. And how many of them were just taking stuff that Facebook gives you for free from blue blueprint and just recreating that with a, with a different veneer. So I started to just write my own training. It was just like, write an, uh, you know, do a short video loom video, show it with the team. And then I started to bolt that together. And I thought, right, how do I turn this into a bit more of a strategy, not just kind of one off videos. And then it was a conversation with a friend of mine in 2017. And he goes, um, have you considered sharing it with other people? And I'm like, who'd want to learn from me. Like, there's loads of other people out there. He goes, not your, your stuff,
Speaker 4 (06:21):
This lowly media buyer that only manages 40 million a year.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
And that kind of space you don't, sometimes you didn't realize how good the puppy is that you're doing and what you've done. So he goes like, what's the best case study you've got? And I said, you know, we talked to this e-comm store from 800 K to 26 million, 18 months. It's like, dude, I've never heard of anyone doing that before. And I said, yeah, we did it like 2015. It was cool. And he was like blown away. But for me, I was right in the middle of it. And I focused on how stressful it was and how intense it was. And he's like from the outside, are you even listening to what you're saying? And I started to share some stuff online, people started following and I figured, you know what, maybe people can use this and can benefit from it. And that's kind of where, where the whole thing came from. So now it's like a balancing act between trying to keep the agency, uh, following its path, as well as trying to do the education thing. And I love doing the teaching thing.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Oh, you're killing it, man. I love it. I it's so thorough. It's, uh, it's really, you know, it's detailed and you're not just kind of throwing up screenshots being like, look at me. I'm awesome. And, uh, yeah, so we appreciate that. Well, do you see, let's, let's dive into it, man. Let's, let's, uh, let's dive into this rich yet. [inaudible] so the patch,
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Which would you prefer first? That Marine one is pretty fire. I will say that. And so I sent you two ads, so we have a Slack channel where we just keep throwing in ads that we see that we like and hate because even the bad ads you learn from them as well. Right? So these aren't playing ads. These are just ads that we've seen from the newsfeed. Um, but I think they're really good examples of really good ads and really bad ads as well. So throw whichever one appeals to you the most we can go through it, I'd say that Murray and grooming.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I mean, I feel like the copy kills it, the headline, it's just a really, it's like, Oh, let's see how far we can get away with this then.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Absolutely. And like, you know, things like ed products or anything, that's a bit more personal. Um, you have to be a bit clever of how you kind of, um, communicate that with the, um, in the newsfeed and with your prospect and stuff. And I think that the hook on this particular ad is that that kind of comparison between you and the guy that, uh, or, you know, the guy that your girlfriend's not dating kind of thing. It's just so clever. And it, it reminds me of the old spice ads and, you know, the man that your man could be kind of thing, but he's just so just, it's just so instantaneous that it creates an image in your head of that new outcome. I think that's like when I break down ad like this, I'm looking at how quickly can you get your proposition across and create that aha moment. Some people really struggle to do that in their ad. They try and create clickbait, try and get you on the landing page. And by then, you've kind of lost the interest of the user. I'm figuring out how do you get that as fast as possible. And, and that had an absolute, does it,
Speaker 4 (09:12):
So let's just read through this. I mean, this is, this is mind blowing right now. So the image says basically on the left side, and you know, if you're listening to go to richdad pro.com/podcast, you got to see this episode and we'll screenshot this, put it up in the show notes, but the left side is your grouping, which is, I don't even know what this is. It's like, it's like furry, there's like two red fuzzy balls. And then versus on the right side, says, you know, the guy stealing your girlfriend. And it's like these like super clean, like two balls with like a razor. Yeah. That's basically, uh, you know, basically resembling the male genitalia here. And then the copy on the headlines, like confidence begins below the belt. I mean, just like I just, you know, it's like Coke comes up with this stuff. It's so good.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
It is. It's like, um, the hardest thing to get done in an ad is get the copy and the thumbnail or the thumbnail of the video or the static banner to get them all working together or get them complimented. Because the thing is, when you see the ad, you got to first be drawn to the image. That's the first thing that captures you. And what people fail to understand is that you don't just need an image that stands out in the newsfeed. I've seen, I've seen experts, Facebook experts, that show images of completely random things that are bright and cheerful and demonstrating how this has caught your attention in the newsfeed. If it doesn't match the copy that just people off, like there's no connection there, but this is just perfectly grabbed your attention. And in the first few lines hooked you in, and now you want to know more, um, you've probably heard of the ADA principle, attraction, interest, desire, and action. When it comes to copywriting, I look at that when it comes to an ad as well, the attractions there, the image absolutely does that. The first few lines does the interest and then the next few lines does the desire. And then the action is literally just click to find out more and you will want to do,
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I mean, just thinking about all the things that they could have done, you know, with this type of ad, right? Like they decided to talk to really highlight the guy, stealing your girlfriend. That's like, brilliant, because you could've said like, are you scratching your balls, right? Or like, is this discomfort, is this awkward in public? You could have gone like this whole, like, not even bring in the girlfriend aspect of it all. It's just like a totally different approach. Um, I think that they, they could have just focused all on the pain. Um, but in a single static image, it's just like, you know, it just, it's just a perfect AB you know, the way they've done it.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It's just, it's so cool. When, when I look at building my avatar, I'm looking at two things I want from my avatar. One is the emotional hook and the other one is the functional benefit. What are those? The products or service. And that absolutely nailed an emotional here, which is pleasing the girlfriend and doing it in a way that makes you feel good as well. And the copy that has just come through on that image, and then the kind of the copy in the ad just hits the nail on the head. Oh my gosh. Now, now I'm reading the copy. Now I can't believe the quotes. This is hilarious. That's my favorite part of growing below the belt. I feel more confident when the bushes are trim, the tree looks clean down there. My partner does it for me, and I wonder how far they pressed it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Or if this was like the first version of one, or it's like, let's see if this gets approved because Aaron's 500 disapprovals before. But the thing is ad was running for some time as well. So I think it lasted a while. It's a good, fine man. Perfect ad to then take someone through an advertorial style Lander and expand on that story and then land them on your product page. Cause then it's just, you've got them interested. Now you need to close them. And more people than miss out is a great ad. Is there to get you into the shop. It doesn't get you to the till and cause it to buy it. That's your Lander. I think we don't use that word over here. We're in Austin, Texas. I love it. That's super cool.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
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Speaker 3 (14:48):
Check it out@funneldash.com. All right, let's look at this other one here, your granddad's wedding band and the engagement on this is just unreal. I wonder how long this was. The thing about this is, um, jewelry is such a, um, red ocean, like when it comes to selling jewelry, jewelry online and stuff like that. And people try, I think too hard sometimes to sell the copy, the image and stuff like that. Usually I try and get people not to focus on the product too much because often people are buying the outcome. So here I've got the aura ring. I can track my sleep and things like that. No one really cares about the ring. They want to know how you're improving your health. That's the thing they buy into. If you look at a product like this, um, usually I'd say don't focus on the ring cause they want to know what the benefit is.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
So it's styling is a great accessory, but what works so well here is the copy because they're talking about is not a grandad style ring. And then there's a bit of curiosity that they create that I, the, the style of the re the band is great, the colors and everything like that. And this is just an element of curiosity that will get you to click the challenge here is, does the land to get you to close? Does it get you to actually bind to the product? I think, I think the ad itself, it doesn't try too hard, but it does so much. Oh. And it just reiterate, it's the exact same copy on the headline and the body. So I just think it seems so simple and effective. Cause I mean, not engagement does not lie. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm on their website right now. Buying a wedding band. Doesn't have to sound good tagline. That's good. All right, man, let's dive into it. So, uh, let's, let's hear about this poor. And is this one of your own Porres or is this one?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
So here's the thing. When you create an ad, you want to evoke an emotion, but that emotion has to nudge you towards buying something or signing up for something. The emotion I feel when I see this is extreme pain in my stomach, because of the image it's shown, I want to get rid of that ad. I want to report the ad. I want to tear it up in my newsfeed. It doesn't do me any good whatsoever. Now I'm, I'm, I'm not the target market. I still don't imagine any human wants to see what they go through. So for example, when you go, when someone goes for Botox or any kind of surgery around the body, no one wants to know really what happens. Cause it's gruesome. They want to know how I'm going to look in four weeks time. And I think that's where this ad kind of misses that trick. Yeah. The image is atrocious. It's like a pension, his belly initiates. Yeah. The other thing that drives me nuts is honestly the Billy link and no actual like headline link, like call to action down there. I don't know what it is, but that always arks me about it please. The, um, the company, the Holly clinic, um, I think it's Holly, Holly, something they're, um, quite well-known in, in London. And I imagine they've got good cash buffers to spend on ads. It's just shocking to come up with an ad like that
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Bat freeze treatment. I feel like they were, they definitely like missed the boat there in terms of, you know, what is the outcome? There is something to be said for highlighting the mechanism, you know, of like, there is like, have you tried all these other ways? And they, they, they basically like heard about this, this, this idea. And then they just like completely failed on execution. Right? It's like, okay, you know, maybe you could ha like, after you're really highlighting the fact that maybe this, this dude's gonna look better and his girlfriend's going to be happy to take a lesson out of the other chat here. Once that's been established, then you can kind of like jump a little bit further into, Hey, you know, fat freezing treatment. It's going to work better than lipo diets. Jim, it's faster, it's cheaper, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when you're just showing up like a picture of a dude and a fat phrase, it's just like, Oh man, that's a big jump to get to.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I can imagine the media buyer or the crazy. Person's like, what is the product we're actually selling? And someone said, here's the picture of what we're selling? And they're like, great. Let's put that in the ad and write some copy. That's not what you're selling, you're selling what happens four weeks later when the guy's looking at his flat stomach and thinking, wow, it's great to now be able to fit in my smaller trousers or jeans or whatever.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
How do you think this applies to, you know, what you're doing over at BPM method, right? Let's just, let's just talk about your own ads for a second. Right. You're selling to an advertiser, somebody that ultimately wants, you know, a better ROI, better, you know, more scale on their, on their advertising. And how do you, you know, how would you think about kind of showing that for more digitally native products that, uh, you know, it's easy to do and you know, it's easy, it's a physical product. It's like, I got this. Right. But how, how are you thinking about that, um, for your, for your own, for your own stuff right now?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Really? So the first thing I think about, so I break down four elements of a great ad campaign into four parts. So you've got product, does the product clearly solve a problem or create a new opportunity? That's all it's all about. So, um, if you've heard of you dreams, Schultz, and his four stages of problem aware solution aware and everything in between, what is your product set? So for example, the first ad that you saw I'd argue the product isn't immediately obvious. Like if you presented that as an ad of a razor, who knows, is it for your face or is it for something else? But now that presented the ad in a different way, you know, immediately what that product's about. But the thing about product proposition, the second thing is the audience avatar, how well constructed is that I might have a call with someone yesterday and they were talking about their buy-in and is exactly what their client says their customer is.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I said, how do you know that? Well, she said, you know, the founder of the business said, that's the case. I said, where's your data points? Have you surveyed existing customers? Have you looked at your ad campaigns to see where the clicks are coming from? If you've gone through your analytics and stuff like that. So it was building a real picture of who your customer is. The third and most important part is the offer. It's an offer is not discount promotion, anything like that, the offerings, the whole construct of your copy, your creative, your Lander, and everything that comes between that, which matches the product with your audience. So once you get the offer, right, I'd argue that media buying is easy. Then the final part is your funnel, the sales funnel, the booking funnel, wherever it is. And when you get those four parts together, that's when the magic happens, then we take it a layer down and say, right, who's the avatar.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
And as I mentioned before, what's the emotional trigger? What the functional benefits and how do we write ad angles that are going to hook people in on something that's emotional. I'll give you an example. Um, about three, four years ago in the affiliate space and CPA offers, led dog collars were a big thing and people were selling them as they're bright. They last long, all that of they're focusing on the functional benefits. Most people were selling it for about 25, $30 then came a different style of advertiser was selling it for $50. But the angle was this product could save your dog's life. Now, all of a sudden $50 doesn't sound like expensive. And, and that's the difference between finding an emotional hook. That actually means something to you. And it's something that's functional, which makes it easier for you to rationalize. Should I buy this? Should I not? It's $25. It's an led led dog collar. I don't think I need it right now.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
Now I got stuff becoming in here. You mentioned the offer coming in hot. Now, is this something y'all help come up with with the clients? Is it the clients they already kind of have something in mind? Do you kind of feed it off some of their top services? How do you approach the offer when it's just non-existent at that kind of point in time?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah. So that comes from the advertise building, um, the hook between the product, the audience, and kind of how that is communicated. That's essentially it. So, um, we would focus on writing different hooks for our ads, taking the newsfeed. For example, the first two lines of your copy are the most important, um, all of the whole copy blog. Cause if no one reads the first two lines, they're not reading any more than read more. So, you know, as we saw in the ad examples, you've got the first attraction point is your thumbnail or your static banner or whatever format you're using, but then you need to retain that interest. So we test multiple ad angles to find which of the strongest ones. So for example, um, you know, we were working with organic smoothies some years ago, we were working on right. What the benefits of the organic smooth, some of the weight loss is weight control is, is, um, bodybuilding.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
There's lots of different things then, right? What the, um, emotional triggers here. So talking about, you know, once you've got the weight off, how do you maintain it and how do you write a few hooks of copy to make that happen? How do we get an image or video to, um, amplify that pain or new opportunity, and then tie that into kind of, re-up creating that ad. That's really going to cut through. Um, and you know, one thing I would say is all the many, many ad accounts, I've audited, the amount of people that have great products and have written great offers, but have no clue really on what they're doing about media buying far outweighs those that are really good at media buying, but can't create great offers. Like this is just something where, when I speak to people and they're like, I want to be the best media buyer.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
I'm like, no, you don't need to be the best media, buy it. Like, don't worry about learning. Facebook ads learn marketing. One thing I think is pretty cool is that the founder of mind value I was talking about, if you go back a hundred years, 500 years, the way you would sell to humans, it has actually changed the triggers, the emotions, the reactions and stuff like that. What's changed is the medium. So even a hundred years ago, the internet, obviously wasn't around 10 years ago, Facebook really wasn't as big a platform as it is for advertising. Now the medium keeps adapting and it will keep adapting, but humans change at a slower rate. So all the strategies and tactics and stuff that you're using right now, if you rely heavily on the platform and you'll know this Dillon from all the different Facebook groups of duplicating and budgets and this kind of stuff that is so like short term thinking, get your offer, right. Get your avatar, right. Get your land is right. Fit your product. That's where the money's made.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Yeah. We had a Mike Filsaime on here the other week and, um, you know, he went into it and he's like, Oh, we're spending 15 K a day, you know, in B2B, which is not easy to do. And in SAS, which is not easy to do. And he's just like only came on and talked about the offer the entire time. Right. And he's just like, we basically looked at the market, we're doing like this freemium page builder, whichever he knows click funnels. And we just like slashed it and made it free and changed our monetization model. Like we priced out LT like LTV. Like he knows his Mark he's been in the market for like 20, 20 years. Right. So like, uh, and, um, just rolled it out, you know, in the last 60, 90 days. And they've already got like 200,000 users on it.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
It's, it's, it's a great story, uh, in a market that's really, um, difficult, but I love the principles that you're sharing to pass. It's it's, it's it's killer stuff. I want to switch gears here and talk about some of the financial principles, uh, that you could share with, with this market, you know, before the show we were talking about, um, really how you think about, you know, funding, the business, how you think about managing cash in your different businesses. Now, both from, you know, on the agency side, which is, there's a lot of agencies that are on that, you know, second, a client leaves, they've got to do some layoffs and, and they're, um, they're always chased, you know, one client away from profitability. It's, it's a difficult business to really be managing cash on. I'd love for you to talk about that. Uh, and then also how you think about investing into a growth into a business. When I think as a culture here in the U S we're like obsessed with venture, we're obsessed with like debt and like, and, uh, speed. So talk, talk to talk to the audience a little bit about, um, how you're taking some of these principles and putting them into your different businesses.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Since 2012, I've been exclusively working with startups, uh, consulting, contracting, et cetera. And I've seen every side of VC, all the kinds of different equities and, and, and deals that go on and the amount of failures. This is the thing about, um, the whole world of VC is, um, you know, for every success is probably 50 failures or whatever the number is. And I've seen that the pressure that comes with as well, and, you know, I've seen businesses that have been really run with it really well, have great product, great service, et cetera, all of a sudden, you know, they got 10, 20 mil of, um, private investment, all these kinds of funds coming in, and now you've got these new kinds of directors telling you to do X, Y, Z, and everything changes. Um, I was at a company that grew from 30 to a hundred people in a couple of months.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Uh, they had $40 million invested. The whole culture changed, and it just changed the dynamics of what was a really successful business. And they started to struggle. Now, when, when I started off the agency, we decided to just go all in, you know, bootstrap and kind of get things started without putting money invested in to help it grow itself. So we started off with, um, clients, and then we started to hire at the base level, start to build our cash buffers. And one thing we wanted to do was after that 12 month Mark, and this is the thing is like, if you want to build security in your business, it doesn't necessarily have to coming day one day, one 80 or whatever it is we decided by that 12 month Mark, we needed enough buffer to cover three months of zero clients. And then we grew that to six months and you know, now we're at 12 months plus, but that means that we can make better strategic decisions because when you know that if you make a move right now, if it goes really bad and you lose a set of clients, we're okay, we can, we can cope with it.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
So for right now, for example, where we are investing for the next six to 12 months in our next moves as the agency. So, um, the different, so we're looking at acquisitions, we're looking at hiring and other things like that, or we're able to do that because we've now built those buffers up. Even if we pull in and it goes from like 12, 14 months into six months, buffer, we can make those decisions. And what we've done is to try and make sure every month, some of that money goes aside for taxes. Some of that money goes aside as just, um, uh, reserves. And then some of that money is just pulled out for other ventures as well. But we've got that, that process going on to make sure it doesn't sit there and doesn't get utilized. So, you know, even if there is access, um, you know, as I mentioned to you guys earlier, and I'll mentioned now, I also have real estate as well.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
That for me is the long-term game for me to be able to build a portfolio, um, that I can pass on to my kids. I can comfortably retire on and stuff like that. That's, that's the game for me, but the agency and, and also the training, which by the way, digital products are more profitable than kind of the gold service. Um, that's the kind of thing that we're kind of balancing out. So when we now start an e-commerce venture, we're looking at giving it a boost. So we might put three, four, five K in to get it started, but then that has to turn profitability to help it continue on its own path and grow at the rate that profitability comes in as well.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
I love that it's so boring, but right. You know what I mean? There's no fancy footwork here, right? We're not, we're not a posting up cat pictures of unicorns and babies here to hack.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
The thing is like, I'm not, uh, so I have a co-founder in my business and she is all about bottom line profitability and cashflow. All I focus on is revenue and growth and stuff like that. And I think this is where a lot of people struggle that if I was a single founder right now to manage all those variables of growth and profit and bottom line, it's really hard. And I've seen so many single founders fail, whether it's co-founder or, uh, coaches, mentors, whatever it is, you have to surround yourself with the people that have walked that path. I I've relied on mentors, you know, for the last six, seven, eight years looking at two, three steps ahead of where I am right now, what do I need to be considering? What am I missing here?
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Yeah, Dave, uh, well, there's a couple of people that come to mind. Um, grant Cardone's quote says cash is King cashflow is King, which I love. And, uh, Dave Ramsey has a funny video on Facebook where he just totally beats up on like chase and all the, all the points. And he's like, if you think you're gaming chase, and you're trying to squeeze out three percentage points, four percentage points, he's like, you're focused on the wrong thing. Right. And he's like, chase is winning in that, in that game. And I, uh, I love your simplistic approach to it. I also think that being in the UK, um, is, is, uh, people look at just, you know, cards and bank accounts and kind of their financial stack differently. Um, it's much more boring and traditional over there. I think everybody in the U S is like, uh, you know, I got to get my airline miles.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
I don't care if I'm in a pandemic. Like I got to get, you know, 2% cash back three or four, and I've really, um, you don't get caught up in that. Right. And, and especially like media buyers that are spending, you know, 40 million a year, like we've seen a lot of them hyper-focused on, Hey, if I could put all this spend like on my card, or if I could kind of build a client's up front, I could double my profit, or I could increase my profit by 50% by just getting an extra one or two points,
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I think, to be fair. I think it depends where you are in your life cycle. So if you're transitioning from working nine to five and you've just launched your e-com store and you're struggling for cash flow and those margins matter, then I think it absolutely makes sense. And people will go for the, uh, those tiny margins help them. I think, as you become more established, it just, you don't feel it as much. And, and yeah, you're probably leaving money on the table by not using certain cards in the UK. We don't even have that much choice. I've seen, um, even my, in my Facebook group, when I, when people are posting and saying, what cards do you use? And I'm looking at the award you get in the U S and Canada. We don't have that here.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
No, it's awful. It's awful. But I, you know, I love it. I it's, it's one of those things, you know, a big part of my, my native advertisement here for, for ad card is like, the way that we are looking at our cards is like an opportunity to give value, to help the businesses grow, which is the thing that you wake up and you think about, you know, uh, every single day is like, how do I grow the top line? Nobody's waking up every single day of like, how do I get one, two, three, 4% back. It's something you check in like every six months in your business, but it's like way back there. And I just, I think that there's an opportunity in the space to say why, why can't a financial company exists to just help you grow the top line? The thing that I think we all just care about.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Uh, and so I always, um, want to highlight the people that don't get caught up into that most of the time is people overseas that are just like, Hey man, that's not the, that's not the needle mover here. So I like how you set it up. Tell everybody I feel like I'm kind of recapping a conversation you and I had, but to celebrate a little bit about your perspective on how you think about, um, you know, cards, points, things like that. Obviously UK is limited, but I think your perspective is also, uh, helpful here too.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah. I think the angle I come from is I'm, I've got family, I've got five kids and, and kind of how I would be able to use those points differs as well. So, you know, for, for people who are single or in a couple relationship, or maybe even have one kid, you got a lot more flexibility. So if you're using flights, you can kind of be a little more flexible with that as well. Um, let me tell you flying seven kids, seven people is truly expensive. Um, we, we did a big trip to Alaska last year and it was, that was fun. But the thing is, it was like, um, you know, I don't really have the time as well. So my, my, my business partner, she looks at things like, how can we squeeze this and squeeze that? I think the way I look at it is every single day, you have a hundred percent of capacity for your same reason. I wear a black t-shirt everyday light. I want you to think about that. And it's the same with, um, the bottom line of, I find out we're profitable. If I know we've got cash flow, then I don't want to worry about that. I'll just continue focusing on growth. Totally.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
I love it. I love it. Okay. The past you've been amazing, man. Um, you just deliver every time, tell everybody a little bit about, you know, how, what you're up to next, how they can get in touch, where they should go.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Absolutely. So, I mean, my big push is to make sure people really know what the BPM method is, because the thing is, what I'm trying to do is get people to understand that advertising is far easier. It doesn't matter which platform you're on. You're on Facebook, you're on Snapchat, the same principles apply, which I've talked about. So that's my big thing right now is getting that message out to more and more people. So the BPM method is my main focus right now. Um, but you know, looking into next year, um, you know, we've got an event that's, we were just about to publish and go live with. I love, I love in-person events now, obviously this year is not quite possible. The next best thing is to try and do that online as well. So events, um, and kind of just trying to get as many of the positive messages out there to help people get better performance for their business.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
I love it. So is that BPM method.com that's that's where they can check it out. Awesome, dude. Awesome. Well, Depeche, it's been awesome having you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing some of the principles and how you look at finances, breakdown, rich ads and poor ads. Uh, you, you you've been awesome.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
Thank you so much. Appreciate it guys.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ad or at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Richard [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book. Learn more about the book, go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
Specializing in paid social, performance creative, and digital education, Nick Shackleford’s overflowing co-founderships include structuredsocial.com, Geek Out Education, KEEPARE. Shortly after attending UC Berkley and then graduating from Saint Louis University with a BA in Communication Strategy & Media Studies, he joined the LA Galaxy professional soccer team where he blocked goals for two years before re-entering the marketing world as a Global Social Coordinator for Resolution Media. He went on to serve as Senior Digital Strategist for Agency Y, helped introduce fidget spinners to the US with his Figetly company, then joined Common Thread Collective as a Senior Digital Strategist and later as Director of Paid Strategy. From there, he went on his co-founding spree of three companies which he is involved in today,
TAKEAWAYS
The tried, tested, and proven effective hacks that can keep ads from dying out.
How UTM tags on FaceBook can transport you to performance tracking heaven.
What the tell-tale signs are that you need to have “the talk” about ad spend with your client.
Ways to soften the blow of “big number” invoices for clients you don’t want to lose.
What three data-driven questions everyone at your agency -- from media buyers to creatives -- needs to be able to answer at all times.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(Structured Social Website)
(Geeok Out Website)
(Nick Shackelford Linkedin)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On this episode of the rich dad, poor ad podcast, we have an awesome guest, Nick Shackleford, he's responsible for shoe spending roughly 55 million right now who may break a hundred million during Q4 and ads. We dive into some awesome kind of main areas of focus on the growth side of things. With specific clients on their side, we dive into their framework and templates of building awesome, creative, that converts, and kind of how to be more efficient on the capital side of things while controlling, you know, payments for their clients that are some big seven figures, but make sure as soon as this one, there's going to be a ton. You don't want to miss out, buckle up, get ready. The juicy one.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah. I wish we were able to do a little, the screenshot I'd have it up right now. So I'm going to count. We'll review across the 125 accounts we've had to date. And from January to September 17th, I would say we're about seven months, eight months and nine months in
Speaker 3 (01:01):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome back to another episode of the rich ed. Poor ed podcast is your hosts, Zach Johnson. I'm with the one and only D C Dylan Carpenter. How are you doing today, Dylan? Good, man.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Y'all better buckle up because we got a super bad-ass guest today and she has and be juicy. You're like,
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I am a little schoolgirl about today's good. Um, man. Yeah. You you've been chatting about this guest for like a month now. You're like, Hey wait, wait, when do you think we can get them on? I love it. All right. So gosh. Yeah, today's guest is he's, uh, he's not the co-founder of one or two, but three companies runs a structured agency which should performance, uh, media agency. I don't even know how much this guy manages in ads, but it's gotta be upwards a figure. So we're going to dive into it. He's also the co-founder of geek out education. I'd say this is probably like the highest level mastermind and a group of media buyers that you can hang out with. And they really are bridging the gap in, in community from like just black affiliates that are really jumping over into like full-blown e-com, you know, working and, and really, uh, really diving into win-win relationships with, with clients. So it's a really interesting niche that they put together their on, on geek-out. And now most recently the co-founder with constant creative double Ks, which is fancy some fancy footwork there on the, on the, on the branding side. So we're gonna, we're going to get into it, man. Sh sh should we bring him on the show down? What do you think? Should we just, it's been real. Let's go ahead and get this guy on here, man. Nick, Nick shack. How you doing, man?
Speaker 4 (03:11):
I'm very, very well. This, I was wondering how this introduction was going to go, but I'm very, very thankful to be honest. I know we've all been in the same service for quite a while and it just took us a matter of time to get together. The COVID has been good, bad, stressful, not Sargent for a lot of people. And I'm finally able to make the time to find the right people to connect with. And so very, very thankful to be here today. And you did kind of give a great intro. There's a lot of things going on, but at its core, I think the easiest takeaway to say is paid media growth. Like we are in this bad boy. And, and I, I hate to characterize myself as just a media buyer because that's, it's always much more than that as us as business owners. That's where I'm most happy. Like if I'm in an ad account and I have no calls that day, like I'm absolutely for lack of a better term, I'm geeking. Like I'm absolutely.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So I did give us, give us some, give us some stats on, uh, on the agency side structured agency, you know, like how much media do you guys touch a year month right now that, that, uh, you're either managing or influencing in some shape form or another capacity for your clients?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, I wish we were able to do a little bit. Screen-share I'd have it up right now. So I'm going to count or review across the 125 accounts we've had to date. And from January to September 17th, I would say we're about seven months, eight months and nine months in, we just spent over 52 million. So we will, we will be close to that eight figure this year. And that's probably the biggest record that I know a team that I've been a part of. We've been a part of obviously early, early on timber to even see why we have some massive spenders and obviously a common thread as they were growing that spend was up there. But what we chose at structured purely, I obviously we'd run a little bit of email, a little bit of social. We just handle Facebook. Some people are downloading and snap, man. We were putting that work in there. And I think if you more is what everyone's going to do, I don't see why this shouldn't be a hundred, hundred million spend.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Dylan. I will send you the screenshot. So you all, you will not doubt me on this. I promise.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Nice for crap. So yeah. So do you work with like, what's the sweet spot in terms of how many clients you guys work with at any given time?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah, this is, this is a fantastic question. I know that a lot of your audience is actually either agency owners or media buyers in themselves. And it's funny because I asked Dylan before he was like, yeah, we can meet by myself. I can handle between probably 10 to 20 depending on the client. And we started to make our own internal matrix of what a client looks like early, early on. I used to explain a perfect brand and I'll say brand versus client. And just so we're clear on who we actually serve as we only do. E-commerce I wouldn't say just physical products, but that's kind of like our spot. Um, a brand that we choose to work with is three parts. First part is, has the founder done this before or understands the value of paid media is the product is, are clear USP's that can be said about this product, versus it just being a bottle of what's that what's the lose USB is what can we create angles around if you're just winning on price point, it's really difficult for me to be motivated or my guys to be motivated and deal structures have to be mutually incentivized.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
So first do they get it? Do they understand paid media that's on the founder level or the team level is the product unique enough for us to kind of support and partner with and is the deal structure mutually incentivized? And a lot of our questions is like, well, what does it mean to incentivize deal structure, usually low minimum and then upside on increase in spend and increase the profitability that's as a channel owner, right? Like we're not across Google, we're not across the other platforms. That's all you can really ask for. And trust me these last couple of months have been very interesting to explain to clients like, yes, it's not your performance dropping. It's actually a dry drop in tracking. That's been on our shoulders to try to figure that out for them.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah. So walk us through like a typical setup, right? Like talk to me about a percentage of spend and then percentage of profitability. That's a tough one, right? Cause like you don't have those numbers.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
No, no, no. You're absolutely correct. So a very good situation for us would be a minimum ad spend of about a minimum outstand about 50,000 to 75,000, which means we're taking our 10% on that initial port, anywhere between you're looking to at least pay us between five to 7,500 on just the paid media side that will kind of taper off. If you're going to go, Hey shack, we want to do some content with you. We also want to do email and SMS. Then we'll kind of work with you there. But the main takeaway is minimum is between five to 75 and that'll drop away depending on how spend increases. And we're always, always down to negotiate a percentage of like if we're spending above 75 K and the roast is whatever we deemed profitable or not profitable based on the margins, whatever the brand will provide us, that that number of, of ROAS on account will be in consideration to what your Shopify net or whatever your net is sidelines.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
So for brands that we work with a very, very brand I'm very proud of as a Luca Downey out of the, out of the East coast, out of Rhode Island, they sell jewelry. Um, we have a success metric tied to platform, but we also have a success metric tied to 3.5 return site-wide to my overall spent. And why I believe that's important is because for a lot of these brands, majority of that traffic or majority of the audience is being built for email for Google, for Amazon is coming from their paid traffic, whether that's Facebook or snap or whatever, their dominant sources. So we, we do need to hold ourselves to a platform. But if we pull back to say, hit ROAS targets, what are we doing to the rest of their business? So we do need to, to those numbers and I would love you guys' opinion if you guys believe that, Hey, I've never heard of that or, Hey, that actually makes a lot sense. What do you guys think?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Well, I think profitability is really tough, right? Because you don't have access to those numbers and you're pretty much relying on a trust relationship with the client. I mean, yes, you probably get access to their Shopify confirm revenue numbers. Um, and maybe it's, maybe it's like a net revenue of just, you know, spend the less, you know, what's in there, their Shopify, but, uh, that's, you know, that's a big part of where I think agencies need to go. And I think you're leading the charge there next. So congrats is like, if you looked at media buying five years ago, it was totally enough for somebody in the media buying shop to be like, yeah, I just drive clicks. Like I don't worry about AOV optimization of the funnel. Now, like that expectation is there. You gotta be able to deliver value on both fronts. I think the neck, the third lever is really thinking about profitability.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And then in order to do that, you have to have financial conversations with the clients, right? You gotta be breaking down cogs, you gotta be breaking down refund rates. And so I think that having those conversations on profitability is another thing, but that all exists in the ecosystem of PR like something that I think you actually should be qualifying your clients for. It's like, how are you going to fund growth? Right? Because like, you guys know you can deliver in terms of, you know, if you're properly vetting these clients, you guys know what products will scale, what won't. And the last thing that you guys want is like, yeah, we just crushed it. But you know, they don't have VC funding. They're not willing to leverage debt or they can't leverage that because they don't have the margins. And so I think the agencies of the future are going to have their hands just as much wrapped around the finances and the profitability and how they fund the business than they do right now with just the funnel and the conversions and the, uh, and the media. Right. It's not going to be enough to just be like, Oh, they canceled it because they ran out of money and just point the finger. Right. So that's, that's how I, that's how I look at it.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
No, you, you can't do that. Cause there's there's days. And we've been at this game for long enough, which is why we kind of built consecrated, which is why we're focusing a lot on the creative. And that's kind of obviously why we're here to talk for ad rich ad. But this, this, this industry, like if you aren't having the conversations, and even though you're a quote unquote, finding success, a brand is going to tell you, Hey, like we just can't do it. Like you might be profitable over here, but if you're not profitable across the board, it doesn't matter whether we're winning or not. They're going to fire us anyways. Cause they just can't pay us or can't fulfill that check.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah. And I think the, the, the telltale sign of this is like, when you're bugging your client to spend more on ads every single week, and they're just telling you no, but all the KPIs are like amazing to you. You know, that's time for you not to just like keep nagging, that's time for you to dive deeper with the client of like, alright, we need to have a conversation. That's up the books of like, you know, outside looking in, like, this is a great campaign, like what's really going on in the business. And those are the, those are going to be the people that keep clients for, you know, years and become true marketing partners and get earn-outs and get an upside. And, and their rev shares, you know, don't stop when they become like super big numbers. True. Uh, so yeah. Anyways, I digress, but Nick, let's dive into this rich ed man.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Absolutely. So the easiest way for me to communicate this is this is a brand that we've, I've been fortunate very, very fortunate enough to be with them since for about two and a half years. And this is if I were, it sells a commodity in his classes, and this is a product that it's easy to communicate. You, you know, what is happening, you know, what is going on. And right now, is it easiest to buy? Just like literally play the video on my screen and talk through it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Oops. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
make it rain man. And D if you, you have this link, it is in there. It's I, and I'll exactly tell you exactly what creative it is. So what, what we're witnessing here and w we've been doing a very, we've been spending a lot of our time developing the templates so that when we have our designers, cause constant creative came out of our, our actual designers for the agency. We on average flow between 15 to 25 brands, depending on the season, depending on the products coming into Q4, we're only bringing in, uh, or only operating with 22 brands. And that's because of bandwidth. And we're choosing to not kind of grow, which say what you will, maybe we can't hire as quick. It is what it is. A lot of the time being spent now is understanding what to creative needs to be made and what do we need for these upcoming campaigns?
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So our designers are going, Hey, we're working on the same brands we want to kind of like, what else can we do? We get more, more, excuse me, more styles to practice on. So we opened up our own kind of feed. The term is dog food. We're feeding ourselves what we're currently doing. And we're allowing it's constant creative to fund the development and the building of our content department. Because we know as agency, if you look at it as like separate P and email brings in its own revenue, social brings in and its own revenue content has to support across the board. And it also another way to build the stickiness across each of our, each of our brands hard stop. So through causing creative, we've been building our own self-service platform that allows brands to go, Hey, we need this type of creative made for us.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
The thing that we've learned over doing this for the last five months, the articulation of our traditional e-commerce brand, that's doing under a million under 50 million. I think those are the two bricks. We either have the early, early people or the people that just want to have help on the accurate side. They can't articulate exactly what it is that they want. That has been the biggest feedback of that. Everyone's going, like I want type of ad and they show examples. That's the easiest way to bring to us. We'll be looking at majority of the ads that are working. There's a ton of a template, okay. This happens. Here's your hook after the hook, here's the solution that solution cuts into a potential UGC or social proof cracking back into product development potentially on boxing, but it's literally pieces you plug in. So this creative, why it was so successful is because it's under 15 seconds. So we are going to get full deliverability on feed, whatever platform you choose from the initial, and I'm going to play right now. So the sound might go off and I'll let this play all the way through. I lied, I'm cutting it in the first five seconds.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well, we didn't hear it, but thought that'd be great. And then it, you know, for everybody, uh, ever listening, you can also, we'll, we'll link these up as well on the, uh, Richard pour a.com/podcast for, uh,
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Next episode. Appreciate you guys. Thank you very much. You probably should have articulated that beforehand first five seconds, or you were already showing the product name, the product and her exclamation of how much that she really, really likes is, Oh my God, this is unbelievable. So it's already hitting you with a statement of your current career. It's like, why is she doing this? What is she talking about? It looks like it's just classes. It's always well lit UGC style face-to-face and it can kind of continues on with simple graphics, kind of keep people kind of pulled into it. This ad has been running this exact style with a rotating in different frames for the last six and a half months. So I call this a reach out for two reasons. One it's profitable above their ad spend total ad spend on this one specific ad is $20,475. And the return is $72,427. So to me, w plus it's a simple template that we can kind of reproduce over and over. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Oh my gosh. And it's been running for six and a half months. That's always really nice.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Yeah. Usually like the issue that we're starting to find is how do you, how do you repurpose this? How do you get this to do something else other than die out? Because it's a huge thing. I know one of our great friends, Zach stud always talks about our best performing ads, dying out. What do you do? How do you address it, where you probably relaunch it and go through audiences or start changing out the transition, start changing out the borders. Somethings that we're are trying to test and flirt with is pulsing borders or making the image smaller so that it looks different on the feed. And don't have data back for that yet. But I really, really do hope if anybody is listening and running tests definitely hit me up and tell them, Hey, smaller images work better with large borders, posing, borders, something I'm really curious about. Hmm.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah, yeah, no, we, um, I L I love that. I like you're giving me all kinds of ideas right now, Nick, on how we could do a better job. Like we're sitting on a billion in ad spend across 50,000 accounts. And like there's so much more we could be doing in terms of back testing, like these, uh,
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Creatives across all these, uh, across all these accounts. Um, well, you know, thanks for that. So honestly, this is what this is kind of fortunate or unfortunate, depending on who's in charge of the project. Um, you, if you have a unified naming structure across the entire agency, and it's been something that I've been trying to get the team on board, not, not just UTMs, but I'm talking straight from campaign all the way down to ad level. And that unified UTM will be our, sorry. The unified naming convention is going to start populating, just trends with like what's working across the board. Facebook has done a beautiful job by creating ads reporting to, to be able to pull in, like, it took me two minutes to let you know, like, Oh cool, we're on pace to, to spend 52 million across the beginning of the year. Now you can still pull that in add potentially the ad level.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
If the naming conventions are right, that's a couple pivots away from finding out feed four by five 15, second UGC. First, if we get all of our templates in line, but man, this has been about a year, a year and a half of building. So I built to get our UTM naming conventions. Oh gosh, man. If I had a nickel for every time, I heard that if the team, the team buckles down and everyone's going to be launching was gonna be tons of dash copy, copy one, two threes. My OCD was going to go off the charts. You know, this, this is going to be a fun tangent. One of the things that we built in like FunnelDash beta days when we were building out an analytics tool, nobody would ever do this. Right? Cause we were like, Hey, you gotta use these UTMs to track your stuff. What we did is we just had our clients connect their Facebook ad accounts. And through the API, we just had this like rotator that would just go in and just fix everybody's links like every hour. And it would just adjust, uh, um, the UTMs and it was so nuanced. Like I appreciate it. You would appreciate it now, but like that feature doesn't exist anymore. Um, I love that. Oh yeah, you would, you would appreciate it. You'd buy it. And then you'd be my only customer.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
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Speaker 5 (20:43):
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Speaker 4 (21:27):
I don't know if it's the brand or if I don't know the product, but we, we primarily sell to females across the board, but we look at our portfolio of brands. We do have some male focused products, but majority of the female buying products and this adds from a solid beauty based out of Australia, they are launching in the U S and I believe looking at it visually, which obviously I'll send it over to D it looks like it should work. It has the social proof. It has the branding. It has a use of product and it is bleeding cash. I'm saying like, this is just on one out on one outset. We spent over $5,000 and it currently is sitting on a 0.72. Now, technically we should turn this off and why the justification is for this specific brand is like, it's the highest CTR and account.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
And it's technically below CPM that doesn't say. We never make decisions off of that. But this ad, for whatever reason, I don't want to give up on it. It got a 7% click to purchase ratio. AOE is 113 bucks. So I'm like, guys, we've got to keep this running, but it's not proven profitability on Facebook. And if I were to let this run, I'll run through it again. It's split screen with UGC testimonial at the bottom, sped up for her to actually try it on. So it is, it is very engaging because she's moving so quick, but man, it's not doing the job,
Speaker 5 (22:48):
But it's still running is everything. Yeah, because it's true
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Out of all the brands, the easiest I posted this earlier this week, the way that we look at a lot of our products now is, or a lot of our ad sets specifically is okay, what's the click to purchase ratio? What pages are we running to? What's the AOV and what, um, what's the cost of like the carts Regan, because we know we're going to kind of build up bottom. We always work off a lot of our downfalls and correlations. That's kinda how we like to buy media as human plus scientific as possible. It's not, it's not a perfect science, but we believe that it could potentially be, um, this ad tends to this ad style tends to do well, but for whatever reason, all the other metrics look good, except the fact that it is not profitable.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
It's funny because I think you've mentioned that kind of correlation Excel sheet. You are,
Speaker 4 (23:35):
You mentioned that a while ago and I love those
Speaker 5 (23:39):
And cart ratios, checkouts and whatnot.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
And those were my bigger accounts. I love that stuff you have. I mean, there's, there's some brands, for instance, we were selling, um, neon signs. So we have an unbelievable neon sign brand that we've been working with and AOV 600 bucks. What do you have to wait at least for 200, 300 all even dealers, they even want to know this is potentially going to go wide. So I was very fortunate enough to work with a good team and we're promoting the Nikola truck, right? That is by far the largest brand that I personally have been able to go against in the most recent time outside of obviously the apples and, um, uh, nugs and, and June shine and a couple of these other like on the email side, but NYCLA has been, I'm very for this industry and very, I'm a Tesla current driver, but I cannot wait for that truck, that hydrogen truck that we're making and conversions are a thousand to $5,000 reservations. Right? So my, my, my, my CPA target was three 25. We're thankfully operating between about 175 and two 50. But man, you've got to spend a couple thousand bucks to figure out if that ads can actually be work
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Well, you are, uh, we were doing an episode. It was the last week about something a little bit more tangible, you know, somebody selling high ticket stuff or professional services, you know, in that two to $20,000, it's the efficiency of capital, right. Is just like, you know, you got to spend a thousand dollars to know if you're, it's like, if you're on target, uh, yeah. Versus like, you know, 50 to a hundred dollar AOV, you get this, you get to spend 50 to a hundred bucks. Right. And you know, my, most of my career has been B2B SAS. Right. And so I did not like understand this for, for a long time in terms of, yeah. I just focused on CPA and ROI. But when you start to really think about, you know, how efficient is that level of spend, what is the result of that efficiency?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Well, you can accelerate and learn so much faster. Right? I think a lot of why, you know, DDC does so well is because it's so capital efficient at this 50 to a hundred dollars price point that, you know, every single week, like you can throw something out and test in B2B. Like if you're, if you're doing like a trial, you're doing some scriptures, you're doing anything high ticket. You, those optimization cycles are monthly at best. They're probably more like quarterly. And so you're really, uh, that capital efficiency ultimately is like, how many times do you get to cycle through learn and test? And so that's why we shifted our whole customer acquisition for on the B2B side to books, right? Like we're like, uh, you know, like a 30, $50 book is, it's not e-com, but we can learn just as fast on lead generation. Um, get somebody to buy a book either. It's the agency growth book or rich dad, poor ed book. And we know, um, you know, within that week that we're, you know, being capital-efficient, we're hitting some, some leading metrics, uh, to really make the thing work and scale. So I'm like a hundred percent with you there, but like selling a semi-truck it's like next,
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Do we are, we we're building our best. So we've been working with a data scientist again, we're trying our best to be as how would you say this? Like systematic to the point where everybody, everybody involved, whether it's the media buyer, that the brand, you have to answer three questions at all times. Like I firmly firmly believe in this over the years I've been in it. You have three questions that if they call you and you wake up and you can answer these three, they're gonna be like, appreciate you. Uh it's what has happened? What is happening? And what are you going to do any time? Those are the three questions. What has happened? What is happening and what are you about to do? You can break that down any way you want, but that's layman's terms too. I know it has happened because I understand what's happening.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
I'm doing this currently. And by me doing this currently, I expect this outcome. That way they feel competent, like, okay, you've got this, continue to do what you need to do. And what's the hardest thing in the agency world. The fact that it's human capital, like you could only take so many brands unless you want to grow. That's why you have the Hawks. You have the mute. Six is you have the common threads that are 60, 70, 80 people, uh, even, even promote w a hundred plus people on social side. We're going that, that model of building out one-to-one or one to five, one to eight is stressful, especially when they need to be putting most of their creative brain to choosing the content that they need to do. Well, man, if you can build this simple by correlation of when we're making decisions and how we're making decisions, you still need the human element because there's nuances of CPCs and the wants. It's a Patriot running to everybody's on the same page. I get why you're doing what you're doing. I can run it forever. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Calm down. Calm down. Nick is not passionate about this at all at all. All right, man. So let's dive into this next segment. Let's talk about some financial principles for the people that are in advertising, media buying, you know, and, and, uh, what are, what are some of the things that either you're working on yourself in terms of how you are structuring your relationships with your clients, how are you having, you know, these financial conversations and to what extent with your clients? Uh, but what, what advice can you give, uh, on that front?
Speaker 4 (29:11):
So this is very top of mind. So this and this wasn't planned before. So any of the lessons, like, I didn't know, these are the three main questions coming. I knew the rich and poor, but this last one is something that I I've been thinking about internally with our partners, because we obviously, we do the traditional model of percentage of spend or minimum, right? We do a lot of the invoicing about seven to 14 days. So we let delayed attribution kind of catch up because a lot of our, our success is based upon the metrics that we hit at certain spend levels. So we spend X, it falls between the success metric or the next success metric. That's what we're able to build upon. And that was agreed upon a contract prior, if a brand isn't savvy to whether they're agreeing to what they're spending on, they're going to get this bill 20, 30, $40,000.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
They're going to be like, Holy, I'm not paying this. So we're currently in talks with other partners, even we've been trying to do as ourselves. We have drawn a perfect solution outside of using just a Google dashboard and adding in a percentage and then doing our own custom doesn't correlate with custom metrics there. I don't think it's perfect. It will improve. Um, but we're, we're wanting brands to a, at the beginning of each month talking through it. And this has been something we've been doing forever, but now it's more of a transparent, updated rather than being manually in the team, doing it on a Wednesday and Friday. It's every dollar we're spending. There's obviously a percentage that we are, we're making on that depending on the success metric of that day. And it's not really on a daily level, you can't do it as much because there's so much nuance and change every two weeks to have.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Then obviously again, finding on the month, we're building the dashboard that will highlight as you're spending. Here's what you expect to spend and your bill is for Facebook. And then that margin above it is the percentage that we're taking on the ad spend at the success metric. So now that they're able to log in, see, okay, this is what I'm spending on a pacing ad. This is what my true ROI is because this is what the agency fee is on top of it. And I can expect my build in a must to be somewhere around this area. And that way they have no excuse other than like, Oh, I haven't checked my, my, my dashboard. I haven't checked the updates in so long. And now then when they get that check, they can either be like, Hey, let's payment plan, because obviously we're in a time of COVID and yes, there are some brands that are doing fantastic. There are some brands that are like, I would love to break up these payments. What are these terms? Can I get to 30 days? And at the end of the day, it's our job as partners to make sure that they have the cashflow to spend. So that we're usually the most expensive bill for them at anybody that produces any, any high spend. And so that conversation is a very intimate one. How'd you guys know,
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Oh dude, it's the rule of large numbers. Right. And you gotta be really careful because, uh, yeah, there's a couple challenges I see with, with folks in the space, right? Is, you know, once you start sending invoices for anything that's 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a month, it does it like as much as you want to say what the ROI is like our highest retainer and our agency will look 45 grand a month. It didn't matter what are our results, right. It was like, it was the rule large numbers, which was, yeah, we're not like we don't want to pay that anymore. And so you can solve this. I should say, you can go down a long rabbit hole to solve this through better analytics and justifying, but the rule of large numbers, and I don't want to pay large numbers is an override against that. The other challenge I see,
Speaker 4 (32:36):
And I'm not trying to poop Hill on your parade here, but, uh,
Speaker 3 (32:40):
It's really cashflow, right? Because you want that attribution to, to, to catch up, right? So you have the month of all the months, September that you got to operate on the account, you got to wait until, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is what I'm understanding. You got to wait until October 15th to send in that invoice. And then my guess, if you're serving e-com, they're not going to pay on October 15th. They maybe you maybe got some good clients. Maybe you're just hitting them their card or their ACH, but maybe it's, you know, it's taking them 30 days to get that in maybe 15. I don't know. What would you say? Yeah,
Speaker 4 (33:18):
This is a great, this is a really, really good topic. So we have on all launches, we're having to stagger them. It's cashflow for us is very, very important because of how big the team is and pay periods. Right? Everybody has to deal with this stuff. The brands will pay anywhere between seven to even sometimes 30 days, depending on how large it is and what I've seen. If you have a brand that's back to back, you're saying them back-to-back checks above $20,000. You're going to get questions, right? Like their, their CFO, their, whoever is checking the founder. That's looking at that check. They're going like, let's just, can we go analyze, like, is this money worth being expensive? You're going to get looked at. So what we've been having to do is if we start seeing, and we have a trigger on our, on our dock to two months back to back above $20,000, that triggers us to reach out to the brand and be like, Hey, we're going to make unique creatives for you pro bono, because that's, that's tangible.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
That's something that we know we can work, that some of that we know is valuable for us as well. And it's a mutually beneficial because the brand's going to go, thank you. We already know we're investing in that. Let's, let's get that. We already make ads as well, but that's just like the above and beyond for them to be, have a little bit of peace of mind of this check is going for not just the management and the growth, which it's, it's hard to, it is sad to say that we have to defend the bill that we have earned, but that's just the nature in which we're in
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Out of the, to be honest. Like I, I think that the agencies that really understand the like, in e-commerce it's difficult, right? Cause like e-commerce is struggling with cashflow just as much as the ad agencies themselves are struggling with cashflow. Right? And so these guys are just beg, borrowing and stealing, trying to get every single financial product that exists. Right. They're tapping into Shopify capital, they're tapping clear bank. They're trying to tap Brex. They're trying to tap like everybody on the sun. And I think that bringing an incorporating some of these, you know, financial products into the entire ad spend entire into the entire, um, agency fee is really how you can have a lot more control over it. And, uh, and also have a lot more control in terms of not putting yourself to like, is the client going to pay the bill on time or not?
Speaker 3 (35:41):
And what's their cashflow and like, how are they going to receive this $50,000 invoice right now and own that. Right. And, um, and so I'll do like a live native advertisement for ad capital right now. Cause you're queuing me up. But yeah, it is like it, you know, one of the things that, um, that the, the, the opportunity we see in the world of advertising is that agencies take a percentage of spend. And for when you're funding ad spend exclusively, it's on a percentage of spend and on a card, you know, it's all about the rewards and the percentage of spend. Right. And so the, and then on top of that, you have this revenue share component that is the ultimate, like dream for, you know, ad agencies, right. Where they get X percentage of, of revenue and clients are always like, kind of scared of like, Oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
You know, let's put a cap on that. Some, some level of extent, right. And so like, if you were to just like put all of that together, one of the things that, uh, I see a potential for in the, in the space, um, and we're getting like early adopters that like yet it is where all this is bundled together in the sense as like, Hey, we're going to fund your ads. We're going to manage your ads. And we're going to take maybe not 10% of spend, but we're going to do all of this for 15 to 20% of your spend. And then in terms of repayment, it's going to look basically on taking a percentage of revenue, right. We're going to automatically take 10% of your revenue until the principal I E the entire ad spend, plus the agency fees. And then plus our, I should say, all the ad spend plus the agency fee and the financing fee get paid back.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Right. And that could take, you know, three to six months, but getting paid back daily over that three to six month period is like, just as good, if not more consistent than like having to wait 60, even 75 days. Um, worst case scenario, 90 days to just get that one big check, that's really difficult to, to model. And I don't think like, everybody's going to like jump on that train. They're going to kind of block and tackle like bits and pieces of it. But, um, at that level, you're, you're proactively, you know, taking re you know, Romans and pay, you know, and, and paying yourself daily, which helps the agency from a cashflow perspective, right? Like if you look at, um, strike point media, they can do this. I haven't seen him, I do this e-com, but like, they do this because they serve like finance.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Right. What they do is they say, Hey, look, this is all the media and our management fee. And you've got to pay us like upfront and they send like that full invoice. And then, you know, it's a matter of, for the incline of like, okay, maybe we'll just fact, you know, factor out this invoice, or maybe we'll get somebody to fund the entire invoice, but the agency's getting all that, you know, paid up front. So they don't have to like float their entire operations for like 60 days. And if you look at, if you listen to that episode, it's an amazing episode because he went that changing, like that went from him being a million dollars in debt. And like just having no operating capital in the business to having exponential growth in debt-free, those guys are doing like over 20 million top line now. And, you know, he talks about just, you know, being on the front end of the flow of funds versus on the backend and hoping clients pay that. So I don't know. I think that the agencies listening to this are really gonna appreciate it, and maybe there's going to be bits and pieces, you know, that they put together to solve this problem, but it is, uh, it's, it's a pain, you know, it's, it's a pain for sure. In how you think about like getting payment from your, from your clients.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah. I think the easiest solve that we have currently is obviously diversifying services. So we have every cash from, from whether it's your email side, whether it's your social sideways, the content side. And we've starting to just on a very simple, simple model that I think people can be very aware of is people usually plan to launch at the beginning of the month. Right? What if you can just stagger that in there, if I'm going to finish out the 15 versus I'm going to finish on the first now, when we launching brands, that's that that's that effective billable date and some Browns people. I know people listening are going to go, why don't you just get them to prepay? Why don't you just get them to put that card in, have that conversation and let me know how that goes. It's no matter how much they love you and trust you.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
And we've worked very, very hard. I know I've personally worked very hard to keep a reputation as a good businessman and someone that is reputable in the space that that's not an easy combo, right? Like you're asking them to give cash that they don't necessarily know is going to be there regardless of how well you did in the past month. It's sort of like the model we live by back when I was playing sports is you're only as good as your last game. Like over here is you're only as good as your last campaign. And that's pretty much yesterday.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah. And I also think it's vertical specific, right? Cause like there's people in local there's people that dealing with like doctors and they're not as cashflow and sensitive, obviously strike points in finance. So they're not cashflow sensitive, but like, if you're an econ it's not happening.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
I mean, they're almost, you're almost, and we know this for two reasons because we own two of our own brands. And so when we're looking at paying our vendors, we have our SEO team that we, that we have full-time hire. We obviously pay ourselves for running the media. Um, we have our content team, like they're our bills. And the last bill that we, our job is to, how do you manage that cashflow? I want to push off some of these checks that aren't knocking on our doors. It's not a matter of while you're rude. You're not paying your Dole time. It's businesses business. So you have to be very mindful where that cash goes, Oh dear you,
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Look, you listen to Josh Nez episode, man, that guy is like King of like pushing off and deferring bills. I mean, it's just like, how else do you build an eight, nine figure business? You know, with no VC money is like, you have to be just maniacal about, you know, your, your cashflow and, um, you know, large companies, large companies do this. Right. I don't know if you had experience with this, you know, in your early agency days, Nick, but like some of the big, big brands, like they're not paying their agencies for like net 90, 120
Speaker 4 (42:06):
That's brutal. Well, you brought up Josh. So Josh and I, and I, I credit a lot of what I've been able to do and the reputation that we built by building up snow. So when we work with snow back in, and this is the person, this is we, we work them structured. Then we took into common. And then I know now that they're managing an internal, but Josh, I, I credit Josh, the house I currently live in today because that's what two years ago, when everything was said and done like that success that we're able to build that product into, was able to put this house was able for me to afford to buy this house. Uh, we did some, we did some wild, wild things together and he, although yes, he's strategic and the cash that he deploys. He definitely knows where all the money's being made. And he treated us as a vendor, me as a partner and me as a friend, very, very well. So I can never speak poorly on, on where his cash is going. Cause I know my personal experience is that invoice came in, that that check came back real quick. Cause he obviously knew it was, he was driving a lot of his grip.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It's all about setting expectations. Right. And being clear on what those terms are. Um, and I don't think, you know, having somebody on net 60 net 90 or whatever it is makes you a bad person, I think it's when they expect to get paid up front and it turns out to be what happened that one 20?
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Um, well this
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Has been an amazing show, man. I'm um, we really went deep into it, man. Like, uh, we really went like super, super nitty gritty here. I, uh, I hope everybody enjoys this episode. Tell everybody a little bit about what you're excited about right now.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
I can support you what you got coming up next. Yeah. Thank you very much for that opportunity. So we obviously we're we're we are sold out like you got LA, we are back in meeting in person. We're taking all our precautions. Um, so whether you believe in happening with Cody, don't believe with any COVID out of respect for everyone's where they're coming from. We, we are meeting in person. This is something that I was very, very, uh, this is why we did this, right? Like you guys are building a community on the podcast. There's people that your tribe, you're going to find that tribe they're going to want to come through. And you kind of mentioned it earlier. We have a very unique set of people. Uh, and it's true. So James comes from, I wouldn't say the blackout world, but we have the relationships in the blackout industry where various affiliates that we work with.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
Um, and we obviously are a staple in the e-commerce world. So we have eco, which is next week. We sold out in eight days, which pumps me the hell up. It wasn't a large venue. Obviously we're only doing about 30 to 35 people. Um, but we, our next one is going to be in Greece, currently planning it. And if everything works out as, as a coring and this, this LA one goes, well, I'll try to do another one coming in November. So the biggest, biggest pump is get back in there and communicate to everybody. There's no better time than doing this. Now. Obviously we all have Q4 to kind of prep for and constant creative. We're continuing to build good creative for people. So anybody has any help. You know where to find me I'm I am, I am shopping for it on the twits and I am nixed out before it on Instagram.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
There you have it, Nick, you killed it. Thank you so much for being so transparent, diving into it, giving away the goods. Appreciate you, man. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich, add more at podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich at [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book. Learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.
Guest Bio
Currently serving as CEO at ClickFunnels where he also held the positions of Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Business Development Officer, Dave Woodward is also host of the weekly Funnel Hacker Radio Podcast. A proven business growth expert, Woodward’s prior experience includes serving as the President and Owner of Monopolize, Inc. and Regional Director of Americo. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University where he earned a BS in Exercise Science and an MS in Exercise Physiology.
TAKEAWAYS:
The scary reason why relying solely on Facebook ads puts your company at risk of dying overnight -- and what your backup should be.
Why a tough love approach to your marketing budget in tough times like COVID shouldn’t be to make deep cuts and what you should do instead.
What the future of in-person industry conferences is and why you shouldn’t be afraid of it.
How to do product use challenges -- and why they helped ClickFunnels increase retention rates by 30%
What the ultimate “proof of concept is” and why going after VC money without it is a recipe for disaster.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(Dave Woodward Linkedin)
(Click Funnerls Linkedin)
(Click Funnels Website)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode, we talk with Dave Woodward, the CEO of clickfunnels.com. We talk about how they're spending 750,000 to a million dollars a month on paid media. Plus, we talk about payback period and the campaigns and the book funnels and how they ultimately relate to bringing more users onto the platform. If you're in B2B SAS, and you're looking to spend a ton of money on paid advertising, you're going to absolutely love this episode. Plus, we talk about payback period. We talk about debt VC, and ultimately how you start thinking about investing into marketing at the level and scale that click funnels is at. You'll also hear about an Epic fail. Uh, it's an amazing story. Uh, uh, a bit Dave is, is totally humbly, uh, sharing. I think you'll absolutely love the show enjoy,
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But the real key that we've noticed is yes, it takes a little bit longer to make that conversion from book to actual click funnels. But what we found is the indoctrination that takes place and the trust that exists because they've actually gone through and consume content makes the buyers so much better.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (01:08):
The rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad. Poor ed podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with the one only DC Dillon carpenter. Hi, how are we doing today? We are doing good. And man, we got a good one today. I'm pumped legendary. It's it's the legendary, uh, gosh man, this guy has been a banner have been around. Um, but gosh, he's, he is a, he's kind of a big deal now he's this? He's the CEO over at, uh, over click funnels. I mean, um, just a couple of years ago was doing, uh, business development, but I think he's been, gosh, one of the longest standing, uh, relationships with the one and only Russell Russell Brunson over there. So I'm excited to have Dave Woodward on the show, Dave, you, my friend really don't need no introduction. So how are you doing, man?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
So it just stuck here. I'm doing fantastic. That was more than introduction than I needed. I'm just going to, but uh, let's go have some fun.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Let's do it. I love it. I want to hear about this. Uh, you know, this is, this is a little past two, but this is the first time you're on the show. I want to hear I'm looking at your LinkedIn man. I want to hear the conversation of how you landed the CEO position over at click funnels.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Um, so I've known Russell, gosh, probably I think 12 years now. Uh, actually I at the time had my own agency, that was a pre digital stuff is like 2007, 2008 and marketing agency in Southern California, where I lived at the time and ended up trying to feed. I had a client. My clients were primarily in the mortgage industry, banking, real estate investing, and they're all trying to figure out this whole online thing. And I'd heard of Russell before. I'd seen a couple of his things and thought, you know, I'm going to go figure this thing out. So I just went to a seminar that he and Stu McLaren, but not at the time was about affiliate marketing. And I remember they, they got up and started talking and Russell said, you know, if you'd like to take us out to lunch or dinner and pick our brain, you know, go ahead and go to backroom and sign up. So I ran to the back and signed up for every breakfast, lunch and dinner Russell had Started off actually just creating a great friendship and we become friends. And just honestly, one of my best friends in the world I've visited, loved working with him over the years. We've done a bunch of different projects together. Uh, some things worked, some things didn't and then when ClickFunnels came around, he asked, invited me to come on board as a partner and, and help things out. Uh, not Dickerson and Russell are the, the two co-founders of ClickFunnels, both introverts and I was the extrovert in the group basically. So, uh,
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That was how I
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Was brought in. I remember in fact, I think I was one of the first times I met you Zac at the time was probably a TNC. Was that probably 2015 or so down in San Diego. And that point they were, uh, I was living down there and Russell, gosh, he was speaking out of the, uh, one of the rooms and you know, they weren't gonna let him pitch. And he said, how am I get people in the room? Because I wish we had a whole bunch of girls that could just, you know, hand out t-shirts or do something like that. And I'm like, dude, you're in my city. So getting a whole bunch of girls to come down here and no problem. And so I contacted, uh, an agency I knew and sure enough, within two hours we had, uh, a bunch of around there, uh, basically helping escort a whole bunch of people into the room.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
And that's kind of where it started, but no I've, uh, and that's what, that's what guy,
Speaker 2 (05:03):
No, I think the, the main thing is both Todd and Russell are, are absolutely amazing at getting things up and running. They're the genius and the brains behind what we have, but not every one of them, like the operations side of it. And so I've been, I've been doing this role now for the last year, year and a half, and we're not really big on titles. And it came up to where people like, you guys really got to start having titles here more often. And I'm like, all right. So at that point is where we finally made it official as far as CEO. And so I guess if you had to actually put a date on it, it was last year sometime, and that's how it's going.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Well, I will I'll, I'll give you more credit than that, man. I know a ton of people. I know a ton of people that have been friends with founders and entrepreneurs for 10, 15 years, and they still don't end up as CEO. So kudos to you. Congrats on that. So that's super big deal and I'm excited to have you on the show. So you obviously have a massive, massive reach over at ClickFunnels. You know, what's working, what's not working, let's get into it, man. I want to, I want to hear about this rich ad. What, what are some of the, some of the themes that the audience can take away from really on the, on the funnel side? [inaudible], it's a one-two punch combo here. Uh, but what do you see in the ClickFunnels world? That's, uh, this making people rich today?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know, it's, it's really fascinating. I think some of the main things that as we start paying attention to, just to the, to the ads and things that your prior to, you know, four or five years ago, we really didn't have a lot of opportunity to run Facebook ads and do things. And most of the times back then it was more PPC, Google plays, SEL things. Um, I think the main thing we're seeing right now is the ability for people, again, Russell just released traffic secrets book. And in there talks a lot about understanding that you can't have just one platform that you're 100% relying on. And so I think the one thing I'm starting to see is, uh, everyone really just gravitated to Facebook because it was the place to go. It was easy. You can get in, you just drill down and get a ton of demographic information.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
You can be super targeted, super focused. And just like we used to have the Google snaps where literally wipe out a business overnight, we're starting to see some of that as far as the Facebook snaps. Uh, we actually referred to it as if you go back to the vendors idea as far as Janos or, uh, it's basically the Zuckerberg snaps that's really is the biggest thing is we're just afraid that if you've got a business that is 100% reliant, just on one traffic source, you literally can die overnight. And I think the main thing I'm starting to see as people are, are understanding that and are going okay, I've got to have, I have to be able to have ads and more than just one place.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
[inaudible] where do you see, where do you see the second place, you know, really, really popping up for a lot of people in your world right now,
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Uh, depending on the platform that they're on or depending on their audience, we actually are seeing a lot of people starting to gravitate back to Google. Google is becoming a little more, uh, easier to play with and they used to be, um, obviously Instagram and Facebook is the same. Uh, we're starting to see other people, uh, starting to explore ads on podcasts. Uh, we've dropped a couple of those and again, depends on your audience. And I think the key to, to ads is you really have to identify who has your audience and then go wherever they're at.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Mm yeah. You know, I I'm, speaking of your guys', uh, traffic secrets book campaign, I actually, um, brought, I mentioned to you guys in a, in a narrative story from back in my lead pages days. And, uh, and really in this narrative of understanding payback period, right. ClickFunnels is really B2B SAS. Right. But like, you guys have totally flipped the script in that arena. And most B2B SAS companies, you know, they're doing free trials with payback periods of like six months, 12 months. Right. And, uh, and you guys have just absolutely done phenomenal with all these book funnels.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And it's, it's amazing,
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Amazing to see, you know, the SAS company focus on profitability before people are even getting into before they're even selling their core offer. And this actually came up when a couple of VC related conversations when they asked us like why we had the rich dad, poor dad book and the agency growth book, which, you know, pale in comparison to the success you guys have had, but the principle remains the same. Do you
Speaker 2 (09:28):
See, do you see this,
Speaker 1 (09:30):
You know, really still playing out your guys' level of, of size and scale on the, on the, particularly on the paid traffic side, uh, because obviously it's, it's working on the affiliate side. Everybody's clicks.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
No, I appreciate that question. I, again, I have the opportunity to talking to growth equity, private equity people two or three times every single week, these days, it seems like lots of people knocking, but I think that the part that I, um, I guess a good reference actually is, I don't know if you know, Dan Martell, I think, you know, to, you know, Dan, so Dan Martell's got SAS Academy and, uh, we were talking to some of their other founders over there about how do you actually scale and grow a SAS company, uh, which is typically not something as you referenced most of the time. It's, uh, it's a payback time of anywhere from six to nine months for us, when you're bootstrapping, you don't have any money, you just don't have that option. And so you start figuring out what works and for us, for like John Parks, your roots, just an absolutely genius at ads and Facebook and traffic and everything else.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
We've really just given him the challenge of John. We need to, we really need a 30 day payback on those ads and that's pretty tough. So you actually get a free trial. What's a 14 day free trial with a credit card to get paid and make your money back in a month. And so, because of that, we've done, what's worked for us. And that is, uh, we're really big on a break. Even funnel is what we basically look at it is, are, and, you know, self-liquidating offers is what it comes down to. So for us, I can tell you right now it would cost us anywhere from 135 to $142 for a free trial. Well, I, and I get in we're converting those things that to pay to anywhere between 42 and 47%. And I'm just, I'm not going to, I mean, so really to get a person actually paid to make a $97, I then have to spend almost $300 and I've got a three month payback on it. I'm like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I can't afford to do that. And so
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Let's, let's explain why just to take that a little bit, a step further if you're spending, you know, 750 grand a month and you have a three month payback period, you're talking about $2.2 million, right. That, that VC money, right. That's why we continue to say 40% of venture capital is spent on paid advertising. Oh my God. Reason alone. Right. And if you want to have the growth record, right. If you want to grow by 300%, 400% next year, that 2.2 becomes 10 million your company in 12 months. Right. And so I don't think like everybody understands book funnels works, but I've been a part of pre click funnels days, you know, running marketing over at leap patients like having the same level of conversation and seeing 38 million in venture raised and, you know, a company that, you know, sold and like sold way early relative to the track record that that ClickFunnels has had. And I think that that full narrative doesn't often get highlighted enough of just a three-month payback period. And then how that ultimately comes back to like, yeah, rah, rah, like VCs are the enemy, but like, why, why, why is that the case? And so I, that's awesome to hear that, like, you guys still track that stuff and you're like, yeah, free trials sounds great from, from a funnel, you know, from a paid acquisition strategy. But, uh, you know, it always makes more sense with a book on the front end. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, it does for us, I remember one of the very first, uh, private equity guys I ever met with it was Russell. And I, we were literally having lunch with the guy here in Boise and this is like 2015. He was like, you know, we started going through our numbers. He's like, Oh my gosh, you know how I can give you this amount of money? And we started and we're like, well, wait a second. We actually don't do that. And he's like, what do you mean you don't do that? I said, no, no, we don't have that kind of money. He goes, Oh, well, I can provide that. And I'm like, I don't want your money because we actually like, we can grow a healers. And as we explained it to him, he's like, so what you're telling me is if that's actually true funnels, Lilly can change the game for any business.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And they're like, yes, that's exactly right. And fortunately, we've been able to prove that. So to answer your question, um, yes, we definitely see a lot of the book funnels that they convert. I can tell you right now when we look at a book funnel, um, our most recent book funnels, traffic secrets. Yeah. We always look at trying to get our, our cash cost to acquire customer to equal or be equal or less than what our ever or average car value is. So cost to acquire customer on a book funnel right now it's about 17 to 20 bucks. Our average cart value on that is anywhere in the neighborhood of 52 to about 58, $60. And then you look at the book cost and the fulfillment, everything else toss another 20 bucks in there. We actually make money on, on actually on, on acquiring that customer. But the real key that we've noticed is yes, it takes a little bit longer to make that con that conversion from book to actual click funnels, right? But what we found is the indoctrination that takes place and the trust that exists because they've actually gone through and consume content makes the buyers so much better. And for us, anytime we're trying to sell something, I would much rather have a buyer lead than an often lead. Anytime this episode is
Speaker 1 (14:48):
You buy a funnel Dash's ad card, the charge card, exclusively
Speaker 4 (14:52):
For your digital ad spend. And if you're an advertiser spending tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands dollars a month on ads, and you're in e-commerce and you're looking for more capital or credit to scale, then you're probably familiar with solutions like Shopify capital, Brex, and clear bank. The problem with these solutions is the cost of capital is expensive. They take a percentage of your revenue, one of the beauties with ad card, when you combine it with one of our in network of our 5,000 in network agency partners, you have the opportunity to qualify for free ad capital funding where we'll load up your ad card with an additional $50,000 all the way up to a million dollars of additional capital to deploy on platforms like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and more. So if that's you, if you're an e-commerce spending a ton on ads and you're looking for
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Way to decrease the cost of capital checkout add card, we'll get back to the show. How do you guys track today? Like book buyer to click funnels, sign up? Is that just kind of a general metric across the board, or do you really track that all the way through, on the back end?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Don't track it all. We're trying to, again, a huge shout out to Alex Becker and hieros, uh, we're using his platform right now and trying to tie a lot more of that in it's tough. It's a little difficult to do. We're trying to get a better job at doing that. Um, we're much better at just growing things than tracking things and it's, uh, it's one of the things we're really trying to learn a little bit better is how to actually track things. Fortunately for John, he does a ton of that. I know we've used wicked reports in the past. I know he's using ropes right now. And, uh, it's fortunately, maybe in three or four months, I'll have a better answer for you. I can't track, I would love to say that for every three books we sell, we get a click funnels user that pays us for four months. I,
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I don't have that yet. So that was all good. Get off the show, Dave, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that was pretty much where we set out. Like, so my journey at FunnelDash was really to be able to track that, right. Cause like I thought the answer was, if I knew my payback period, you know, then I would be confident in that number and then I would just go win more capital over on budget and then I would be able to scale. And it turns out the end of that analytics rainbow that everybody's still chasing, uh, in most times, um, I, it, that clarity didn't really end up changing the overall investment in the channel or the growth. I think it gave like some level of satisfaction or confidence, but most of the time that led to a financial conversation. Right. Of, okay, now that we know this were great, we have a payback period of 90 days, I'm still spending a hundred a month.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I still have 300 grand of carry, you know, in B2B, SAS or subscription, where am I going to go get the, the 900,000 of operating capital. Right. And that is pretty much the journey of kind of starting from, you know, like a click funnels, trying to solve that problem through a better funnel. And I think that you guys are doing a phenomenal job of like helping people play that, that book and the journey of kind of where I've come to is like, wow, finance can actually be another lever here. And it doesn't venture capital. Like doesn't have to be the only alternative to like you either get a funnel, a break even, or you have to go VC.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I think it would where we want to go with ad capital. That ad card is really being able to, to bridge that gap through, you know, financial products for advertisers. So, um, I appreciate the, the, the narrative of the conversation of seeing how you guys have really evolved that. And it's been such a, a part of, um, our story as well in terms of just like, how do you acquire customers at breakeven and it'll solve like so many, so many, so many problems it does, but that's cool. What's so, you know, uh, ever everybody, uh, has some failures though, Dave and I want to enter there. I want to hear about something that is just totally blanked. Cause everybody just thinks, you know, you guys are untouchable over at ClickFunnels and everything you do turns to gold, which is for the most part. True. I want to hear some things that you guys have done that have totally bobbed and break down this poor ad get paid for us.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No, the only thing is we just go really fast. So, uh, it covers up a lot of mistakes. That's the main thing. We can make a lot of mistakes super fast and hopefully we learn from them. Um, I think one of the things, uh, you know, it's interesting, we I've cut my teeth in direct response marketing for so many years. That's again, Dan Kennedy back in the early two thousands and that's just really where it came from. And so for me, uh, when we were doing, we just recently did the traffic secrets book launch got rustled to the New York times bestseller list, super excited for all that success, but it was probably one of the most frustrating campaigns I've ever been involved in. And I feel so sorry for John Parks, who I'm like John, I'm sorry, I'm totally blown your ad budget and it's completely failing.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And I can't, I just continue to apologize to him because I'm like, this is what we're told we need to do. And so we ended up, normally everything is tracked and it's just how we're, we're accustomed to tracking things. And I remember working with an outside agency, um, we've used decision and some others to try to try to get us a much more broad appeal and, you know, really to get more mainstream for the book. Uh, it was our biggest concern. Yeah. People inside of click funnels, community and others have heard about it, but how do we go more mainstream so that we could actually get recognized by the New York times and that, uh, people go, Oh yeah, everybody's talking about it. And so we ended up using a decision that some of their things, and I remember there, they were saying, Oh my gosh, you won't believe the type of conversions we get.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
We're going to be on all these TV shows. We've got these radio shows, we've got these huge, huge networks of where we're posting things. And they were like, I just, all I care is you can track this back to book sales and like, um, we can't, I'm like, I just, I need to be able to track this and I know we can track it back to maybe video views. I'm like, okay, great. So we went ahead and did that. And I wish I had the actual numbers here in front as far as how much we spent, but it was somewhere in the neighbor for this one, one week with somewhere in the neighborhood of know, 30 to $50,000 or some stupid thing. And in doing that, uh, so I just got there. I was trying to find the report a few months ago. So, uh, total audience views was 785,000,001 of our 60,031 views or potential audience views, I guess what they were calling that. And then it hit the 14,965 sites. And out of all that we got 23 video views
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Contract.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Honestly, I think we would have been better lit up, just walk down the street and say, you know, what can I just pay you $8,000 to buy this book? It would have been a much better, better opportunity because from those video views, I don't have any of you in the converged if we haven't sold any books out of that. But, uh, so we spent nearly $50,000 and I could have literally thrown a party in,
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I know, seriously, what was the, was it just a PR play or like, what was the actual, was it ads trying to amplify things?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It was like, Oh, it was PR it was a PR play with ads and all of their ads. We couldn't, we wanted to write the copy and they're like, and so we did again, more direct response Mark, and they're like, no, no, no, no, that'll never go, it won't fly in the magazines. We're putting this into it. There's no, no way. And by the time we saw it, it was so diluted. It's like, I wouldn't even have stopped. There was no re I, I mean, if I was looking at the actual ad, I would have just glanced over and gone to the next thing. Cause it, it was just, it was just a total brand new play that sucked and just burn a ton of money.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Branding, branding plays are really tough. You know, when you come out of the stock of, you know, bootstrapped and breakeven and director, it just doesn't sit well with, you know, you know, I, uh, so we were talking recently, um, with the, uh, old co-founder of capital one and, uh, it was a phenomenal story, but the, basically they, they kind of came out with the whole, like what's in your wallet. And basically Samuel Jackson was like the complete opposite of what you're talking about. He's like, yeah. So like, you know, we, we went public and then we just realized that to have a household brand, it was going to cost 120 grand to, or sorry, 120 million, 20 grand. He's like 120 million a year for 10 years. And, uh, and then we should just kind of own the space and I'm like, Oh, that's how you guys think. Like at that level, like, um,
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I'm just not aware if I, if I thought $1.2 billion over the next 10 years, I would not have come up with that plan at all.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Right. Like, it's just like, Oh my gosh, it blew my mind. And, uh, here I was trying to talk to him about book funnels and he was like, what?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
But you probably see that in the ads. I mean, sometimes when you have that kind of amount of money, you can't spend that all on Facebook. You're not going to spend that. I mean, you just can't spend that kind of stuff. So I guess you have to do different things. Well,
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So here's how I want to talk about, this is a side that I don't think it's talked about enough, and this is really the whole purpose of the rich dad. Poor ed podcast is to really help the industry move away from marketer, math, Stompernet math, as you would say, Dave, uh, wherever everyone's rounding up to the nearest million, 10 million and using bookings number and purchase. And I think really we've all been guilty of it, but really I want to help the on the market get educated on, you know, financial principles of how to think about investing into, um, campaigns. How do you think about it? Like cutting your losses, limiting your losses on some of those things versus like riding them out and now with your, with your big fancy title, like you're making like a ton, you're making like a ton of, you know, you're basically like a, high-level like chief investment officer of like Ricoh, CEO does allocation of capital and resources and initiatives. What are some of the principles that, you know, as you're thinking about where to invest, um, you know, that that's also applicable to, uh, you know, us, us, we ons down here, um, in the neural businesses that, that, that could be applied across, across the board.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I, you know, I think some of the main things that we take a look at right now, um, for us, when we're looking at investing, there's an investment into tech, um, itself, uh, there's an investment obviously into the marketing and the growth side of it. And I think, I mean, they're totally different conversations. I'll try to focus more on just the marketing side of it. So for us right now, um, so beginning of the year we were spending just over a million, a million a month in ad spend, and I've never, I'm always, you'll never see me cutting ad dollars when times get tough. I think it's probably one of the biggest mistake that most companies do is they cut their marketing budgets or their ad budgets. And like that's the time when, when you want to double down. Uh, but one of things we did do, uh, right around early COVID days was, um, we looked at at really things we would classify as either, you know, break glass moments or full on emergency break moments.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
And I think in a business, those are some main things you've got to pay attention to is there are certain things that are kind of break glass type of things where we're like, ah, we better, you know, and again, break glass comes back to the, the idea here of you're in a fire. And basically you have to break the glass, pull the fire alarm and, and run out of the building. It's a huge fire drills type of deal versus the handbrake type of things where it's like, I'm just going to slow this down a little. And so for us, we started looking at it and one of the main things we challenged John with and he totally responded in that was which ones of our ads are really working versus those that they might work. And so for us, uh, we quickly went from just over a million dollar ad budget a month down to about 600,000 by finding the ads that actually they were more testing type of things.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
And hopefully, you know, longer term, they might, they might play out. But for us in that moment, it was a handbrake type of a situation where we're like, okay, uh, it's yeah, we'll say four in a grand, but more importantly, what we want to do is to reallocate that 400 grand, it wasn't just to save it. It was to actually reallocate it. And so we ended up breaking that down to 600,000 within about a two month window, but within a month, we're back up to seven 50. And the reason for that was John was able to say, okay, these are the ones that we're not, they're not generating the type of an ROI that we need right now. And again, every company's Roaz is different. And as far as how, how long of a time do you have we, you know, what your return on CAC is, is it a month? Is it two weeks? Is it three months? So for us, again, it was John we're looking at a, basically a 30 day return on CAC. And we wanted to make sure that, you know, there was, it wasn't just a return on cash, but that the customers were bringing in were actually converting. And that was one of the main metrics we started paying attention to is what's our, what's our conversion and our metric from, from those legions to actual ClickFunnels users.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Uh, that's where I feel like a lot of people go into this space with kind of this like blindfolded rule of like, Oh yeah, everyone's cutting budget, but I'm not going to cut budget. But the secret killer of advertising, you know, like, I don't know if you guys saw this, like in March or April, but like the thing that is difficult for a lot of people that visibility is in their LTV dropping, right? Like the higher ticket stuff drops off. Your average order value starts shrinking. And next thing you know, like you're trying to hang on to that level of spend. Um, but I think you you're, you did the playbook perfectly. So I have just kudos to you, Dave, in the sense that like, let's, you know, let's pull back, cut the fat, but not cut, but reallocate. I think those are great differentiators there. And focusing on the right again, I'm like, you know, giving you a round of applause over here and the, if like what is actually driving LTV and what LTV is, is, uh, is, is
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I appreciate that. And thank you. I can tell you for us, one of the main things that it actually did was while we were looking at that metric, the other metric we really paid attention to was our churn and trying to reduce churn during the same period. So we were bringing in the right customers and we were fortunate enough to be able to get our churn down by almost 25%, uh, over the last four months. So it was a full court press.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's awesome, man. I love it. I love it. So tell everybody a little bit about, uh, you know, what, where are they going to hear about more about ClickFunnels? Is it, is it clickfunnels.com? Is that the,
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I think that's the best domain we have right now. So let's go with that one click funnels. Is it,
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Oh man. Dave, this is so exciting. I would love to hear just a little bit about what you're excited about next and what does this mean for you personally as, as like, you know, put it on the CEO hat, what are you excited about next, you know, over the next six to 12 months?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Oh, for me, I think some of the real exciting things, uh, we're seeing right now is the impact of virtual. Uh, I, for us is we have our annual users conference funnel hacking live, we'll have 5,000 people at, uh, we ended up again during that whole handbrake scenario. One of the things we looked at was actually bringing on a virtual conference and in June we did one, uh, at, you know, 5,000 people registered for it. And, you know, we're seeing a lot of the summit challenges. We're seeing virtual conferences, um, that those are the types of things right now that are working and because they're going to people right where they're at and, and where they've got time. So for us, I think, um, I think you're gonna see a huge change in the way virtual is done. Uh, and meaning it'll be much more engaging.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
We've got a couple of things it's going to be, uh, potentially a hybrid of virtual that we're looking at doing. And I, I believe right now, um, you know, most people are becoming more accustomed to really how to use a webinar, how to use a zoom room, how to, how to actually engage it, where again, from a virtual standpoint. So we see a lot of opportunity in virtual. Uh, for us, we ended up selling our high-end coaching there. We're going to be doing the exact same thing at the end of September. Uh, and we'll probably end up doing one later in this year as well. So we'll end up having the normal impact that we would get to bring people into our high end coaching once a year. We're going to now have the opportunity to doing four times a year and seen a great opportunity there.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I believe that, uh, the whole idea of either a summit or a challenge, again, a challenge funnels work extremely well these days because people are trying to get results. And so if there's something you can do in your business right now, that is a quick win for your customer, that you can get the net win within the next seven, 14, 21 or 28 30 days, whatever it is doing, a challenge is probably one of the best things, because you got a lot of skeptical buyers out there and what they want is they want to see a win. And that's the easiest and best way of building trust with someone is to take them through that kind of a challenge. And I've seen, I'm seeing challenges. In fact, I think, uh, I saw a summit recently. Uh, I think Teachable's copying some of the names things we did with mastermind, but on the summit side.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
But I think, again, back to the challenge thing, if there's a way that you can put a challenge into your business, great way of having your customers actually use your product, consume your product, use it, gain the trust. And then from there at the end of the challenge is the up-sale opportunity. We've been doing that for our one funnel away challenge over two years now. And our retention is almost 30% higher and those people go through one funnel away challenge versus those who don't. Um, this summit funnels again, uh, we did the summit funnel is how we launched mastermind.com last three weeks ago, with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. And the summons are fantastic because people get a ton of information from experts or people in that industry. And we're seeing that being done in so many different verticals these days that uh it's. So I think those are the three areas that we're super, super excited about right now.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, no, that's cool, man. All right. So we've got a couple of quick rapid fire here, these, uh, so when it comes to your guys's card program, are you guys like it? And it's interesting because at the level you guys are at, like, do you care about points, cashback, credit, or just you guys don't even care at this level or credit cards. Yeah. Like, so we've talked about like, you got the points, that's like enthusiasts, and then you got other people that are just like, I don't even care. And then the other people's that are just like straight cashback and Honda curious.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah. So ours are all Amex points. Uh, and we have way too many. We used to use them for our travel expenses all the time. We'd fly most of our employees around on Amex points. And now we have so many points. Uh, we're probably gonna have to, since no one's traveling, I don't know what we're going to do with these millions of points. We've been accumulating.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Well, it's a recovery pointless. Oh my gosh. Okay, cool. And then, uh, I think I know where you're going to land on this one, but bootstrapped debt, VC, where do you stand?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Oh man, obviously on a startup bootstrapped all day long. No question about it. Um, and as I think the key right now, when I look at a company that's getting going is you need a proof of concept and there's no better proof of concept than a customer actually takes out their credit card and pays you something. And so for a company who's just, who thinks they're going to go out with an idea and have someone else invest in it. I'm totally against that. I think you need to go ahead and you need to bootstrap this year. I think part of the debt that comes into play is, I mean, I've, I've used credit cards many times on that. I think a debt actually, as you scale and grow a company starts to have a, especially a SAS company. It's one of the things we've looked at, uh, you actually, these days can typically get about three times your EBITDA on debt.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
And so it's something that I've definitely been looking at, uh, as far as away of if nothing else, I've just, I think it's important these days to have cash and have access to cash. I believe we're going into a time after the first of the year where you're gonna see a lot of businesses for sale and we definitely want to have cash on the sidelines to acquire those. And I would do that through get for sure. Um, and then as far as VC, I think, um, VC, I'm not a huge VC guy. I'm probably more the private equity, growth equity. Uh, you know, I see things that Kajabi has done recently, uh, with, after they had an investment, um, from spectrum. And I think that, uh, once you've got a proof of concept and you've scaled and you've grown and you built a company, there definitely comes a time where, um, it's probably worth taking a look at a PE growth equity and not necessarily from the investment, but more from the knowledge, the wisdom and things that, uh, companies of that size that they provide. So I think that's how to answer that.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah. That's a nice, like holistic this perspective, you know, it's just like, you're like Switzerland, you have the benefits and pros and cons of each. I love it, man.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Well, I want to make sure I'm definitive on the whole bootstrap from a startup standpoint, I'll draw the line
Speaker 1 (37:05):
And I appreciate you so much and, uh, appreciate you. It kinda entertaining some of the, the, the less obvious and the less talked about parts of scaling a business and being so transparent. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, man. W w any, any last words, any last thoughts?
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Men? Absolutely just love seeing what you guys are doing and love seeing the growth you guys are having and, uh, congrats on all you're doing. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Thanks, man. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add for ed book to learn more about the book, go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ad for at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
Co-Founder of Neil Patel Digital, Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics, Neil Patel helps companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, Google, Thomson Reuters, Viacom, NBC, Intuit, Zappos, American Greetings, General Motors, and SalesForce grow through marketing.
Patel’s marketing blog generates over 4 million visitors per month (51% of them spend money on paid ads). His Marketing School podcast generates over 1 million listens per month, while his YouTube channel about marketing has over 31 million views and 765,000 subscribers. He has 1 million Facebook fans, and 372,000 Twitter followers.
A New York Times Best-Seling Author, Patel has been called a top web influencer by The Wall Street Journal. Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers. Entrepreneur Magazine has recognized him for creating one of the 100 most brilliant companies.
He graduated from the California State University, Fullerton with a BA in Marketing.
TAKEAWAYS
Discover the intensive 6 step process that lets him create the kind of pitch that regularly crushes big name competitors like WPP and Dentsu.
The crafty emotional vs logical videos retargeting strategy at checkout that has sent conversions through the roof.
How counter-intuitively giving away more for free lets you slash ad spend AND sell more stuff.
The revenue point at which a company should focus on building a brand rather than generating massive ROI -- doing it a dollar sooner is drop-dead dumb.
Why he believes monopolies are magnificent and what you must do to create one for your clients.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(linkedin)
(Neil Patel Website)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's a hard thing. Like I've just been in business so long, right. Just know certain things will work. And I just know it's one of those things that'll work. And I don't know how to explain it. Other than I know I can make the numbers back. [inaudible]
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliate brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads.
Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich ed pour at podcast is your host, Zach Johnson. I'm with Mr. Dylan carte fender, Dylan, you excited pumped, man. I've seen this guy speak at a couple of conferences, so yeah, I'm excited. Yeah. Today's guest needs no introduction. I think he knows a little thing or two about, you know, traffic and marketing and things like that. But, uh, yeah. So Neil Patel, man, welcome to the show. Neil Patel, founder and CEO of Neil patel.com. That's that's so original. I love it. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, by the way, I'm a big fan of, um, what you've done with like Uber suggest we, we totally use it. That was awesome to see like how you, how you guys rolled that out recently and, uh, kind of incorporated that into Neil patel.com. Uh, but tell everybody a little bit about like what you're up to these days. What's new, uh, and, uh, what what's exciting for you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. Um, these days I'm working on my ad agency and you'll probably be digital. And then of course running Uber suggests as well, but those are the main two things I'm working on. There's not much more other than that,
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I love it. Okay. So here's the one I'm excited to talk about today is agency life with Bianca tell, man, I feel like you just close some Epic contracts that so many agencies would just like drool over. Uh, and so like, I, there are so many that, you know, it gets stuck in this like five K a month, 10 K a month, retainer hamster wheel, but word on the street, man, is that, that you've just taken it to like a whole nother level. And, uh, I, I'm curious, like what's it cost to work with the Neil Neil Patel digital these days.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
There's no flat pricing. It's all customized based on your business. What do we have to do to hit the goals and objections? It's all ROI base. None of it is,
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Of course it is, but it's expensive. Uh, customers,
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, we have an F and B division, which is very affordable. And then we have an enterprise. We have clients paying us five figures a year. Uh, and then we have clients paying us in the seven figures. That's what I want to about Here in the SMB division. We have a Neil Patel accelerator for small and medium businesses and we have an enterprise division.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
All right. I want to talk about this enterprise division. What does, uh, what, what, what goes into that like break, break it down, right. So everyone listen to this podcast, it really kind of fits into a couple buckets. They're either an ad agency owner. They're an advertiser spending a ton on Facebook or Google ads, or they're really an affiliate, uh, doing what, you know, the, the, the ladder. So I think for some of the agencies listening on the show would love to learn about how the hell do you close, like enterprise agency contracts. I mean, obviously with your brand, your name, maybe it's a little bit easier, but like still that's, that's not a super easy to do. So walk us through how that works.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There is no solution. So all the way from getting a lead or all the way from pitching. Cause we kind of get the leads inbound.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah. I don't need, yes. Not getting, not getting the lead. Like what does, what does that pitch look like?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So the first is a discovery call. We figured out where they're at, what are they trying to achieve? Then from there, we send them a questionnaire. We get them to answer it. The questionnaire is based on the, what information we need to do analysis. Then once we have that, our team goes and does an analysis on the business. Uh, we try to create projections and stuff on what we think we can move the needle, how much more revenue can we drive? How much ROI based on their margins, the numbers, how long it's gonna take, then we break down what can be done. And then we look at their internal resources and what we actually think we can implement by when, uh, or what needs to be done in our, and what needs to be done on there and et cetera. And then we do a pitch and we break it all down and we break down how we're going to get them the ROI.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Uh, the process in general can take a few months. And then if they like that, then you typically go through a procurement process. The chairman tries to beat you up on the pricing, you negotiate. And then you go through legal and get it all written off. But it can take two to three months just to close a deal easily, sometimes six months because you have multiple divisions, right? Like if someone has SEO issues or paid issues and conversion issues, you gotta figure out how to fix all of them. One was, if someone has a crazy Q4 goal, because they're publicly traded and you got to figure out how to hit a right, like all these things impacted.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah. So, uh, that's amazing. Who are you typically selling against, you know, for the seven figure contracts that you have to go through procurement and legal on,
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Uh, other bigger agencies. So divisions of like WPP or Dentsu? Aegis. Yeah. It's usually like, like the I prospects of the world, uh, which is owned by density, EGIS. Um, but yeah, it's all other agencies typically owned by the holding companies. If we don't run up against the small and medium agencies, what I mean by that, like, you know, there's a lot of people who own agencies, like, honestly speaking, we don't run, run up against most of them on the enterprise end. Got it. Got it. Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So here's, the grass is always greener. On the other side, I can't tell you how many ad agencies we've talked to that are like, have a dream one day of getting into software, but you you've like flipped the script. You've like crushed it in software, on multiple locations. And here you are like doing the agency. So like, what
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Was the, like, what was the inspiration
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Where you're just like, Oh, you know what, like, I'm not going to go create another seven, eight figures.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I'm going to do services. Cause that's the valuations in that are just incredible. Uh, just kidding. But
Speaker 2 (06:42):
What was the, uh, what was the reason? Why did you,
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Well, I don't run the agency. My co-founder Mike runs it. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. And stuff I'm involved in the agency, but I don't have to run the day-to-day operations. Got it. So what you're saying is money. Yes. But we also used to pay a lot of agencies to do our own marketing and I was so picky and I hated so many of them that we just did it internally. Fair enough too. Yeah, I got it. All right. Cool.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, cool man. Let's get into this rich Chad, what's working for you now. What, uh, what's something that, um, is either an ad or a funnel or an offer
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That, uh, is surprisingly doing quite well.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Sure. So this is like the silliest thing ever, but most people, when they get traffic to their site, they remark at them. Right. And when you do remarketing traffic, where do you send them to get back to the same page? Well, it's been working really well for us right now. And this is really silly is we remark all the people who go to the checkout page, right? Add to cart, checkout, whatever you want to call for SAS e-commerce doesn't matter. And then we create videos that show them what the experience is like if they would have completed the checkout of the product or service, like a high quality video. And the conversion of that are through the roof. Because a lot of the people, right? In many cases, majority of the people that hit checkout don't buy,
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This is like, you're talking about for like maybe one of your agency clients, that's an e-commerce that are, that's
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Like, you know, purchasing at
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Checkout or like give me an example of a product.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Just any, any thing that has a checkout page, do this. Let's keep it really simple. Let's say you are selling insoles for high heel shoes. Okay. And that's all you're selling and you're probably going to get a hundred people visiting your checkout. But you're lucky if like 50% of them buy, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we'll send a video to the other 50% Facebook, YouTube talking about how it's like, how it insults and how it's so much better and just showing them. But the pitch needs to be the opposite. So if your whole website pitches like all logical, we'll do the video. Emotional. If your pitch on the website is all emotional, the pitch on the is logical because you couldn't convince him the first place, right? So you got to try to rotate up and do a different pitch. Ooh, I like that. There you go.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Retargeting like some low-hanging fruit, that's amazing. The low hanging fruit that most people aren't using. The, the biggest thing that we're doing right now, which doesn't go into ads, but we're noticing this trend that people aren't going to like, and the trend is ad costs are just going up. So what we're finding is, is giving more away for free actually boost your conversion rates in your funnel, then actually fine tune your ad, copy your ad, offer your landing page or any of that. Seriously. It's just a cheaper hat. Just give away more for free and spend less on ads because your conversion from your ad will go through the roof. I'm not saying turn off your ad, spend less, your conversion rate goes through the roof. Now, is it more of a, kind of a free plus shipping or is it kind of a value bundle deal?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Get this for free when you kind of buy this, uh, it could be bundled deal. It could be free plus shipping. It could be any one of those things. The other thing that ends up doing quite well too is, uh, you know, like, let's say if you're in software, you would end up doing it more of the features for free, um, or upsells down sells funneling a lot of things for free within there. You know, normally you would get this for $10, but we're going to give you X, Y, and Z fall dollars or something like that.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
This episode is brought to you by funnel Nash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend. And if you're an ad agency that manages seven or even eight figures a year in media and ad spend for your clients, and you're looking to double your profits over the next six to 12 months, then check out ad card. See the typical agency model is this. You charge 10% of your spend. You make 10 to 20% margin at the end of the day. So that's really one to 2% of your clients spend that is profit in your business. The easiest way to double that is a really find a way to earn in that one to 2% cash back of the card that is on file of your clients has ad account. And before add card we had to do was invoice all your clients for their ad spend upfront. She's really difficult on a cash flow basis and very difficult ask. And then you had to put the card on your own Amex or whatever card of choice to get that level of value back into your business with add card it's entirely different in streamline. You simply get your clients on add card and make yourself the agency of record, and you'll get the cash back. As long as you're managing the ad spend, it's a great way to double your profit without doing any additional work.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Check it out@funneldash.com. All right, Neil, I want
Speaker 2 (11:54):
To know a poor Adam and I want to know something that you're embarrassed to talk about that failed, uh, and maybe just hurt like a little bit.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay. So I was really off at that one. You know, we had a ad guy on my account and I was telling him like, Hey, just wrap me up. I want to be at a hundred grand. This is for a new campaign. And I'm like, I want to be at a hundred grand a month and spend with them like a week, like they need to. And he's like, yeah. And this was for Uber SAS, our SEO app. And this really hurt me because he's like, okay, I got ways to really do it and get cheap clicks because I want to cheap clicks because it's like, I'm like, yeah, I don't care for conversion to pay. Just give me really cheap clicks that are super qualified because I was trying to do a branding play and what he ended up throwing at me, look at your audience and analytics. And he says like, there's a lot of gamers who are reading are the Neil patel.com website and he's assessed. So then he's spent a load of that a hundred grand in the first week on video games, you gotta be.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
So off
Speaker 1 (13:16):
The world, video games. I don't give a crap about marketing. I'm like, come on. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I thought about that and thought that was logical. I was so off.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Oh man. 25. Geez. I mean, it's just a lot though, to just like the, the, the angle, the creative, you know, has a big impact in like on LTV, right?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Video gaming. It's hot in this, you know, your, your audience loves video games. Like it's, cause my audience loves video games who liked video games. They're going to like
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I was really embarrassed about that one. I was just like, just really off and embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
You know, the good news says on that, Neil is that you shut it off after a week. Right? Totally. It's only 25 grand. All right. So let's talk about some financial principles here. So this show is all about blending the world of, uh, finance and bringing that world to, to advertising. And we're our kind of enemy is what we call market or math where we're rounding up to the nearest million. Um, but one of the things that I'd be curious on is cashflow management and how you manage the cash and the investments in your business, uh, from an advertising and marketing perspective.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So you're saying, how do I manage the cash from an advertising manager perspective?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
If you're ultimately as a business owner, you are making investment decisions, right? Like I'm going to invest a hundred K a month into Uber suggest I'm going to invest X, Y, Z into this initiative. And you know, some, some businesses, uh, are more aggressive on those investments. Some aren't, uh, some are willing to lose money on those investments,
Speaker 1 (15:17):
The wrong way. But like, if it's for my own business, I do a lot of stuff for branding. And I don't care about the ROI for most people. I tell them to spend a dollar, you men are make more than a dollar back and it better be profitable as well. Um, but I look at the LTV and I look at branding, cause I think brands are priceless. Like when you, do you want to buy shoes? Like I just want Nike or buy a car, you pick a brand like a Tesla or whatever. You know, not a lot of things are related to ROI. I think a lot of it's brand related, but just other people don't like that. And I'm huge on branding.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
At what point should somebody start thinking about branding and like making those investments, do you think
Speaker 1 (15:58):
When they're already profitable and take their business to the next level, I'm trying to build like a nine figure 10 figure company.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah. Okay. So if you're already doing like eight figures, branding should be something that you, if you want to get it,
Speaker 1 (16:12):
If you are doing like a million bucks, 2 million a year and they're like, yeah. And put all this money in Brandon, don't do that. We make it like 10 million, 20 million in revenue and you want to figure it out, like tell me branding, spray. Got it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And how do you think about investing in new initiatives and new projects? You've got your agency, you've got your, your software businesses, you know, do you have like a loss pool on new test projects? Do you, uh, yeah. Like how do you,
Speaker 1 (16:45):
How do you think about that? No, you're just testing have fun and whatever works. We're methodical.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
You sound so strategic when it comes to your SEO and your internet marketing and it, and just like,
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Right. Like you just got to be, it's different for all businesses. I'm very strategic and I'm very mindful when a businesses starting up. But if you're spinning up free cash flow and you're growing really fast, I'm all about experimenting and just doubling down. Yeah. I love that
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Down on what's working or doubling down on what's your experimenting or both?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Both. Yeah. I believe winner takes all right. And this is like, Hmm, you got to go, try to take over market share and try to create that monopoly. I know that sounds bad, but that's the reality. If you look at most of the big companies are monopolies, whether they want to admit or not, Google never says, Oh, you know, we control search. Google always says, Oh, we're not. We're like fourth in cloud competing. And we losing against Amazon and you know, icons kills us in the cell phone market. They never talked about search because it had a leader. Apple doesn't talk about I-phones because they're the leader. So they'll talk about like, no one uses Safari browser converted Crow, you know, you know, and then you don't hear Microsoft talking about how they control the operating system, but we're losing with Azure again, AWS, you know, they're not here talking about everyone's using Microsoft office, they're talking about, but all big companies tend to be, uh, monopolies to some extent. And the other thing is they've all built brands. The brand is an unknown X factor. Can you figure out how to build a brand? And that is not something that you can put a formula on. And that's where I think most people get wrong.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I want to switch gears here for a second. I want to talk about this tool section on your website. This is something I feel like I've noticed in the last year or two with what you're up to. Like what's the high level strategy here with what you're doing with Uber suggest and like this, this suite of suite of tools, particularly with like your own branded domain, right? Like when I look at personally branded websites, I think of blogs. I think of podcasts. I think of like a course, something like that, but I mean, you're taking it to a whole nother level here and I'm just curious to kind of get inside your brain of like what the big idea is.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I will just wait till next year, I'm going to release a MailChimp competitor and just make emails a hundred percent free. Unlimited sends up. I'm going to contact. You want to send you a hundred million emails a year. I'm in a month. I'm going to pay for a hundred million emails and no it'll be free for you.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about that for a second. What, like, and you're going to put that under the Neil Patel brand. Yes. Okay. So like what, what, like, why, why, why, why the Neil Patel brand? Why not like XYZ?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
It's good. On the keyword email software. How much do you think it'll cost you CPC? I don't know. Marketing. Right? Let's take the word, email marketing. What do you think quick would be just take a guess $18,
Speaker 2 (20:06):
40 bucks. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Okay. So $42 and 57 cents right now. And people like MailChimp campaign monitor, et cetera for, so their cost for pay customers is actually quite expensive. Would you agree with that statement? Because not because every, if you pay for 10 clicks, probably not going to get one customer, you agree with that, right? You're not converting at 10%. That'd be very rare for LTV. It is cheaper to just give away the kit and caboodle for free and just say, okay, I'll figure out a different way to monetize.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Oh my gosh. So this is like, you know, this is, this was the exact thinking that me down into creating ed card and ed capital was like 10 years of B2B SAS. FunnelDash originally starts out as this analytics and advertising tool. And I'm like, what does it look like? What does it look like for SAS? Like to be free? And that was the original thesis that was like, Oh, there's opportunities to monetize through financial products of a card and a capital side of things. And the, and there's no like set, you know, SAS subscription. So I'm curious, like what other monetization models do you see out there for somebody that wants to make their SAS free? Cause I had the same conversation with, with ClickFunnels. They're like, well, what does click funnels look like to be free? I'm like, well, you guys have like, that's a little bit too late to the game here to be able to pull that off. But like,
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, because you can't MailChimp technically they cannot just say, Hey, we're going to take our 700 million in revenue and just make it all free. So that is my disruption.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
No, of course. Well, what do you think are some of the new monetization models for others? You know, SAS companies, like I think the next decade financial products are going to be a new way to monetize for sure. But like what do you think?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Um, I think financial models marketplaces like eventual release marketplaces with a lot of our software. There's a lot of different options, but um, everyone just optimizing for revenue on the front end, I think the real model is the backend. Whether it's you have an agency and upselling your product or creating marketplaces, if you have software or upselling other people's products on your checkout and them upselling yours. I just think that is
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Future marketplaces. Yeah. I love it, man. I, I, I wanna like spend like two hours on that topic alone of like how to make your SAS free and um, and monetize the backend. I think like a lot of SAS subscription companies, I know make high seven figures on like their certification programs and their agency partner programs. Uh, that's almost equivalent to their $50 a month, a hundred dollars a month subscription business. Um, or like a, yeah. So I think that's an interesting, uh, way to monetize when you, when your SAS is free. Um, that's what, gosh, um, we interviewed Mike [inaudible] of, um, grew funnels and that's what you know, he's done so well with, right. He's getting, he just passed over 200,000 hundred 50,000 users and he kinda basically like stuck at the ClickFunnels was like, yeah, it's free. And uh, gosh, there were signing a couple thousand couple thousand people a day and the free was a limited, right?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
It was like, it was a little bit of a bait and switch in the sense that you can only build like five funnels by you and then you had to upgrade to their, their lifetime deal. Um, which is something that actually, I think you've done really well with Uber suggest by the way, like this like freemium and then how you like baked in like a lifetime deal at the bottom tier is like, that is like a more SAS companies need to be doing like an L like a lifetime, like a strategic lifetime deal. Not like an app Sumo lifetime deal where they're just giving away everything. Right. But like, it's this, it's this, uh, you know, middle where you're just gonna, um, you know, push people over the fence. Has that worked well for you or not so much? It has funny enough we use the lifetime deal. Cause it mainly takes more people to go to monthly.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah. Right? Like it, it takes people from like a free to the, Oh really? Oh. So you wanted to actually push people to a monthly with their life for a lifetime. We also do it because it gives back to the community, but eventually we'll, we'll remove it. We're trying to figure out how to give less our costs are down, but not that much less for people notice it. And then go back to that $10 a month price point. Got it, got it. The software isn't to make money it's to break even a Y w for what? Just because you want to sell them X, Y, Z something else.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I'm not worried. I'm not trying to think revenue and profitability in front of things. Just break even and gobble up market share. Okay. So help me understand like gobble up market share for Neil Patel. Like so many people, those say personal brands, right? You can't sell them. You can't do it like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There are there's no equity. Long-term equity value. What, what do you say like to that? Right. I feel like you're a smart guy. You probably gotta have an answer. I'm like why you're doing it for Neil Patel. I mean, you're kind of closing off some optionality of people that are going to want to buy the Neil Patel tools. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Uh, I just know the numbers work.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
It's a hard thing. Like I've just been in business so long where I just know certain things will work. And I just know it's one of those things that'll work. And I don't know how to explain it. Other than I know I can make the numbers back out. In what way? Like, it's, it's hard for me to explain to a lot of people. I'm not saying to you guys, but some people don't understand the value of brand and the traffic and what it can do for a long haul. But because I've been doing this for 16 years, I've seen it. It's a lot of ideas to gobble up market share and brand because I've seen what it does to income five, 10 years later, I want to play that game because it's too long of a game. You can go to Sequoia capital and say. Like I'm going to go give away email and I'm going to pay for all this ends and
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Do all of their contacts and all this. And like, how are you gonna monetize it? I don't know. But I'll figure it out later. Like that just doesn't fly. You get what I mean? Right? Like it's, it just doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
My question is specifically on like, I don't know anybody else in all of SAS or info that has a SAS tool that is branded under their personal name and domain. That's my,
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah. So when you combine them, but so my blog gets 10 million visitors a month when you combine that all. Wow. So I do it because it drives so much traffic to the tool. The tool also helps drive more traffic to the blog. It doesn't necessarily work if you're trying to sell it. But at the end of the day, if I can show them people tracking and revenue numbers, people tend to forget things like, Oh, it's under the Neil Patel name. If someone looks at your business, your business isn't this cookie cutter business five years ago, people would have told us, told you that your businesses and silly idea. Right. Would you agree with that statement five years?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yes. They were just like, what analytics to, why do you want to do analytics? Why do you want to do audits? Yeah. A hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
But when I look at how I'm doing with the naming and the convention, people is look at it today and say, it's silly, but the numbers prove out to work. So if they prove out to work, they may not like it. But the numbers prove out to work. These guys are all investors and financial people at the end of the day and spreadsheet junkies from Harvard numbers talk. Yeah. There's so many businesses out there that people don't understand and they don't like, and they're like, why would you do this? But when the numbers were like, Oh, okay, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Look, the numbers are there on your blog. Right? The numbers are definitely there in terms of recurring revenue and like SAS. But like, I literally say there's no one else building SAS tools and investing in that technology and rolling it up into a personal brand like that I think is so like visionary. And I'm still having a hard time, like struggling of like, okay, cool. Like you're just, I think you've just accepted that all these subscription and SAS is just like, like a phenomenal business model. And you're kind of okay with the, except that it's quote unquote, like not sellable because it doesn't have X, Y, Z own like
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah. Optimize businesses for the exit, because I also, I'm not investor back optimized for what I think makes sense for the long haul. I'm not saying I'm right. I do it based on what I think is right. For me, based on what the numbers and the data is showing people may disagree. And I don't worry about the long haul of we'll invest your light this or not, because I believe I'm making the right long-term decision. I think that they'll start coming around. Just like when I tell them I want to do free email, they think I'm silly. Right. But three, four years from now, we'll see if I'm silly or not. And I probably could be the one that's wrong and I'm okay with taking that risk. And, but yeah, it's a big bet. That's
Speaker 2 (29:42):
A really big bet. Expensive. Yes. Yes. Very big inexpensive bet. Well, Neo man, I, uh, what you're doing is visionary in terms of the SAS tools on your personal brand. Uh, what you're doing with, with Uber suggests lifetime deal pricing, your retargeting strategies. Um, and we really appreciate you coming on and still willing to accept failure that you still lose 25 grand on a, a, on a, on a first week of an ad campaign. So thank you. This has been super interesting. Tell everybody what you're up to next and how we can support you. Check out louvers, suggest.com. Check it out.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Awesome. All right, Neil. Thank you so much, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book. Learn more about the book. Go to rich ed, pour a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
Known as the Michael Jordan of Internet Marketing, co-founder of GrooveKart and CEO at GrooveFunnels and MikeFilsaime.com, Inc., Mike Filaime is one of the founding fathers of funnel marketing. His companies have done over $150M in sales and he has created some of the most influential software and strategies that have fundamentally shaped the methods and technology of today's marketing industry.. His prior experience includes serving as co-founder of Marketing Genesis. Filsaime is a graduate of the New York Institute of Technology where he studied Computer Science and Suffolk Community College where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree.
TAKE AWAYS
How putting all your energy into giving away your product free eventually adds up to big bucks.
Why selling the hype instead of the product instantly obliterated the biggest barrier to signing up.
The genius of creating an “anti-upsell” page that built massive goodwill and credibility.
What made his “mouth breather” COVID-era ad an unbeatable control.
Why you should spend a ton of time optimizing this one component and not even think about generating traffic.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(Groove Digital Website)
(Groove Funnels Website)
(Groove Pay Website)
(linkedin)
TRANSCRIPT:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode, we talk with Mike [inaudible] of GRU funnels, the viral funnel and page builder that is scaled to 200,000 users in less than six months. We talk about how they scale their fall to spending 25 K a day on ads and how they have become an eight figure business. In a short matter of months, Mike talks about his entire strategy of how he thinks about funnels, offers, framing of those offers, and ultimately how to scale those to the moon. Mike is a legend when it comes to online marketing and his launches are some of the biggest ever. So enjoy this episode and we'll see you in there.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
We want to rewrite the game. We don't want to create another me too. Pagebuilder we want to, we want to do something that's never been done before. And, uh, you know, we've got a lot of very lucky in a lot of ways because they said, you know, I said, how much is that going to cost? And they said, it's going to cost about 60 grand for about three months,
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Listening to the rich ad poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad, poor ed podcast. This is your host, Zach Johnson. I'm with Mr. Dillon carpenter. How are you doing today, Dylan, man, I'm moving and grooving. And I'm looking forward to this one. Yes, I am so excited for today's guest, everything. You know, that we're all about here at the rich ed port podcast is bringing you some of the best marketers on the planet that are scaling winning ad campaigns, as well as really bridging the gap between finances and marketing and today's guest invest in not only brand and ads and direct response marketing, but has a totally new perspective on, on how to think about investing in your brand and in your growth.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So a really famous guests also needs no introduction. Um, but, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a stab at anyway. I mean, you've been all over the web, uh, for the last, like what maybe two, three months straight and as one of the co-founders and partners at groove funnels and has a, just a litany of experience in online marketing, uh, prior to, to grew funnels. So without further ado and along getting this intro any longer, um, Mike Filsaime, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, guys. I'm happy to be here and I too am moving and grooving excited to be here
Speaker 2 (03:01):
100%, 100% attendance,
Speaker 1 (03:04):
100%. Oh my gosh. I love it. Well, congrats on, uh, just the launch of, and the success of, of grew funnels so far. I think, uh, you know, the funnel that you've designed here is absolutely brilliant and, and honestly following you for quite some time, it really does feel like accumulation of your life's work, uh, that is thought through in every aspect of the product through, through the funnel. And, um, it's so excited to see how viral, uh, this, this launch has gone for you. So congrats,
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Thanks. Uh, you want to present, right? There's a culmination of everything that I've done online has been put into this, uh, into this platform. So all the way back to the early days, you know, my first, very first, uh, you know, software product was something called Powerlink generator and all that, you know, that I learned in there, uh, you know, that, that was the 4runner two pretty links if you know, people ever heard of or use that on WordPress, that was basically, you know, WordPress was taking off and I was fighting WordPress. Like, no, I've had I butterfly marketing, I have dynamic sites and I just, I just couldn't keep, you know, we couldn't compete with, with WordPress. It was free. And then so instead of me adapting my software products, like viral friend generator and, and, um, and Powerlink generator and butterfly marketing and these different things into WordPress, I other people went and created awesome different plugins, and I kept thinking a little bit bigger and, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So yeah, grew funnels has a bit of, you know, my very first, uh, marketplace product that competed with ClickBank pay.com. Um, it has Powerlink generator, butterfly marketing, viral friend generator. Uh, and then, you know, uh, you know, from there, you know, things like webinar jam ever webinar, which I was co-founder, I sold obviously in 2016, this is a culmination of, of, of all of those things, but not just hack together. It's really what I learned and, and wanting to create the perfect all in one solution. And that was originally going to be Kartra, you know, that was my, you know, my, uh, my, my product originally. And, and, um, first we did webinar jam. We didn't expect it to, uh, to become the, the second largest webinar platform in the world. And every webinar became the largest automated webinar platform in the world. And that kind of, uh, I don't want to say distracted us, but it needed a lot more focused than we thought we were going to need and the kind of delayed Kartra.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And while that was happening, you know, another partner came into the business and, uh, you know, I kind of Steve jobs myself, like what happened, you know, fired from his own, his own company. You know, um, it sort of happened to me. I went from 50% ownership to the 33%. I lost control of my company, uh, sort of became an employee in the company and you, we, we got along good as friends, but, uh, not, not the greatest as partners. And, and so I took a buyout and, uh, in 2016 and 2018, I had to start from scratch with, uh, no employees, uh, just, just a little bit of capital and an idea, uh, and, uh, and set out to reclaim, you know, what I had planned to do, and that, that's why that's why the group digital brand was started.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well. So that's what I want to know, you know, being in technology, you know, and being part of several software companies before FunnelDash at lead pages and Ontraport, like I have a little, you know, quite a bit of insight, I should say more than a little bit of insight of like what goes into building all these tools. I mean, between brew funnels and groove sell and affiliate and pages of member and video and mail and desk and plug, I mean, one, the foresight on that, that brand is amazing and impressive, but I mean, how long have you been building this? Like, where is this dev team? And like, how are they so incredibly efficient to crank through so many, uh, so many different features and products?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Well, the, the first product that we had group card, um, which is a Shopify competitor, uh, group card was in development for about two years. Uh, when I came on, uh, I was approached by matzoh serralta, uh, who's, who's developing. And he reached out to John Cornetta, who was, you know, doing, you know, uh, hundreds of thousands of dollars, uh, uh, with Shopify stores. And he asked John, Hey, I need help marketing this. And John said, look, I know everything there is to know about e-commerce, but I'm not a branding guy. You'd probably want to talk to Mike. And, uh, right at that point, you know, I, um, I was looking, I was looking to start my own company, uh, but I definitely knew the advantage of at least having a platform that I could start with. So they were called ultra fun cart at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
And so the very first thing I said is we're going to change this name. And he absolutely hated groove. And trust me when I tell you, he absolutely loves it now, but he was a little married to it. And I said, he said, why, why do you want to go with groove cart? Um, and I said, because bruv male group sell group that all of these things are available for about 2,500 to $5,000. And he was, and they just didn't get it because as you guys don't, you can't buy a domain with a.com today. It's, it's, it's fairly impossible. About 50%, we were able to, we were able to buy the ones that didn't matter. We got the.net and we were like, looking for glute groove, blog.net. That's not going to, you know, we're not going to hitch our company on that, but we have to pay for group pay group funnels group.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So all these different things we paid for, and I was secretly buying them on, on a 12 month payment plans. A lot of these things you could buy for like 250 or 500 a month for two months payment plans. And, you know, my partners were a little worried, like, you know, why is he, you know, we've got group card. Why is he thinking so big? But I was you, Stephen Covey says, you know, begin with the end in mind. And I knew that, you know, my job was to come here and create a brand. So that, that was the first thing was, was looking, where are we going to be? And now we sat down in Boca Raton, and first met for the very first time in July of 2018. So it, we just crossed two years from, you know, from that meeting. And so in, in, in, um, December of 2018, we launched group card.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And as soon as that money came in, uh, I had, uh, said to the partners, Hey, I want to go into, I want you guys are familiar, obviously lead pages, click funnels. I said, I want to go back into the, the place that I know best. And that's, you know, that's an all-in-one platform. So we originally started with group pages and I brought in the guy that built Kartra pages and the guy that he re re re uh, hired after he left with Kartra. And these two guys, uh, said to me, look, you know, I have a framework that I've been working on for two years, but it's based on the same bootstrap technology that we did with Kartra. We wanna, we want to rewrite the game. We don't want to create another me-too page builder. We want it, we want to do something that's never been done before. And, uh, you know, we got a lot very lucky in a lot of ways because they said, you know, I said, how much is that going to cost? And they said, okay,
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Um, that's a great, they said, it's going to cost them about 60
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Grand for about three months. And I said, well, that's probably a hundred grand for about, for about six months. Okay,
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Exactly. Yeah. So, uh, so,
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Um, you know, I want to, I want to go out and raise the funds for this thing, but I don't want to do it the normal Silicon Valley ways. I don't want to investors, I don't want to give up any part of the company. Um, so what we're going to do is I'm going to, I'm going to create this Kickstarter style video, and we're going to go out and we're going to, we're going to sell group pages, um, for $497 for life. And if they buy, it's basically, that's your perk you back the product, and you don't get anything right now and you help us back. It, what ended up happening is that promotion did 1.3 million it's first time around. And when that money came in again, you know, my partner said, uh, you know, how about now, are we taking distributions? And I said, no, we're gonna, we're gonna now move the scale up.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
And I'm adding group sell and affiliate. And we started doing, uh, doing that. And then we started realizing, Hey, you know, we can actually put some more onto, onto this. We can do group male. I want to add group video and I want to add group member. And so we started doing that. And, uh, you know, we, we hired another developer. Who's actually a minor partner in the company, his name's on route, and my group had, uh, access to talent. And the talent was, you know, we were, you know, Matt, uh, Matt analysis fighting it, saying, you're not going to be able to get talent, you know, for, for $3,000 a month. Uh, but sure enough, we did, but sure enough, we want to percent did. And we outgrew even that as well. And, um, wow. Um, things just started taking off, uh, better than we had ever, ever, ever thought.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So I just kept, you know, we were at the roulette table, right. And red just kept coming up and I said, let it ride, let it ride. That's kinda like what I was doing. So we ended up building a, uh, working with a company. Um, I'll give them a plug there. Uh, when we had, uh, 40 people on dev, we couldn't get to 41. We put on one, we'd lose two. We, we really hit the point where we couldn't do the hiring and explaining and all that stuff anymore. So, we, we reached out to a company called daffodil in India. Um, yeah, they, yeah, they have a couple of different solutions, you know, they'll do the project for you. They'll help you grow your team. Or the third solution is the one we wanted was an ODC, get created an offshore development center where I basically said this 42 people that I need on the team.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I want your very best people. Cause they have 400 people in the wings. And the 400 people they have is kind of like Stanford university. They were, there were 40,000 people trying to get into daffodil. They've pre-screened everybody. And then I told them, I want the cream of the crop. You know, I was very, very serious with them. And, and let me tell you, the people we got are just insane. So we hired 40 people. They gave us 18 on day one and it took us another 30 days to, you know, to get the other. And we're, we're still putting on a couple more here and there. But the way that we built the platform first was with, with the foundation was, was with a UI kit. Um, and then these tent poles, everything basically had, you know, the same authentication system, certain navigations, certain integrations, all in one app.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And then, then there are so many things that when you're creating an app, it's the admin dashboard, it's the, you know, the, the notifications for the signups of transactions, all that's about no joke, 70% of the app. So when you have that already built and you say, okay, we want to go create the survey tool. Um, it's like, okay, well you have a UI function, you have all of these different things. And what would normally take, you know, maybe, uh, two years to build, we can build out a major tent pole in about three to four months, uh, I would say, uh, and that, and then a hero tent pole, something like groove mail takes about nine months, you know, which would normally take about two years. So, uh, so w we started our first line of code on May 1st of 2019, and we're going to finish the product, uh, December 31st of 2020, and that's a 1717 products, uh, that will be completed.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Wow, man. Well, look, I've, I've seen, uh, gosh. Yeah. My days at Ontraport, they had, you know, something not even close to this, this technology stack, we've seen it take years, you know, sometimes even like five to 10 years with dev teams, you know, here in the us. And, you know, it's something that like, as, as you know, these customers are, are signing up for grew funnels and groove pages. It's like a huge Testament to the fact that you're like you're shipping so much product. And like, the thing that ultimately sucks for a lot of the early adopters is like they, they buy in to the early programs and then just the layers of complexity and these all-in-one tools just clogged down the machine and then you're not able to ship new stuff. And I think that, uh, it's always been, you know, impressive, like anything that Mike promotes, like it's feature rich. And, um, I've always been impressed, you know, from afar in terms of the overall volume and quality of output that you guys have do on the dev and technical side, nothing to do with rich ads or poor ads, but I'm a fan of bar in terms of like the quality of the products that you've put out.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah. In this case, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, what I was going mention is, I mean, I've seen multiple people kind of post about Shaw. Um, it was during that lifetime deal and I was like, what is this? So I started kind of following y'all around and man, it's been super cool on how rapid is growth spend, especially in a lot of the Facebook groups I'm into, it's just, I'm seeing the post after post. Who are you guys? Right.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
You're going to have to share some of the numbers. Mike, you got to give us an update.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Well, so let me, let me say this before I say those numbers, right. Um, I'll definitely take on the role of Tony stark in this company, but this company is really, is really the Avengers, right? So in that sense that, you know, Tony was kind of the hero character, uh, you know, they made the big deal when he died and maybe not everybody else and stuff like that, you know, I'll, I'll take that role as the CEO, but, uh, you'll, you'll take a look at any iron man movie and you try to compare it to what, you know, the Avengers movies have done in there. There's nothing that could be compared. So what I did, what I did in this company was, was basically said, I need to, uh, uh, assemble the Avengers. And, uh, you know, I have four equal partners, you know, the way I did this in terms of control, uh, you know, and for all of us, in fact, uh, is we're all protected, but, you know, I own less than 25% of this company.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I was very, very generous to go out and have four main partners. And then another, uh, four partners that we gave another, uh, part of the 10% of the company is divided, uh, in the other four partners that you see as the front of group digital. So I'm not a greedy man in any way. I certainly live by the I'd rather have, you know, 22.4, 8% of a watermelon than a hundred percent of a grape. And I knew that by getting Donna Fox wonder woman and getting, you know, the incredible Hulk and Spiderman and getting all these people onto our team, that when they buy in, there's no employee CCS, you know, the leaders there are putting in eight days a week in the 26 hours a day. Uh, and, and they, they, it really, you can really see how that made a difference. Having our two of our lead people being well, actually three partners in the company are developers, but, uh, but, but, uh, but so that made a difference.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So what happened was, and quite frankly, it was a surprise here, you know, here are the numbers. So we, you know, we had the, the first set of numbers and then we started changing the offers, you know, okay, so it's not group pages for life. And then it's, and then it's the longer, this thing that we call groove apps, we were able to secure the domain, grow funnels. And then I said, okay, this is going, well, why not push it? Why not get people away from WordPress and create group blog and all these different things. And we started working on them. They started coming out phenomenal, and then that created much more buzz around the brand. And so we had this, this basic Kickstarter backer program has been running ever since. And so the price at this point is, you know, 1397, or, you know, up to 2000, if you take some of the payment plans and, uh, we've, we've put in some very viral things that happen when you sign up.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
There's a very, uh, uh, very generous affiliate program. That's getting us about 1500 on a slow day, new free sign up today. And 2,500, uh, free signups on a, on a good day or sometimes 4,000 when we have affiliates promoting. So on average, about 2000 a day, that's about 60,000 new users, uh, per month, we, we we've crossed the 200,000 Mark on Sunday labor day weekend. Uh, we, you know, the, the, the graph is going up and we're, you know, we, when you look at that model of Dropbox and Trello and Gmail for, for that sake, you know, there's G suite, you know, for people that want to wrap up their domain, it, it gives you so many people that, uh, you know, so many different people that are coming in and gives you exposure that it's making it nearly impossible for the competition to survive, because there's just active campaign. Well, we'll give you so many leads for free or there's click funnels or lead pages. We're giving, we're giving part of the, you know, pretty much their lead product. We're giving it away for free. And then what we're getting people to realize is that there's just something great and having a software that's made to work together. And so only about 5% of the people are, are upgrading, but when 5% of you take 5% of 2000
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And the lead to sell conversion rates great though, right? Like, well, yeah. And 5% of 200,000 on a sheer number of volume
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah. Or 2000 people a day, uh, you know, it is, you know, let, let's just say it's a hundred people a day, you know, at an average price point of $1,300. You know, we, uh, we, we quickly went to, you know, a 45, $50 million a year company, you know, doing, you know, a hundred, 120 550. Oh, you know, we have, we have slow days, you know, quote unquote, slow days for we'll hit 40 or 50. And somebody will say, Hey, what happened? And, you know, and then we have days where we'll hit 250,000 or 260,000. So that, that, wow, that has obviously when we had 1500 new people coming in everyday, we had a, we had an act treat them like regular customers that gave us a credit card. So we, we have to scale and, you know, put in all the proper onboarding and things like that.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
But that was, that was fun and challenging. And it could have been a lot worse, to be honest. I, you know, I can't believe how smooth the growth has been. And we're just, we'll just redeveloping all the money back back into, I don't want to say that anymore. I can't say that anymore. Investing because as you know, you can't just throw money at development. Right. I can't say, well, let's just, let's just throw a million dollars at it and we'll finish it next week. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. You're going to actually have too many chefs in the kitchen and you can overwhelm your project managers, but, but we're, we're, we're putting it at the proper throughput. And, uh, and now, yes, it's, it's my, I will tell you this, my partners and I are very happy that there's just a, there's only so much surplus money that could go around, you know, for nest eggs and rainy days and war, chest, and advertising, which I'd love to get into media buying stuff next. But finally, we're, we're, we've been able to take our distributions and, and put some smiles on our faces.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
That's awesome, man. Well, let's dive into it, man. I want to see what the, what this rich ad is all about, why it's working. And I want to know how much money you guys are really put behind this because it's become such a flywheel at this point, your, your whole campaign has got so many affiliates and people sharing it and pushing it. But guys, you know, see the thing with, with obviously you've got a great audience and an existing email list, uh, but also seeding it, you know, with the second wave of paid advertising and now it's become a life of its own. So let's dive into this rich ed, Mike, let's do it, break it down for us.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
All right. So the, the, the secret is, uh, in my opinion, is getting the signup right? And, and, and working on making the sale through a lot of different experiences, such as onboarding email, follow-up retargeting free education and a Facebook group. And we can unpack all of that. But at the beginning, what we have to, you know, we have to realize when we're doing these ads is, um, all we do need to do is get their name and their email address. So we're very, very curious, uh, careful when we're doing even our current landing page about putting that awesome video on the front end of the page. That's a great video for SAS. It's a great video for our brand, and it's a great video for normal conversions, but we're not trying to make a sale. We're trying to get you to create a free account.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So we have to make sure, you know, trust me when I tell you, when you go to group pages, there's six, six sections on the page. You know, your headline section know, uh, the video section, your, your call to action section testimonial, and, uh, you know, maybe guarantee or not even a guarantee because it's free. Right? So our focus is the main thing that we want people to see is that we're giving you a better landing page and marketing funnel builder that happens to be free with no credit card required. And sometimes it's like, okay, I'm using, like you said, Ontraport lead pages, click funnels. I'm using that while I know that this free products out there, I don't use free in my business. Right. So we had to be very, very careful. Uh, I'll, I'll just pull that up, um, pull up, um, like my, my headline there.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So our headline is the better way to build funnels, but then we put the word free in there highlighted free way to build funnels and sell digital products. And we have a lot more than just funnels and selling digital products that we, we leave out. We don't mention group video right now. We're not mentioning, you know, group mail or group webinars. We don't know necessarily if we, if we have to, because what we want to do is get people onto an ad. They could, they can consume something very, very quick. Then there's a video there, which we think in this case, um, you know, this is, this is very well thought out. We're not really selling the software here. We're selling the hype, which is normally something I don't want to do, and we're selling the growth. And, you know, so it's, it starts off with this, this question.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
We have a question for you. Why has 47,000 people in the last, you know, 75,000 people in the last 60 days made the switch to group funnels. We're about to tell you why, because that's what we want. We want to handle that objection, right from the beginning, like, like, okay, so this is free and you're saying it's better. And we need to address those things. And all we want to do is, is get you to say, Oh, you know, like, you know, like doc holiday, okay, I'll be your huckleberry. All right. You're not asking for a credit card here. Uh, and it says no credit card required ever. Let me give my, uh, my name and email address and get in there. And then once we get you there, that's our goal is then from there, if we can do our proper onboarding where we're going to, if you're any type of series business owner, we're going to get you.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Right. Yeah. I mean, you can say this a little bit, but like free, but it's definitely a powerful offer, you know, on the front end, but it also has, you can lose a lot of credibility, right? Like if I were to say, like with, with ad card, right? Like we have this free benefit where we do unlimited ad copy and creative with ad card and P and then it's like, well, what's the catch? Like, why is it free? Is it, does it suck? And so I feel like you guys totally overcome that with just an overwhelming amount of, uh, of, of credibility, uh, in that video, like you said, and then,
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And
Speaker 1 (26:44):
The, and the funnel of a free, you know, a total free product then into, you know, this, this lifetime deal. And then into recurring revenue, like, is the, is the, the, the, the simple playbook for, you know, scaling a technology and a SAS business, like at, at, at the early stages.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, we got, we got lucky with that. Uh, guys, um, you know, our thing was to do this, um, in the T w probably launch sooner, um, at $99 a month and one 99 and two 99, and we're going to, we're definitely going to get there, but we, um, we got hit with COVID, right? Like everybody else we were at at, at traffic and conversion summit. I had a, uh, a place that I rented in, in downtown San Diego, which was my former hometown. I lived there for five years and I was excited to get a place right there in the Gaslamp district. Um, and, um, I got a place for two months. I'm here for, for TNC a month early. I just signed a lease with, we work having troubles, you know, there's, this is the worst thing that could happen to them. So I, I got an office that we work.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We had a $20,000 booth at TNC, and we just made a $50,000 contract with sidebar, and we were going to be hosting the TNC after-party. So w I was, you know, basically had all of my PowerPoints to be on every single, uh, every single television set at sidebar. And I was going to be standing up on the bar at seven o'clock and telling everybody, Hey, you know, DJ is going to be starting in about an hour and this free drinks for everybody until nine o'clock or whatever it does. Uh, but in the meantime, everybody, and, you know, I was going to be talk, nobody had heard about groove at this time, and that was going to be, our thing was going to be, you know, one day, you know, my staff starts saying, should we be coming? Should we book these Airbnbs? Cause COVID was happening.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
This was right in March. And then Tuesday traffic and conversion says, we're still going on Wednesday. They say, they're canceled. Uh, then it's declared a national emergency Thursday. Trump says, it's a pen. It's a, you know, it's a national emergency first. It was a pandemic. And then on Friday I was home. And just like that, I told Michelle, I was soon as I heard Trump say that, I said, I knew what was going to be happening to the flights. I said, I don't want to get trapped in this city. Uh, I said, book us a flight. And she says, we have dinner plans tonight. I said, book us a flight out of here. Right. And then, so by the time that we got home, you know, my partners were saying, so now what? Then, you know, you know what? It was like, everybody was right there, right?
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I mean, this was governor Cuomo saying, screaming, this is your future. Right. You know, this was, this was the scariest time in anybody's life. And I said, guys, I don't even know if we're going to have a company. You know, uh, the economy tanked everybody, we had a knee-jerk reaction cut everybody to 50%. And I said, I'm scared to announce a launch date. So what happened now? We're saving grace was there, there was, um, you know, my, my partner Matt was using, uh, this company, you know, appear in, um, which I, yeah. Right. And, uh, and I think, I mean, I think they had to rebrand their name by whereby and then, then there was zoom and then there was Skype calls and every day he had a new link for us. And so I said, Matt, can't we just use zoom. And he's like, well, here use this Uber conference link.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
And I was like, why? And he says, well, they're giving you a free premium account right now because of COVID. And I said, Oh, well, whatever. So we do the conference. Um, and the second I get off a pop-up comes on and it basically says a letter from the CEO. And it says, uh, because of COVID, um, we understand that entrepreneurs are having a tough time and we're doing our part by providing a free service with no credit card required. Is this self-serving? Well, we could be accused of that. He said, he said, but, uh, yes, all we hope is when things get back to normal, you'll remember us for being a good service. And I had one of those, like, you know, brain moments. Oh my goodness. I called my partners because this would, the freemium model was never, you know, I'm not going to take any credit for stroke of genius or anything.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I saw another company do it when we were wondering what we were going to do to create any buzz. And I said, look, why don't, if it's free with no credit card, people are going to hate us. Right. If it's, if it's, you know, if it's a work in progress or a beta. So that's what we did. We went out there and we made it free. And that's what ended up taking off that, that turned out to be something that will be a date, you know, for this, this company we'll, we'll, we'll look. And we'll say there was a silver lining to COVID certainly for, for us, you know, I, you know, I dare use those words, but, but you know, it, it turned out to be a silver lining for us.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
That's awesome, man. So you get the funnel, right? So you decided to go down this, this free route, and you've got this, uh, you know, this, this, this picture of you, which is basically like a picture of your ad, and it's quite dashing Mike, on your Facebook ad, you're pointing at the camera and this is, uh, you know, this is your, this is your guys's control. I'm like how much, you know, if you're open to sharing, like how much you guys spend on ads, like see the launch in and, you know, push behind this, this winning ad right here.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, uh, no, no problems at all. Uh, talking the, uh, the little joke about the swimming ad is, um, the, the video it's no longer up there, but, you know, so we wanted to go out with this, this video, and we're very careful about making sure at the time we didn't want to have any upsells or anything because we were coming out into the COVID bed. Right. And so we didn't, we didn't, we wanted people to come in. So the way we did it originally is we said, you're getting group cell. And then the upsell was no upsell. It was a page that actually said, this is not an upsell. And the video said, um, Hey, you probably thought this was where it was going to be the catch, but guess what? We're giving you group pages for free as well. So we, we wanted to completely subvert and juxtapose their expectations where they will be like, Oh, I knew, Oh, wow, just got better while these guys are, these guys are for real.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Right. Cause we, we, we knew that that marketing under COVID could be considered predatory or really, really terrible. So, so what we had to do is that video started out with, hi, I'm John Cornetta and I'm Michael, same. And we're coming to you from inside my house and forgive us for the echo. So we deliberately didn't go into the studio, even though we could have. And we, you know, we said, Hey, we're, we're apart from each other because of social distancing. And so what happened when we left the studio? Um, I, you know, I was in my house with all this bad echo. I was right behind a window, which, which created real bad exposure. I didn't know how to use the manual, focus on the camera. And as always moving from the couch onto behind the window, the exposure completely shifted. And frankly, it was a horrible video.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
It was, it was just, you know, we, we didn't, we didn't have a videographer come in again. It was COVID. And so my team decided to take a screenshot from that video at a point when the, the back got completely whitewashed. And I was, I was drowned out in contrast and I was pointing with my mouth open and my teeth sticking out and my eyes closed. And you know, when, when you're, we all know what it's like, you know, if anybody's ever tried to send a selfie, you know, to your, to your wife or your girlfriend, we all know who's taking a picture 17 times. Like it's almost embarrassing. Right. You know? So when you see somebody else taking a screenshot of you, my very first thing to my team was, Hey, I don't like that ad, you know, here's some approved pictures of me.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I gave them studio shots, some action shots, some better screenshots from the new video, all this stuff. And I gave him about 12 different pictures and the, the control, the ugly ad, the one we call the mouth breather to this day, we can't beat it. And I'm using all this and stuff like, like guys that's because, just because that ad is seasoned and it's a season, Rory, Rory is like, it could be Mike, but these other ads are not doing better. So what do you want to do? So I have to take my ego out of it and use this. This is very terrible. But having having said that, um, there are multiple, uh, you know, different versions of that ad with different texts. Um, but for the most part we're, we're spending, um, on average, about 11,000 a day on Facebook ads and about 17, uh, $17,000 a day on total media, all, all in. Wow. Wow. The breather, the catfish.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Oh, dude. That is, uh, that is hilarious, you know, for, for a guy that used to, uh, what you used to be partner up with with Andy Jenkins and that there's the production value that Andy used to put in everything. You kind of just put all that here of just suck your ad. It's just like Andy, rest in peace, man. But like this, this would not meet up to Andy's production standards. Like by any means at all.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Uh, let, let me, let me say this about, about Andy, right. Um, you know, uh, cause you know, as I alluded to, you know, the, the partnership didn't work out and you know, I said we were better friends than we were partners and nothing is more true, but I'll tell you one thing about Andy, Andy went to N Y U uh, film school. He got an Emmy and editing with ESPN. He was partners in a company, small little company. You might've heard of their work. Maybe not the company called hacks and film. And I think Haxton is like the German or Dutch word or something for which, and that is because their, their very first, uh, film was called the Blair witch project. And Andy Jenkins did all of the marketing behind that. Making people believe that that was actual found footage, they're credited for the term found footage, film, and started a whole new genre of film.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
I didn't know that Andy did the marketing for Blair, which I thought he just did the production of it.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
No, no. Yeah, no. And Waldo Sanchez was actually the production and the director and Andy was there, you know, as an investor and executive producer of the Blair witch project. And, and he was, uh, he was, uh, he was the person that created all of the myths of this found footage. And so everything that made you believe that it was real and all of the fights that they had to have with Hollywood. So, so in Hollywood you have to credit actors. Um, so, you know, if, if you look into this whole thing, like George Lucas, like having problems, he didn't want to, he didn't want to roll credits at the beginning of star Wars and how they, they lost all of this stuff with the film Guild and all this different stuff. So they were having a problem, getting, getting access to the film Guild or whatever it's called.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I forget what it, what it is, right. Because you're supposed to roll credits. So what they actually did, what Andy did to get around this, as he checked with them, you're allowed to, to roll credits with just somebody's first name. You don't have to give them credit for last name, if the actor agrees. So they got all of the actors to agree. Uh, so they filmed it with all of the actors first names. So all the actors are actually used all of their first names and then they credit didn't credit them. You know, at the end, it is a very weird way by just listing their names. So, uh, their pictures, it was, it was very interesting how they, how they have, they did that. But anyway, so, uh, Andy had products like video boss and the way we, we got together as when we were in Turks and Caicos with Brendan Rashard, uh, speaking of Brendan's mastermind, uh, Andy said, Hey, come out to California.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Let's, let's do a product. We ended up doing called video Genesis. And then everything that we did after that for, for the software products, Andy literally liked to write scripts and we would shoot. I learned so much about filmmaking with, you know, with different takes where we'd shoot over the colder with Mike over the shoulder with Andy. Now, now, now a wide. Now, now, now let me get better footage. In case you were blinking, all of a sudden you'd have to shoot a scene. 19 times it took a lot of the fun out of movie-making you're having to redo the lines, but then seeing the final product, you know, was, was a lot of fun. So I definitely learned a lot from the boss, Andy Jenkins, and I, you know, that, that I was able to, I love him.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So you go from like, Oh, Emmy award-winning producer and like this crazy level of creative to the breather ad spending 17 K a day billion a month. And it's just like, it's just,
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah. Great video that you see at the front of the site. Uh, and we, we, you know, we couldn't use any of the stills from that, but we did pre repurpose a lot of that ad that, that video that you see at the front of the group, photos.com, you know, with the jazz beat and we're walking in a Plaza at night, um, that, that video, uh, we cut into many different versions and, uh, is killing it for us.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah. And so what do you target, you know, your, your ROAS with this type of funnel, right? If you're spending 17 K a day, like, what is, I mean, you've got such grandiose visions, are you okay? Breaking even, are you okay, losing money? Are you guys profitable on day one? How do you looking at the key guys of your day?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Yeah, so, um, so, you know, we were up to 25,000 a day. Um, and you know, we, we kind of had this, this, this thing in the company where, um, where Rory and I were were telling John that look at the, at the end of the day, we have to be willing to sacrifice ROI for scale. Right. Uh, you know, so in other words, what if, what if our ROI was horrible, but we were, when we're spending nine point, you know, uh, you know, uh, 9.7 million to make 10 million in the day, you know? Okay. Well, at that point, that's a horrible ROI, but we're making 300,000 a day. Right. Uh, and at the end of the day, making 300,000 a day is better than making a hundred thousand a day. Right. So, so that was kind of like what I was saying when we were at 25,000, what we felt was that we scaled too fast and we didn't optimize it. So we brought it back down and where we are right now, we, um, our cost per acquisition, um, is about, uh, $375 to $400 for every paid customer. Uh, and every paid customer is worth about $1,200.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Wow. That's awesome. Yes. You don't even care about the free trials. Well, I mean, you do care about
Speaker 2 (41:34):
The free trials, but optimizing obviously for the paid customer, um, as that's the way to go. That's great.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
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Speaker 2 (42:44):
We'll get back to the show. Let's talk about that. You wanted, and you wish you would've worked it would've made you look so good. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is, you know, I, I ended up, uh, getting all of these great screen screenshots. Uh, I don't know what I, I can't tell you what it is. Maybe, uh, maybe, uh, um, it's, uh, me in action just as not what people want to see, or maybe, you know, uh, I think, I think these are good looking pictures of me and maybe they're just like, no, Mike you're ugly. And every version and the ones that test better are these. I am, I can't tell you what it is. Uh, but, uh, any, anything that I try to do, uh, to, to, to look more handsome in the ads is my team is telling me is not working the mountainous, my poor, my poor ads, or my better looking ads.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I it's nothing that I could, that I could tell anybody, uh, that they can write anything down. Oh, I was on a podcast, you know, don't make yourself look like a mouth breather with your mouth open and your eyes closed, you know, the test that it's working for us, unfortunately. And I can't wait to get a new winner. Oh my gosh. Well, I love thank you for sharing this. This is embarrassing and awesome at the same time. Uh, but you know, this show Mike hangs kind of at the intersection of finance and marketing, and we're trying to educate more of the advertisers in the marketing community on how important, you know, finances are in the game of, of scale, right? Not just in knowing your KPIs, but how you think about funding and investing in the growth of your business. And, um, what are some of the, you know, principles and
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Frameworks that you would share for, for some of those listening? I mean, you've already given us a ton of interesting perspectives. It's just like, Hey, it's just as long as it's like net positive in terms of breaking, even on your ads, like you'll scale up, you'll, you'll, you'll focus on, um, kind of growing the overall audience. Like you also gave a great tip around like, Hey, you didn't want to go the route of venture capital. You wanted to do the fundraising. You want to do that lifetime deal to, to get, um, you know, that in terms of how you capitalize the business, but what are some other things that, that, um, you would share for, for those folks that are looking to, to, you know, ramp up and scale their ads
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Here? Here's what I would tell people. Um, there's more traffic in the world out there than, than, than you could possibly imagine. Nobody has a traffic problem. It, it, you know, Hey, we need more traffic it's out there. Um, you go by it and it doesn't work. What does that really tell you? What it tells you is you have an offer problem and you have a conversion problem because if you put the focus into the offer, die hard, make sure that you have everything down right in, um, you know, in, in everything, on a macro level to a micro level. So on a macro level, what does that mean? That means you've, you've got the right product, the right product framing, the hook, the offer, um, and the proper funnel, the proper, in our case, we need onboarding. Uh, we need the software to sell itself.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
When they're in, in there, the software needs to have a path to the sale. It needs to say you only have two domains left, one domain left and pop up the right way. So we need to have proper, um, uh, retargeting ads, onboarding emails, all, all of these different things have to be completely, completely thought out. And then on the micro level, you need, you need perfect video production. You need the proper headlines and proper site design and things like that. So I think what people want to do very often, and it's not a, it's not a sexy answer where people want to do very, very often is they want to get the offer up and check that box and then say, let's go to traffic. An optimized offer is something that if you spend a good three months on optimizing that offer completely well thought out, whiteboarded, and then, and then really putting attention to detail.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
And in the seventh email, like it's the first email that, you know, the, the, the, the PS in the, in the 10th email is as important as is the subject line of the first. If you have a campaign that is well thought out like that, well, then what you get is what I call a no fail offer. You can throw money at this thing and it won't fail. What I would definitely recommend is start with Facebook because Facebook lets you, uh, we all know Facebook is, is, is easy. You can, you can, you can figure it out very, very quickly. But once that goes, here's a couple other tips that I'm going to tell people. I got this from my friend, Glen Ledwell. He said, um, whether you have an in-house or an agency get two to three different agencies running on your ads, don't worry about them complaining, Hey, sorry, buddy.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
This is my company. And you're going to share the data. I don't know why you're worried about making me more money. I'm paying you. And this is how we get paid. And if you can get me to spend more money, go for it. These are the KPIs. So it's not. So trust me when I tell you this has nothing to do with lighting a fire under there. But what you realize is first of all, Facebook has different algorithms on different days. And sometimes one picks up on an algorithm because we got lucky that the other one wouldn't have, because it was a Thursday, not a Tuesday, but more importantly, you're going to find out that different advertising agencies think differently in their ad sets. We're working with, you know, our good buddy Travis Stevenson, uh, with ChatMatic and ch and he's doing a completely different campaign based on getting shy, yeses, comments and followups.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
And then we work with, you know, groove ads, which is, you know, RFS media, and they're doing traditional ads with retargeting and a couple of video ads here and there. And we're hiring a third company called chamber media, who, you know, these folks that cost a hundred, $120,000 just to come to the table with them because that entire money goes into a six 60 day process of, you know, a 17 page questionnaire. It took me about eight hours of total time to, to basically write out. I'll be happy to get that to you guys. Just, uh, take a look at it. Yeah. You'll, you'll be curious to see what they're asking and what, what we, the way we answered for our, for our company. And then they go out and they basically go to create like a viral video, you know, like these videos. And, you know, you look at some of their customers, it's kind of like P90X type customers that they've taken the $30, 50 million, a hundred million dollar.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
So, so we're, we're, we're not looking to say, Oh, we're only working with one agency. If people have a different approach, we're going to work with different agencies. And then my next thing is be very, very careful with all in one agencies. They will tell you that they're all in one, they're really heroes at Facebook or whatever. After you dial it in with one medium, medium, then bill find the legends in YouTube and the legends in LinkedIn and the legends in Instagram or whatever the different things are like that. And, um, and drill real down. I'd highly recommend not doing that at the beginning, because they're going to you. Don't every one of these people requires a different type of marketing. The videos are different for YouTube than they are for Facebook. And you're going to approve it to run your marketing team a little bit too thin, but once you figure out what works in Facebook, um, you get it on autopilot.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Now you can put your resources more to maybe going after YouTube and scaling YouTube, or pay-per-click, don't try to do it all at once. It's a great dream to say, Hey, I want to do pay-per-click. I want to do Facebook, want to do YouTube. I want to do LinkedIn, social media, all these different things. And like I said, if you're doing that, that's what I call the, you know, the process map, the big mind map. It's it's it's if you do that, you're just, you're gonna, you're not even going to put the time into the offer that I sent at the beginning. So that's kinda my take on that.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
I mean, I agree. I like I'll do a native plug here for ad card. Again, the whole approach to, you know, working with several media buyers is the right one, right? Like the, uh, if you look at, uh, V shred, this guys are spending I think 500 grand a day on Facebook right now. And the way they run it is with several media buyers across several accounts, and they're all competing with each other. And this was pretty much like why we added this whole agency matching and monitoring was we are sitting on this, this data of a billion dollars ad spend and 5,000 agencies. It was the early start of funnel dash and we flipped it and we're like, Oh, the performance data on 5,000 agencies is the value for the advertiser to ultimately help them with getting them matched up with the different media buyers.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Like you said, the legend of, of these different style of accounts that have scaled maybe free trial funnels or scaled lifetime deals or scaled webinar funnels, or, you know, who are those people are. And, um, and that, you know, we ultimately with ed Carter trying to help people scale what their ads and immediate buyer is like getting them to, to work with several, not going all in on one. And each of them having their strengths, like is, is the way to go, you know, at a level of scale, one question I have though is like, how do you go from like, you know, spending a couple hours or maybe five or 10 grand and building a funnel to dropping some serious coin on grew files, right? Like this, this has got to cost you like several hundreds of thousands of dollars to really like spending a month building out this, this funnel. Uh, how do you think about investing on that front end before you're even going live with the campaign?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Um, I look, you know, I, I have, um, you know, what do you call it? Um, you know, my superpowers, right? You know, everybody has their superpowers. Right. Um, and I'm part of, you know, as I said, I'm the Tony stark of this company. We have a lot of people with a lot of superpowers and I have a great marketing department, but I've been doing this since 2002. I have a pretty good, uh, sense of, of, uh, of what works. I don't try to reinvent the wheel too much. I know that there are, you know, there are boilerplate templates that, that people have put out there, you know, from, you know, from myself and David who's in Russell with a perfect webinar, webinar control, all these webinars, present, domination, all these different things. When it comes to an automated webinar, there are people out there like digital marketer that have basically scripts and templates for your VSLs and, you know, uh, all of these different things.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
So, so we, you know, we purchased the, the $3,000, uh, up ups upgrade thing for digital marketer. We have no ego involved in our, in our company. Um, I, I know that I have forgotten more things than, you know, uh, th that I practice today. And I know that, um, you know, the best thing that I can do is go back to my previous words by previous studies and the previous mentors that I've learned from, and not try to reinvent the wheel. And when I'm handing this stuff off, you know, that there's an expression. Um, you know, there's, there's a difference between, um, a time teller and a clockmaker right. And if, you know, if, if I, if I'm a time Keller, that means I have a unique ability. Uh, but if I'm building a factory, I need a factory of clockmakers, right. Everybody needs to be able to make the clocks if I die, and I'm the time teller, and I have this unique gift, right?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
So, so that gift that I have is not going to translate all the years that I have in marketing, isn't going to translate into my marketing team. So we, we buy, you know, everything, uh, you know, the full, the full access to the course at, at, um, digital marketers, uh, DM labs. And we, they have all of these templates that say, when you're making a blog post, when you're making a social media post, when you're making a Facebook ad, and I look at this stuff and I, and I say, Jesus, this is brilliant. Oh my goodness, thank God for them. So they have standard operating procedures in place. So, you know, there's no secret sauce. I mean, as much as I can tell you, I'm a time teller. I can not take that gift and put it into my marketing team. So having these standard operating procedures and checklists and heartless and hot sheets from, uh, from Perry, Belcher, Ryan dice, and their incredible company of people that have done this, uh, thank God because otherwise we'd have to do it. And I don't know that, you know,
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Oh my gosh, Mike, you are an amazing guest today, man. Thank you so much for opening up the kimono and, uh, sharing with everybody, this journey of how you, you know, just completely rebuilt your empire from the ground up here with GRU funnels. I'm so excited for your success. And, uh, gosh, man, I was just blessed. Yeah. I mean, tell everybody a little bit about, you know, what, where to go from here, how they can, you know, get in touch, go sign up. I mean, it's a, it's a no brainer offer. It grew funnels. I mean, she was, it's like, what 388 bucks on your payment plan or something like that. It's, it's super.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeah. So, so what is it it's, uh, right now, you know, uh, hopefully, you know, this is an evergreen podcast, so, so, um, you know, but, uh, at the time of the recording of this podcast, we have an offer, um, where you could get access, uh, for one time price of $1,397 when you join, um, it's, it's that price, or we give you a couple of payment plans, like, uh, pay nothing for 14 days and try it out. And then it's three payments of four 97. And I think it's six payments of two 88 and 12 payments of one 88. But let's, let's just say for $1,397, you can pay one time. Uh, and trust me, I'd rather you go try it. Uh, but w put our money where our mouth is by letting you try the software, when you see it, uh, you know, you're, you're going to realize you're spending close to 2000 to $2,500 a month on all these softwares combined plan or these other plans.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
You're, you're actually spending probably tens of thousands dollars a year if you're, if you have any traffic or audience. So yeah. Group funnels.com. Uh, and then after that, on the thank you page, they'll ask you to join the Facebook group, and then you can, uh, you'll see, I'm very, very active in the Facebook group. We have over a hundred thousand users in that Facebook group since April South. Uh, so in just five months, we put a hundred thousand people in it's growing, it's growing very, very fast. Uh, so we'll see you there. And I appreciate you guys having, so Dylan, Zach, I know we got to go. I just, I just want to say this, you know, we're using this awesome software, you know, squad cast, uh, to do this. And when we shut off our cameras, it basically shows my map. And then I see you guys are pretty much in the same place, but there's no map data.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
All I'm seeing is this, these little lakes that kind of looks like the Ozarks or something, but I don't, I have no idea. It could be Canada. Where are you guys? And you're both at the same place. It appears we're in Austin. That's Austin. Okay. Oh, and that little, little circle right around the, the, the circle around the city there that's dead set in Austin. All right. Well, there you go. So, uh, that's what lakes is, uh, a river is that it's splintering, uh, that is a red river all the way down to it's called Lake. They call it Lake Austin, but it's really kind of comes all the way down. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (58:24):
Yeah, definitely. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich, add more at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich ed [inaudible] dot com slash podcasts. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or ed.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
Chief Marketing Officer at Shopanova, Nathan Otwell bills himself as a paid social traffic and innovative funnel strategist as well as a growth hacker of agile advertising strategies who is responsible for 9-fiigures worth of new business revenue for the company. Prior to joining Shopanova in early 2020, he served as President and Chief Marketing Officer at Digital Nitro, LLC, Paid Traffic Specialist at Revere and Chief Media Officer at Grantwise Enterprises, LLC. He was also co-founder and Marketing Coordinator at the Arkansas Guardians amateur football team, a Junior Account Executive with the Walmart Shopper Team, and a Sales Representative at Complete Nutrition. A graduate of Arkansas Tech, Otwell earned a BS in Business Education and BSBA in Management and Marketing.
TAKEAWAYS
Why if you don’t know these 3 numbers in your business, you will NEVER be able to scale ever.
What’s to love about Facebook campaign budget optimization.
The old-school Gary V. tactic he uses to create iron-clad engagement -- time-consuming but totally worth it.
Why insisting on getting a 10X return on every order is a ridiculous benchmark for profitability .
The overlooked advantages of Facebook AB testing when it comes to budget.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(Shopanova And Me Website)
(Shopanova Website)
(Linkedin)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it. All right, everybody. We are back this week with another episode of the rich dad, poor ad podcast, where we dive into what ads are working. What's not really crappy ad and some kind of more financial tips, uh, you know, make everything a little bit jucier.
Well, this week we have a very special guests. Nathan, Otwell from Shopanova, he's been there for about a year, took over the CMO role. This January, these guys are spending shoots hen million generated well over 50 million in revenue. We were actually chatting about a Bootsy client. Who's spending about 75 K a month and generating well over a million a month in ads or in revenue there. And I was just geeking out. So y'all give a nice warm welcome to Nathan Nathan. Thanks for jumping on, man.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Absolutely glad to be your guest.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Heck yeah, well, sweetie. So I mean, give everybody a little background of kind of who you are and shop a Nova. So we have some context I've seen a hundred of y'all's ads for years. I believe formerly it was staggered media. Um, we can kind of double check on that bad boy, but kind of get everybody a little background there.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, for sure. Uh, so a little bit about me. I live in Bentonville, Arkansas. Uh, basically the most landlocked part of the United States there is. Um, but the thing is, it's also the headquarters for Walmart and Sam's club. Uh, Sam Walton actually grew up here, lived here, um, grew his business all throughout Benbow Arkansas. Um, my great-grandfather was actually, this is a good story. Um, my great grandfather was actually offered to be one of the initial five investors of Walmart to get it, to get the first store opened and he turned it down. So, uh, yeah, Sam Walton was hitting up all the ranchers in the area of the time. It was just a bunch of ranchers. Uh, my great grandfather made a killing and cotton back then, and that was in Texas, comes up here, buys, uh, just a ton of land, starts a cattle ranch and Sam Walton's going around to all the cattle ranchers and saying, Hey, you know, I've got this idea for this really cool store.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's going to have everything. Basically it's a one-stop shop. And my great grandfather was like, nah, pass. Just kinda like whatever. And my dad always tells a story like the, the biggest failure in our family, because we could be worth, uh, the original five or collectively worth like 15 to $20 billion or something like that. So we can be, my family is like the one that got away, man. Oh my gosh. It's crazy. But yeah. So grew up in Northwest Arkansas, went to college at, uh, Arkansas tech university. I got two degrees in management marketing at that time. Uh, came back home, started working for Walmart and shopper marketing field, which is basically where a Walmart suppliers, the rantings. They don't really want to take their marketing strategies, the marketing mix out of the national scene and put it just for Walmart. So what we do, what we did as an agency was we would take the brand teams overall national strategy, and we would create a Walmart shopper specific strategy to get Walmart shoppers into a store, get the product off the shelf into their court, get them to the checkout, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Um, it was really good experience. Uh, I got some great, great marketing mentorship in that. Uh, dude hits me up in the area and says that he's into some really cool stuff in Facebook and Instagram paid traffic. And I was just, I didn't, I mean, I didn't know anything about it at the time, but whenever I was on the Wal-Mart agency, we did a shopper social stuff, which is more like blogs and influencers and all that stuff, paying a ton of money for stuff. Um, we're talking like targeted banner ads, a campaign for a targeted banner ad at Walmart is like 150 $200,000 for like 60 days, stuff like that. So, um, and it's all pieced out by the impression by the reach and all that. You don't really get that performance standard. Like you don't get told like what type of ROI or return on ad spend, you're going to get, you just have to create the strategy.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And they're going to tell you how many people they're going to send it to. And hopefully your strategy works. That's kind of the director's job in that area. Um, they get, they used to get paid a lot of money for that too. Now there's been this huge shift with performance marketing, namely in the social media space. And whenever I got involved with it, the first thing that I saw when I got behind the Facebook and Instagram platform is that I could do exactly what I was doing with these digital banner vendors for a fraction of the cost that I was doing it for. So I was like, Oh man, I can do, I can basically create banner ads on Facebook and Instagram for like Unilever or Procter and gamble and take their budget and get 10 times the amount of reach impressions, and also see how much money I'm making off of it. And so whenever I started to explain this to people, they were just like, no way, no way, no way, but after three, four or five years it's finally caught on and people are figuring it out. And here we are today.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Talk about a lifecycle and the home online marketing side of things. So with shopping Nova, I mean, y'all have had quite a jump in the past year. I mean, going from X amount of clients, I want to say to two X and back, can you kind of give some background on the badge just to kind of show how rapid the growth was for y'all as a whole?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, so they started out, uh, Dan and Robbie or in Homer, Alaska, which is always leading away from everything else. Um, this started as commercial fishermen and they had some run-ins with a storm or whatever the Bisquick capsize their boat and put them all in a really bad spot. They kind of pick themselves up by the bootstraps and started a, uh, like a creative agency. They did videos, photography, stuff like that. Um, that was stuck that media. And I think over the, over about a year or two years, they transitioned from a creative agency to a media buying agency. That's kind of what sparked it. About two years ago, I came on, we had about 27 30 clients every single month on the roster, uh, relatively large budgets between $10,000 a month to $50,000 a month. Uh, some of them were spending almost a hundred K a month lately in 2020. We went from having about 27 to 30 active clients over a month to having about 80 to 90 active clients a month. And we've got five to 10 that are spending over a hundred thousand dollars a month every month. Um, super fast growth. Like I told you, we can't hire people fast enough these days, uh, especially with, you know, the talent pool that's out there. And it's just one of those things where it's a great place to be in online. E-commerce marketing right now.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah. I mean, I believe it well that growth, you know, come some killer ads. So, I mean, let's go ahead and take this bad boy into the rich ad segment. I've been seeing these ads for weeks, months, years. It seems like, um, kind of give everybody some background. You know, we have some short form, some long form, but it's very video oriented kind of ads here. And we'll have these in the show notes for some context here, but go ahead and got of dive into, you know, what made these ads rich, who they're hitting, you know, how they've been able to evolve over time, just kind of, you know, break it apart there
Speaker 1 (09:29):
With that one. What we're really trying to do is, uh, it's a retarget ad. It's a 10 day bucket head. So basically anybody that takes any kind of action on our top of funnel, uh, discovery ads, or going to get dropped into this 10 day bucket for 10 days. And they're going to see this ad or variations of it for 10 days, no frequency cap, which we get a lot of comments that are like men, I'm tired of this ad swollen up, but I don't care. It works completely works. Um, um, I'm of the I'm of the thinking that the higher the frequency, the more action takes place, even though people might not like it. So to speak, it makes them take action. Like whenever I see an ad over and over and over again, I started clicking on that thing just because it's like, I got to see what this is about.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Um, so I'm in that kind of train of thought that are really like high-frequency and my retarget ads, especially. Uh, but this ad it's really more of a personal, uh, personal ad. It's a selfie video. Uh it's, it's Daniel one of our founders and he's basically explaining like, or results for our clients right now, the current climate of the industry right now, uh, what we're seeing across the board. And it's more, it's more or less like giving somebody a behind the scenes look of the type of revolt of results that we're actually creating for our clients and not just, Hey, we run ads for e-commerce brands. That's the discovery ad. This ad is more like getting back into the weeds. Uh, lately we just did a variation of it that it we're talking more about quarter four and you know, black Friday cyber Monday is coming up, got to get ready.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
2020 is going to be probably the biggest shopping event of the ever, um, quarter four because everybody's online right now, shopping. So obviously black Friday and cyber Monday are going to be bigger than ever because nobody's going to try to get in a store with a mask on with 5,000 other people. You know what I mean? They're going to do all their shopping online this year. Uh, so we're really hitting people with that messaging. It's, it's very, very purposed, uh, to try to get that personal messaging out. That's one of the things with our retarget ads is in our discovery ads for that matter, is there a messaging is very consistent at each level, uh, whether it's a discovery top of funnel ad, whether it's a 10 day, we targeted a 30 day, we targeted or a long-term 180 day retarget ad. Our messaging stays consistent no matter what, we just change up the variation on creative pretty much
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And something cool. I love about these two is the comments, you know, whether it's good or bad, it's good engagement, but I love how y'all kind of reply to the comments in here just straight, serious, you know, realistic replies. They don't look at canned responses. So, I mean, I think y'all's commentary and replies on this just helped change the momentum of the ad as a whole. So, I mean, I think that's killer what y'all are doing.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah. I'm responsible for all those comments.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
That sucks, man. I'll go ahead and say that
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Dude. I, so two times a day, first thing in the morning, and the last thing I do is go into our page and get all the comments from our Facebook ads and from her Instagram ads and our try. This is one of the things that I've taken from. One of the very few things that I've taken from Gary V, is to create that engagement, create that conversation by trying to reply to everybody no matter what. Um, the only thing that I will ever delete from a comment section is like a troll comment or a spam comment. Like if somebody is just calling us a bunch of, you know, expletives, or if somebody comes in with a link or spam, but nothing else oblique those, but for the most bored, anybody that comes at me trying to like, tell me how I should run this ad or tell me why this ad is bad.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Or even if this ad is great, I reply to them. And I try to sport dialogue as much as I can to create that engagement on those ads. Because I mean, everybody's entitled to their own opinion. Don't get me wrong, but it's like, people will literally stop what they're doing throughout their day, just to tell somebody what they think they're doing wrong. And it's like, they have no idea how we're operating our company. They have no idea. Um, but I try to spark the dialogue for somebody else. That's going to open that comment section to see it. And what I try to do is I really try to enforce our we're legitimacy and our knowledge in those comments. And those replies try to let somebody know that reads through the comments section like these people know what they're talking about, that type of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
What kind of ROI do y'all see on this type of ad here? Um, just based on, you know, percent actually convert who it shows to. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
That one we're spending around hundred to 800 bucks a day on, like I said, it's only a 10 day buckets. So the audience isn't huge. So we can't really spend like a grand donor today or two grand on her today, like would do our discovery ads. Uh, but we're getting leads for about 200, 250 bucks a piece out of that ad. Um, a lead is a very, very qualified booked call that has come through an application process. It's been vetted with conditional logic to make sure that that client at least passes our baseline criteria to become a client. And then we actually have a two call process to vet clients even further after they've qualified for call. Um, so those 200, $250 leads. Usually we close about 10% of them. Uh, we're looking at a cost per acquisition of around 2,500 bucks to 3000 bucks and or lifetime value of a client because we're really good at what we do. And we retain clients really well is around 55, 60 grand
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Bringing the heat out. I fricking love that. Ah, well shoot, there y'all have it. That's that's a rich hat I've ever seen one and especially from an agency so much appreciated the goods, man, that was good.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
This episode is brought to you by funnel Nash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend. And if you're an ad agency that manages seven or even eight figures a year in media and ad spend for your clients, and you're looking to double your profits over the next six to 12 months, then check out ad card. See the typical agency model is this, you charge 10% of your spend. We make 10 to 20% margin at the end of the day. So that's really one to 2% of your clients spend that is profit in your business. The easiest way to double that is a really find a way to earn in that one to 2% cash back of the card that is on file of your clients has ad account. And before add card we had to do was invoice all your clients for their ad spend upfront. She's really difficult on a cash flow basis and very difficult ask. And then you had to put the card on your own Amex or whatever card of choice to get that level of value back into your business with add card it's entirely different in streamline. You simply get your clients on add card and make yourself the agency of record and you'll get the cash back. As long as you're managing the ad spend, it's a great way to double your profit without doing any additional work.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Check it out@funneldash.com. Well, let's go ahead and make this a little bit more rowdy and fun. And go ahead and check your email. I sent over the poor ad for our poor ad segment. Now I'm sure I'll get a ton of very bad dropshipper leads. So I thought it'd be fun to just show a very bad drop shipping ad. Now it's gotta be a trash page, maybe a burn and churn account, but go ahead, give me your first thoughts on that ad once you have a chance to kind of open it up.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So the first thing, the first absolute thing that I noticed on this ad is the creative, the image on it, like makes no freaking sense whatsoever when somebody first sees it. Like I realized that this is based on the copy. It's for lighting it's for some type of led lights or neon lights or whatever. But when you first see the image, like it looks like a trap house. Exactly. And so it doesn't make a bit of sense when you first see it. Um, does that give somebody attention? I don't know. Maybe, uh, maybe the person that they're going after is a trap house. Maybe that's exactly what they want. I have no idea. That's why I say like, I don't know how they operate their company. I don't know what their ideal customer is, but whenever I've received this ad, the first thing I see is that trap house living room that makes no freaking sense whatsoever to me.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
And you got to love the copy being the icing on the cake of how complex this sounds. It looks like somebody they copy and paste the subject. Molly Baba.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah. With the copy. Like, like I said, after you see the copy and you see the led strip lights, it's like, okay, this kind of makes sense now. But then it goes into like, like crap music, same Bluetooth, Bluetooth control, adjustable brightness. Okay. Those are obviously features of these lights. But if you were me, I would be talking about like the music sinking thing in a specific, like it's got its own paragraph. The Bluetooth control has its own paragraph. The adjustable brightness has its own paragraph. Like people that don't understand how those lights are operated, you know, you can really spend a good story. Like, you know, just what brightness, for instance, if you've got a party going on and you want some different lighting, if you want some green, he wants some pink. You want some purple, whatever. If you want to get somebody in the mood, dance, the adjustable brightness feature, yada yada yada yada, right? Like just listing off these features and then talking about kitchen, TV party with absolutely no context whatsoever. Again, it's almost like they're catering to somebody that already has neon lights in their house and wants more or something like, and this is one of the 10 beta testers per day. What the hell? That means,
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Oh, I love the requirements. You need to have an Amazon account and you have to have a PayPal and do not share this deal in any Facebook group. Like this,
Speaker 1 (21:05):
It's a Facebook app. It's a Facebook app. How are you going to tell people you can't show them. You can't share something on the platform that we're advertising on,
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Man. I don't know about you, but I'm, I'm, I'm converting. I'm converting right now. No.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
So I can't really see the, I can't see any headliner or a call to action button. It says, please message us interested. Is there at least a call to action button on there for a minute chat dialogue or something? Exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah. It was a sin message headline. Um, once in many chat, which linked to an Amazon account, which is, it seemed pretty scammy, but yeah, it's just, this is definition of a really bad ad that somebody put money behind. But what I love is hopefully they hear this because you gave some very good insights of how you can make this an actually good ad. So we love that
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Being in pasting the item name is stupid. I don't know why they did that. They absolutely copied and pasted that from Amazon 100% dead. And like they, they killed every bit of potential. This ad had by doing that, when you could form more of like a story around the led lighting and how it can be used in a party, how it can sync up with your music and your Bluetooth control and her phone, you can create an ultimate vibe with a color scheme. Like they missed a huge opportunity by just copying and pasting.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I think I would take this and just have the simple copy. Let let's get lit, you know, absolutely some basic stuff. Well, my gosh, y'all, that's a, another terrible ad in our poor ad segment here. So to add the icing on the cake, let's go ahead and get some kind of financial tips, you know, take a page out of that. Rich dad, poor dad book. Um, I know y'all are doing a ton of scaling over there. So I mean, what kind of financial tips would you have possibly scaling up, you know, coming up with a budget, what would you love to kind of dive into on the kind of financial tip side?
Speaker 1 (23:11):
So first of all, the first thing that somebody has to do when they're, when they're looking at scaling is they have to know the numbers they have to, they have to know what the margin is. They have to know what their average order value is. They have to know what our cost per acquisition is getting somebody to make a purchase. Because once you know those three things, then you can say exactly how much money you are making per order that is being generated. And once you understand numbers, then it's a very, very easy decision to spend more money or to kill something, maybe re maybe launch a new, uh, item or a new collection. See what happens. I don't know, whatever the case may be. Next steps are very easy. Once you know the numbers in your business. Uh, for instance, we tell somebody all the time, lifetime value is something that a lot of people don't know in their business. They don't know how much money somebody spends on average with their company. Not the first time they buy something, but over the lifetime of being a customer and a really good example that I use for this as Walmart with Walmart, we can spend as much money as we want to to get something into the cart and add a checkout aisle because the average shopper at Walmart will spend anywhere between 25,000 and $50,000 in their lifetime at Walmart.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Think about that. If your person is spending 25,000 to $50,000 in their lifetime at your store, what are you worried about running a hundred dollars for ads for, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
And are, y'all always looking at LTV perspectives at shopping Nova, or is there, are there one-off scenarios? Is it mostly when you're kind of shaping out these ES or predictions or projections, or there are pretty LTV related
Speaker 1 (25:23):
For us? Like we really try to, we, we try to consult on the backend. Um, like if it's, if it's a Shopify, if it's a route commerce, or if it's common sold, we try to get into their backend and kind of show them what these numbers look like as far as their store goes. Um, and then we show them what the Facebook numbers look like, because you can really see like lifetime value and average order volume and all that good stuff on the store backend. But then you can see what the actual ads return on is inside of the Facebook platform or another tracking software that you're using. Um, but at the end of the day, we talked about like different levels of traffic. So you have top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of the funnel. So on and so forth, a lot of people get hung up in this mindset that they have to get like a 10 X return on their ads right away.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So like the top of funnel, if it's two X, three X, maybe even four X, these people are saying this isn't making me enough money because my margin is this. My cost is that my labor over here is that my overall overhead is this for item. I need to be making a 10 X return on every single order that I get through Facebook for it to be profitable. That is false a hundred percent false because we are also marketing to these people that have bought for the first time. They will get ads over and over and over again for new items. Over 30 days, over 180 days, six months, we are looking for these people to come back and purchase things over and over and over again, every other paycheck, if possible. Um, they're marketing to people that went inside of the store, shoved around and didn't buy a thing.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
And we are continuing to bring these people back to the store for not for new items, for sale items, for promotional items, for cross sells for upsells, all that good stuff, what we are doing with this multilevel strategy, as we are increasing the lifetime value of somebody that we are getting on Facebook and Instagram to buy from you over and over and over again. So when we S when we show people like your overall return on Aspen is seven X, because our bottom of funnel is a 12 X return in our top of funnel is a one to two X return. That does not mean that we take money out of our top of funnel, because we have to get people to the bottom of the funnel, right? Like it's, it's about understanding the numbers. It's about understanding lifetime value, average order value, and then throwing your overhead in there. If you don't know those numbers in your business, you will never be able to scale ever
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And straight fire there. Now, when it comes to how y'all are kind of scaling, you know, stuff that's already working for y'all's clients' accounts are y'all coming up with a new product lines. Collections, are you just doubling budgets? Are you creating new campaigns? I know there's, I, there are probably three or four ways. I scale both. What are y'all seeing kind of work the best these days? Cause I mean, I love is Dublin budgets, to be honest. I mean, I'm more of a simplified campaign approach, guy, dynamic creative. Our top of funnel is very simplified, very structured where the kind of retargeting is a lot more granular, kind of like you mentioned 10 day, 14 day 30 day, where it's kind of more of a customer journey alone on the bottom of the funnel side. So, I mean, when it comes to scaling up those colder audiences, what are, y'all seeing kind of work the best for, you know, y'all these days.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
So first of all, testing hyper testing, especially like everybody hated the campaign budget optimization that Facebook came out with when it first came out, but it honestly helped things. And for the record, every single update that Facebook comes out with is usually beta tested and tested over and over again, to make sure that it works. And it actually makes the platform better. Campaign budget optimization makes testing so much easier than it used to so much easier. Um, you can throw 10 audiences, 10 ad sets, and two to three pieces of creative per ad set. And Facebook will optimize it as best as possible. If I usually don't put any more than three ad sets in a campaign and I don't put any more than three pieces of creative in each ad set. Now that being said, when a client wants to let's say, test a new product or new collection that they're coming out with, there's a very qualitative way of doing it, that we have found is awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
And it's really based on the decision, the decision is, is your top of funnel currently killing it? Or is it like, could be better? You know what I mean? That's the, could it be better or is it just absolutely murdering it with a five to seven X return on ad spend? And you don't want to touch that thing because what's going to happen. As soon as you inject an ad set or an ad creative into another ad set inside of that campaign, it's going to start shifting the money around to test things out. It's going to throw off your optimization a little bit. It might reset you back a little bit. If you do not want to touch that thing at all. The best thing that I have found is create an official AB test campaign that duplicates, that campaign duplicate the ad set. You can put new piece of creative inside of the ad sets that have been duplicated.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And again, make sure it's an official agent. The test when you saw, when there's, what gives you that option slugged, it hit that switch for an AB test. Facebook will actually continue the optimization of the other ad that you don't want to touch, and it will start throwing some budget at testing that new stuff that you want to test and efficiently give you a good side-by-side comparison. Now Facebook's reporting of it is not that great, but if you're good marketer, you should be able to look at that on a daily basis and compare and contrast. Now, the other side of things, if your ad could be better, like it's not just absolutely murdering it. Then what I do is I like to the new test, I turned off the worst performing thing. That's in the adverts, the creative wise, the worst performer off and inject the new one in. And what Facebook will do is kind of allocate some budget to it. And it will kind of test it against the top performer. The only problem with this method is that Facebook will not give you the budget that you truly need to test. So if you truly need to test like budget and money against this AB testing is really the way to go. In my opinion,
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Man, that's, that's killer there and that's a feature a lot people use sometimes and don't use to where it's been around for so long, but the only issue I've ever had it, that is, I feel like the split tests, you always have one that just kills it. And whenever you try and separate it into its own campaign and it never performed as well as it did in a split test sometimes, but it's just it's hit or miss. But I mean, that's the key point of testing these days to where you really have to test to kind of gauge what works best for you. Because as I mentioned, there are like four to five ways I can scale to where it's never a one size fits all with these accounts these days.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And I mean, the main thing is like, if you can, even if you're a macro results on what you want it to be your return on ad, spend your CPA, isn't what it w what you want it to be on that split test. Look at the micro stuff. Look at the cost per click, look at the CPM, look at the, uh, reach like that kind of stuff. Because if you're getting a lot of like, CPM is really low, which means you're getting a lot of impressions for your money, then it might be something that you test inside a completely different audience. Maybe you have your purchase look like going on. Okay. Let's try to test it with your initiate checkout, look like audience, or let's try to test it out with your, uh, targeted, you know, uh, what I call avatar's audiences, where you're actually going for the interest targeting type of thing. Um, you know, if you're a Microsoft statistics are looking really good, try to throw it into another audience that isn't competing with the split test. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, no, what I mean, it goes to show, I mean, there are definitely some key takeaways. People can kind of take an implement of some ads without a doubt, but man
Speaker 1 (34:33):
[inaudible] model is the thing it's not, it's not a one size fits all model is the thing. A lot of people will come up to us and you know, they'll say, okay, like you guys know exactly what to do. And it's like, yeah, we know what to do based on experience, which means we have like five different options over here that we could do and one's going to work. We just have to figure out which one it is. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. There's this one. There's like this secret methodology formula that somebody knows that like works every single time and that's not the case. That's why you hire a really good media buyer.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Oh yeah. I mean, if I could replicate results one after another, I'd be on a yacht over in Bali right now or something. But my gosh, man, this was jam packed of value, you know? So how can people kind of get in touch with y'all website Facebook, what's the best way to kind of, you know, for people to get in touch or shopping over there?
Speaker 1 (35:26):
So, best thing to do is to go to a shop, a nova-and-me.com, shopping Nova and me.com with dashes in there. Uh, we have shopping over.com, which is our hero website. That's got more information about us. It's not very, uh, I would say salesy. Um, so you can go in there as well as shopping over.com uh, shopping over aimee.com is kind of our flagship funnel landing page. That's, it's a one-sheeter that gives you all of our information and case studies, that type of stuff. Um, so just depends on what everybody wants to do. Uh, we, on our website, we also have the e-comm grocery show. If you want to tune into that, that's really a really good way to see what we're all about or YouTube channel shopping Nova on YouTube, check that out. We got tons of case studies, uh, and basically just shooting the on what we do. So paleo, everybody has got love that, you know, in this D to C
Speaker 3 (36:35):
World, we all got to stick together. So I mean, you know, check out
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Them channels, subscribe. What's her name? That was an absolute blast, man. Thanks for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you guys for having me. Y'all have a good one. You too, man.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich, add more at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich poor [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book. Learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
An investor in business and technology companies and growth strategy advisor, Brad Costanzo is the founder and CEO at Costanzo Marketing Group, principal at Costanzo Capital, Partner and Advisor at CDB Capital Group, and Advisor and Investor at Otomo. As the host of the award winning podcast "Bacon Wrapped Business" he uncovers what's working now with some of the top business experts in the world. Prior experience includes positions with Brandetize, RealEstate Investor.com, Frank Shamrock, Inc. Jesse Itzler, Real Estate Worldwide, MIH Publishing & Marketing, Organifi, and Prudential Investments. A graduate of The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned the credential of a Certified Investment Management Analyst he earned his BS in Investment Finance and Economics at Eastern Illinois University.
TAKEAWAYS
What qualifies as a touch point and how many of them it takes before a prospect is ready to buy. (It’s way more than you think).
How to create an absolutely irresistible offer -- if you’ve got the guts to do it.
Why falling in love with marketing metaphors might break your heart and response rates -- and what you should do instead.
The 24 objections you should be 100% prepared to handle.
Why offering this free of charge works better than requiring a prospect to “pay for it” by giving you their email.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
(Bradcostanzo Website)
(Email)
(Bacon Wrapped Business Website)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode with Brad, we dive into how to break down the core beliefs and principles that your prospects and your web traffic need to believe in order to buy. It is a proven strategy and a method and process that he's implementing for all his portfolio clients. Plus you'll also learn the path of how Brad has basically gone from hired gun and advisor and consultant to now acquiring businesses and exploring even a $50 million potential credit fund to buy even more and more businesses. It's a great episode. Hope you enjoy.
So this is me trying to grow
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Entrepreneur, which is, um, um, create a pitch deck for what the proposed use of funds will be. Um, in this case, it is to do an it service manager, MSP roll up.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Listening to the rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad. Poor at podcast is your host, Zach Johnson. I'm with Mr. DC, Dylan Carpenter. How you doing today, Dylan? Good, man. We got an exciting one here. Yeah, I'm excited about today's guests, you know, for a lot of the agencies listening, I think today's guests is like had the perfect consultancy and consulting business that a lot of, of ad agencies or smaller agencies should be modeling after.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I also think for some of the agencies that have gotten stuck in agency life, uh, can really learn a ton about, um, how to rise above it, uh, and really take things to the next level and, you know, build a revenue stream beyond retain hers as well say. And, uh, and so today's guest is also, uh, the host of, uh, the bacon wrapped business, uh, podcast, which is, um, a PR pretty awesome podcast. I mean, he interviews some pretty, pretty high level entrepreneurs, um, on the show and it's a pretty, uh, diverse, uh, diverse, uh, group. So without further ado, Joe, uh, uh, Brad, how you doing welcome to the show, man. I am doing great. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, man, I, uh, I'm pumped to you on, I feel like you are, um, the, kind of the perfect blend.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You're like the perfect guest for the show in the sense that there's like straight media buyers that love to just talk about rich ads all day. Uh, but then, you know, there's people like yourself that, uh, you know, in your words, like focus on growth, you know, across the board and are really thinking about, you know, the financial aspect of it, right? How do you budget for growth? How do you reinvest in the growth? Um, and it really is, uh, growth is all about, you know, being a good investor and allocation of resources. And so I'm excited to dive into that, uh, because I know that's like, um, right up your word, so pretty a little bit up to speed about what you're up to, uh, these days and, uh, and a little bit about how you,
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, my pleasure. So, I mean, I I've been in the digital marketing space for about 12 years, having back in 2007, I'd left a career in financial services, 2007, 2008. It was it voluntary, right? Uh, everything was falling apart back then, but I had spent my entire career is a both investment advisor as well as like financial investment advisor and, um, and then a consultant to the advisors at Prudential securities. So I managed to book a business, uh, recommending stocks and, you know, portfolio allocation, et cetera for a while. And then it got a little bit crazy and I moved into the corporate side, working with financial advisors, helping them convince their clients to do fee-based business, et cetera. Um, the recession was, uh, you know, cause a lay off at the company just so happened. It was the same month. I read the four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss and I had no idea this was a new area to me.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I was in my early thirties and I just remember thinking, well, I mean, they're going to go, you know, put my resume together and try to get another job in financial services during the financial service meltdown or Tim Ferriss talked about information marketing and online marketing. And I was like, well, this keeps me from putting my resume together and begging somebody for a job. So maybe I'll try this. So I, um, I started a software business at the same time with a couple of partners. And at the same time I started a, uh, just a home study course like niche information product, really just as a marketing laboratory and to kind of see what I could do from that angle. And I learned all about direct response and copywriting and marketing, et cetera, like all my life. I was actually pretty good at sales, but I knew nothing about marketing.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
So I learned and I learned to learn. And then about four or five years later, I sold, um, now about five years later, I sold the info product. And then about a year after that I sold the, um, the software business and I just started turning into consulting. I didn't just want to start something new on my own. I think that was because I had the, the curse of knowledge. Like I knew how hard starting something up from scratch is. So I figured that my skillset would be better tuned in working with other businesses who already have momentum and are already building it up and say, listen, I like the one thing about me is I'm a voracious learner. I pay attention to everything I test and I try stuff. And when something works, uh, and it works well, I'm like, I wonder where else I can apply this.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And I found that a lot of business owners, uh, whether it's agency owners or, you know, they own a physical product, et cetera, you know, they're so bogged down in just running their business. They don't have as much time to pay attention to the kind of the cutting edge, uh, strategies that, you know, that work and change. But I loved that. So I got to satisfy my entrepreneurial add by working with a lot of people in a different industries. And I've worked with almost every major industry from SAS to info, to physical goods, to, um, service-based businesses of all types and, um, helping them really grow using my financial background and understanding of like, you know, finance, et cetera. Although I'm not an expert in accounting, I understand that. And then adding on marketing and profit optimization. So now what I do is I still work with companies and this ranges from like I'll work, I've worked with coaches and consultants and people who are, uh, you know, small trying to get an info product off the ground.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
I've got a couple of venture funded app companies that I work with. I'm talking today to a large like fortune 1000, uh, it company, uh, to, to pitch like an ideation service team, which is crazy. But, um, and then at the same time, I've always got my eyes open for acquisitions that I can make specifically, um, in the kind of, I love the health and wellness field. So I've got, um, a partnership in a company called vitamin patch club.com, which is a innovative vitamin delivery system. And I am looking to acquire and or invest in, uh, it companies like managed service providers, those companies that work with local businesses. Uh, so it sounds like I'm doing a lot, but really, you know, my consulting feeds my, my appetite for acquisitions and then looking for acquisitions oftentimes feeds into the consulting business. So it kind of goes hand in hand, but there's nothing I love more than working with a company. I love service-based businesses. There's a, those are my favorites to help show them really unique and proven ways to grow their business without like exponentially instead of linearly or incrementally
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Their statement, man, people that say they love service businesses. Like, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Operating them. I love helping them make a difference. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So, uh, so my career started out in, in financial services in 2008. I worked at, um, Merrill Lynch and, uh, ax advisors, like right when I was getting out of school at the worst possible time. And so I, that's kind of been, you know, my story, you know, similarly is like taking that finance angle and really that experience and really how to using it as a, as a, like, um, a pretty awesome, uh, tool in the tool belt. You know, as a, as I kind of started my marketing career back in like 2009. Um, so I always listen to your podcasts and, you know, seeing the people that you work with and, and the type of things that you've been involved in over the last few years as directly and indirectly running in the same circles. Um, I knew from afar that like Brad's of the same stock. And so that's super cool, man. So, uh, let's dive into what's working now. Let's, let's give everybody a little taste of, you know, um, this, this, this rich ad segment doesn't have to be this specific ad, but what are some of the things that you're deploying right now with, you know, you're got a broad range of clients ran across a ton of different industries. Uh, so yeah, enlighten us what, what what's working.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
So, um, especially as it, it, you know, it comes around ads. I mean, there's the standard things like just understanding where in the journey your customer is obviously very important with the ability to do, I'm sure most of your listeners understand top, middle and bottom of funnel, you know, ads copying. Um, I mean, at the, at the most foundational level, that's super critical. And for instance, um, one of the things that, um, so, okay, I'll go into this. Um, and I'm gonna put a pin in this. Don't let me forget to explain. Um, but there there's another like super long format that's been working really well. I'll explain. I'm just, I'm saying that. So I don't forget to tell you,
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Go on format. Got it.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
So one of the things, uh, like for instance, with vitamin patch club, which is, I don't know when this is coming out at the time we're recording this, the ads are not, um, they are, they are not as effective and they're not following the guidelines of what I'm about to say, because I recently just, uh, acquired a part of this business and we are undergoing the ad rehab if you would. So, one of the things though that I've done this in the past, and it works really well, but, um, this is something we are actively doing with vitamin patch club. So currently the ads are, did you, you know, did you know, you can get your vitamins from patches and blah, blah, blah. And here's the basic science and just, you know, come over and drop off on the homepage of the, of the Shopify site, right?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
That does not have a really high conversion rate. So one of the very first exercises I did with the founder of the company is we went the, you know, it's commonly called a chain of beliefs. So, you know, this, this sells a, a vitamin C supplement basically, but we broke down something like 20 different beliefs that we're asking the, that the customer or the prospect needs to have in place in order to get to the point where they're willing to give us money at the VA, I'm not going to go through them all. But at the very top end of the belief is that they need to believe that their health is important. If they're not, we're not, that's not our crowd and we're not here to convert people to thinking, I don't care about my health to health. Then I went down further, okay.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Then they need to think that their health is under control and that this, this, this, and that, you know, they actually, that diet is important, right? So I got as fundamental as possible. Like, what are all this singular beliefs that a person has to have in order to take the next step in, um, bolster to giving us money? Then what we did is down near the bottom of these, which become the, not, you know, no duh beliefs it comes to, will they, they're going to need to believe that for instance, not all vitamin sources are created equal and that bioavailability is important. And what that is, the next thing they're gonna need to understand is that, um, vitamin patch club delivers on its promises and that it's worth it, right? So quality and price. And then at the very bottom, they need to believe that the company is somebody they can trust that will take care of them.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Because even if they think that the product is amazing, if they don't trust the company, that's ultimately what it is because somebody pushes by they are putting their trust in you. So by ordering this chain of beliefs and then looking at well, are we, do we have content and in our ads or anywhere else that is helping people, um, understand what this is important, because ultimately we don't want people to believe anything because believing something means accepting it without evidence. And in marketing, that's terrible. That's a sin. Belief is a sin in marketing, right? Because we want to support everything we're saying with evidence. And the more evidence we can provide, the more, you know, the more we can move them down that chain. Because the minute we get to a point where they're like, well, I guess I have to take your word for it.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
You're probably going to lose them. Right. So what we've been focusing on now is creating content that can be used in the ads, which supports each one of these beliefs. So this is kind of a, I guess, a more granular version of the top, middle and bottom of funnel. Like instead of three areas, we've got like 24 different chains of beliefs. So what the strategy will then be, is starting at the bottom of that funnel and saying, okay, well, how do we first make sure that people understand that the company will take care of them and that will have to do with, you know, the founder's story and the mission and the risk reversal and all of that other stuff, testimonials. And those are the first things we'll create. And we're obviously going to put that in front of our retargeting audience, because these are the ones who are the closest to the, um, CLO you know, closest to the shopping cart.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Right. Um, and then, so we've just been building out this ad content plan to say, you know, our, all of our advertising should be valuable and it should be enlightening. And we should try to try to turn beliefs into just accepted facts in their mind. This is a lot of work when done, if done correctly, it's not just like, Hey, throw an ad up there. And then somebody goes and buys because these days, I mean, it takes like a hundred touch points. I've read recently to get somebody to take an action to buy. And that touchpoint could be where they see you on social media. They're Googling you, the emails that you're sending them, it's harder and harder to get somebody to give you their money. It's easier to get, to get the rest of their money once they, once you've got that trust. But the hardest thing is getting them to overcome that first hurdle, right?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
That's such a golden exercise. Like, I mean, what are the beliefs, right. And listening and down, what does everything you need to believe, you know, from top of funnel all the way down to bottom funnel, and then operationalizing that through, like, what are the assets that need to get created? You know, like I feel like, uh, that's a great thing for a marketing consultant advisor marketing partner to come in and do. And, uh, we we've talked to a lot of them and not, not ever talked about that.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Thanks. Yeah. Well, I'm glad I can add some unique aspect to this, but it's very, it is a very fundamental thing to do. And when I start doing this, like for instance, with a client or myself, it's kind of like, we really have to go through this and then they start to see it. Like, and in fact, I'm going to read, okay. I actually came up with 17 beliefs for vitamin patch club. I'm just going to read these out loud because I can rattle them off. My health is important. My health, and these are important that they're in order, right? My health is important. My health is in my control. I can understand how to achieve good health. My current method is not optimal for good health. Nutrition is number one. It's possible to get good nutrition, good nutrition can be affordable. A balanced diet is the best way to get nutrition.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Supplementation is important because it, it's hard to eat all the right things, the right times micronutrients are important. Okay. So those are the first 10. Like I'm not going to create much content around those because those are the ones that like, okay, I get it help is important. But we went to that level of what are we, what do we need people to accept as true before we can ever get their money? And then the final seven are not all vitamins are equal bioavailability. Like I know what that is and why it's important. I understand the best methods of delivery for vitamins pills are the least bioavailable. I believe transdermal patches are effective. Vitamin patch club delivers on its promise of great products and affordable price. And lastly, the company will take care of me. Now, there may be some other ones, but if you will think about that, it was linearly you go, huh? Okay. Well, I don't actually have any content talking about like reinforcing the fact that we will take care of them. Maybe I should do that and then throw that in bottom of the funnel retargeting ads.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah. Whoo. I like that. It's cool. You can kind of reverse engineer it, Sue. I mean, you mentioned Devin's that bottom of the funnel first. So I mean, it's, it's kind of cool. You can really execute this. I mean, we're so we're so addicted to the hack, right. And we just, a lot of times we'll get straight into what's the latest tactic, what's the latest hack, assuming that the principles of what you just talked about and the foundation is all in place and in most cases, um, there
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Exactly, exactly. And the, the, uh, the foundations, the principles are everything there is sometimes boring to do, but, um, but they can uncover, they can make things simple and uncover, Oh, a way to make everything a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And a good consultant. I would also say not only just like takes you through that exercise, but a good consultant is going to like operationalize that exercise for you. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
That's exactly what I do. So one of the, yeah, but one of the other ads it's working real well, so I don't forget this. And this kind of helps, you know, especially if people don't know if you're not a household name, you're not, Coca-Cola, you're not a big brand. You're kind of coming from nowhere. Let's say you're advertising on Facebook is a, is a good example, right. Where people stumble across you. Um, let's just say like, so I did this, I had a, um, I had a client who taught, uh, you know, is in the real estate investor business, real estate investors and agents, both were where their clients. And they were a great marketing agency. They did a lot of work for them and help them generate leads and close those leads, et cetera. And so one of the things we did out there was we put together about a thousand word Facebook post slash ad.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
And on this, um, it was, these are the, I forget how many, I think it was like 24 objection handling answers. So as a real estate investor or an agent, whenever you're talking to a seller, you're likely to get, uh, uh, any number of objections is why they can't do business with you, especially when you're, or when you're negotiating or just trying to get the listing or get them to sell the house. Here are 24 of the best objection, handlers that we've got. And we just listed it out like one, and then a little clip, one, a little clip, and you come across this and it should be overwhelming. Like, wow, this is really long. Like, this is almost too long, but it's so valuable. Like I need to refer back to this. So a lot of the times what people will do, and I do this all the time is I'll save it in my Facebook, you know, save it, screenshot it on my camera, roll on my
Speaker 1 (20:48):
IPhone. It's just screenshots of it.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Right. So the problem with that is how often do you really go back to your saved stuff and consume it? I rarely do. Right? So every once in a while, I'll go in there. I was like, Oh yeah, I forgot about that piece. But so what we did in this case is we acknowledged in the, on the top and the bottom, like, Hey, if you want to get over objections, if you want this, here's a great resource for you. Hopefully it's helpful. I realize it's long. If you want a printable PDF that you can download for free of this, where I include a few video walkthroughs and et cetera, right? Like throw a couple of bonuses in, just leave a comment or click here or whatever your call to action is. In this case, I use to leave a comment and then I use many chat to fire it up.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Hey, thanks for requesting this. Would you like a PDF of the post that you just read? Great. What's your email? Now the point here is most people who do an ad to an opt in are, you know, it's, it's kind of a tease like, Hey, do you want these objection, handling things? Give me your email. First, this point is like, no, I'm going to give you the value. I'm not going to ask a thing for it. However, you're going to, you're going to, I'm going to get your opt-in for an easier to consume version of what you just got a better modality, maybe with some bonuses, but I've already delivered the value I've made you believe you can trust me and go, huh? So the, the net effect of this and yeah, I mean, we spent, we spent, uh, tens of thousands of dollars on this ad and it crushed. But, um, it, we, we had so much social proof on that ad. Everybody was commenting. This is great. And we didn't tell them what the comment we just said, Hey, let us know if you want it. So people would phrase it in different ways, but then many chat would pick up that comment and grab it and say, yeah, here you go. So we built a tremendous amount of rapport with them. So the go ahead.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well, I, you know, the switching up of modalities is, is proven, right? Like classic, you know, BookFunnel right. Like get the physical book, get the audio book, get the ebook. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
And wanting to, in a way that's easy to consume. Oh, totally, totally value from them. That's and that's really the takeaway. There is like, whatever you're selling, think about this. Like how can I create a valuable post so that it's not, this is not supposed to be enlightening necessarily. It's supposed to be almost tactical, like do these things, like what can you produce that somebody would want to print it out and almost have it as a reference or a cheat sheet or something like, Oh, hell yeah. Like we're working on this for vitamin patch club now to just go, um, you know, what are all the things you need to know? Like, Hey, do you want a printable PDF of this? Uh, we're happy to give it to you now. I've got your attention by the end. Then, as, as you guys know, as media buyers, you get tons of social proof on an ad, positive social proof. It just it's like compound interest. Yeah. And, um, and it helps with that. That was always a fun, unique one. I haven't seen a lot of people doing that method. I've seen him saying, Hey, if you want this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I've got this thing. If you want it, you know, comment here, but now give it to them upfront in an unformatted hard to consume version, but make them go, Oh crap, I'm going to need, I'm going to need to have that handy.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
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Speaker 4 (25:23):
Check it out@funneldash.com. So I want to hear about an ad. That's not working. I want you to read this poor ad because you know, Brad, you have this pristine track record, uh, and public persona of like the ultimate marketing consultant and like stays like super high level. But I want to know brands not perfect close to perfect. The ads that don't work, then I'm sorry. It's easier to pick the ads that do work only because they're so, so the rest of her were a lot longer. Um, I mean some of the ads, gosh, you know, some of them, you know, I love using metaphors and ads, love stories and metaphors Mike in marketing. There's some of my favorite things to do. And I remember writing up one, um, recently I got, I'm trying to think what the metaphor was, but just where it was like a brilliant thing and it was long and it was kind of contrived, but it was like brilliant writing as if, if somebody read it, like it was supposed to create these Epiphanes in people's minds. Like, Oh, wow, that's super cool. And it flopped, we changed the ad to be something like, if you want to, how to, um, if you want to learn how to do this, watch this video and that crushed it compared comparatively. And that's where as a marketing guy, I'm kind of like, ah, gosh, darn it. Like, I think I'm brilliant. And it,
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And you over-engineer that this is like my, my achilles' heel man of being in marketing too long, or you're like, let me just, just put every principle all in play and then flops. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I wish I would have, I didn't create this, but I, I have no idea who to give credit to, but I think I read it someday where it says sometimes the best way to sell a horse to somebody who wants to buy a horse is to put up a sign that says horse for sale. And I was like, it's just so blatantly obvious. I just find somebody who wants what you've got and just say, I've got it. Like sometimes it's that simple. Now, granted, it also depends on the sophistication and cynicism of your market. But, um,
Speaker 1 (27:39):
This isn't, that's a new one, but a good example,
Speaker 4 (27:42):
A lot of marketing agencies who listen to the show. Right. Cool. So sometimes you could literally just say, and we've done this what us, you know, if we offered to do all your marketing for you, you know, would you be interested click here? Like, um, yeah, I want that because in Facebook it's going to be a little different because people are scrolling through and you have sometimes less time to make your point. They know, they typically know it's an ad trying to be too cute. Can screw things up. But as marketers, we always, we want, like, we want to be cute. We want to be genius and creative and stuff. And sometimes that doesn't work. Um, the majority of my ads that don't work or me trying to pull out my best sales copy, you don't really know who's got it. And I, and I, I touched on this, I gotta give him credit, but I love this concept, you know, Joel airway. Yeah. Joel's, Joel's got this absolutely amazing, um, structure for an ad called a power offer. Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, we're actually, I think he's actually going to be on the show tomorrow. Uh, recording an episode, talking about,
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Gave him, tell him, I gave him props basically says like, look, go for the absolute, you know, the ultimate thing that people want. Like, and just say, if I offered to do this for you, you know, w would you be, would you take me up on the offer? Like what, like for instance, if I offered to do all your marketing for you set up all your campaigns, do this, blah, blah, blah, like talk to the highest, highest possible, um, avatar of somebody who wants what you're doing. And then just say, if I offer to basically do all this, would you take me up on that offer and then, and then give them something to click on and go find out more because when you're ever, you're talking to people like basically saying, Hey, do you want me to do this for you? Or just here, you're going to get the attention of everybody. You're not just getting the attention of, Hey, you want a cheat sheet of the best objection, handlers, you know? Um, so I love what Joel has done. I'm happy to give him credit for this power offer structure. Uh, you know, I've used it and you know, it's been, it's been great, but, and he uses those in ads.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Cool. So I want to talk about your zone of genius, man. I want to dive in and really there's so many things to uncover in this next segment, but no, we're really talking to, you know, agencies, advertisers, and some of them are, most of them I should say, are all guilty of marketer, math, right? It's lazy Roundup to the nearest million or 10 million and, and, um, you know, project out, uh, all kinds of, uh, of crazy numbers around bookings instead of revenues. So I want to talk about some financial principles, um, in terms of how you think about, uh, this with your clients in terms of investing in growth, managing marketing budget profitability. And then I also want to talk about some of the creative stuff that you're doing in terms of leveling up from being a paid gun for hire consultant and expensive one at that to really jumping into, uh, using strategic finance, to, to, to do acquisitions and, um, and, and buyouts, I think there's plenty of stuff out there. You know, I'll just leave a caveat. There's plenty of stuff out there around like no money down acquisitions, you know, and, and being creative. And, and, and there's a ton of principles on like no money, but like, I want to, I want to focus on like what to do with the actual money.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yeah. There's I mean, and I, and I've bought a couple of companies with no money down and by the way, like the no money thing, it, sometimes it can mean not your money out of your checking account. Right. Sometimes it can mean I borrowed money sometimes millions of dollars to do this. As I mentioned offline, like I'm, I'm attempting to put together a $50 million line of credit, which makes my butt pucker and go who you don't know what you do, and, but you're going to do it anyway. So, um,
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Well walk us through that. Like, what does that, what does that look like? So
Speaker 4 (31:44):
I'm just figuring that part out. Well,
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I, yeah, I mean, let's, let's, let's talk it through, right? Like what's the use of funds, right? Cause like you go raise 50 million, you're going to pay depending on who you raise from, keep in mind
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Line of credit. So not like give me 50 million and let me have access to it and put it in the bank. So a line of credit is going to be different. If I can get access to that, then with the ability to say, Hey, if I've got a specific deal or deals, then you will write the check. Cause I I'm basically it's earmarked for me. That's a different story. And that's a more powerful way to do it because it's less risk for both parties. But, um, for instance, one of the, one of the things and once more, I'm, I'm going to be telling you this, as I'm learning how to do it. This is me trying to grow as an entrepreneur, which is, um, um, create a pitch deck for what the proposed use of funds will be. Um, in this case, it is to do an it manager MSP roll up where our goal is to buy multiple it service businesses and, um, you know, acquire them up, make them more efficient, operationally and profitably, and then sell this conglomerate to, um, maybe it's, let's say five different companies to a bigger player, like a private equity company or another strategic player, like the one company you and I were talking about offline.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
So in order to do this, um, and it's a very competitive market out there for this industry, we're gonna, we, you know, we can go at it and try to get, you know, owner financing and be real creative if we're talking to somebody who wants to sell, but cash is King and somebody who sees themselves able to get money is going to get the deal. You know, they're going to give the deal there. So what we're going to be working on is putting together a very robust pitch deck that says, here's our plan. Here are some of the companies that we have identified as potential targets. Although I don't believe we have to have conversations with them yet. We can just identify them and then build the business model and the case, or, um, what we're looking to do. Uh, a lot of times they call this a search fund, like give us a fund to put together that is, uh, you know, we've got access to this capital.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
So when we need it, we can strike and we're going to go out there and search for these companies that way. It allows me to say, okay, Zack, you've got this business, it's worth $3 million in cash. I'll give you 1.5 million in cash with a one point, you know, you know, $1 million in, um, you know, owner financing, another half, a million dollars in earn-out or something of that nature. Right. But if I can write a check, I don't want to write a check for all cash for somebody assets, unless I, I know I can come in there and flip a switch and double the income, but, um, that's the goal of creating what really, I think this amounts to is a search fund, which is what they call.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And so we're not going to go the route of, you know, creating money in, you know, nobody down trying to go [inaudible] you want to talk about a $50 million search fund, which is, you know, it's different, right? So what would come to mind for most people is like, I need to go create my own font, right? I'm going to raise 15 million in whatever, five Oh six BC, whatever. And I'm going to go pick a million dollars at a time. And, uh, and basically give, you know, 10 to 12, 15% pref and you know, some upside, right? That's like what most people would default to in terms of raising 50 million, if, um, you know, unless they're doing a more of a syndicate where like, somebody's just going to be like, Hey, we have this deal. You bring in money on a, on a per by deal, by deal basis. Um, so you're, you're kind of taking a different step. You're not saying I'm going to create a fund you're I'm going to go get a line of credit. Uh, yeah. Up to 50 million that I could draw down when the acquisition is ready. So talk to me about what you're learning in terms of who, who are these, these, you know, with the money. Yeah. Who are the people with the money
Speaker 4 (35:57):
On that case? Literally the conversation this week where he cause he, a friend of mine put together a deal like this for a different industry. And, uh, I lucked into this. He's like, I've got the people, they've got no access to a lot of money. Um, I can't go into like the, um, they are looking for deals to place their assets. He's already got an in, he's already gone through the process and he's like, I'll walk you through it. He'll obviously get a piece of my company. But, um, he goes, I'll walk you through it, but they are, you know, they've got access to at least a billion dollars of, uh, cash that they're trying to do. Um, you know, placing investments because they don't want to put it into the stock market. Ideally they will be real estate backed, right? Like a lot of these investors want something that's real estate back.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Like it's, let's say it's a local chain of auto shops where they actually own the land under it. The stuff I'm looking for, isn't really real estate back. So that might cause a problem. But bottom line is how do you find these people? For me, it was luck and networking and relationships of people who just know what I'm trying to do, which is why I'm never secretive about the business plans and things I do. I mean, I may be secretive about the micro details, but I let people know because it only takes one person to go, Hey, I've heard you on this show and I may be able to help you out. So I out, I tell everybody I don't hide the ideas,
Speaker 1 (37:22):
The, uh, uh, just to speak on that. We're saying I a hundred percent agree when we, when I first had the idea of like just funding people's ad spend and kind of changing the monetization model of a FunnelDash like literally the first person I told was the guy I go to church with, who was like, he's like in nonprofits, you know, he's like, you know, just like you're running the mill local guy that shows up on a, you know, has got a couple of kids in high school, not in business, like at all, you know? And he's like, yeah, you know, you should meet, uh, Dick blew it. Um, he's a good friend of mine. And Dick is basically the head of the GSO group at Blackstone, which is like the largest credit asset manager in the world is like the first go around connection onto this effort. So I couldn't agree more in terms of like being open with what you're thinking about. Even if it's unstructured, even if you don't have all the pieces, um, you never know who's connected to who and, uh, sometimes you have somebody completely ignorant that doesn't even know what you're talking about, but they're like, yeah, you should probably talk to this person.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
That's precisely, that's precisely it. And then with the, with the ways that we're trying to find some of these deals, uh, there's going to be a, and this has started, it's going to be both, um, uh, email, like networking, email, direct mail, reach out, just trying to get conversations going. We, we have created a company that is doing a pay-per-click lead generation for, um, it surface companies, um, to be quite honest, that the Trojan horse we're going to go in there and do that because if we can, I mean, we'll, we'll try to monetize it either way, but if we can get their trust as a trusted advisor, who's able to ask them about their business. Then we can ask the, um, the million dollar question, which anybody who's who's owns an agency right now should pay extremely close attention to them. It's a very highly manipulative persuasion based question, very advanced language, which is you ever thought about selling your company?
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Right. Ask that question. Um, agencies, advisors, consultants never asked that question. And it's mainly because they don't, they wouldn't know what to do with it. If I have. And if that company is thinking about selling, they, they get worried because they're like, well, um, I might lose a client. I ask every single one of my clients that, and I suggest that every agency owner does too. Because even if you do not know how to buy a business, you know, people who do, and if you don't know people who do, and you're listening to the sound of my boys hit me up. I know we just met, but call me maybe. But, but that can happen. And then, so for instance, I love working with agency owners who are especially product high service. Like let's say I do PPC and Facebook ads for a company or a website design.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
You know, they've got the ears and the trust of their clients simply ask. So what's the long-term, uh, what's the long-term vision here. Do you plan on growing this, giving it to your kids, maybe selling it. If they say selling it, put on your thinking cap and go, wow. If this guy could sell it to somebody else, what if I could buy it or, or be a part of a group who buys it? I wonder who I could call to help make this happen. You'd be surprised at how many business owners would love to get out of their business because, but they feel like they're stuck in it because they're not even thinking that anybody would buy that piece of crap. That's how I felt about my info product. I, it was, it was down 70% from its peak because I was working on other stuff and I was just gonna let it ride it down to the ground.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
But I talked to a buddy of mine who said he knew a business broker. He's like, I bet I could get this thing sold. Like I never thought I'd be able to sell it. Lo and behold I did. And that is a very common thought among business owners out there. Like, I'd love to sell this business, like take it off my hands because especially, you know what, like in my field of the it service businesses, a lot of times there are these tech technicians and they're really good at it, but then they decided to go like quit Microsoft and go out on their own. And then they realized now they have to deal with client service and marketing and sales and accounting. And that sucks.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Right. I want to know. So how do you scale this, right? Or like, how do you manage your time? You're a guy that is working on so many different verticals. How many projects can you like, just peel back the onion for us, just a little bit of like, how many deals do you really have going on right now in the sense that you're able to keep a pulse on? Not as many, unfortunately for me, but that's okay. That's okay. Advisers, you know, they, you know, some people are doing like 50 deals, a hundred deals. I don't have that level of organization or management ability in my life. But like, do you talk to, what's your sweet spot? Is it like three to five deals at a time? Yeah. 10 deals at a time.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
The time is quite a bit, I mean, it depends on what stage they're in, but you know, I have to split my split my time between three primary things professionally, which is I have current clients that I work with, some of them on fees, some of them on performance, uh, you know, et cetera. So I have, I do have to devote some time to that. Uh, the good part is I'm not doing a lot of personalized delivery. It's more strategies showing up and helping manage a few of the parts and more creative brainstorming. But, um, I typically try to do client meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's kind of my sweet spot for that, if I can. And by the way, I'm far from perfect at doing this well. Like regimenting my time. Um, the other time I actually, you know, I have a couple of portfolio companies, the ones that I have ownership in and I like Mondays and Wednesdays, I really try to, uh, focus on, um, you know, my, the things I have ownership of to the greatest degree possible, um, throughout the day, usually in the afternoons is when I do, uh, you know, phone calls and like analysis.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
Like non-creative work, just talking to people, moving deal. Like if it's a deal, moving those things forward and just trying to see where it's going now, if sometimes, you know, sometimes the deal is just conversation, conversation, conversation. And then once an agreement is struck, then it goes into like due diligence and it gets harder. So, um, I have to sacrifice either client time or portfolio company time. And I just have to, I have to get creative or work twice as much. Um, but that's, I mean, those are the three things like at this exact moment, my deal flow is not real high, so it's not overwhelming me. Right. So I'm spending the majority of my time between the companies that I have a piece of and my, um, and my clients while trying to get that other deal flow coming in more timely.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
What do you do on Fridays?
Speaker 4 (44:29):
Primarily working my and strategizing, like just really strategizing the things that have to move forward. And a lot of fun Fridays are almost all phone calls back to back to back.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Got it, got it. But
Speaker 4 (44:42):
I'm trying to figure it out. You know, there's no such thing as time management, it's all activity management and the other way, I've kind of time blocked. Uh, once more, I'm not as successful as I'd like to be at this, but I try to group things into, uh, the mindset I need to be in when I'm doing it. So strategic work is one thing, like really thinking through a strategy, uh, there's creative work, maybe I'm writing copy or ad copy or, or something of that nature. Right. So there's difference between strategy thinking and creative thinking. And then there is just doing things. I call it feeding the animals, right? Like it just has to be done. Maybe it's personal finance, maybe it's just getting off my plate. Um, and then there is the connecting side, right? Like I need to be in the mode where I'm having conversations and I'm connecting.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
Those are the four primary buckets and there's other little ones, but it's like, am I doing, I guess the other one is like deep analysis, like let's say spreadsheet work and really, really left brain thinking. Um, right. So if I try to switch, if, if, if I'm writing sales copy or, or trying to come up with an idea for a video or something like that, and then I have to go jump into a spreadsheet. The cost of switching is so high that I'm not going to be effective at one of those and likely either one of them. So I'll try to just segregate those out by day, say, all right, Hey, is spreadsheets all day, put a gun in one hand and a mouth.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
All right. So I gotta, I gotta, we gotta wrap up with two other questions here, which is, uh, wa well, we'll just dive into the first one here is what are your thoughts on debt in the business? We've talked about debt to acquire businesses and, you know, exploring, you know, the idea of creating a credit fund. And, uh, but then there's, um, you know, there's actually a good and bad uses, uh, of leveraging debt. How do you advise your clients on this? Do you, to what extent are you involved in that financial planning conversation and in terms of capitalizing, cashflow management, things like that?
Speaker 4 (46:46):
I don't go super deep into that because I unders like, I don't even, um, I'm not as expert at that as I actually would like to be, but, um, I you're right. The good debt, bad debt. Um, basically if it, you know, if it's something that either funds inventory or funds a growth initiative that you think you can turn this around and, um, and get profitable on, then yeah. Go for debt. If it's vanity projects, if it's just like growth at any cost, I say, no. Um, like, and for instance, I love following a profit first methodology made famous by the book of the same name by Mike [inaudible], which is, um, you just flip the numbers to say, here's my sales. Um, this is how much profit I'm pulling out, like, pull your profit out of your, uh, out of your sales first. Like, let's say, I love to do this, which is, I want to engineer a minimum of a 10% profit margin in a business that I own, right.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
So it's like a million dollars come in of those of that million dollars off the top a hundred thousand dollars, let's say it's that year, or let's say it's that month a million dollars a month, right. A hundred thousand dollars comes off the top and goes into a separate bank account that leaves us with $900,000 of expense to play with. Like, that's how much we get to spend. We've pulled the profit off first, don't touch the profit, don't put it back into the business. Now, given those, that level of expenses, can we grow with what we need to, um, like, you know, do we have the capital to grow well, there's a couple of ways to create capital. We either sell more stuff and ideally that helps. Or we borrow the money for an initiative. If we think that, you know, the terms are fair and we can pay it back. Um, I wish I had a more expert opinion, but that's kind of the way, uh,
Speaker 1 (48:36):
No, that's good. That's good. So, uh, and then the last one, where do you really land, you know, in a, w w with credit cards, are you like a cash back guy points, sky credit,
Speaker 4 (48:48):
Then they have a points guy personally, but I am woefully inadequate at managing those points. And then I never want to spend those points. Cause I was like, Oh, but if I spend the dollars, I'll get more points. So I'm terrible at this. I just looked at my like Amex. I got like almost half a million points on my Amex and I've got other stuff and I never use them. So I'm not efficient at managing them. And, uh, whatnot. I would love to, like, I love this stuff that you guys are talking about, bringing out for your card. Like maybe it's a crypto thing or et cetera, but, um, I accumulate points and then I sit on them and I go, Oh, Hey, look at all those points. What should I do with them? I should be much more intentional with them.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool, man. Yeah. I, uh, well, this has been an amazing episode. Thank you so much for effort for being able to, I enjoy, um, tell me a little bit about what you're up to next, how we can support you and, uh, how people can get
Speaker 4 (49:46):
All right. So yeah, th th the things I'm up to next is really, uh, growing, um, vitamin patch club, which is, you know, the one just took, um, equity in, uh, so anything to do with, uh, health, wealth, uh, health, wealth, health, and wellness market. I am going to be actually looking to do some acquisitions in that space as well. Um, that's a big area. And then, uh, really looking for it based companies that I can either serve as a, you know, lead generation and advisory to them, because it can be one or the other, and or if they're open to taking an investment or, uh, exiting, then I'm extremely interested in talking to them. And for instance, if you have people listening to this who run agencies, and maybe they have clients who are in the it service space, I don't want to compete with you and try to serve them.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
But if you ever ask them a question such as, would you ever be open to selling your business, um, or open to a conversation? I know somebody who's looking to acquire, then, you know, you know how to get ahold of me, by the way. That's not just it businesses. I'm always looking for businesses that can have value added to it, that the owner might be a little bit ready to let go. And marketing agencies have the single best level of trust have that you should be having that conversation anyway. Um, have it, and if you don't know what to do with it, I mean, get, get ahold of me. I may show you how to get control of it, or I may offer to partner with you. Those are the two primary things. And then beyond that, if anybody just wants to, um, you know, cause some kind of unique ideas to grow their business, uh, you know, I, I still do work with clients. So, and you can't,
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I mean, check out bacon wrapped business. I feel like you, uh, you got all the OGs of, uh, people that are in a marketing for like a decade, two decades, uh, on your show. And, uh, you go like really deep, uh, on that side. You know why? Because I use that,
Speaker 4 (51:43):
I joke that I have the most selfish podcast on iTunes because I do not actually care if anybody's listening my audience. I have people on the show that I want to learn from. And very selfishly. So it's like, you don't get on my show. If you just want to talk about you. It's like, if I already know everything that you're going to talk about, you're not getting on because of that. I ask these questions that are, that I want to apply either in my business or my client's business. So it's very actionable. Like I could almost care less about your story. And because of that, by the way, like I've generated over a million dollars in revenue from my guests alone because I've found a way to work with them and say, Oh, that was, that was an interesting challenge you're having, but let's follow up later and I've done either partnership deals or clients. So it's there, you got bacon
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Wrapped business.com sponsored by
Speaker 4 (52:33):
Guaranteed profits
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Sponsored by bread. That's awesome, dude. You've been an amazing guest. Thank you so much, Brett. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add for ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ad for at.com/review. Thanks again.
Known as “The Chief Rainmaker”, Gil Ortega has been a go-to Customer Acquisition Specialist for over 24 years and today works exclusively with agencies to transform their client’s customer acquisition cost. Currently head of IDENTYO and Profit Worldwide, Inc., Ortega has also served as CEO of Leads to Wealth, Inc., Vice President of Sales for Pixels3d, CEO of Beyond Profit, Director of Entertainment Client Recruitment for ProSports Management International and Owner of Chili Productions -- a company he started as a sophomore in high school. He is a graduate of UCLA where he earned a Certificate in Music Business Extension, and Grossmont Community College where he earned an AA in Video and Film.
TAKEAWAYS
Why ridiculously expensive Customer Data Platforms are obsolete -- and how to get even better results at a fraction of the cost.
How to create an outcome-based ideal offer in 30 days or less.
Why static data is history and what you should be using instead.
How ramping up too fast can kill your algorithm’s targeting -- and what percentage increase on ad spend per day will keep it alive.
Who’s 1000X better (and cheaper) than Axiom and Oracles at finding your best customers.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
linkedin.com/in/gilortega
https://www.identyo.com/
SHOW NOTES:
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On this episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast, we have a very special guest, mr. Gill, Ortega, we dive into real-time data and how to use it properly across multiple channels. Ultimately lowering your cost per acquisition. We also kind of dive into some tips that Mark Cuban gave them towards the end of last year. That completely changed the way their businesses ran this year on the poor ad side of things we dive into, you know, not understanding more real-time data and static data and the importance of using, you know, the data you do have with consumer behavior, um, to really kind of move that needle and lower your CPAs. Make sure to tune in this one's all about data and it is solid
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Created an outcome result-based offer that literally within 30 days, all we're doing is pushing in audiences that we're identifying segmenting and delivering into the various ad platforms, Google and facial being the primaries, but it can go everywhere. Every, every major ad platform, including DSP is
Speaker 3 (01:12):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
All right. All right. On Friday, everybody, we are back in action with another episode of the rich dad, poor ad podcasts. We've got your host, Dylan Carpenter and the house. You know, we're going to talk about what's working, what doesn't work and then some bad-ass financial principle tips. So today we have a very special guest, mr. Gill Ortega. Back in the day, he was doing a ton of lead gen, you know, managing she probably 4 million a month, but that was in the past. Now he's the co-founder and chief Rainmaker of identity, which is kind of more of an audience creation biz, but without further ado, but the hype is real guilt. What's that, man. Thanks for hopping on
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You doing thanks for having me
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Not a problem at all. So kind of give everybody some context of, you know, who you are, what you're doing these days. I didn't see. Oh, sounds super awesome. I'm super into it. I'm excited to learn more, but kind of give everybody some context of kind of what you're getting into.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Sure. So Zach and I met in 2015 and right when he was starting funnel dash and, uh, it was big data that I was making a really big pivot into from lead gen to, to audience creation and data-driven campaign. So, you know, all, all the privacy can per all the privacy concerns that we're hearing nowadays, you know, from like the Cambridge Analytica fiasco a few years ago, to current concerns, GDPR, all of that, wasn't going on when we started in 2015, creating what is known as identity resolution or identity graphs. And I, and just to give you some background, I'm going to, I'm not going to get into the weeds of data because it always makes people's heads spin and it, and, um, it just, you know, it's not the sexiest thing. And when it comes to marketing, you know, it's like the data and the analytics and how, you know, how you target somebody.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But basically we started, uh, creating identity graphs and, you know, the old cliche of the right message at the right time, you know, pretty much every company either says they do that or wants to do that. It's, it's basically the, the levers in terms of data leverage to be able to do that. So you identify somebody that is visiting your website, right? So that's the identity part, and this is all top of funnel. So people that have not filled out a form, you know, opted in to your, to your list, we're identifying somebody and then you you're able to track that person across devices. You know, how many devices do you got now? Like you just look around your desk, right? Like a lot, right? Yeah. Probably eight or nine. It seems like. Right? So the more devices that people start piling onto their daily usage, the harder it becomes to attract somebody.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So that's the, that's the goal when you, when you're doing a data-driven type of campaign, um, or from a, from a brand's perspective, the goal of building an identity graph is to just identify your potential audience, your entire total universe of potential audience. So whether you're B2B or B to C, you know, you have this avatar of potential, like if you just sell the women of a certain age, et cetera, like, or if you just sell to, uh, you know, whatever type of audience you want to identify, everybody that you could potentially sell to, and then you want to key in to their behavior when they're looking to buy a product that you have, right? So you want, you want to be able to sense through all the various sensors of the internet, you know, when somebody shows up to a page or somebody else's page, and then you want to be able to send them the message, the right message at the right time, that's the cliche.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So people do this with, uh, CDPs, right customer data platforms, like in the past three, four years, a massive amount of CDPs have been getting funded, like tens of millions of dollars because it's bringing together the functionality of building the identity graph. The, and it's, it's not cheap. You know, this is, these are normally six figure seven figure endeavors for a brand to be able to do this kind of stuff. So, um, what, you know, I'm telling you this, because that's where we start it. And what we've done now is we've simplified it to the point where you don't even have to do that. It's like the, the end result is what we're focused on now, just the outcome of being able to do all that cool tracking. And, and, um, and now we just want to give you a lower cost per acquisition on media that you're already spending on your budget span right now. That's it
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Now with most of the brands you mentioned, you know, high six or seven figures, they're pretty established businesses. So before you even dive in, is it possible for you to look at past data or do you all have to incorporate new systems and then look at the new data to be able to kind of find these more data points more or less?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
So historical data has been a big part of building a graph, but we, the things that we've learned, um, so like if somebody is, um, historically been purchasing some kind of product or, uh, has visited a certain website, uh, what would you call like affinity groups or, or, um, you know, just transactional type data that, you know, Oracle and, and, uh, Axiom and all these big data companies experience, et cetera. All of these data companies are building these audiences in a manner that what, what a marketing agency or brand will basically do is take those audiences and put them into a platform or into Facebook and Google directly as a custom audience and create the targeting that way. We used to do that. That's what we start, that's where we start it. And we saw the flaws. There's so many flaws in that approach, that what we realize is that historical data, even data that's days or a week old is, is secondary to real time data. So real-time behavior. Like, I mean, when, I mean real time, I mean, by the second, by the minute behavior and the data associated with it. And so a visitor to a website, all traffic and all, all clicks and all interactions, all engagement is data and visitors to your website that you own is first party data. So that data is the most crucial data that we have found that we've started to leverage to create better audiences.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Oh man, I'm fired up. I'm big data guys. I'm fired up over here, but man, heck yeah. I mean, that, that helps a ton of context there without a doubt. Now we love to kind of dive into what's working for you. I know in this scenario, we're going for more of a strategy, go ahead and open up the kimono. You know, let the world know what's worked well for you on this kind of strategies forefront. So,
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You know, I always referenced back in the day because so many marketers are still using what I called static data, disconnected data disconnected in the sense that it's not real time. So if you, if it's your customer or your CRM data, everybody believes that that is the, you know, the Holy grail of creating a custom audience like your customer data, but it's not, um, believe it or not. It's like, um, you know, pre-packaged audiences data that comes from even like the biggest data companies in the world like Axiom or, you know, my, one of my business partners used to work for Axiom creating data products for them 15 years ago, um, or for 15 years. And so like Axiom started this company called library, live ramp is probably the biggest, uh, 800 pound gorilla in our space. They, you know, they make, uh, they have 500 clients of, uh, of their identity link product, which doesn't seem like a lot, but they do hundreds of millions of dollars quarterly.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That's another huge, you know, they're big, big company and, um, and now they own bigram now owns Axiom. So the reason I tell you that is because everybody's taking data, the, the, the standard approaches is taking data, whether it be customer CRM or third party data, and putting it into a custom audience or their platform, their DSP, or, or what have you, and doing the targeting in that manner. And what I'm, what I'm telling you is that is sub par or lesser to creating the audience in, in real time. So the, the downside to, uh, say like bringing your customer data, but just say you're selling mattresses, right? Like somebody owns a mattress, there's a lot of mattress companies out there. So you take your customer data that people have bought say like last week or last month, whatever, you're you're, you got these customers, right.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And now you upload them into Facebook, Google's custom audience, and to create, you know, to, to create a lookalike. Right. That seems, that seems logical. Yeah. Have you ever done something similar to that with audiences every day, every day, it's a manual process for one, right? It's, it's very labor involved, you know, and, uh, so that it'll, it'll produce what I call a streak of brilliance. A streak of brilliance is going to be a lift that you're going to see. It may last a few days, maybe as long as a week, and then it'll start going down and you just keep doing this. You're like, Hey, that worked. I mean, do it against some other, you know, next month, next week, whatever the problem is that that data set the behavior of those, those individuals, your customers, if you're looking at it from like an avatar, you know, or like finding co cohorts, like it is, it's great.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
But their behavior there, that list of people are no longer looking for a mattress, right? So their behavior right now in real time is no longer behaving like a customer. And so, and, and if, if you're a B2B marketer, let's just say, you're, you're, you're people that buy some kind of SAS product, right? Some kind of B2B SAS product, and you're doing this. Um, the same thing applies because everybody wants to find somebody that's in the market, right. Google term, uh, created the term in the market. So it's like, it's like this behavior that is deeming this group of people they're searching for insurance or whatever. Right. So the problem is that those people, maybe a month ago, or a week ago, whenever they became a customer are no longer in real-time behaving like the person that you wanting Google and Facebook's algorithm to find,
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I actively searching for fresh mattresses versus, Hey, they did that two weeks ago. Now they're looking for sleeping pills. So it's kind of those different behaviors is that kind of,
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's exactly it. So Google, so there's a lot of, uh, uh, businesses and specifically B2B too, that are looking elsewhere. Third-party data to, to find the segment of people that are going to be right for their product or service. And what I tell everybody is Google and Facebook are the best at finding the people that you're looking for. There's no other, no data company, Oracle Axiom experience. Nobody can find the people that are behaving in real time, as good as Google and Facebook. And the reason is because they have such a large footprint of retargeting pixels globally. Think about how, how wide, how many websites, B2B, and B to C have the retargeting pixel of Google and Facebook on their website, massive comparison. So that network of retargeting pixels functions as a sensor, real times, behavioral sensor of people on a website. And if you go back to identity, Google and Facebook knows who you are, right?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
So when you're basically asking for a lookalike, the algorithm, Google and Facebook's algorithm is all about behavior, more so than it is about the demographics of this person meets this specific profile. And if you're uploading data that is static non real time, you know that like your CRM data or, or worse, you know, some, some audience that some company produced for you and you're uploading Matt saying, Hey, find me more people like this. It's it's called data decay. So the algorithm is going to basically be lesser because you have unqualified people in that audience as your seed data, right? So that seed data is essentially, you know, saying, Hey, there's some people in here that really aren't looking right now for whatever product or service that you're looking, you know, to build the audience. So Google and their algorithm and their Facebook is going to basically give you more of those people, right? So you have unqualified people in there and they're going to give you more of those unqualified people. And, and you'll see sometimes a lift, but it's just not sustainable. It's not your pain. You're basically paying for clicks, leads and customers at a higher rate.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
You're saying we're having this conversation now. Um, especially with everything kind of going on, I'm over here, amping up for Q4 with black Friday and cyber Monday. But what we've noticed even on the Facebook forefront is, you know, back in the day, you would be able to get, you know, custom audiences of 180 days. Everybody who's purchased when these days is that they're, aren't working so well. But in the past week, I've been doing a lot more seven day 30 day audiences, which are kind of a bit more recent. Um, it's where it's not as real time, but it's as close as we can kind of probably get. So where does it performing way better? So, I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand on how Facebook and Google, they know what you're looking at, what products, what kind of websites to have that real-time data and have those specific behaviors are going into, I think it's kind of cool how I I'm over here noticing kind of trends that I'm seeing it's correlating with you're.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
So it's the old computer adage of garbage in garbage out. So it's an algorithm, you know, their, their local like algorithm is, is behavior-based more so than data, uh, profile based the demographic base. And if you're putting into the seed, the custom audience and that seed audience, if it, if there's unqualified people in there even a little bit, it's going to skew the lookalikes to have a little bit, or sometimes a little bit too much unqualified lookalike audience. And so in essence, what we've been doing is we've created a real time, include an exclude audience creation system, and it automates this, this entirety of, of, uh, of one identifying people, right? So we get rid of bots bot, you know, that's, that's not hard, but there's, you know, it matters if you're, you're getting rid of, um, you know, the bot traffic. And then once you identified somebody, that means that you can take that person to a variety, different ad platforms all in real time.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So if you're, you know, like, you know, your audiences and Google and Facebook with their pixel, even though, I mean, you should be using their pixel adjust. You should be capping your, your daily spend and your frequency caps with their pixels, Google and Facebook's pixels because becoming a premium, I mean, it's, they, they work, you know, amazingly, but you're gonna pay more for, for their, you know, for their traffic. You're retarded and they're going to expire that on you and it's just not portable. Right? So what in essence we're doing is we're making that audience identifiable it's. It goes back to what I was saying earlier. It's identity resolution, is that the key and doing it in a privacy compliant manner where we don't use any PII, personally identifiable information and we're cookie plus. So you combine those two were GDPR compliant for Europe, CCPA compliant for California.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
And at the same time, we, when we started doing this, this is, this is what, this is kind of why it's against, against the grain of the norms in terms of what all the data companies, all these really big companies are doing, uh, the PII route or they're they're buying and creating their own identity graphs, which is not, not cheap, like I was saying. And, and ultimately you're paying way more than you need to, it's going into your cost right. Of acquisition. And I think no matter what kind of marketing you're doing, whether it be online, offline, the end goal, the end goal is to just lower your acquisition costs, improve, improve the quality of customers. You're getting the targeting and then lower the cost constantly to be able to do that. And I should probably tell you about, uh, the, the, the changing with, uh, the meeting that we had in December with the shark, because it really changed the game for us.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Um, so we see that for the financial side or dive into the now you think, well, yeah, I mean, I tell you, I'll tell you now. All right. So in December of 19, at the end of the year, we basically were, we were trying to be a, a quasi CDP customer data platform. Everybody was getting funding for, you know, uh, being a CT CDP. And so first click, last click, and every click in between is what we track. We still track that, but it's like, we, because you can track that, you know, go back to the identification of a person and then you can track everything and you can do that. Cross-platform right. So whether it's TV, radio, mobile, post postcards, physical postal, uh, you name it right. Google, Facebook, native, native email, you name it. So tracking all of that was what we were building. And it's like a behemoths that's like this huge monster,
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Have a platform and activity to be able to do
Speaker 2 (21:03):
That. And so, um, in December we were, uh, talking with some groups about bringing on investors and partners and such. So we had these new partners that we, uh, were on the verge of, of, uh, working with in December. And they set up a meeting. Um,
Speaker 4 (21:24):
One of their clients, one of their clients, one of my partners owns an agency.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
You set up a meeting with Mark Cuban, the sharp, right? Like the guy that claps right on, on the chart. So, um, would its axis. And we got this meeting with, with Mark Cuban, from what was supposed to be a 30 minute lunch meeting, turned into two hours. We showed him our, our, uh, like our full plan
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Form that was basically tracking everything and been able to do all this stuff. We know he's invested in a lot of data. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Companies. So he, he was like the perfect, uh, we want it sharp juice. Right? So we, he was the perfect target for us to bring on, to get that shark juice or that, you know, somebody that knew data and could influence, uh, what our direction, big time. So the long and the short of it is, um, we didn't get investment from him. He did say, uh, you know, come back in six months, but what he, this, what he wanted us to do was he, he looked
Speaker 4 (22:27):
At everything and he goes, this is awesome. He gave us three claps
Speaker 2 (22:30):
During, like, he gave us, you know, that was cool. But you know, at the end of the, at the end of the day, this is like a lemonade out of lemons, because what you mean we didn't, we didn't get shot, uh, you know, shark juice. But what he said was like the game changer for us, because in December, from December to February of 2020, this year, at the end of February, we had basically re transformed, just pivoted and created a hyper-focused on what we were doing all because of what Mark Cuban said. And this is what he said. He basically said, look, all this tracking and stuff, all it is, you know, amazing data and the attribution of, you know, ads. And it's awesome, but it's not actionable. You got to package this up and is perfectly honest. I don't care about all that data that you guys are collecting
Speaker 4 (23:26):
And tracking and all that stuff. And he's a, really,
Speaker 2 (23:28):
What I want is I want one dashboard, one screen that shows the outcome, the results of all this cool stuff like you guys can do this, just do it, just do like, show these all, then show me in real time, the, the, the results of the stats. And we're like, and he's like, you guys are good at lowering acquisition cost for customer acquisition. That's what you guys do. Right. That's the end. That's your, that's the end destination, the journey. And I go, yeah, that's yeah, basically. That's, that's it. So, um, he goes, just do that. And so that's basically what we did. We, we threw out all the complexities of data and building a graph and doing all this stuff. And we said, let's just build the platform to be as simple as getting a result within weeks under a month, under 30 days, we'll basically lower your acquisition costs by half or even more.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
And just show that, yeah, you know, whatever reporting platform they are, somebody already is using already uses, or they can use Google data studio. They're just, you know, we have a template that shows the results for, for clients in our, in our clients or agencies. So we work with agencies and the agencies have a lot of different clients. Some, you know, some pretty big brands that are getting millions of visitors spend millions of dollars on, on ads. And the simple thing that we've done because of Cuban is we've created an outcome result-based offer that literally within 30 days, all we're doing is pushing in audiences that we're identifying segmenting and delivering into the various ad platforms, Google and facial being the primaries, but they can go everywhere every, every major ad platform, including DSPs. And we just say, run our audience to a converting campaign that you already know benchmark is doing well, run those same ads for our audience and just watch it, just compare it.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
And then in 30 days or less, probably within a few weeks, if somebody has a lot of traffic, it's a lot easier. It happens really fast. That's it? You just, you, you see a kill and it boils down. So the simplicity of that is where we've, we've come from this complex, uh, you know, data-driven platform and building, and, and there's so many companies that are doing that right now. Like that is huge activity right now. And what we're saying is that's cool, but you don't have to do that. If the end goal is to lower your acquisition cost for customer clicks, leads and customers, there's a, we've got a really simple, like no brainer solution. It's super cheap and it'll dress. Like I got a mortgage client, you know, through our, one of our agencies spending 50 grand, I think 60 now, and within weeks, they've taken that same budget and we're getting 44% more conversion to application on, on refi applications, 44% more on the same exact budget. And I got, you know, countless other examples of that. So companies that are spending a lot of money, I haven't gotten to the really big budgets yet that like, uh, I saw, uh, you and Zach talking about people spending a hundred thousand a day or something like that. We haven't gotten the budgets, but, um, you know, maybe this, uh, this, uh, this, this, uh, holiday season, but yeah, so people that are spending millions of dollars, you know, a year, it just that's the idea is that we're lowering that position costs.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
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Speaker 1 (28:57):
Now, I think this is the perfect segue into the next segment of the poor ad side of things. So, I mean, on the rich dad, I mean, definitely dove in to kind of, you know, how to reduce the CPA, very data oriented approaches more real time.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
But I mean, for this
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Poor ad side of things is, you know, if this is an executed correctly, what kind of turn into more or less, or have you had these scenarios where you kind of went all in on a specific feature of this, where it just did not work at all?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
So, um, you know, so since 2015 we've been testing, I can't tell you how many variations of custom audiences to lookalikes. And everybody thinks that it's the custom audience that you're going to be retargeting. Um, that's that that's the money. It's not the money. The money is in the, in the local like similarities. Yeah. And so the, uh, like for instance, if your, if your, if you have a custom audience and you're updating that custom audience, right? So every week, every day, whatever, and you know, this is, if you're not doing it automated, you're you hate doing so people get new data from wherever their CRM customer and what they've, what we've have found is that when you update an existing, um, audience, that you've already created a custom audience, it will produce less than if you're creating a brand new custom audience and taking, getting that new data that you got and loading that into versus loading it into the existing custom audience now.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So we would see a massive difference in conversion. Now this is the brain twister we were doing that manually for years, right? This is, we call it a protocol. Like you have to create a brand new custom audience to get, uh, to get, uh, the most, the biggest lift. Yeah. Don't update an existing one to create, you know, your local likes. So what we realized was that when we started, when we, we always had this theory, it was a theory. If we could become real-time right, it goes back to the data decay and not uploading, you know, static data. If we could become real time, real-time includes an excellence. Meaning by the second, every second minute, I'm taking somebody in and out based off of some score on their behavior, into an audience. So what we found is when you update an audience, the same exact customize, like that, it's golden being an audience by uploading a data file, right? Like manually, it doesn't work as well as creating a brand new custom audience. And, and the difference is like staggering. Like this is, these are the things that, that will, you know, triple cut your costs. Like you'll get three times lower costs for clicks, leads, and customers doing, doing these tasks. The, the, the thing was that once we figured out doing this real time, it's consistent. Like if you have seasoned retargeting data, like warmed up audiences that are the best with the best optimized campaign, we'll beat that data.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
Ooh. Ooh, . So
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Just to kind of reiterate, so hypothetically speaking, say I group, you know, we'll look at September for example. So if I were to group everybody from the first of the seventh, that would be one bucket just for that week. Now, if I wanted to kind of, you know, have a dynamic list and a, of the next week, I would go through the eighth to the 14th and not go from the one the first before though, I would kind of have it segments. So that way the older list isn't polluting the more recent, real time, real time data.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
And this could be your, this could even be your CRM data. So this is like a map. Like if you're, if you're not going to be real time, just, I mean, this is a test that people can go do on their own to prove this, you know, this is like, they're getting a lift from just creating a brand new custom audience. Now, is that strategy the best strategy? No, but I mean, really you can't beat real time is as good as it gets. This is that. So when you identify, for instance, like an e-com situation, um, you know, there's all, all of this on, on page identification from like number of times to site time spent on site, certain types of products that somebody looking at, you want to be specific in your segmenting, but things like off, off page transaction history, have they made transactions so offline data events more or less, right?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
So we'd basically be, uh, API APIs and, and using non, non PII, personally identifiable information I can grade or score somebody based off of transactions. I don't even need to know what they bought. I just need to know that they're, they're actually transacting. Like they you're selling t-shirts or whatever, you know, something expensive. You want to know that this person has a transaction history. Yup. And how recent, so that kind of data will make all the difference in our score because now that I'm building segments based off of behavior, right. And transaction history is a heavily weighted behavior to say, these people are not only behaving, like they're in the market, they're able to buy. And if you create a custom audience of those people, the garbage in garbage out, right. There's no garbage in that custom audience and it's in real time. So it's the timeliest audience.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
You create a look like that, that it's going to kill. It'll, that's why it'll beat any CRM or co I mean, if you have enough customers and you're doing the, like every day, you're building a custom audience, that's, that's pretty darn good. I mean, that, that would be pretty hard to beat, but most people don't have enough customers to meet the threshold minimums in the custom audiences to be able to do that and then do it in real time. Right, man, I'm about to go into all my accounts and like make some more recent lookalikes and custom audiences off of this man. But I think I can officially say you've coined, you know, the real-time data and audience creation King man, like this is, this has been super juicy. So I mean, it kind of wrap it all up, go ahead and give everybody, you know, some insights of what's next for you, how to get in touch with you and kind of, you know, how to test y'all out. Um, you can go to [inaudible], um, it's ID ENT y.com identi.com. But I wanna, I wanna, uh, leave something else to like, or before we wrap, but like there's, so my, my, uh, my, what I would call the poor ad, like the strategy that is like the kiss of death.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So we, you know, we have these winners and our whole goal as a company with agencies and their clients is to basically win as fast as possible within 30 days or less. What I, what I call proof in the pudding. And it's like, you know, if you have a winning campaign, the worst thing that you can do is wreck it. Right? So things that we've seen that have the biggest impact on wrecking a winning campaign. And this is the knee jerk reaction that we basically tell our clients, our agencies, the basically don't do, don't go from spending X number amount, whether it's a hundred or a thousand a day, whatever amount to quadrupling doubling, like you basically will kill the algorithms targeting if you ramp up too fast. So the success for ramping up, especially using our strategies, our techniques of creating these real time audiences and taking, you know, scaling it, it's 10 to 20% per day, maximum increase on your budget.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
If you are staying within those parameters, you're allowing for the machine learning on the platform side to keep pace with you, because, so, do you understand what I mean? So like, if you, if you're spending a hundred bucks a day, don't go to 200. So 15 between 10 to 20% increase per day maximum because to go to 115 hundred 20, as you're aligning that machine learning to graduate up with you, instead of taking it from, you know, this, you know, winning campaign that you're spending, and then, you know, putting 500 bucks a day from a hundred, it's just going to be the kiss of death. And is that more of just because they're going to try and spin your budget. So the quality's going to be a lot lower there in that scenario, doesn't have time to kind of pick, there are kind of a lot of variables, but it sounds like that's kind of, you're basically the platform to just take your money. Yeah. That's basically it like they, and they do as they will. So like, if you want to, to take something that is hyper data centric, like our, our audience strategies and our technology and, you know, incrementally grow it successfully, keep it consistent, ongoing, just don't blow it like that. And, and that is that's, that's my, my, uh, poor ad, uh, avoidance recommendation.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
That's killer. I I've, I've fallen to the kiss of death numerous the way too many times that scenario.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. Hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Sweet. So we got, I didn't see. Oh, um, you know, how can people kind of find you Facebook, LinkedIn? What's the best bet there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Uh, LinkedIn, you know, Gil or Tayga and, um, yeah, identi.com. We're we're, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, we're virtual, so I'm out of San Diego. You live in San Diego, but you can meet up. And, uh, I know Zach. And were you ever living here in San Diego? Was Zach or?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Well, I've been in Austin for shoot probably eight years now because he had one of my clients like, Hey, one of my buddies is actually moving to town now should link up and we hit it off. So it's kinda, it's kind of a weird story, but yeah, I've been up there a couple of times or conferences, but never lived there.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah. I just came back in February from the Bay area. I was living up in the Bay area and it's so much nicer weather wise down here. I'm just so glad we moved back to San Diego. So we're based out of San Diego and then bend, bend, Oregon is my, my other, um, partners. They all live in bend. And, um, now there's direct flights for me from San Diego to Ben. So I'm super excited about that, but it hit me up. I'm, you know, we're all virtual now. We like easy to get ahold of
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Hell. Yeah. Yo man, this has been absolute pleasure, man. Thank you so much for jumping on.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed for at.com/review. Thanks again.
GUEST BIO:
Jordan Menard is the CEO and founder of Traffic Pilot, an e-learning platform that teaches people how to become highly-proficient digital marketers who can charge high-ticket prices for their services. He is also founder and CEO at the digital agency Longform Creative and has served as a Strategic Marketing Specialist for PayCertify, Head Media Buyer for Consulting.com, founder and CEO of Surf Media , and Marketing Director for FranConnect.
TAKEAWAYS
The secret behind the success of long form creative (its more than just length).
How to avoid becoming a one-trick pony by looking at what’s behind the CPR.
Why good stories sell -- and how to make a fortune by telling great ones.
What apps like instagram do to your brain -- and your chances for success.
Why flipping the script from cash grab to cash flow is essential for long term profitability.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
https://longformcreative.com
https://trafficpilot.com/
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Buddy. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad, poor ad podcast. We're going to dive into kind of, what's working a really ad and then some kind of more financial tips, you know, so we have a very special guest today, mr. Jordan Menard, um, the creative traffic pilot, the world's first preeminent digital marketing e-learning platform. And not to mention this guy's slang and some ads, but Hey Zach, you ready for this one? Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, man. I'm excited to have on I'm I'm a fan boy of Jordan's work. He's worked with some pretty, pretty big names. Knows, knows the world of advertising. I think he's worked with like, gosh, anybody that's like in, in internet marketing and biz up from Ty Lopez, the Sam ovens, Dan Locke, freakin Robert Kiyosaki, Jordan Belfort. Um, he's worked behind the scenes of some pretty, pretty big campaigns. And uh, I'm also excited to talk to him about what, what, what he's up to and working on, uh, himself as well. So let's get him on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Jordan was good, man. Thanks for jumping on what's going on guys. Thanks for having me, um, pretty crazy to hear, uh, you know, I always say that, uh, people don't know me, but they've probably seen my work. So when you hear who I've worked with on the info marketing side, uh, yeah, that's really what I'm known for, but, um, you know, I like to do a lot of, a lot of different, uh, stuff as well. I like it, dude. I mean,
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You were just touting the fact that you've probably spent over a hundred million on ads over your career over what, let me say the last five years, is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, I would probably say five, six years. Um, and that's gone up and down and that's been over, you know, different platforms, everything from Google display, uh, native Facebook, um, since I've started my Facebook agency, um, we really focus on Facebook and Instagram, but I still run Google search YouTube. Um, really any network I can run on.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So one things that, that, uh, I knew about Jordan before Jordan knew about me is I was impressed with Jordan's long copy skills. There's very few, uh, people immediate buy and tech can do long form creative well, um, and most, pretty much stick to short form just to get the click and, and make the funnel do the work. Uh, but Jordan, you know, I'm a fan boy in the sense that I think you do a better job of pre-qualifying the click than, uh, the thousands of agencies that I know of here at funnel. So, um, yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I appreciate that. That's actually, the name of my agency is long form creative segue I've ever heard. We could not have done that better. Yeah. That's the name of my agency as long form and um, you know, I think it's pretty obvious what we specialize in and people always ask me, you know, a lot of e-com guys, right? They're like, ah, too long for my copy. Doesn't matter. It's all the image. It's all that I'm like, Oh, is it really? Or are you just saying that because you're not making me images right.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
In e-comm you can get away with crap. Copy. Right. It's it's so visceral it's so it's so crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I got evidence on this, this argument, right? That is it doesn't copy. Doesn't matter for e-commerce. So I was like, let me write an ad. I wrote an ad for them. It was selling beef jerky and I made the dynamic creative with an angle. It was way longer than anything they had, but I pulled a story about jerky. I tied the craziest stuff into that story. Before you knew it, you were ordering a bag of beef jerky supporting the troops and being a good Patriot American, you know, and when did she know that ad hit at like 5.5? My buddy hit me back and he's like, what's up scale daddy, that beef jerky dynamic creative you made is that a 5.5 row ads. And so that's a story of how coffee does matter. Now you can get away with it. But that doesn't mean that you can approach your actual ceiling. Yes,
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Love it. I love it. We're getting into it, man. This is good. Let's just dive into it, man. Like what's the rich end what's working right now. Let's break it down.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So right now, um, I, you know, I, I don't mean to sound like we have a lot of ads that are working, right. I could have shown a lot of things. Um, I decided to talk about a webinar ad. Uh, like you said, I'm known for info marketing. So I had an ad that was with Bob Proctor and Adrian Morrison. And the angle is called my friend, Adrian. And in less than a year, this ad has made about $2 million. Literally one ad I spend between five and you know, three to seven a day, depending on, you know, what the marketplace is like. And I'm pulling anywhere from seven to 20, um, just an automatic webinar. The whole thing here is I pass it so many hours against this and this one always wins. And the headline is very simple. My friend, Adrian is an ecom genius.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And the ad starts by saying when I first thought, you know, when I used to think about e-commerce my mind immediately went to Jeff. Why? When Amazon took like 20 acres or whatever, then just went higher. Amazon took like some massive place, a massive percentage of the marketing. Um, until I met my friend, Adrian Morrison, now I'm not selling anything. I'm telling the story. You have no idea what the product is. You have no idea what my pitch is. I get into that later, but that was the best performing ad we had. And how I want to kind of kick this off on what's working for me is not focusing on what that specific ad, but the general narrative that we adopt, which is create better angles. Look at marketing from a big picture standpoint and the ads as the outlet or the amplifier for all of the business efforts, the creative efforts you do on the backend.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
That's where the needle is actually moved. Too many people focus on one single hack or one single element, or because it works over here. It should work over here. When the reality is you need to be making new creative with the purpose of entertaining people before you ask for their money, right? It's the same thing that Joe Rogan does. Joe Rogan in the world of content creation. Everyone is making my wish dribble. That's really short look at TechTalk right? Those the whole content platform is centered around videos that don't have any substance in the sea of meaningless. You have very rare creators like Joe Rogan, who are super, super long form yet they're capable of monetizing at a way higher. It's just not even close. And how does that happen? It's because Joe, Joe Rogan's podcast is worth money because so many people listen to it. And so many people will buy what Joe Rogan says to buy because he created content that he thought was interesting. He genuinely believed it was the best content. And so many media buyers are trying to just appease the masses and only think about the clip and totally forget that that's a real person behind that CPR. That is a real person with a light, with problems, with political views, the whole thing. And when you look at your marketing from that perspective, you're always going to win and you won't be a one trick pony
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Wrap up on that. And that's pretty good stuff. Thanks Jordan, go into church, go into marketing church that So good. So good. So this I, man, I mean, webinar ads are difficult, right? Like, so this, this ad was a webinar ad long form. It was, I mean, was it a video or was the image like, like what was the actual image behind it?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, I use that in a creative video image. I want to maximize the amount of real estate that I can buy. So vertical images, but it's all centered around the angle. Now we have some pick outs to be honest, and this one images actually work better than video and that happens in webinars. Um, but the media is centered around being congruent with that angle. So there's a video of Bob and Adrian talking that it's an image of Bob and Adrian standing in front of the, the, the desk that they did, the presentation and that went out, perform the video. So as long as the media is ruined with the angle, I don't think it's reliant upon a single type. I think both are the best.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Gosh, that's so refreshing. I love it. I love it. I'm such a fan.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
This episode is brought to you by funnel Nash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend. And if you're an ad agency that manages seven or even eight figures a year in media and ad spend for your clients, and you're looking to double your profits over the next six to 12 months, then check out ad card. See the typical agency model is this. You charge 10% of your spend and make 10 to 20% margin at the end of the day. So that's really one to 2% of your clients spend that is profit in your business. The easiest way to double that is a really find a way to earn in that one to 2% cash back of the card that is on file of your clients as ad account. And before add card we had to do was invoice all your clients for their ad. Spend up front. She's really difficult on a cash flow basis and very difficult ask. And then you had to put the card on your own Amex or whatever card of choice to get that level of value back into your business. With add card it's entirely different in streamline. You simply get your clients on add card and make yourself the agency of record and you'll get the cash back. As long as you're managing the ad spend, it's a great way to double your profit without doing any additional work.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Check it out@funneldash.com. All right, let's dive into it. Let's let's talk about some, some fails is done this time. It's done break it out. Dylan. Jordan, I just sent you an image on messenger, man. I want you to just give us your first thoughts on this ad. Yes, Zach, you already know our biggest fan Alibaba. These guys are, uh, these guys are going to sponsor our podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Now is this some straight or some straight shot, straight fire? Um, I mean, I really love the minimalistic approach that they've used here. This is, uh, this is horrible. I can only imagine that this was like a dynamic creative malfunction or dynamic product ad malfunction, but either way the images so useless, it's incredible. And the best part was, is I found this on the Facebook ads library, just scrolling through all their active ads. And once I saw you can buy rocks for starting at $0, I was hooked immediately. So I mean, you know, strong headline, you're not, you're not, you should see Dylan's newsfeed.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It's true. Basically is making money off of, off of Dylan's newsfeed. So many click-through rates, it's just stupid, you know? Yeah. Definition of a ad, you know, CTC. Uh, but yeah, see PCs. That is amazing. And what product before it's gotta be cool or rocks or some Santa giveaway thing. It comes with four stockings to fun fact. No. Oh my gosh. That was a, that was a breath of fresh air. Thank you, Dylan. Thank you, Dylan. All right, Jordan. Let's keep rolling. Let's keep rolling. All right. So yeah, the show really hangs at the intersection of finance and marketing. So Jordan give us some juicy principles, advice around scaling ads, whether it's managing budgets, whether it's, you know, thinking about funding ad spend, tell, tell us how you think about this. Both from the agency, you know, media buyer's perspective, but also how you're thinking about it for your own, um, brands. What are some do's and do not. So when it comes to funding and, and investing in ads.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Sure. So, um, I think the biggest thing is, uh, people will take the money they make from ads and then like go buy a Lambo. Um, when the money, the money that you make from ads is essentially energy, right? If you just pouring back into the machine, as opposed to doing something that makes you appear rich, you can actually build something that has longevity, but what a lot of people do with ads is they don't think about it from a cashflow perspective. They think about it from a cash grab perspective. And so they think that if they can just make the most profit as, as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Amazing. Oh, I love that soundbite. I'm so sorry to interrupt you just in your mid river flow, but investing in ads is all about cash flow and not a cash grab. Oh my gosh. I love it. That's so good. So money.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Thank you. Thank you. That will be the episode bite for sure. I'm not going to say anything better for the rest of it. There I've definitely peaked. Um, but so on that note, it's like people don't look at ads in the right way, really right. People look at ads as like, Oh, this can solve the problem of, you know, that I'm not getting, let me, let me rephrase this people that run ads, they would rather build, you know, a bunch of new campaigns with three ad sets instead of two with day parting rules and a B test between target costs and costs to get that 0.3 better row ads. When in actuality, they should be thinking of how can I offer my products in a way that makes people think it's a great deal. And so people are, are missing. They're approaching the entire idea of what advertising is for, uh, in a bad way.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And so then they'll take money that they made for that and buy something that doesn't have any ability. No, it's not an asset. They just throw it away in something. And then when the platform changes or the offer will go stale, that financial situation they've got themselves into now will hinder them for the next 10 years, as opposed to just being a small blip in which they can get up. If you look at companies that are extremely successful, like Apple, they have hundreds of billions of dollars on reserve in cash. Now they pay out their executives, but they understand that cashflow is necessary to weather the storms that allow you to make the bigger profits and seeing advertising as a player in that game, as opposed to something that can just make you a bunch of money to put it in your pocket is the difference between great advertisers and people who are victims or who are at the whim of the platform. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Hmm. Oh man. It's so good. I love it. What else, what else do you wanna say, man? Let's just, let's just give you like another 10 minutes, like talk about whatever you want on the podcast. Cause you just spent three minutes, your podcast.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Uh, so yeah, I'm uh, I'm dropping an album. It's a super stick mixed tape. No, I'm kidding. Um,
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Uh, no. So what I'm most interested in right now is, uh, you know, the things that like, um, are really, you know, I, I'm a big believer, right? Let me phrase it like this. Uh, Pablo Picasso says that, uh, I know of no other way to produce a great work then great periods of solitude. And his point being is the only way to do something really, really cool is to spend a good amount of time by yourself working on it. And so that sounds good in theory, but how do we do that? And so when I started some projects about a year ago that I didn't know what the power of my whole life, but they did. Um, I didn't, you know, deep work was the name of the game and it was that all day, every day. But I found that when I would sit down to do six hours of work, I constantly got distracted.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I would be, I would go on Instagram, I'd be scrolling Facebook. And I didn't know why it was almost like I mindlessly just went and did it. And you know, I couldn't figure it out. So I started reading a bunch about this and found that basically my brain was the victim of unearned dope and a good example of an unearned dopamine loop. Very obvious. It would be like a smoker, right? A smoker will tell you when they're stressed, they need to smoke a cigarette to calm down. Now that's like saying, I need to drink a cup of coffee to calm down. Like tobacco is a stimulant, right? It gets you up, but they still find relief relief from it. That's because there's a dopamine release in the brain when you smoke the cigarette and you're chasing that and that provides you a high, right? So that's an obvious one, a less obvious one is the result of why I was constantly distracted when doing deep work.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And that was things like Instagram, right? Instagram gives you a dopamine release that makes you entertained without doing anything to deserve that reward. Our brain used to get dopamine from like hunting elk for four hours. Right? That's a very, you know, the dopamine mean releasing only at the end. It's only when you do something productive. Now we can get it just looking at Instagram. Our brain interprets dopamine in binary. I E it has it and wants more or it doesn't have it and doesn't want to do it. So I was trying to do something that was super valuable, but couldn't focus because I had so many unearned dopamine loops in my brain that had the most, even the most productive work was impossible compared to scrolling Instagram or Reddit. So I threw away my phone literally for three months, just got rid of it and what don't, you know, it, those problems went away.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
When I brought, when I reintroduced my phone back into my life, it didn't have any power and now I forget it all the time. I leave it on airplane mode most of the day. And so if you can solve those issues as an entrepreneur, you will figure out the things that are preventing you from succeeding at a massive scale. And these are the things that make you successful in an almost self-fulfilling prophetic type manner, right? It's like, how did you ever seen someone? And you just know they're successful. This is what I'm talking about. You can reprogram your brain to be that person, but you have to be willing to go the lengths to do it. And I think that if people are focused on these things, they would find their whole business model is full as opposed to full foot.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I just got some dopamine off that. That was awesome. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah. That's the whole point, you know, you gotta get that. You gotta get that. Don't be me release baby.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That's great. No, we, we, we, you know, we, we gave you the floor and that's where you went, so I love it. Absolutely love it. Um, Jordan, you've been an amazing guest. Thank you so much for opening up. Like I, uh, I will definitely have you back on heck, maybe even have you on as a co-host and you can invite some of your dopamine friends. I don't know. Where can people get in touch? What, uh, how can people get in touch? What are you up to next?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah. Um, so, uh, track your power.com. Um, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's um, when I, you know, I've been on the back end of so many courses, when I decided to build one on my own, I realized that, you know, if I'm going to do this, it has to work. And so I thought about why people aren't successful and the answer is worse because of things like I just said, I could teach them all the CBO, all the ad hoc, everything, and they would still fail because they're not successful people, traffic, pilot addresses that root cause a week or so a week, one day three actually teaches you how to the new digital, fast, how to do a social media fast, reprogram your mind. And, um, the whole thing, you know, most courses are like the job I had to make my own platform because of all the gamification and things and features that I wanted to ensure that if people bought this course, it would actually change your life.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
It's thinking about the long-term instead of the short term. And so, uh, traffic pilot became that thing and we just released it. The initial beta it's gone extremely well. Everyone that has purchased it loves it. Um, it comes with lifetime membership to my group where I go live every Monday. And basically, if you want to learn how to master traffic, if you want to learn how to trade attention for money traffic, uh, you can start with the free training. And yeah, that is so cool, man. I mean, you see like incorporated gamification dopamine hits into your training for media buyers, right? Like essentially you're training up full stack agencies, media buyers, like anybody who wants to learn Facebook, Google ads, like they should go to traffic, pilot.com. They should go to traffic, palette.com. It's the same gamification that makes people waste their time use to for self-improvement. I flipped the script. Wow. That is amazing. So if you don't know how to read, or if you, uh, you know, just have a struggle paying attention or just suck at life, there's hope for you, uh, go to traffic, pilot.com. I love it.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Give it a round of applause. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed a.com to leave a review that a rich ed for at.com/review. Thanks again.
Hawke Media founder and CEO, Erik Huberman is in the business of growing and transforming businesses for clients like Red Bull, Verizon, Evite, Planet Blue, Stories by Kelly Osbourne and others. He is also Founding Partner of Hawke Ventures, Managing Director of Nest Equity Partners, and Operating Director of Arrowroot Capital. Prior to that he was owner of Erik Huberman Consulting which he founded while earning his BS in Business Administration - Management at the University of Arizona.
TAKEAWAYS
Why 99% of ad agencies aren’t helping their clients -- and how to be among the 1% that actually does
The massive financial red flag clients try to fly that you should run from like the plague.
How to float your client’s ad spend boat and make money doing it.
The biggest thing agencies need to be concerned about with their clients (and it’s not CACs).
Why today’s super low interest rates let you make a better case for getting ad spend bucks up front.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhuberman/
https://www.erikhuberman.com/
https://hawkemedia.com
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:02):
On this episode, Eric founder and CEO of hock meeting, I'd dive into land Rover's COVID-19 campaign, where they have a picture of a land Rover out in the, out, in the boonies, out in the wilderness. And this has practicing social distancing since 1948. He does a great job of breaking down why this campaign worked when it worked. Plus you're also going to hear about the underbelly of these larger mid-market and enterprise level ad agencies that are actually floating. Their clients is ad spending, meaning they're actually paying to the tune of tens of millions, of dollars for their clients in ads, and then waiting sometimes upwards of 90 to 120 days to get that spend back plus their agency fee. And you'll hear about why this is absolutely ludicrous and how you should avoid this at all costs and how you can actually make money by solving this problem for your clients. So without further ado, let's dive in to another episode of the rich dad, poor ed podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah. So I'm going to start with that asterix that like, I think 99% of that ad agencies don't help their clients. And so let's just take them off the table. So I don't think like the future of agency, I think is the same as it is now, because I think it's mostly, uninnovative like, or we run businesses, but the ones that are doing really good work that are going to come ahead. I think I have, and we'll think about the whole business of their client, not just the CAC that they're getting on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
[inaudible],
Speaker 4 (01:47):
You're listening to the rich and poor ed podcast where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Welcome to another episode of the rich add poor ed podcast. We've got a phenomenal, uh, well-known guests, uh, today I'm super excited to have on Eric Huberman, CEO and founder of hock media who really needs no introduction, but Hawks been around the game for almost seven years now, I think, um, based out of LA managing, I think I want to say over a hundred million dollars a year in ad spend and works with clients across dozens of different verticals, scaled a ton of e-commerce brands. I'm excited to dive into it. Eric, welcome to the show. My friend. Thank you for alchemy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So give everybody a little taste of what you're up to these days. I think most of the people listening on the show, you know, understands that that Hawk is, uh, uh, an outsource CMO for your marketing agency, uh, or as a marketing agency as your outsource, uh, CMO. But what what's the latest for, with you guys? Like what, what are you doing now and where are you taking things, uh, to the next level
Speaker 2 (03:19):
We're scaling growing, thankfully like, you know, we are, we're built to be remote, so we weren't remote before all this, but it hasn't really done anything but helped us. And so we're actually bringing people on, in a lot of major cities around the country and really scaling up our team, uh, building out more offerings, you know, outperforming what we had done before, which was already pretty good. So things are going really well. We're growing fast.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
That's awesome, man. So I, uh, I, I want to know why you started an ad agency. I, I feel like we've, we've got a large audience of ad agencies listening here, and a lot of them aspire to build an ex, uh, Hockney to hear this all the time from folks that are maybe doing, you know, seven, uh, maybe starting to approach eight figures, but talk to us about like how, how, how did you end up starting Hawk? And, um, and why is it, why are you still doing it today? Seven years is a long time to be doing, uh, uh, anything.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, I think masochism is a part of it. You know, I just like, I know it, honestly, it came from bill, I built installed two e-commerce companies. I just frankly hate most agencies out there. I think 99% of them are full of . And I have no idea how to actually scale a business. And this is coming from someone that has actually done it for myself. And so I was advising and consulting for a bunch of businesses and just found that everybody deals with this problem, that the agency landscape out there sucks. And so decided to do something about it and, uh, started building my own little SWAT team to help companies and then just scaled from there. Now, now seven years later and 170 people later, good place, you know,
Speaker 1 (05:01):
That's awesome, man. That's awesome. So let's dive into this rich head, man. I'm excited to see, uh, what you sent over let's let's let's pull it up.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
It's very code friendly. I mean, from the first look I had it, I loved it. I was like, Oh man, they're killing with the times going on.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yup. And the I'd say, when it went out, if they put that out today, they would not, I don't want to hear about social distancing anymore.
Speaker 5 (05:31):
Yes. We'll give everybody some context, the brand behind it. Kind of what it, what does it mean?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah. So a few things, one, uh, the timing of it, I think is key. They really knew what their audience was going through at the time. You know, this is right early COVID everyone just got put into quarantine. It was, I think like a week or two in where it's like, Oh , this might last a little while. And I haven't seen the sky and I'm not supposed to do outside. And like, it was like, you know, for the people that took this seriously, it was like peak. I'm not allowed to do anything, but sit in my house. Like I gotta be worried if I'm even getting someone to like deliver the mail. Like I, there was a point where I know Mo a lot of people like wiping their mail down with wipes, just in case the COVID was on it. Like, we still had no idea how contagious this was.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And so it's like stay home. And so this was a perfect ad of like a beautiful shot of nature, which anyone that likes nature and fit that, isn't it, you know, it's gonna trigger something for them. Uh, it's a calming message of practicing social distancing since 1948, basically land rovers saying like, Hey, you're all new to this, but don't worry. We got you. Which is exactly what people wanted to be here at that time was like, everything's falling apart. Like, can we have some, you know, beacon of light, some confidence here and boom, here's Landover saying, like, we've been doing this for a long time. Don't stress. It we'll get into nature soon. And it all, it, honestly, even for me sparked the idea of like, Oh yeah, social distancing doesn't mean necessarily just locking yourself in your house. It can be going camping, going to national park, which by the way, if you haven't heard national parks are absolutely flooded right now because everybody took that idea and Rover originated it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
But they were one of the first people. I mentioned that for sure. And, um, it was just like, again, there were this beacon of light at a time when people needed it, they set it early. This was when social distancing was just a brand new term. And like that, that's the thing, wait, three weeks on that ad and you look at it and you roll your eyes and go U2, like Jesus Christ. Like I, I saw a blog post today, um, of just like a list of all the people that said we're in this together. And it was like, it's pretty awful. How many companies, like when all the celebrities saying from their mansions, uh, w was it dreamer or something? Like, I forgot what they saying, but it was like, they all sang a song on Instagram or Tik TOK, whatever it was. It was like, Oh, thanks guys. You're we're all in this together. Are we? Yeah. Your 9,000 square foot houses, like it was. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Um, I mean, so Eric, you know, a thing or two about operationalizing marketing, right. And the timing of this, this is what's so magical, right? Like in a matter of weeks you have a really large brand taking massive action. Right. So like, walk us through, I mean, w w with hockey guys, you guys deal with this all the time, right? Like what does it actually take to operate racialized, something like that, to see a trend, the hop on it, to execute it on and put enough juice behind it, to where it has a meaningful impact?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, no, I think it's trust in their social team. Cause that's who put it out was their social team. And like someone somewhere put a process in place at land Rover that allowed for a little bit of autonomy, because there was no way that ran through legal and that ran through everything. Like there's no way that they took time on that. Someone just ran with that, for sure. And so they built a process that they could trust their people in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
That's awesome. I thought it was actually like a full blown ad campaign, but you're saying this was like a social post
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Social posts. They then boosted like, wow, got it. Make or break it.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
That is so cool. I mean, Ryan's view of like the, the, the, the, uh, the Peloton, um, it just totally tanked and, um,
Speaker 2 (09:09):
All right. It was so unfair, like that turned into, like, that was like one of the first witch hunts of the year where it's like, I get that it was a weird commercial, but like, it didn't how they, people took. It went so beyond how bizarre it was. Like, it was a little bit of a weird commercial. It wasn't that bad. Like it was bad. Don't get me wrong. It was a bad commercial, but the fact that it became headline news was ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah. But like, uh, what, what was, uh, what was the, uh, was it like a vodka company that like spun up the aviation gin? Okay. Well, that's Ryan Reynolds. Okay. Yeah. Well, Ryan, yeah. Uh, I mean, just one of the best comedians and creative it's like ever, but I'm just saying like the fact that they were able to respond like so quickly, um, and get so much juice off of that.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
They just sold the company. He just made a boatload of money too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
But I mean, like, that's a Testament of like one of these campaigns, you know, over a 12 month period as that kind of staying power, you know, can lead to some pretty amazing exits in a relatively short amount of time. Right. Like who the heck was aviation before Ryan started like coming up with all that crazy creative. Oh, really? Okay. Go for it.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
But yeah. No. Oh, no, he did not. He actually tried it and loved it. And that's how, yeah. His agents are friends. I was hearing the whole story.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Got it, got it. Got it. Okay. I love it. Okay. This episode is brought to you by funnel Nash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend. And if you're an ad agency that manages seven or even eight figures a year in media and ad spend for your clients, and you're looking to double your profits over the next six to 12 months, then check out, add card, see the typical agency model is this. You charge 10% of your spend. You make 10 to 20% margin at the end of the day. So that's really one to 2% of your clients spend that is profit in your business. The easiest way to double that is a really find a way to earn in that one to 2% cash back of the card that is on file of your clients as ad account. And before add card we had to do was invoice all your clients for their ad spend up front, which was really difficult on a cash flow basis and very difficult ask. And then you had to put the card on your own Amex or whatever card of choice to get that level of value back into your business. With add cart, it's entirely different in streamlined. You simply get your clients on add card and make yourself the agency of record, and you'll get the cash back. As long as you're managing the ad spend, it's a great way to double your profit without doing any additional work. Check it out@funneldash.com. Uh, let's let's into support as
Speaker 6 (11:58):
You're aware. Were you fine?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
You know, I find these all over the web. Sometimes Reddit, sometimes Facebook groups, but this one is really stood out to me. You know, it was really a thumb stopping from just how terrible it was. Um, I don't even know it's a beauty place in Concord, but they're breaking a lot of rules, 20% text rules, a lot of great deals and offers on this app. Great ad personally, I'm I'm ready to buy human hair or not, but I'm here to buy. It's a hundred percent at least, you know, it's not that 95% stuff happening. Well, I was trying to figure out like, why is a hundred percent human hair cheaper than whatever a wig is? Oh man, you're getting deep in this. I didn't even catch that. Hey, you know, I read this now the big thing I would say, like, from just getting real with, this is the first thing you're going to notice here is if there's a grand reopening, so something closed and it's reopening and that's the main point of this, which yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And I, I, by the way, w let's take the, like, who posted it out. If I was just reading this banner, I have no idea what the company is. Is it album Roe, right? Yeah. It's sun or is it, Oh, it's in Concord. It's just a really bad use of, there was no like design elements of like, what is the headline? Like people here, like, don't understand what the headline is, but I mean, you can even go further. I mean, this is a classic mistake, right? Like, what is the offer? These guys have like four offers all crammed in offer. It's like with human hair, branding air, I mean, you know, there's plus some other bonuses in there, which I don't, again, I don't know. I guess our beauty is a buy. So if cost makes sense, but why an anklet earrings? I know it's a foundational, like marketing principle, right?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Like just focus on one, offer one headline. And, uh, there were just like, well, we're not confident in the first one, the second one or the third one, Hey, maybe they wait one 20 bucks an offer. Like, I mean, wigs starting at five 99. That's not an offer. You just told me your price, what wig I don't need. And by the way, there's no images of any of the products. So I, again, grand reopening is the main point. That is from a design standpoint that is here. And if you're grand Rio, then not assuming, I guess their own to show this to people that know them, we're back, which is cool. Like great. Totally. And now you don't need to tell me that your wigs start at five 99. Cause apparently I already know you. If I don't know you, then I don't give a that it's your grand reopening and you don't like, what I would have done on the creative is I would have gone more geo, right? Like if it's in Concord grand opening, I wouldn't have like a picture of the store. Like something like that to like grab the eye of somebody that lives in Concord. Right. And it's like, Oh, okay. I'm going to like drive over to this spot. Um, I don't need to know. So we'll have prizes. It's like overkill. I mean, 50 cents for braiding hair
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Though. I mean, it's kind of a good deal though. Brilliant. Hey, you know, talk about it.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
One braid is 50 cents. That's what I mean, you really got to dive into this and if I'm this 20 bucks, now I'm not getting 40 braids to get my $20 to spin the wheel to get my free web cost. Is that how this is working? You can get so many, is that talk to them and just say, Hey look, the point of an ad is to drive the click. Like we shouldn't even be having
Speaker 5 (15:15):
These conversations, right. If you're looking at an ad
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And we're having these level of conversations, like you're doing understand it, I want to know who Alba Marley is or what album are we is? Cause it sounds like I'm left out of a club and I want the special discount, but might not have had to get this special discount. Cause I don't, I'm not part of this secret club because I'm descent. That's all I'm saying,
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Oh man, this is how to build an ad on PowerPoint. One-on-one here.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
That's so good. That's so good. I think this one, I love it. Hold on PowerPoint. They use some great word art, but like, I don't know that I could recreate this in PowerPoint. It'd be difficult. It takes some time. That's the thing. If someone absolutely spent some real time on this because they pulled different colors, they've got the Halloween grand reopening along with like the red and like they really thought someone did spend real thought on that. So that's our hope. It's not someone in marketing, but someone probably that frankly couldn't afford to, or kind of grab someone else or didn't have someone, they knew that how to do this. And they're like, I'm just going to do it. Which power to them. I actually liked the initiative.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
The click-through rate would just probably be, I would imagine decent with like, what is this? Let me click on it and see what happens. You know? So, I mean, who knows
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That pattern interrupt, it's almost jarring. Like I guess because now I'm gonna have to figure out what the this is album our way. Let's see what this is. It's a global specialty chemicals company. Now I'm concerned
Speaker 5 (16:47):
This women hair is not 100% at
Speaker 1 (16:49):
All. Yeah. So if you're a chemical customer, you that if you're buying lithium or bromine, you, you can, uh, get a discount on your wig. I don't know. Oh my gosh. Okay. That was fun. Thank you, Eric, for entertaining us. This was honestly one of my favorite rows. Um, that's awesome. People actually spent time with this. We never even addressed at all the other point. Uh, let's do this together. Like just throw this up there. Like they really, like, there are many powers in there. There's a lot of there's a lot going on. Oh my gosh. Well, moving on as fun as that was, uh, you know, the show is all about bridging finance and marketing and uh, what I'd love to hear from you, Eric or some of the financial principles of how does Hawk help their clients, you know, in this area, uh, we've talked with agencies that are like, Hey, that's not my problem. Like, you know, let, let my clients like worry about their cash flows, how they're funding acquisition, how they're funding growth, you know? But you and I have had pretty, pretty extensive conversations around like where you want to go with Hawk and the future of hock financial and like, you know, how do you see the future's role of, of ad agencies and their involvement in helping their clients like fund growth?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah. So I'm going to start with that asterix that like, I think 99% of that ad agencies don't help their clients. And so let's just take them off the table. So I don't think like the future of agency, I think is the same as it is now, because I think it's mostly, uninnovative like, or we run businesses, but the ones that are doing really good work that are going to come ahead. I think I have. And we'll think about the whole business of their client, not just the CAC that they're getting on Facebook. Meaning if you even look at the big guys, WP, Omnicom, et cetera, they've been in the business of financing, their clients for ever like they're, they're, they're providing net terms on ad spend. They're doing things like that. So it's one way. But the problem is if you're don't have an 8 million, eight, sorry, $8 billion balance sheet or something ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
You can't really afford to do that because if you're a smaller mid-sized agency, let's say you sign Nike and they want you to spend $20 million in ad spend for them. But they want to pay you on net one 20, which this happens to agencies they'll do it. And then one 20 days will pass and Nike will decide to pay it monthly. This isn't literal. I don't know that Nike has ever paid late, but I know many big brands do. And so the company goes bankrupt because now they can't stay above water. They fronted more money than they could ever afford. We were doing a lot of M and a in agencies. And we see this happen with agencies coming to us all the time. We had one, they ha they did, uh, they were doing about a million a month in revenue and we're 20 million in debt on clients spent and couldn't get it paid.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
So what, so let's break this down for a second because there's, there's two schools of thought, you know, an agency realm, which is I'm going to bill my, or maybe, well, there's more than two. I'm already thinking of like a handful, but like, let's just say there's bill my client upfront so that I'm not ending up in that situation, which is not great for the client because they get like negative float. Then there's, I'm going to front that the spend. And then I'm going to bill my client, which is what you just talked about. And then there's like, I don't want to touch it, put my client's card on file. You know, that's, that's, that's their role. So let's talk about the middle because I think the minute that that mail use case of the agency fronting the spend, I think is really a much more common at the mid market enterprise level agencies dealing with bigger budgets, which is surprising because that's like an insane amount of risk that you're taking. So w w why is that happening at the mid-market? And, and it helps shed some light there for some of the smaller agencies that haven't quite experienced this problem. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Just every big company has been around a long time. Like right now interest rates are zero. So keeping cash is actually kind of stupid. Like there's no reason to be just sitting on cash. It's basically based on inflation, you're just losing money, but still agent there, you know, policy-wise big companies are taught, keep as much cash as possible because when you're talking, let's say interest rates were where they were in the past and you're at like 5% to DVC numbers. And you're talking about a $10 million ad spend, well, that's what does that $50,000 a year. So you're still talking about four grand a month in income. I can make on that just by not giving it to you. And that's 10 million bucks. Budgets get a lot bigger than that, but let's just talk about $10 million. I'm going to make four grand a month, not giving it to you and letting you spend it. So if I have, if I delay four months and you go spend it, I just made 16,000 bucks,
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Uh,
Speaker 2 (21:40):
In terms of interest, payments alone, another one on the working capital benefits of that, where I can actually use it for other things while I don't pay you. So for big companies, when you're talking about scale, it's meaningful. If you're spending
Speaker 1 (21:52):
10 grand, well,
Speaker 2 (21:54):
The 50 bucks, I'm going to make a month, not giving it to you and it. Like that's, that's again, when we're at 5% interest. So like not, not as big of a deal know again, 40, but $41.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So, and this is rampant in, in, in, in TV and like radio, right? Like
Speaker 2 (22:10):
It was just a common practice in TV and radio and old school marketing, because you're talking about really big budgets. And, and they, you know, at some point someone asked for net terms and it went 30 days and 60 days and 90 days. And also, you know, agencies get put in a rock and a hard place for the, you know, if you know, you're dealing with, again, I'm just using Nike as the example, because they're big and they spend a lot on marketing, but if they tell you, you know what, we're going to either pay you 90 days after you spend it, or we're going to find another agency, someone's desperate enough to take that money. Now, do I think it's the best move for Nike to put their agency in a risky place? No, but usually CFOs are making that decision. Not CMS.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah. What, what level of scale do you see this happening with, with some of the conversations you're having at Hawk? Like where, cause this is not happening, like in the world of e-comm right? Cause like the brand wants to own the ad account. They're like throwing up their card, you know, their card on file. They're, they're working out their own terms. Um, but like at what level of scale do you see this pop up? Uh,
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It's not really scale. I mean, it's, it's definitely mid, you know, mid five figure spends at least. So like, no, one's going to ask you to front five grand and pay you in net terms when they do like their company, like run, but mid, mid five figures, you start usually again, it's not really necessarily a scale, always a scale thing. We have fortune one hundreds of pay us on time and ahead of time. And don't ask for this , it's literally individual culture and policy. A lot of like foundations and things that we work with that like are a little more old school in the way they operate or ones that ask. So we have a, uh, yeah, a few of our clients that are like old school like that and the way we've worked around it, cause we won't do that. We're not going to get into net terms is we basically say fine, we can kick off a month late. And then you get your net terms and you're going to have to, but you're not going to start spending money until you've already paid for it.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love it. I mean, this is, I mean, I'm going to do, I've been doing all kinds of, uh, live native advertisers for ad card here. Like this was one of the use cases for, for ad card was, uh, is to be able for a agency to be able to send their client, like to add card the client, to be able to put their funding source on, on file in the agency's ad account so that the agency is not taking the credit risk or the default risk in the middle, but the agency still gets to participate in the cashback and the interchange on the upside. Right. So there's like, there's a little bit of juice, um, there in terms of like wanting to squeeze out and honestly I've seen agencies. Yeah. I've seen agencies literally double, double their profit just off of figuring out how they can earn one to 2% cash back on their clients. Is that a credit risk?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Great for ad spend if that's the case, but it's still Oh, double the profit. Yeah. That's actually very fair. Like they could, I could see that if you're an ad agency, you charge, let's say an average 10% manage ads, your EBIT does 20%. Right. That's 2% of ad spend. If you add another 2% of ad spending cash back, you just doubled your profits.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I think that's fair. Uh, I love it. So, so, so what's the, what's the, what's the takeaway here? Right? So there's a takeaway for agency, which is like, don't do this, but like what's the takeaway for the brand, like do this or like bring it up.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
So the takeaway for me was working capital with a brand. The other piece is a lot of times it's in almost all the time. The payback period for a good marketing campaign is depending on the product can be a month, two months, three months that you actually make the money back and the returns back. So again, from a working capital standpoint, sometimes you're putting out money that you don't see the returns on for months. So if you can find ways to build a cashflow management around it, which again can be credit, can be, debt can be a, there's a lot of different ways to do that. But one of which is exactly what you guys do at FunnelDash like that, that is super helpful on the working capital side. That's why we've been interested in it is because it's not really about like, I don't have money to scale my business.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
So I'm going to take out debt it's that money. I know that my ads are working, but you know, every time I scale, I have to wait three months for it to scale for that returns to scale. So I'm just going to take out some form of debt to accelerate that so that I can scale faster than my working capital allows the same way people factor invoices, the same way people, you know, finance, they're a supply chain. It's the same thing with advertising. Like from the time you order and have to pay a manufacturer for your, to the time you get to sell, it is usually some period of time. So getting financing around that period really can help a business scale appropriately. Same thing with advertising.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the agency really takeaway here is, is twofold that if your client's really pushing you to, for you to take terms on their media, that that should be a massive red flag. Like yes, you can offer net 30 terms on your services, but I would not put yourself in a position where you're fronting the ad spend and offering net 90, 120. I don't care how large the client is. I would never do that. I would, I would force the client to really like, we're not forced the client like, and just say, Hey, go figure this out. But the, the right agency partner should bring that to the table. And I think that's what you're on to Eric with Hawk is like, this is a real problem, solve that, but put the credit exposure and the risk on the client and that really the, the agency, um, I think the opportunity for them is probably making some margin on facilitating that, that process, but then also facilitating, um, you know, at the car transaction level of like, it doesn't matter, like who's funding it, like what card it goes on and, and earning some of that cash back at the card level is, uh, is a pretty like small knob to turn, to, to double your, to double your profit.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Um, so th this was Epic. I think that's phenomenal advice, Eric, and I appreciate you having that perspective of, you know, what you're seeing crumble a lot of agencies and maybe if you've done this and you're an ad agency and you're suffering from cashflow, uh, talk to Eric at hock media who will buy your agency and solve this problem for you. I do do that sometimes. Exactly. So wrapping the show up, Eric, let's get, give us the pitch on how people can get in touch. What are you up to next, um, and, and feel free to offer a blatant pitch that you know, that you're looking to acquire agencies.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, no, on the agency side. Yeah. I'm always happy to talk. If agencies are looking like agency founders looking to scale a lot faster than they can do on their own, we've got a massive sales and marketing effort. We're doing a ton to expand and are working for good partners to do so with. So we've done four acquisitions gone really well, looking for more, um, that's that pitch. So to speak, it's a really heavy one. Um, the other thing we, we have e-commerce week LA coming up September 28th through October 2nd. So if you go to e-commerce week.la, um, that's going to be a really fun event, got about 10 we're expecting about 10,000 attendees. So it should be exciting. And, uh, what else is happening? Um, th those are the two cool things. I mean, growing the business fast and doing a bunch of stuff to give back to the community and bring it together.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's awesome, man. Well, Eric, you've been an amazing
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Guests. You always over-deliver. Thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
[inaudible]
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich dad, poor ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add pour ed book to learn more about the book, go to rich ed pura.com to leave a review that a rich had poor dad.com/review. Thanks again.
The founder of the 8-figure enterprise, GetClients.com and author of The Wall Street Journal and USA Today’s bestselling book “Digital Millionaire Secrets”, Dan Henry has helped thousands of entrepreneurs sell their advice or services online, for top dollar. He has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, and more.
Takeaways
Why the more you charge for a product, the less you have to spend advertising it.
What his relentless “Book a Call” CTAs are really designed to do (it has nothing to do with selling).
How sticking to his “sell nothing cheap” business model makes prospects more willing to buy
What reverse organic advertising is and how it can get people off the fence
Why he could stop running ads for two months and STILL get toasty warm leads.
RESOURCES/CONTACT
https://www.linkedin.com/company/getclientsdotcom/
www.getclients.com
www.getclients.com/funneldash
Transcript
Speaker 2 (00:00:29):
You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad. Poor dad podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with the one and only Dylan Carpenter. You ready to rock this? Dylan?
Speaker 1 (00:01:06):
Yeah, man. Y'all are going to geek
Speaker 2 (00:01:08):
Out for who we have in the, in the podcast today,
Speaker 1 (00:01:10):
Man, I'm geeking out over here right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:01:12):
Today today's guest is a new new agency owner. He's just getting started in online marketing and he made his first thousand dollars this last week. He did it all on a single day and now he's teaching other people how to start an agency and it is going to be good. He's the founder and creator of get clients.com. And uh, his name is Dan Henry who, uh, who is not at all the guests that I just described. But Dan is, uh, Dan is a character in the world of online marketing. And, um, he's doing some big numbers these days. I think he's most known lately for, uh, having the balls to, uh, to get out on the seas. It's just about how to like a ridiculous boat. I feel like that proceeds, uh, Danny. So I think Dan's the only person that we know on the show, Dylan that, uh, is like, see you later, COVID see you later quarantine. Like I'm going to go live on a boat piece.
Speaker 1 (00:02:12):
That's legendary status right
Speaker 2 (00:02:13):
There. Legendary status, man.
Speaker 1 (00:02:16):
My God, I just wanted a yacht. I just wanted a yacht.
Speaker 2 (00:02:21):
So Dan, welcome to the show. And how'd you like that intro? Is it like a pretty accurate, like you just think he's just got started like a week ago.
Speaker 1 (00:02:30):
That sounded a lot. It sounds like pretty much, uh, every I am or
Speaker 2 (00:02:34):
Today. Very, very classic, uh,
Speaker 1 (00:02:37):
Uh, description.
Speaker 2 (00:02:41):
I love it. Well maybe, uh, maybe you could tell people what you're up to these days. Cause I feel like, uh, your, your focus on like some, some newer things you're doing like a lot more high ticket stuff these days. And, um, it's not, it's not where you're up to. Like when you w when you just got, uh, selling chiropractors on local ads, so F fill everybody in on what's new.
Speaker 3 (00:03:06):
Well, I haven't had that offer in a long time. Um, I stopped selling that while back cause, uh, you know, I, after I did about 8 million selling, like online courses, coaching programs, it had some events, you know, I, I found myself being a lot more passionate about how to sell your advice and, and, and I felt it was a lot more impactful than, you know, getting some extra, uh, guys into a massage parlor or something, you know? Um, I mean, maybe that was impactful for them. I guess it depends on the type of massage parlor, but for me, I wanted to impact at a higher level. And I knew if I could help other experts sell their knowledge. Not only would I help them grow, but I'd help them help others. And so I decided to kill my old offer and, uh, start teaching people how to sell their advice.
Speaker 3 (00:04:01):
And I kept, you know, refining that. And, um, I just got, I mean, I'd love to tell you some esoteric, uh, mythical story, but I just got really good at it. And we've sold over $15 million to date of my own personal education products. And, um, I've since, you know, raised my prices and, and developed a much more VIP experience for clients, uh, to go with that increase in price. But, uh, as I say, a lot of people say, Dan, you know, what's your cheapest thing? Do you have anything for like 500 bucks? You know, I say, no, I don't have anything cheap because I don't have anything that sucks. So
Speaker 2 (00:04:45):
I love that. No, I don't have anything that totally sucks. So what's like, what's the highest ticket thing you've got
Speaker 3 (00:04:53):
55,000. Well, I do have a $100,000 offer that I'm I'm planning. Uh, but the one, the, the highest one that I have right now is a $55,000 mastermind, and it's more intimate coaching with me and I sold two those last week.
Speaker 2 (00:05:13):
Thanks. And, uh, that's cool, man. Well, I'm excited to dive into this, like, uh, you know, we were talking before the show, you keep things really simple on the advertising side. And, uh, I feel like we, we really want to dive into, you know, some of the mindset of like, behind, of what it takes, uh, to create a winning ad campaign. And you've got, you know, some interesting numbers, right? Like it's not like, uh, some of the e-comm businesses we've had on, you know, spending a hundred K a month making 200 and they're trying to borrow money from, from Shopify to, to like float it through, you know, black Friday. Uh, so like walk us through a little bit about, um, know what's
Speaker 3 (00:05:58):
Working for you now on ads. And, uh, what's, what's been the biggest difference for you as you've got? Well, the thing about, uh, selling high ticket is you don't need to spend as much on ads to make, you know, the same amount of money. And because when you sell high ticket, you are selling over the phone. You know, if you have two or three or four reps, you can't just blow $10,000 a day because you have nobody to take phone calls. Um, but the profit margins are so ridiculous that you don't need to spend that much. And I've spent actually I used to spend five, 600 K a month to make a million in a month. And you know, and then of course, you've got other expenses at your company and this and that. Um, we're spending maybe a hundred now, maybe. I mean, we have months that are 60 to 80 and still hitting seven figure months.
Speaker 3 (00:06:59):
Um, and I know that's like a huge, uh, you know, it's a decrease in spend, but it's an increase, massive increase in profit. And there's a few reasons why that's working for me. Number one is, you know, I don't, I don't sell anything cheap. Uh, number two, I give a lot of value upfront. We either take them to buy my, um, my book, digital millionaire secrets, and, uh, uh, or we send them to a, a webinar. Um, and if they like that, then they book a call and they get on the phone and we enroll them if they, and, and the way that I do it is absolutely everything revolves around one idea, book, a call. And so if we send out retargeting ads, it's always to either a piece of content native in the ad, it goes to an application, or it is to a piece of content that is leading to book a call.
Speaker 3 (00:08:05):
Every time I release a YouTube video, it goes on my blog. Every time I release a podcast episode, it goes on another section of my website. And under each piece of content, there's a button that says, was this helpful to you book a call. And every email we send out, every retargeting ad, once you see that initial core content, which would, you know, for most people be a webinar, everything else is intended to just get them off the fence that, you know, they go on the webinar and they either say, yes, I'm going to book a call. No, Dan, you look like, um, Doogie Howser and drew Carey ran into each other super fast and exploded and, you know, whatever. And they just say, I don't like you, I'm never in a buy that's maybe like, you know, that's like maybe like 10, you know, five to 10% book, a call right away.
Speaker 3 (00:08:48):
Maybe 20% are like, no, Dan, I hate you. You suck. And, but then you have 70% that are on fence and every single episode of a podcast or an email or a retargeting ad or a student case study or a blog, but everything revolves around one simple idea. I'm going to give you enough information to get off the fence and book a call. And that starts to roll over month after month after month. And if I, if I turned off ads right now, I would still be experiencing sales from my ad efforts from the last month and the month before that. And the month before that. And when you make it like that, um, everything becomes super profitable. It's even in, you know, it integrates even into organic. I mean, a lot of people view organic, like, well, I'm gonna run ads. I'm going to get new customers and I'm gonna do organic.
Speaker 3 (00:09:42):
I'm going to get new customers. Well, I don't do that. I do reverse organic where I spend money on ads and I bring you people I've already paid for, into my, uh, organic audience. And that is where I nurture you to get off the fence. And if somebody else, your friends, people who see you happen to chime in along the way they can, and they'll end up back top of funnel and we cycle it like that. I don't go out there and try to grow necessarily my audience organically. I nurture the audience already paid for and as a by-product that grows new people. And when you do that, that ad spend becomes worth far more than just, you know, I spent a dollar and I made a dollar back because that dollar you made back may in of itself make two or three more dollars. And so, um, that's in short what it is. And I know that sounds very simple. You just send them to one piece of content and then give them more content. But the thing is, it's not simple or complex it's if you do it well, it works really well. Um, and
Speaker 2 (00:10:53):
Yes, sir, you're a walk us through this call process. Like, um, they book a call and, uh, like, you know, what, what goes down on these, these elusive, uh, phone calls?
Speaker 3 (00:11:07):
Well, how it works is when they book a call, they fill out an application. Now they can either get approved or denied if they get denied. I mean, it depends on how they answer the questions, right? We don't want to waste anybody's time and we don't want to have our time wasted. So if they get denied, they go to a denial page. Now on this page, we say, Hey, listen, this is why we denied you. If you don't feel this is accurate, go ahead and continue to book your call. Now, if they get approved on the application, they go straight to a page to book their call. And when I say book their call, I mean, pick the time, you know, we use Calendly currently. And then when they pick their time, they go to a homework page where they get a video explaining how to prepare for a call and a program overview guide. So they, you know, they have all their questions that they're logistical questions about our program answered prior to the call. And if you do it well, you don't actually have to sell on the call to sell happens in your core content. You're simply closing on the call, which means you're not, you know, you're, and, and to me, the art of closing is simply getting somebody comfortable, uh, with separating themselves from their money in order to buy something that they already want. That's closing. So it's really more of a mindset call to get you connected.
Speaker 2 (00:12:26):
And how does it go at the end of the call? Hey, uh, I need to check in let's let's schedule a follow-up, uh,
Speaker 3 (00:12:33):
Depends on if you've been trained by me or you're just trying to do it yourself. That's how it would go. If you try to do it yourself, we don't, we close on the first call. There's no to call system. We do it. Once you book a call, we do have somebody that calls you right away, confirms your call. And we always confirm calls. If you don't answer, you don't confirm the call. We canceled the call. Um, so our close rate is high. And one of the reasons is because we get people qualified on the call and we confirmed that. They're going to make it. Now you mentioned, I know you guys care a lot about ads and campaigns and then the technical. So I'll give you one quick aspect. Here is when they fill out an application, if they go, if they go to the next page that we set up a custom conversion, and we count that as a qualified, uh, call, right?
Speaker 3 (00:13:20):
Like a qualified application. If they go to the app denial page, we count that as another cost of conversion as a application denial. So in our dashboard, we can see how many qualified calls we booked and how many denials we got from a certain ad. And more importantly, when we run retargeting ads, we are optimizing for qualified calls, not just any call. So there's a little hack, a tweak right there. That definitely, I mean, you know, we, we get like 20, $30 book calls on our retargeting ads because it's just so dialed in. Um, but yeah, when you get on the call, we, we go through, we essentially, what we do is we ask you questions and we make sure we can help you. Um, we make sure that our program, if it's not a fit, we don't offer it to you, right. Because you're not going to be happy. We're not going to be happy. Um,
Speaker 2 (00:14:11):
No. Are your people getting on the call where they're like, uh, they know they're going to make a buying decision or is it kinda like a,
Speaker 3 (00:14:20):
It depends on how, how you know where they're at. I mean, if, if they watch the core content and or they read my book and they're all about it, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna want to make a decision. Um, but we try to filter out people who are, you know, just browsing per se. Uh, but a lot of times people get on the call and they say, Oh, I'm not buying anything today. But then when we show them how we can help them, they say, you, what I wasn't going to buy today, but I'm in a B. And the thing is, is I always say, if somebody doesn't buy from you, it's because you didn't effectively sell them. Not because they weren't ready or they couldn't afford it, or anything of that, because you know, the concept of, I can't afford it. I'll give you an example. If I said to you, Zach, give me $10,000 and I will give you a car, but I'm not going to tell you what that car is. What would you say? I can't afford it. Okay. But you need to know what the car is. Right. But now if I say Zac, it's a Lamborghini, give me $10,000. You got seven days, come up with 10 grand. I'll give you a Lamborghini. Or would you say, yeah, you'd figure out how to find the money. Right. Then I would say, so let me get this.
Speaker 2 (00:15:37):
Let's just pause there. Right? Like you figure out how to get the money. You got to do a one call close and be like, Hey, let's get this credit card now. And then you're going to go figure out how to get them out.
Speaker 3 (00:15:47):
Well, no, no, no, no. We don't. I mean, you would do we make sure that, I mean, I guess if you have a credit card, you have access to the money, but we don't, we, I'm not a credit card guy. Uh, we have, uh, we, we present our people with some options that are a little bit better than credit cards. Uh, if, you know, if they can get approved for it, uh, because you know, credit cards can be crazy, like 20 grand or a 20% interest and all that. And I, I wouldn't want anybody to pay a 20% interest, but I mean, not that, not that it wouldn't still be worth it, but it's just a lot, you know? Uh, but we, I say, you know, um, you're willing to go out and find that money for a Lamborghini for a car, but you're not willing to go out and find it to move your business to the next level. So you can buy as many of those cars as you want. And here's the thing. If you tell me it's more important to me to get that car, I'm not going to offer you my program. But if you tell me, no, it is, I care about my success. I care to make this happen. That's a different story. So we don't actually offer the program to everybody. We only offer the program to people. We know we can help that we know are coachable and that we know are going to actually do something with it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:17:06):
That's awesome. Man. One of the things with, with high ticket, you alluded to earlier is financing is a big, big piece of it, right? And a, or a payment plan is a big piece of it. Either. Whichever one you want to call, do you find like, um, uh, how do you guys think, how do you guys think about this? Right? Like, cause some people, you know, when they're selling high ticket, they're, they're very like anti, like, I don't want to get my like clients or students like in, in debt or I don't want to have them like leverage anything
Speaker 3 (00:17:37):
You don't believe in your program.
Speaker 2 (00:17:40):
So you don't believe that
Speaker 3 (00:17:42):
That's B that basically means you you're. You're just said. So you see, so first I'll give you an example. If I said to you, if I, if I could work with you directly and I can teach you how to book calls and close sales, I know. And your, your offers say, 5k, I know you would make 20 grand in the next 30 days. If you were my worst student ever. I know that, right. As long as you show up, I know I can help you make four sales, even, let's just say two sales, that's it. I know that, right? Like there's no fricking I have zero doubt in my mind. So if I sit there and say, Oh, I don't want to put my client in debt. Well, then you must have a real crappy product, because if you don't believe that you can help them make it back.
Speaker 3 (00:18:29):
What does that say about you? You know, or if you say, well, it doesn't have to be, make money. Maybe it's weight loss, right? I mean, how confident are you? And, and my thing is if you're that, um, unconfident that you think they're going to waste their money, then you go figure out how to make your product better. Period. That's [inaudible] they just want to jump in their little internet marketing groups and talk about split tests. Like they don't actually want to be a real entrepreneur and build a real company. And that's the difference. And especially in high ticket, I mean, you just mentioned pay plans and funding. I mean, we, we have a funding company we work with, but the vast sum over 80% of our sales are full pace. Right? We don't, I mean, we don't really have a huge issue with that very little pay plans and, um, not, not a ton of funding, but we do get a lot of people funded. It's just the vast majority do full pit.
Speaker 4 (00:19:24):
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Speaker 3 (00:20:41):
Check it out@funneldash.com. I love it. I love it. So walk us through,
Speaker 2 (00:20:48):
Uh, walk us through a poor ad, man, walk us through what not to do. If somebody is like, Hey, Dan, we teach, or you just like how to just run a completely losing ad. And, uh, what would it be? The advice that you would give to them or not
Speaker 3 (00:21:07):
You're running ads for like a chiropractor or a local business that's so there's not much I can say on that. I mean, if you can't figure out how to get people to a massage parlor with Facebook ads, I don't know what to say. I mean, that's, it's like the flag football and it's like Tom Brady playing flag football. Like you should be able to do it. It's not a big deal, you know, but when you want to sell something that's more transformational and that this is the difference. Massage parlors, um, fidget spinners phone cases. These are transactional products are commodities. They're, they're, they're not products that make an impact on your life per se, but then you have transformational products and transformational products are going to be things like coaching vents, masterminds, online courses, consulting, perhaps even, you know, a niche accounting service. Right. Uh, I, I know when I got my account in my life changed, cause I saved like over a million dollars in taxes last year.
Speaker 3 (00:22:07):
So that changed my life, you know, but here's the thing. The problem is when you're just an ad person, you can run ads for a transactional product and everything's fine. But when you sell a transformational product, uh, it's, it's very difficult to just focus on the ads because there's a symbiotic relationship between the ad, the funnel, the, the, the content, everything, um, you have to know things about how you came to believe, what you believe in order to run great ad campaigns. Um, one thing I do is I always come up with angles and so I'll come up with a story or an angle or a life lesson, or, uh, some sort of epiphany or whatever, and that'll be an angle and I'll run an ad campaign. I'll try it on multiple audiences. I'll try it obviously with some variations, but ultimately I'll see if that angle is working and if it does, then I will move it to a, lose a winning position.
Speaker 3 (00:23:16):
I just keep it in a Trello board. And if it doesn't, I move it to a losing position, right? So this is the mistake most people make, they just look at data, they just kind of make things more. I'm going to make this ad and I'm going to follow this ad structure and they don't consistently get better at the types of ads they're putting out. And when I can not, I can have a column of losing angles and winning angles and I can study myself and I can figure out how to better stories, how to
Speaker 1 (00:23:46):
Be better on camera,
Speaker 3 (00:23:47):
How to, um, what things are people connecting with more. And so my, my ad campaigns are very simple. I have a cold campaign and a retargeting campaign and that's it. And I just try to put out better ideas
Speaker 1 (00:24:05):
And better ways of saying things and not be so concentrated on what
Speaker 3 (00:24:10):
Enzyme pushing, because that's been more training. That's been, that's been more effective than anything. Um, so I would say a couple of things and, and here's some specifics, right? Uh, w if you're using a pattern interrupt, okay. Be very careful because what a lot of people don't understand about, uh, optimum,
Speaker 1 (00:24:32):
My optimization based platforms like Facebook is,
Speaker 3 (00:24:35):
You know, part of your targeting is your copy because your ad
Speaker 1 (00:24:40):
Is being optimized to show to people that resonate
Speaker 3 (00:24:43):
With it. So here's the thing. If I say at the beach, let's say, let's say, I want you to buy my book. Right? My book teaches you how to create a, a, you know, million dollar, uh, informational product. So
Speaker 1 (00:24:56):
If at the beginning of an ad, I say something like,
Speaker 3 (00:25:00):
Um, you know, uh, uh, what's
Speaker 1 (00:25:03):
The secret of the wealthy that nobody wants
Speaker 3 (00:25:05):
You to know. I remember when I was poor and I, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? You got to wait three, four, five paragraphs. Before I get to the part where I tell you that you're going to make money by selling your advice information. Now, if at the beginning of that, I say something that specifically calls out my audience, like what a most
Speaker 1 (00:25:30):
Coaches and consultants not know about creating wealth. Well, now, what did I do? I use a very similar pattern interrupt, but this time I made it, what I call an identifying pattern interrupt. And that's where the pattern interrupt not only grabs your attention, but it would only grab the attention of your ideal
Speaker 3 (00:25:47):
Client. And I see so
Speaker 1 (00:25:49):
Many ads where you got to read three, four paragraphs down before you even know
Speaker 3 (00:25:53):
The ads about, I like to make it very clear who it's for and w and why,
Speaker 1 (00:25:59):
Or at least allude to why they'd want to read that ad in the video
Speaker 3 (00:26:03):
First sentence. And when you do that, people who are not your target audience don't resonate with it. So they don't click and interact with it and people that are do. And so that optimization goes not just towards people who are optimized to click on it, but who are the right people to click on it. And I do talk about that in the book, but that's, that is one thing I do different is I always identify every single time, even at the top of my emails, you know, everything I try to identify who should care
Speaker 1 (00:26:36):
About what I'm about to say and why they should care about
Speaker 3 (00:26:39):
It. That's awesome, man. I love that. I feel like you do,
Speaker 2 (00:26:45):
Uh, I feel you coach people on how to create a winning ad, not Louisiana, which is better, which we love. That's awesome. All right. So for this next segment, what I want to talk about is, you know, some financial principles on how you think about running and operating your business, and you've, you've gone through, you know, a lot of different iterations and graduations in your entrepreneurial journey. And, um, and I feel like you're at a different spot right now where I feel like you're fairly disciplined in, um, and there's a lot of, you know, people in the show that the grass is green on the other side, right. They're on an agency. They want to build a big, you know, SAS company, or they are, um, you know, getting into like info. And then they like, um, you know, they want to, uh, they miss the agency game.
Speaker 2 (00:27:39):
Right. And you know, what we see in, in, in some of these instances, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, right? Like you've got one business it's like profitable, and then you're throwing money out the door. So, you know, I'm curious to share like, about your, your journey of like, you, you tiptoed a little bit into tech, right. With, with lead owl a year or two ago. And, um, yeah, before this, you're like, yeah. I'm like anti, like big business. And, um, and so like it, yeah. Tell us like how you've gotten to where you're at and what you're optimizing for right now on the finance.
Speaker 3 (00:28:19):
Well, I, you know, I've never really wanted to be like a big CEO type, like running around like a chicken with my head cut off, like Gary V and, you know, just constant. Like, I'm like, I'm on, like, I got an Ivy of methamphetamine in my arm running around, you know, making Instagram videos and stuff. It's just not me. I like to impact people. And I lied to, you know, have the lifestyle that I have. Um, if I want something, I just go make the money to get it. Like I wanted to, I wanted that yet. I'm like, all right, well, these yacht, how much are these yachts? And, uh, I found that, you know, about 2 million bucks. So I went out, I made 2 million bucks. And, uh, um, I mean, I, I obviously didn't pay cash for cars. That would be, that would be absurd.
Speaker 3 (00:29:08):
But, um, I did get a seven. I did get a 700. So this is a funny thing, right? I'll, I'll, I'll break down the finance side of it. Let me get to the yacht in a sec. So, first of all, I always say, if you got two businesses, right, and you haven't made a million with the first one, you have no business doing anything with the second one, you go make, you know, you, you go make billions of dollars with a business. You want to start a side project or even two fine. But if you've not, at least made a million, by the way, that is, that is the entry fee to the beginner circle. You have no business making a second business. Okay. Cause you can't make the first one successful. What makes you think you can make the second one successful? Now, if you're trying to transition out that's, but still, I mean, you know, focus, focus on what you're doing. Um, I didn't like agency work because I wanted to,
Speaker 1 (00:29:59):
You know, I did it for a long time, but then I wanted to be more impactful.
Speaker 3 (00:30:01):
And so I switched to selling my advice and coaching and whatnot like that. And here's the thing. There are businesses you can sell. And there are businesses that swell and
Speaker 1 (00:30:14):
I have created, I mean, I acquired 50% ownership in a software company,
Speaker 3 (00:30:19):
Hold it up. And then we sold it for multiple, multiple seven figures a year and a half later. I'm very happy as nice little capital gain. And, uh, that was a great payday for me. Um, but
Speaker 1 (00:30:35):
That's a business you can sell, you create an e-commerce store and you, you don't make huge profit margins, but
Speaker 3 (00:30:41):
You can sell it maybe down the line. So that's businesses, you can sell. I with what I do, I can't sell my business. My business is Dan Henry. Right? You buy my book, got my frigging face on it. You know, like what, what am
Speaker 1 (00:30:57):
I going to do? You know, I can't, I cannot sell
Speaker 3 (00:30:59):
My business. I don't think Tony Robbins can sell his business. And if he did it, it would not be at the same value if he's not there. And that's the thing is, uh,
Speaker 1 (00:31:13):
Trade off though, is that my business is extremely profitable. I've had million dollar net
Speaker 3 (00:31:17):
Months net, and I'm talking like net, net, net, net, net, net. So here's the thing
Speaker 1 (00:31:28):
I can't sell that business, but you know what I can do, I can use that money to invest. I'll give you a quick rundown of some of the stuff I'm involved in. I generally
Speaker 3 (00:31:37):
Put in six figures minimum a month into something every month, always looking for deals. Um, so right now I bought a, I bought about, uh, 6,000 shares of Apple. Um,
Speaker 1 (00:31:52):
I've, I'm also,
Speaker 3 (00:31:55):
Uh, into crypto a bit and, uh, some of the more Orthodox crypto stuff, um, got some six figures in that, uh, I've got multiple six figures in a cannabis fund that, uh, loans money to cannabis farms that can't meet demand. I've, uh, invested in a project building section eight, housing vested in an apartment project. Um,
Speaker 1 (00:32:20):
I do own multiple real estate properties, but I'm, I'm not,
Speaker 3 (00:32:23):
Not really wanting to buy more real estate because it's, you know, you buy real estate and you think you're, you know, Oh, I'm gonna earn 20%, but you can get into a real estate.
Speaker 1 (00:32:33):
They fund with people that know what they're doing, and you can earn 14%. Why am I going to bother them?
Speaker 3 (00:32:37):
That's somewhat that one, what I do is this, you know, um, so I'm in multiple funds. Um, as well as recently, I decided to create a, some accessory products to what I do, basically their own little companies. So they'd be like sister companies. I've got a physical product coming out. I've got, um, uh, and this is something that happened recently. Uh, you know, I, I sit around on my calls and I think that night, you know, 99% of the questions I get, they're not really marketing questions. They always end up being mindset questions. So I, you know, I like to think to the future, a lot of where I'll be in three, four or five years. And so I, uh, I was just randomly, you know, hanging out one night and I, I wanna, I wonder if, how to think.com is available just like a random thought.
Speaker 3 (00:33:29):
So I go to GoDaddy and I type in how to think.com, knowing that that would be a great domain. And knowing that eventually I would come out with a mindset offer. Cause that's, you know, that's like, honestly I L is the mindset, but yeah, if you say that, you're the one that needs it the most. Um, but, uh, you know, I put it in and it was like three grand and I go bot, so, you know, I'm always investing now. Let's, let's bring that back around to the yacht. Right. So my, my CPA calls me, she says, listen, Dan, here's the deal. You got an opportunity here. I know you've always wanted a yacht. I said, yeah, I've always wanted a yacht. I grew up on sailboats. My dad used to be a sailing. Uh, we used to race sailboats. Like he also used to deliver them as a captain.
Speaker 3 (00:34:16):
Yeah. I'm I'm in the boats. Yeah. So she says, well, listen, I don't know who's going to get elected this year or not. But the current administration has a really awesome tax credit, but they did. And it's, you know, it might go away eventually if somebody else gets an office as well, what is it? They said, well, normally there's a $250,000 deduction on yachts. Well, right now it's 2 million. And I go, well, you know, so I come to put this all in perspective, um, just this year by purchasing that yacht. And let me just run the numbers for you. Right. Cause I don't like to waste money. I don't.
Speaker 2 (00:34:57):
So with the business deduction before we even get into this, because I feel like I saw some posts where like, Hey, can we do a mastermind on a yacht? Right.
Speaker 3 (00:35:06):
And that's what I'm getting to this. I'm getting to, okay, I'm getting there. So,
Speaker 2 (00:35:10):
So I know how it qualifies for a business expense before we actually get into the that's the cherry on top.
Speaker 3 (00:35:18):
So I find out by purchasing the yacht, I save over 700,000 in taxes like that. So right off the bat, we just took that $2 million yacht down to 1.3 million just off that. And that's for the first year, that's not even, you know, so then I find out that the yacht comes with and it's only chartered out for a very short amount of the year. It comes with $300,000 a year in income from existing charters already booked on the, on the app. Okay. So within a year, we're up to, so now, now, now the boat's only a million. Okay. Plus I decide that, um, I'm going and I, again, I, I have a special relationship with GoDaddy. That's how I know I go and I type in millionaire, cruise.com and sure enough, it's available. So I buy it, I start a company and here's, here's how, so this is what I do.
Speaker 3 (00:36:15):
Here's my idea. My, my, my idea was I would sell a one day mastermind where it'd be like maximum of 10 people. So you'd think there'd probably be normally five to 10 people. You could fly out here, you get on the yacht. We go out for the day, we talk business, I'll look into your, your sales, your company structure, your, um, whatever it is, you need to grow your business. Right. And that one conversation that can happen on that boat or the network. I mean, if you're a serious entrepreneur, you know, that, that that's worth it, right? Like that, that one conversation or one new perspective can change everything, give you a paradigm shift. So I go out and I say, Hey guys, here's the deal. Here's and it's not cheap. I said, here's, you know, it's a five figure investment. They here's what it is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3 (00:36:59):
Nice. Put out this little funnel. And I say, only sign up for this. If you want me to call you, when you, when it's time to buy a ticket. And we had over 75 people sign up in the first week. So I'm like, all right. So there's like a million dollars a year in revenue, right? So then I call up my buddy Myron golden, and I call up another, a couple other big influencers. I talked to Sam ovens, some other guys. And um, I say, Hey guys, I have an idea. How about you sell a one day mastermind to your audience to have a mastermind with you all attend if you want. Or if you say no, Dan, I don't want you there. Well, good. I'll go. I'll go. You know, I'll go to the gym or something to have fun. What you sell them on that mastermind day with you, I'll give you the boat.
Speaker 3 (00:37:48):
My crew as a full-time crew that lives on the boat, a captain and a stewardess private chef. They'll take the boat out. They'll cook for you. They'll do your mixer. They'll, they'll give you the full luxury experience. You give me half and I've already got three influencers that are like, I'm ready. You know, when can I, how many people have about, so I'm sitting here saying to myself, it's going to cost me more money to not have this yacht than to have this yacht. And I get a yacht. So that's how I like to invest. I like to really run numbers. I like to make sure things are going to happen. And that's where I put my money in, especially in things that, you know, I enjoy like yachts and cannabis. Oh man. My mind's exploded,
Speaker 2 (00:38:37):
Man. I absolutely love how you made that pay for itself before you pulled the trigger and most people would have stopped at the tax deduction. Right. So like what, how does this work with your existing business? Like walk us through, let's just like spin up like a year yacht LLC. Did you
Speaker 3 (00:38:55):
Eric Cruz, LLC. Yeah. So I just asked my current clients who wants to come and they're all like they're all super down. So, I mean, I mean, I've got thousands of customers who would love to spend a day that, that close to, to learn from me and, um, and from each other, you know, at that level. And, um, as soon as I said it, everybody was, was in, like everybody wanted to do it. And so I knew, you know, and so we already had like branding and a logo made and we've got, um, we're actually replacing all of the fabrics on the cushions, on the boat with new fabrics, which have the millionaire cruise logo embroidered onto them. Um, we've we have a little, little drink napkins because the way we do it is we have sessions throughout the day. We have a lunch, we have a, a nice, more formal dinner and then we have, uh, drinks like a mixer, right? So like the little cocktail napkins, all have the millionaire, cruise logo on it and all this, you know, it's going to be great. So it's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:39:58):
I love that. Well, on this episode of the Richmond port podcast, I feel like you have just constantly come back to a mindset, but we haven't really dove into it yet. And, uh, what do you, what do you think the biggest difference is between somebody doing 10 grand a month, net, net, net, a hundred grand a month, net, net, net, net, net, net, as you would say, and a million a month net.
Speaker 3 (00:40:26):
Well, so here's this thing, right? When you're born, you have an adolescent life, you have friends and family and you have a childhood and you even have an early adulthood. And what happens in this life, this beginning of life really defines and creates what I call a construct of how you're going to think what you're going to believe, how you're going to approach things. And it's not really your beliefs. It's not really your personality. It's what was given you as a default template by your experiences growing up, for instance, let me give you an example of something that everybody can relate to when you at, when somebody asks you, why they start a question with, why have you ever noticed that? For some reason you tend to get a little annoyed when somebody asks you, why? Like, why are you asking me? Why? Like, even if you don't say anything, you do kinda kind of irritate you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (00:41:26):
Well, here's why, when you're a kid, what do your parents say? Every time you do something wrong, what's the first they say, don't do that. But they say, why did you do that? Oh, why? Oh, I'm sorry. Why did you, I told you that. Why didn't you listen? All right. So your parents criticize you and they, 80% of the time begin with the word. Why? So later on in life know, it's not that asking someone why is offensive it's that you were programmed to feel it was offensive. And so what happens is you go out into the world with this construct of beliefs and limits that we're all in all different categories. We're set on you. Well, some people accept that construct. They say, well, this is who I am. I'm just not that person. I I'm, I'm an introvert and I'm not comfortable. And I'm, you know, I wouldn't even say that a lot of people don't even know what those contracts are.
Speaker 3 (00:42:23):
Oh, they don't know they have it. Yeah. They have no idea, you know? Um, and so what happens is they, uh, they go, they got one or two choices. They can either accept the construct, go through life and live under those limits. Or they can begin breaking down the construct and creating their own. You don't find yourself that as a fallacy, you create yourself. And so when you start knocking down and removing all of those limits, one by one, the more limiting or limiting beliefs that that construct has given you, the more that you knock down, the more free you are to move and achieve things that those limits were preventing you from achieving. And so what happens from six to seven to eight figures is that you, uh, you believe, you know, you have less limiting beliefs as you go. And you just, and the more you knock down, the more you're able to do, I'll give you a perfect example.
Speaker 3 (00:43:20):
Would you ever pay $25,000 for a one-hour coaching call that you couldn't record? And I couldn't record, I guess it would depend who it was with, but most people would say no. Oh yeah. If you asked me now, I'm going to say no. If you asked me that just two years ago, I would have said, no. If you asked me that even a year ago, I would have said no, but a few months ago I met somebody who trades, uh, options like stock trading. And, uh, they have a lot of money and, uh, they, you know, they trade a lot of money and I don't really know. I've never even understood options every time I go. And I try to watch a YouTube video on it. My brain goes, I mean, I'd, I'd rather sit around, screwing around with infusion, soft, psychotic dashboards than deal with options.
Speaker 3 (00:44:17):
Right. You know? And, um, so I, I say to him, well, you know, you know, you know, we're talking, we're having dinner one night and he shows me his trading cat. And I know enough about trading to know what buys you. I, I know basics. So he says to me, he says, Dan, how much money do you have laying around, just in cash in the bank. And I tell him, and he's like, okay, what if you could take that money and put it in another bank, but make like eight to 15 grand a week off of it every week. And that money really doesn't go anywhere. And I say, well, yeah. Well, why wouldn't I? So he shows me his trading cases is only works. If you have a lot of money, like if you don't have any money, it ain't working. I mean, nothing. But if you have like an extra 500 grand, you can put into this, you can make, you know, eight to 15 grand a week. I said, well, yeah, I got an extra 500 grand. What, what way you? So he shows me and he shows me what he's doing. And then he says, I will hop on a one-hour call with you, but it's 25 grand. And I go, you know what?
Speaker 2 (00:45:17):
Hold on. I want to back up for a second. You guys are, you're having dinner. He's telling you, he's going to be showing you his account. And then he's going to say, we're going to do a followup call for 25 grand
Speaker 3 (00:45:28):
Without a follow-up. I just, I asked him, I said, how much to teach me this? And he says, well, I, I charged 25 grand to teach it. And I teach it to you in a one-hour call. I, and I thought about it for a second. And here's what I did. I access my mind. I said to myself, I never would have even accepted this, you know, uh, a year ago. But how many times have I taken a risk and done something outrageous? And it worked out. And the thing is, it's not really that outrageous because he says to me, he says, look, all you got to do is transfer this money here. And I'll, we'll make a trade on the first call. You'll make at least eight grand. So you, you know, I'm going to make almost half back. And I, and he's like, if you don't make it back, I'll give you your money back.
Speaker 2 (00:46:13):
Elon gets emails in his spam box or from Nigeria. And
Speaker 3 (00:46:19):
He is licensed by the sec, everything,
Speaker 2 (00:46:21):
You know, or something like that, you have to transfer. Um,
Speaker 3 (00:46:27):
No, but anyway, I get on the call with him, right? I give him the money. He teaches me the whole thing in an hour. I get it. Cause you know, I, I pick up things rather quickly and we made a trade and I made nine grand. And before the end of the call and I'm thinking, and then, you know, within a few weeks I had made the whole amount back and I've, I've made that every week. And I, I, you know, I think to myself, if I would've said I'm not paying 25 grand for a one hour call, I would have missed out on a multiple six figures, extra a year just for having money and for pressing one button a week. And so I, you know, I, I say to myself, I almost miss that because of what my, Oh, it's crazy to pay somebody that not really.
Speaker 3 (00:47:19):
Because if I, if I said, Hey, I'm going to put 25 grand into a box and close it. When I open it, you know, 50 grand is going to be back out. You, you hesitate. So one thing I learned is when you invest in things, you don't vest invest in things based on the price you invest in them based on the, on, on the result. Like when I, for instance, the yacht, I was only going to buy a $1.3 million yacht, but I found a yacht that was 2 million. It was under market. So there's equity in the boat because it wasn't even on the market. It was, it was, I bought it the day. The guys started thinking about it, thinking about selling it. So there's, I would rather spend 2 million and get this much equity than spend 1.3 and get this much equity, plus all the plus the extra tax benefits and all that.
Speaker 3 (00:48:10):
So you see, you got to think about the end result and you can't get sticker shock because of what's in your head. So that's one of the things that when you, when you go from seven, eight figures and beyond you, don't wince at 25 grand for an hour call because you know, as long as that guy's not full of crap, you know that you're, you're gonna make that return back. Now, if he said, Oh, I'm going to show you to make a thousand a week. Dang. You know, but he made it, he set an expectation and he met it. But, but the thing is, I know you probably think of, well, who is this guy? It only works. If you have like hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around you, you're not doing anything with, so it's not a strategy for everybody, but it's still 25 grand for an hour is, you know, it takes a set of, uh, nuts to write that down.
Speaker 2 (00:48:58):
Framed it to you. Like in the very beginning too, you know, you kind of showcased it to where the sales process is. Actually it makes complete sense.
Speaker 3 (00:49:06):
Well, that's the thing. There was no sales process. He just showed me his account. And he said, look, each week, each week, each week. And I said, so you'll show me how to do that for 25 grand. And he's like, yeah, I'm like done. Why wouldn't I, I would have to be a complete idiot to not say yes to that. The only, the only way I would say no is if I thought he was being non truthful, but he logs in, he was count. And shows it to me is, is, is, is each rate account. And I, I have, uh, an account. So I like, I, I, I know it's not Photoshop, you know, on his phone. Like he's like scrolling. So that's what I did. But see, but even what's the other thing, if you have to, if you're, if your construct has too many limiting beliefs, even if, even if he showed you that, you'd still say no. Even if he wrote a legal document with 10 lawyers around you, that said, if you don't make it back, you'll get a refund. You'd still, you'd still be so nervous about it. That, that a lot of people wouldn't do it just because of that, just because it's 25 grand, you got to let that go. You got to just, there's no difference between 25 cents and $25,000. There's just, no, it's just a number. It's just a number. That's the only thing.
Speaker 2 (00:50:20):
When did you suggest somebody go about identifying that? Right. Like you, you hinted us a bit, um, before, which is like, most of us are just kinda like cruising through life and we don't even realize what these limiting beliefs are. And we're just like, Oh, reaction, move on, reaction moves on. But the first start is like awareness of and identifying, Oh, this is a limiting belief, which I feel like is actually the hardest
Speaker 3 (00:50:47):
Part.
Speaker 2 (00:50:49):
Because like once, you know, it's there, it's like, Oh, okay, I need to get rid of it. And like, what's the process to do that, blah, blah, blah. So how, how do you practice that, um, on a regular basis?
Speaker 3 (00:51:02):
Well, when you don't have any direction, you do tend to just kind of like find these limiting beliefs as they become limiting, and then you have to recognize them and then you have to do something about it. It's funny. You should ask that because, um, the only other thing I'm doing today, besides this interview with you is I've been working on, um, I told you that I bought how to think.com. We're actually working on a mindset assessment called what type of thinker are you? And we asked multiple questions and then we spit out a result, a profile that shows you, you know, what your limiting beliefs are and how they're, they're actually preventing you from getting to the next level. And, um, I wish it was ready that I could just say, go to that website, but it's not ready yet. Uh, but we did make substantial progress on it today. We got, uh, we, we tested it on about 20 people and most of them said it was very accurate. So we're, uh, we're checking along.
Speaker 2 (00:52:03):
This is live like you guys should totally have it. Well,
Speaker 3 (00:52:06):
Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm transparent. That's where if you go to that website, now there's nothing there. I don't think. But, uh, um, we're working on it. And so that's something to look out for the future. Um, but, uh, uh, you know, like I said, this is one of the companies that I, cause I really think I can help a lot of people past just marketers learning, how to think, not what to think, but how to think, not what I believe the answer is, but how to come to the answer, you know, how to find it for yourself. And, uh, there are just a lot of limiting beliefs that if you can just start busting each one down one at a time, you can do anything. You can achieve anything in life by changing the way you think. I have a bonus question here for this
Speaker 2 (00:52:49):
Bonus round here, Dan it's like, you've been in the space, man. Like, I feel like you've been in all the groups. You've, you've gone down the agency, rabbit hole, you've gone down the course creator rabbit hole. You're gone down like high ticket. You're got, you're wearing a lot of investor has like right now, if you were to, and then we just kinda look at, um, let's just say that the industry for a whole, for a second, and then we'll do Dan Henry likes, you know, separate from the industry. Like let's just fast forward three years and five years. Like where do you think the biggest opportunities are? Um, and like, where do you think the industry
Speaker 3 (00:53:26):
Is headed?
Speaker 4 (00:53:27):
And then also like, where do you see yourself
Speaker 3 (00:53:29):
In three to five years? Well, the industry is headed at the same place. It's always been, here's this new thing that I'm doing. The thing that you're already not good enough at because you tried that thing, you know, from the thing before that and try this new thing and that'll work. And, um, I've been, I've been doing the same thing for years. You know, like this whole, Oh, webinars don't work. Nah, that's like even thinking like that anything works if you do it well. And the problem is that our industry is so obsessed with the new way, the easier way, the better system that they just don't get good at. What's in front of them. Time spent searching for the easier way, could be time spent getting good at the hard way. And this is the thing right in the next three to five years, I see myself.
Speaker 3 (00:54:27):
I'm probably not even in the make money space. I see myself in a, or maybe more of a personal development space. I'll probably still have my mastermind and I'll still teach people to make money, but not with a funnel method or something like to me, that's when you start thinking eight figures and you start getting it, you learn that it's no one funnel or that's irrelevant. What's relevant is good. You do it. So for instance, a lot of people want to have things, right? They want to have a nice car. They want to have a successful business. They want to have a big audience. They want to have things, but they never consider that they have to become the person that deserves those things. They have to become the person that can make those things happen. Right? And that's why we're called human beings and not human havings.
Speaker 3 (00:55:24):
So think about this. Think you want to be a millionaire. Do millionaires know how to speak. They articulate themselves properly. Either that I found the other day of me from years ago when I was trying to start a YouTube channel about around electronic cigarettes. And I'm like, Hey guys, this is Dan Henry from UF web.com. And I sounded terrible. Now I get to sit there and said to myself, well, that's just me. I'm just not good on camera. It's just not for me. I'll find another way to make money or I could just get good at being on camera. And that's what I, that's what I did. I eventually got very good at speaking and articulating, I mean, think about this. If you give a hundred actors, a script, how many get the part one? Why? Because they did it better. So a person that deserves to be a millionaire is a person that does not search for the easier way all the time.
Speaker 3 (00:56:19):
They get good at the thing. They get good at speaking. Yeah. Good at, at making your point, I watch movies all the time to study story arcs. I will listen to, or like you want to get good at speaking. Here's what you do. Watch the movie, Django, Unchained German guy, whenever he explains a situation in this intense, like he's got guns pointed at him. Things are about to blow up. And every time he says, gentlemen, let me explain exactly how and he's just so articulate. Watch that movie learn how articulate he is and try to mimic those scenes. Try to talk like him, find articulate people and try to talk like them. And eventually you will train yourself to be able to talk and people will listen. You will command attention. These are the things that grow your business now. Oh, a new funnel myth, Emmy create a challenge. I'm going to create a five day challenge. That'll do it well. So the webinar didn't work. Your little three video series didn't work. Your launched didn't work, but all of a sudden you,
Speaker 2 (00:57:29):
This is an interesting day only. I, no one's ever come on the show and talked about just articulation for a second. So I was like, let's, let's just like hone in on this. Right? Like what, like you've obviously, you know, done a really great job with, with webinars, right. And naturally articulation. And like the voiceover are, and speaking on a webinars is a big part of it. Do you think like, that's kind of where it stemmed from of like, I have to master like a 45, 60 minute presentation and then that kind of morphed into like a lot of other areas. Um, and you're in your life or do you kind of attribute it to, to something like entirely different
Speaker 3 (00:58:08):
Ever seen a multimillionaire webinar presenter that didn't sound like they could speak. So I knew I had to sound like them period. Go find me somebody that's made millions of dollars from a webinar. Yes. Okay. Go find me, somebody that that's, uh, uh, uh, an award-winning speaker that all right guys. No, they know how to speak and how to command attention and use inflection, rhythm and cadence in their voice. You got to learn that stuff. So yeah. I can teach you the funnel stuff and all that, but I always say, most people teach you what to do and how to do it. I teach you how to do it. Well, and let me give you an example, right? So, um, how you do some things is how you do everything, right. You can tell. And, um, I'm going to have to speak about men specifically here, but you can tell what kind of worker entrepreneur, a guy is, why, how he takes a . I'm serious,
Speaker 2 (00:59:17):
This your interview process, or
Speaker 3 (00:59:20):
This may crude, but it's true.
Speaker 2 (00:59:24):
If you who's watching the though, who,
Speaker 3 (00:59:28):
I'm not saying somebody watches it. If you're the type of guy that goes and takes a whiz, shakes it twice, puts it back in your pants. First of all, gross. Second of all, um, you're probably pretty sloppy and lazy and other aspects of your life. But if you're the type of guy that gives it a little squeeze, dabs it and makes sure everything's dry, make sure everything's good. Puts it back in. Everything's tight, no leakage. Then you're probably pretty meticulous in your business, in your life. When you brush your teeth, do you just want, and you're done or do you make sure that you get each and every piece with the flaws and you don't miss it? And if you did miss it, you can do it over again. Right? Like these are the small things in life. When you type, do you use words like, you know, instead of saying a long word, you use some short thing that half the people don't even know what you're saying, or do you take time to articulate and properly write it out?
Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Do you capitalize the first letter in your sentences? Or do you just write like how you do some things is how you do everything? So, one thing you can do is start doing everything in your life more thoroughly that doesn't necessarily mean take more time and waste time, but do things more thoroughly. You know, I mean, me, you know, that old saying about a discipline man is a man that makes his bed every morning. There's truth to that because you, you don't make a bed to make a bed. They make a bed to teach themselves discipline, you know, and again, this may sound unorthodox, but if I made, you know, a thousand bucks last weekend, then you could probably sit here and tell me I'm full of crap, but I've made 15 million. There is something do this. So
Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Love it, man. Yeah. This has been a very, very interesting episode. I, I absolutely love the details and the carcasses that we liked.
Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
A lot of entrepreneur wives that are thanking me right now.
Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Finally, I can sit down on the seat now. Well, don't worry what you're up to next and how we can support you and how people can reach out and get on a call.
Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Well, uh, I, you can get on a call, but I highly recommend you, uh, read my book first to make sure it's for you. And there's a lot of value in here. Um, and what I can do right now is I, I can make a special link for your audience, um, so that they can get the book for free. Uh, and what I'll do is, uh, let's do funnel dash. What I'll do is, um, if you go to this link that I'm about to give you, all you have to do is pay the post man, just pay shipping, and I will send you the actual book for free. Um, if you, when you get the book, we also give a complimentary, uh, 48 minute training. Uh, if you're don't want to wait for the book, you can watch that training. And when you're done, if you'd like to book a call and talk more about how we can help you sell your products and services for a high ticket price or sell an educational offer, such as a coaching program, an online course, a mastermind, uh, any situation in which you'd sell your advice online, you can book a call, um, and if we can help you and we know we can help you then, uh, we'll show you what that looks like and allow you to make a decision on whether or not to become a part of it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Dan, thank you so much, man. URL is going to be get clients.com/funnel dash, get clients.com/on all hash and, and there it is.
Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
I love it. Thank you so much, Dan.
Speaker 5 (01:03:19):
Not a good time.
Speaker 4 (01:03:24):
Well, thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich ed [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book. Learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or ed.com/review. Thanks again.
Key Takeaways
• Dig into the surprising secrets of a winning ad that he has spent over a million dollars on over the last 18 months.
• Why the offer is the most powerful part of any ad -- and how he consistently comes up with ones that crush.
• How he never loses more than a hundred bucks on testing an ad.
• The insanely simple principle that fueled his rise from welfare to
riches (and you don’t have to be a finance wizard to understand it).
• How a crazy idea and two helicopters helped give a $36K three-week
billboard advertising campaign eternal life.
RESOURCES/CONTACT
https://billygeneismarketing.com/
Follow on instagram at billygeneismarketing
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode, we interview the Wolf of advertising. Mr. Billy Jean from Billy Jean is marketing and we tied,
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ah, just
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Died. All right. Three, two, one. In this episode, we dive in with the Wolf of advertising, mr. Billy Jean from Billy Jean is marketing. We dive into his winning ad that he has spent over a million dollars on over the last 18 months and exactly how he goes about creating, winning offers and winning at plus how he limits his losses on his poor ads. He talks about how he never loses more than a hundred bucks on testing an ad and how he's incredibly disciplined, uh, into the pro. Uh,
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So sorry, who has to ever these interests three, two, one. In this episode, we interviewed the Wolf of advertising. Mr. Billy Jean is marketing. He's got over a hundred thousand students in 75 countries and 800 million people have seen his videos. He's an absolute legend and OJI in the world of advertising. And in this episode, he talks about his process for creating rich ads. And it actually has nothing to do with ads. It's all about the offer and how to craft a winning offer and how you can guarantee and ensure your success. Plus, he talks about how to limit his losses on poor ads and how he thinks about managing the numbers and the data and the financials in his business every single day and how he responds to them. It's an amazing episode.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You enjoy.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Welcome to another episode of the rich dad. Poor dad podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with mr. Dylan Carpenter. Dylan, are you excited?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's an understatement, man. I'm freaking out.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
We have a legend today. It is the one and only mr. Billy Jean Billy Jean is marketing man. The Wolf of advertising. I'm so excited to have you here, man. I honestly, I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Robert. And by the way, I just love the name of the podcast. It was inspired by you dude. I was like, Wolf of advertising was just so legendary. I love that. Oh yeah. Well I'm just saying it was inspired by you made that move first. Um, I was like thinking for months on how we could pull that off. If anybody's listening to this podcast and they don't know who Billy Jane is just, just stop listening. Um, you've been sleeping under a rock man, cause you're all over the place. You've uh, I mean, gosh, you got over a hundred thousand students now you're in 75 countries. You're just telling me you've got, what, how, how many times do your video has been seen like 800 million, 800. That's almost as many downloads as we get on this podcast. Um, amazing. And I, I I'm, I'm pumped to have you on. And um,
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It's interesting with those visa, like, cause they're always targeted right at entrepreneurs or people that entrepreneurial space. So like my world is really funny. Like if I'm outside and I'm any in any place that has like entrepreneurs in it or something like that, like some award recognizes me in a second, but like if it's outside of the entrepreneurial world, I'm just like, who the is that guy? So it's perfect blend where I still get my life. But if I go into the realm, you know what I mean? Like it's it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I love it, dude. That's awesome. So tell me a little bit, like what's new with you? Like what do you, what do you got going on right now that you're excited about? And, um, you're most known for, for your, for your advertisers that you rolled out like a couple of years ago, but uh, I feel like you've been like super focused this year. And so,
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And um, honestly, you know, for me on the professional side, it's our virtual experience to our students. You know, we, we have a studio here in downtown San Diego and we spent a million bucks renovating our office and um, and just to deliver an incredible experience, like when people come to our calls, it is immersive. Like everyone's got their zoom cameras on, it's scored with music and all of that. And we got like seven different cameras and we do break out rooms for people to like practice. So like, you know, just think about any webinar you go to. Right? Usually you just sit there, everyone's muted. You can't see anybody in, someone's just talking to the president. You come here, we're like, hello. We say, hi, there's a tech test before, you know, and Tony Robbins really, the UPW really led the way with that.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Him and Danny shout out to them. Um, and I was like, yeah, we're going, we're going, we're going to do that. And, and put it the business application to it, right. Because they're in personal development, but it's like, when's the last, so we'll, we'll do an exercise like, Hey, let's practice writing headlines or something. And then you'll go into a breakout room with 20 other entrepreneurs and practice together and get to share just nobody does that. You know, we do it at the most affordable places in the world. And that's important to me, you know, because that's, that's the impact, that's the reach, you know, like I think it's so funny as cause sometimes we level up and people are like, we'll only focus on like high ticket, only find people who can like really afford those services. And I'm like, nah, that's not how I started.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Like, let me, let me give tools to the people who can't afford it. Like that's actually the game, the people who wouldn't. So I always say like, let's deliver a Harvard type of, you know, uh, education level, but do it to ways that, you know, 30 bucks, like 30 bucks, 40 bucks, like, and, and also too is when you create raving fans, they they're like, I paid like my favorite thing is someone just goes like, man, I feel like I stole from you. That's my favorite thing. Anybody can say. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, I just get so much value and you're only charging this. I'm like, that's the point. Yeah. That's how you build brand. And you know, so to me that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Well, first off there's nobody else. I know there's actually, there's one guy I know that's been a million dollars on a studio and it was actually where I started in marketing or like 10 years ago, it's this guy named Mike, Mike Keenings who used to have this business called traffic Geyser. And um, he did like this, you know, eight figure launch. And like he spent, he's like, all right, I got enough money to just go crazy with this, with this studio. And it was, most people would be like, see that as like a liability. You're like why you're like over investing, but there is so much money. Mike has made off of bringing people into that studio, including his own lines.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, we made our money back. We made our money back in the first six months we lived through an event like virtual event, like tickets and did it right away. It was like the easiest return on investment. Like, you know, people don't realize
Speaker 1 (06:45):
The gamble though for you, right? Like when did you say like, Oh, I have the balls. I have the balls.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I mean, it honestly didn't require any balls to be real with you, but let, let me explain. Why is we already had a massive student, not massive, but we had, we had a large student base online and when I asked them, Hey, would you guys like us to create a hub where you can also come in person to, they all said, yes. So how ballsy was it? When I already had people who were asking to pay me the money for whatever. And I'm like, okay, here it is. So, you know, that's why. And then also too, like I view content, you know, props, things of that nature, just like most people be real estate. You know, people I'm invest into real estate. My property value will go up and X amount of years I'll flip it. And you know, it's, it's a forced savings account.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
However you want to, you know, quantify or qualify, whatever. And to me, that's what a video is, except the difference is I don't gotta go through escrow. It doesn't take me a whole bunch of money. I can literally make a video, put it some places and it can sell for me 24 seven. And it brings me cash. How is that? Not an asset with a lot less risk. So like, to me, you know, those plays, people are also looking into like, yeah, does it take risks balls? I'm like, no, it was really logical to me, you know? Uh, and every single investment that I've made into content, um, has, has been a killer return. Even my Lamborghini, you know what I mean? On my Ferrari Bentley, all that . We get returns on all that stuff. I just put it in, add it, it increases the click-through rate, which brings my costs down, which makes my cost per sell cheaper. And it literally pays for itself in months and months. So, you know, it's a different way of doing things, but it's effective.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I love it is. So we were talking right before this and you, I was asking, we were telling you the format of the show. I was like the first thing we talk about rich ads. And I love it when, when people come on the show and like they're, they're kind of knee jerk, instant reaction of like what their, what their response is and why that's their answer. And you immediately said, what's all about the offer. And it wasn't, it's not even about the ad. Like, we're like, Hey, we're talking about Anthony. And you're like, it's about the offer. And that makes sense. Honest. And it's coming from a guy that like, I don't know of a single other person that pushes out more offers than you. I don't know how many, I don't know how many domains you have. Like it's
Speaker 2 (09:09):
How many domains, but you know what it is is all of it. So you see a lot of front end stuff, but all of it leads to the same backend that we've been doing for six years, which is weekly calls on how to get more customers. So it's the front end, right? And this is actually the thing I struggled with my background was doing lead generation for franchises, right? That's how I got good at this stuff and started to master it. And I still have a lot to learn. You know, I still got a miles to go. I can't wait to see where I'm at in a decade because I still felt like a crazy student, you know? Um, but what I realized is when we let's say I'm running a campaign for a really large gym franchise or something like that, a campaign would start off.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
We get high volume in the, in the cost would be low. And then over time it starts to creep. And when that happens, people, they, they go and let's show it to different people. Let's change the colors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can do all those things. And you get like a little minutiae change, but you want to blow it up, change the offer. And that's why I started to get really frustrated, dealing with franchises. Because as you started working with bigger franchise at the more corporate they are, and when you're dealing with corporate, you know, they're like, this is our offer for a year and we're going to stick with it no matter what, and they're going to lose, they're going to lose you. It doesn't work like that. You don't dictate your corporation. Like the market dictates how that works, not you.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And so I used to get in arguments like, yo, y'all need to change the offer. They've seen your one week offer for forever. And I'm like, look at the most successful companies in the world. Let's look at the most successful franchises in the world, subway, which is the biggest. And I think McDonald's behind it. Um, and what do they do? Five, $5 foot long McDonald's rib McFlurry. Uh, uh, come here, play monopoly, uh, two fries, 29 cents cheeseburgers. But you get there and it's always the same thing. It's the same , you know what I mean? They put a little fancy on it to offer you something, to give you something new, because new is a powerful word in marketing, but then when you get there, it's the same process, you know? Do you want fries with that? What'd you like to shake? You know, would you upgrade to supersize? Like, so it doesn't change. You know what I mean? Like, so you, I mean, down to such a great example of that, it's like, you're like, McDonald's is always McDonald's, but yet they're always offering new things,
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Your process, what's your process for making a great offer. We basically spend about 20 minutes before this and you know, you just came up with like offer after offer. You have this ability to just kind of cut through the .
Speaker 2 (11:31):
No, I start with the impossible. And what I mean by that is the best offers are always things that make you go, well, how the can we do that? Like, think about an offer. Like, Hey, what if we can, what if everybody that came into the store, we gave a brand new Lamborghini to like, would that not crush, no matter what, I wouldn't sound like. They're not crushed. Hey, with your purchase of this pack gum, here's a brand new Lamborghini like, Oh , there's a waiting line. Right. I'd have a line to sit here from San Diego to Los Angeles. It would work. Right. So instead of trying to figure out my time of what's the offer, I make up something ridiculous and say, well, how could we make it happen? Switch it because that's what creativity is. Crushed. Creativity is crushed into trying to figure it out. That's where you lose. So I spent a lot of time with my team is like, stop saying, can't stop saying, I don't know, like just what would actually make them come and get them excited, then it's our job to figure out how can we deliver that? Impossible. And yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Okay. So I want to talk about your funnels too, for a second, because your offers it's like, it's always a crazy URL and then it is
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yes. Easy, easy to remember URL. It's always like, not like a super long form sales page. It's just like a medium sales page. Not like a ton of VSLs like on them for the most part as a, you know, as, as of late. So I feel like you, in the last couple of years, I've seen you go from like crazy VSL, like crazy videos to just be like, what's the offer? What's the domain, here's the page. And like, let's go. And I dunno, I'm just curious how that's evolved for you. Is that a fair, accurate depiction of how you've evolved in terms of creating our offers,
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Parts, parts of it? You know, we, we really let the data dictate. So I'm, I'm very on, uh, committed. Like I'm not in a relationship with the way I do business. I'm in a relationship with winning and money and helping people. So, you know, when I realized that I realized the amount of pivots, I need to come with that, the reason why people don't see a ton of VSLs with this, because when I write a VSL, we usually end up using it for like a year. So, you know, we got over 30,000 members in our membership site with one single VSL that we ran for like a year and a half, you know? Um, uh, another one I just recently did, you know, we, we launched this whole thing. Um, and if I had, if I lost it all, what would I do? Here's my 30 day business plan.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
You know, we've got 25,000 students in that and a handful of months, um, with a VSL. So VSL is actually my whole thing. Even like last week, I just shot a new VSL. It's fire to bring up our new membership for the GA. You know, that does take time, like, you know, thinking. So the thing is, is the sales mechanism is the hardest part of the equation. A lot of time, it takes the most time. There's the most variables, et cetera. So when I have a sales mechanism that works, I try not to touch it, adds it easy. I can shoot, I can take out my phone and shoot an ad right now and throw it up. And you know what I mean? I can strike out. Right? You know, our, our, our process is not about, um, uh, uh, uh, doing this and that it's about speed.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know, we, that's why we have in-house, you know, five media people to bang out videos, et cetera. That's why I have, uh, five people on my marketing team that are in charge of direct response advertising for the Billy Jean is marketing brands. So that's 10 people in total. So, you know, most people's rotation or process looks like this. What should we sell? They spend three days arguing about that. And then they go, okay, well, how should we sell it? What is it? Facebook and scam. They spend another three days a week goes by. And then they say, okay, well, let's, uh, let's do this. Okay. Well, how are we going to film it? They planned it out that another week goes by. And then they finally test it two and a half weeks later. And then it doesn't work and they get discouraged because so much energy time and resources came into it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
And then they say, it. And then they don't want to do something. And the next thing, the thing that happens though, that triggers all this is, uh, expenses come every 30 days, expenses come. So as the owners and decision-makers, we start to get frantic, why I need to do something different to add stuff, doesn't work and we get discouraged, et cetera. Now take our process. You know, most people take weeks, months to test one thing for us, years, years. Yeah. Years we'll test an ad daily. Hey, I'll test an ad. I just test. I just made one, like two days ago, we tested it. It sucked. We spent a few hundred bucks on it and scrapped, move on. So think about it. I can take 30 shots before somebody takes one. How can you compete? It's just math, you know? And one of those were hit, you know what I mean? And, but a lot of people realize we strike out a lot. I actually, my last two ads, I just did sucked. Um,
Speaker 1 (16:02):
That's a perfect segue to pour ads here because I love just to recap, like you're rich as just like start with the offer.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
The other thing is for, for everybody listening, it's like a good ad lasts for so long. That's the other point. That's why I don't mind like taking the shots then creating that rhythm because when it lands and when it works, you can use it for years. I use, I use some ads for years in cycling back. Cause a winner is a winner. It's a mess. What's
Speaker 1 (16:33):
The winner for you that you're still using right
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Now, this, this beach house ad as like we were there at the beach house for 4th of July. And honestly the only purpose was just to get drunk and have fun with my friends. And I'm Paul, our media guy was like, PIL, you should just shoot an ad. And I was hammered. I'm like Brian shooting him a ad right now. Like, I don't really feel like, um, but I did. And I literally, it was like one of those, I think it was like one or two takes like 30 minutes. I'm like, Paul, like, stop, like I'm done with this . And it crushed, you know, dollar leads on, you know, Facebook, YouTube and led to sales and, and, and a whole bunch of members and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
How much you think you put, how much media, how much do you spend on behind that one ad?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Uh, now, uh, uh, God, um, we probably spent a million bucks on it at least, um, at least, um, and it, and yeah, it just, it just worked right. It worked and it was good. The message was good, you know? Um,
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So it was so separate from like everything you were doing before, right? It was like high production, like you were talking about, we have the one you were in a beach house you're on like this little whiteboard and I'm like, this is so not like Billy Jean, like raising production message. The message like was, was on, on point,
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Right. The message and the offer, that's it. That's what, and does it, and I see students do it all the time. Right. Because the hard part with them, when I teach ads and people see our ads is they think they have to do what I do. And I'm like, absolutely not. Like it doesn't even work for the people when you're like, and you know, people don't like, you know, like this don't, don't do that. And, um, you know, but I have students like in their own little way there, they shoot the video. Some people read their lines in the video and it's still crushes. Shout out to Brooke. You know, my broker's a student who had been with us for years. And, uh, we went through a script together and one of our sessions, I was like, I'll just to shoot it. And she literally reads the whole thing, you know, on camera. Right. And I'm like, it. Who cares? Put it out, whatever. And it worked and she's, she crushed it. Like, again, it's like when the message lands and also to some people appreciate that. People love to know that like, yo, like it's just a human being in front of me, like putting the word out for the business, you know, you see how people rally around supporting small businesses. Right? Like, you know, it's, it's a thing. So, you know, it's the message in the office. That's the game.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
All right, Dylan, I want to know you're not perfect, man. I want to talk about a poor ad, but I want to talk about, because, because it's easy to talk about that poor ad that you spent a hundred bucks on. Right. And you're very disciplined in that front and my hats off to you, but like tell me a time where you went in a little bit over your skis and you kind of strayed from this, this approach and you were less disciplined and you kind of paid for it.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Never again. It's not because like, I'm so cool. They're so disciplined. It's because you just watched the numbers. It's like, yeah, like I got a question. If you spend a dollar and every time you spend a dollar, you lose 75 cents. How much do you have to spend before you stop doing it? Like if you spend a dollar and you're losing money, like you don't have to like, what the you want me to do? Just keep spending to lose more money. Right. And I just, I just know a truth about advertising. If it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't, that's what people don't get because they go through that cycle. Well, it took me so long to make this ad, so they try and force it to work, but not because they think it should work because they just are mad at themselves for putting so much into it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So now it's like, well, I'm going to get my money out of this because I did it as ego. So I just, you know, so no, I don't have any like crazy losses because it sucks now time, right? Like, yeah. I may like get too fancy and we may do some funny and like, you know, highly produced some things and before testing it, but also too, I use my Instagram a lot. Like my Instagram to me is just like a playing field where I can test this. Something's going to work. So like, for example, I'll sit in the marketing team and we're like, Oh, that's a good offer. I'll I'll take my camera out. You can scroll through my Instagram. You'll see it. And I'm like, Hey guys, if I created a book that teaches you, this, this and this would you want to comment below and then no exaggeration within the first three minutes of the response, how many comments I get?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I will know if I'll make an ad out of that or not. And if I see it pop in like, Oh , then we'll literally go big. Hey, let's build an entire out of this. So, you know, any, that's why I love advertising. It's just like the safest gamble ever. Like people are like, would you go to the casino and just put a hundred grand on hand? People are like, hell no, because you can lose it in a second. But if you spend a hundred grand in ads, you realize how many decisions you would have to make to continue to lose that money. You would literally have to sit there and refresh your account and be like, yeah, I'm down to grand. I'm gonna keep losing money on 1100, 1,212, you would have to make, you would have to literally say I'm okay. Losing money, like a thousand times real number if they're responsible, you know? But again, people do it. Not that they're just unfamiliar with the process, you know, they're groomed from, you know, uh, the radio and television era where a sales rep tells you, Hey, it's going to be 20,000 bucks for three months. And there's nothing I can do. Or your money stack or a quarter million bucks or a million bucks for three months. And you just have to play it out. They poisoned, they poisoned the air.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
This is what I see on here.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
People like it. So I haven't been forced to do it
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Instagram today, tomorrow if that's what the people want. So for those people that can't see, I'm basically pointing out to Billy, you know, he was just saying he tests offers, but I only see like a dozen of you, like getting ripped here.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
That's that's it. So I'll give you a great example. Like, you know, the progression was like, for everyone, like I, from my twenties, I was like extremely in shape. And then I just got lazy as . And I got really fat. And then I was like, I'm not going to be fat anymore. Let me get like really in shape again. So like posting pictures, et cetera. And people just engage in them like crazy. And I'm like, all right, cool. That's what people want. So I turned one of those into a story ad, and now it's an ad that we're running right now to go watch a VSL dictated that, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So the recap I'm going to do with me,
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Here's the funny thing I don't, I don't even like social media. This is what people don't realize. I am. I'm truly a direct response advertiser and a salesperson, social media and posting . I can't stand. Like I literally can't stand it. Like, you know, I'm not out there , you know, Sharon memes and . Like I just post, like, what's easy. Like I work with my, I work on my training every day at two 30. So if you see a surgeon fitness ones, it's because one, it gets engaged on. And two, it takes me two seconds to do it. Cause we're already working out and I just don't want to, I don't even want to do it, you know? And like with my ads, right? Like I can film something once and then I can make it live for years. I never have to do it again. Social just like, God it. update you my life when I'm eating. I hate that . I want to chill at home. When my daughter, when my girl, you know, eat dinner and like play video games, you know, shout out to among us, if anybody plays it.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So I love it. It's uh, Billy has no losses. You heard it here first.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And you know, you have bad months as a company and stuff. Or like, what happens is you go through that rhythm, right? You test an ad, it doesn't work. You test it out. It doesn't work. And now you're like two and a half weeks in. You realize sales have halted. And now, you know, you hit your email, right? Like, so hold on. I lose all of the time I lose. But in regards to like an ad that bombed like, nah, like not, I don't know, Paul, what you think? Like, I don't know if there's any, like we don't. I dunno. Well, I get, I'll give you a great example too. It's like you, you know, you can solve anything with creativity. So take billboards, for example, right? We've got like four billboards in San Diego. One time, it was like 36 brand. And like put our picture up there and and had a fun call to action.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
And it led to an automated over, uh, ever webinar and it went okay. Um, but it wasn't like phenomenal. Like we, we lost a little bit. That was me sticking my neck out though. Cause you commit to the billboards regardless of what happens. And I was okay with that. I literally put it out with the expectation mentally of like, Oh yeah, I just burned 36 grand doing some stupid , but then it's like, you do it. And you're like, I don't want to burn 36 grand. That's stupid. So what do I do? We, we rented a helicopter. This is true. This is ridiculous. As I said, we're really in a helicopter and had took a bunch of budget ropes. Paul had a camera shoot. Now we actually got two helicopters. Then we got two helicopters, me and my COO we're in one, we got another helicopter that Paul was in filming to chase us and the camera. And all we did was fly over all of the billboards so you could see them in the city. So that, cause the billboard only gave me three weeks. So if we filmed the billboards, now we can make those billboards last forever.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
That's how you get it. All right. So, you know, when the billboards got popped in, when I posted on social media that I have a billboard, you know what I mean? So it's like, you can get out of anything with creativity, you know what I mean? And then resourcefulness. So that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I love it. So let's dive into this next section where we're really bridging the world of advertising and finance together, right? We're this, the enemy of this show is a, what we call market or math. We're rounding up to the nearest million and um, and uh, sharing a lot of, a lot of gross numbers, but we also want to uncover really how you look about, you know, managing the cash in your business, how you look at, you know, driving revenue growth, um, and how that really plays out operationally. We've had people in here talk about, you know, their mindset on things. You know, people talk about how they'll just like, never leverage like credit or investors or anything like that before. But what are some of the guiding principles, you know, for you, as you think about like, you know, managing the cashflow?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Well, a couple of things, you know, my background is, I mean, my parents both grew up on welfare, so there was no like, you know, talk about like funding or venture or capital stock bond, you know? Like there was none of that . You know, when I went to the university of San Diego, that was the first I heard anybody talk about any of those things and it intimidated the hell out of me. And I, I had no, I literally had no clue what any of that meant. Like, and when I say no clue, like literally imagine hearing something for the first time and note, by the way, this isn't about white, black or et cetera. But when people are mentioning the word privilege, a lot of people don't like that word. That's what they're talking about. It's a privilege to even know those things exist.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
And people don't realize that that's the privilege. Like my daughter being black, my daughter is going to grow up extremely privileged. She will be a black girl. That's privileged as , just because I'm a dad, you know, you know, she's going to know that a don't know. Right. And again, it's just one passionate about like hooking people up and educating people, you know, and doing it in an affordable way. But anyways, I aggress. Um, so my whole thing at an early age was money was simple to me. Which was, is it there? Or is it not there? There was no like, well, let's get this, uh, you know, nice cush funding round where we can sit on a couple of mil and half time to figure it out. It was a, I ain't got no money in the bank, so we need to go make some sales.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
And I still live by that guiding principle, granted more sophisticated approach. Now there's other things I do, but it is. I obsess about the money that is coming into my account. Um, as a whole, as a company, et cetera, I have an assistant, I have two assistants, but one works specifically with finances and she sends me a report every single morning, a text message where I can see how much money is in every single account and what we are plus or minus for the month relative to that day. And if I noticed we had five days of not hitting the goal of what we want to be at, then I will call an audible and do a promotion or something to get it. Like, I literally let that number, guide my actions to make sure I'm always following the data, you know? Um, so that's one way that I kind of,
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I want to highlight that for a second. If you're not hitting your growth numbers or your, your, the revenue targets, not like the minimums, right? Like the growth part.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Glad you picked up on that because so many people, at least in the beginning stages, right. For early in the beginning stages, that's the psychology is I was, if I just made three GS, then I could pay for this, this and this. And then you realize when you're doing your thing, it's we don't even talk about man. I ain't talking about no minimum. It is yo what, where we need to be. Right. Like when you, you know, so,
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And then the second is the bells are ringing. If you're not on there within five days, meaning you're taking immediate action to get that back on target, which means you are absolutely incredibly nimble and responsive to that number, which is like the way it should be. Right?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's it. Yeah. It's nimble is kind of our thing. And it's, you know, also too, like I mentioned five days, but even like a day, if I see a day of like down, you know, we can anticipate you do some loan. If you can anticipate, like what's going to bring in sales and what's not right. Like pipeline, pipeline is fundamental in any business. Every business knows when they're going to have a big week. Like there's no like , don't just sometimes they do, but almost very rarely people just fall out the sky and all of a sudden sales again, you know, when you're going to have a day, right? Like if my recurrings low, my accounts receivable as are low, we don't have any ads that are promising, et cetera. My sales team, I got, you know, three guys who are off on vacation.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
There's no, you know, holidays coming up. So this team is out to, you know, money. It's, you know, it's amazing as entrepreneurs, how many times we pretend money is a mystery. It's never a mystery. It's always right in front of our eyes. And you know, my favorite quote is right. You know, like the amount of offers the money, the amount of money you make is directly correlated with the amount of offers that you make. But I asked you about a time like that. They tell me they're in a slump. I say, Hey, how many people did you ask to buy? And I have many sales the last week. Cool. How many people did you ask to buy during that time? Well, I didn't ask any because I was set up the end, the end. It's always the answer out of a cash crunch, ask people to buy and then you work backwards.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Okay. Well, how do I, who do I ask to buy? All right, well, how do I get those people in front of us? Well, that's called marketing right in advertising. And when I got them in front of me, what do I say? Okay. And what do I charge them? And how do I collect the money? Cool. Marketing and sales. Great. If you figure those two out that you can figure out the rest of the , you know what I mean? Like you can hire other people to help you figure out the rest of stuff, but you gotta be able to make the engine go. You know,
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Curiosity, whenever you get these kinds of morning texts, you know, with the growth decline, have you been noticing a lot more fluctuations this year with kind of code or people are maybe
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yes. So what happened in March? Um, when she first started going on with, you know, uh, pandemic Renata, uh, the uncertainty really did create a drop in conversion sales, et cetera. And what I mean by uncertainty is now people would make a joke about Corona. Like, Oh, it's whatever the world is fine. We're going to continue. That's about a, I don't know, a million times more competent than March one, literally. I mean, me and my girl, we had our refrigerator, uh, uh, packed because we were like, are we gonna be able to get to the grocery store? Maybe not like this was, this was real people, like, forget, like this was a real thing during that time the uncertainty did. And what happened is in 2019, our message was really focused on scaling, right? Hey, you want to grow? You want to scale dah, dah, dah.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
So all of our ads and our promotions and our communication with our customers about scaling, but in March, wasn't anybody thinking about scaling, they would think about surviving, right? So then yes. And the morning times I see the numbers declining. I see from marketing standpoint, cause I get my, you know, executive summary every day with each department, you know, I see like we're getting less leads on the sales team. We're closing less and more payment plans. I'm seeing all the numbers, right? The numbers are dictating. So I say to myself, okay, we need to pivot. And I said, you know, there's still a truth here, regardless of what happens with the economy. People still need to make their business go. Matter of fact, I would argue, they need to make it more, but why aren't we landing? Because that's what we do is we help people, customers.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And I'm like, okay, maybe it's the way we're saying it. So I was like, all right, what are people really thinking right now? And that's the question to ask yourself, if you go into your customer's head, what will you hear? And what I heard was this is how am I going to pay my bills? What am I going to do? Job employment was an all time high. How many did it? I says, okay, if I lost it all and I had 24 and I had 30 days to get it back. If I had no resources, no team, no credibility. And I had to start over. I didn't even know what to sell. Here's exactly what I would do. And then I put that on Instagram. You'd probably scroll back and find it. And I was like, Hey, if this, if I did this, would this be interesting to anybody to chop up or talk about or something like that?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I put something up and I think the response was, was crazy good. And so then we, um, I said, it, I'm going to do it with you guys. 30 days. I'm going to bring in a group of people who wants to do it with me. And then when we put it out to the people, and I think we brought in like in a few days or a week or something like a half, a million bucks, just like that of people who wanted to do it. And we knew it was popping. And then from there we continued to push it. And like I said, since then, you know, uh, you know, 25, 30,000 people, something like that have taken us up on that. And here's the thing, as we've seen in the climate, that message isn't going anywhere. Right? So that will be something that we push probably for the next six months foreseeable. Um, but again, maybe, maybe a year, that's how long the conversation may be relevant. You know what I mean? And so, um, and then guess what, when it goes back to a conversation of growth, then we'll switch our message again, because that's the game, you know?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So
Speaker 1 (34:32):
If you were to simplify your business, right, let's just subtract like all the fancy rememorable domains and all the front end offers. Obviously advertising is a big Boulder sales, a big Boulder, but like, what is the core offer of Billie? Jean is
Speaker 2 (34:48):
As marketing. We teach small business owners how to get customers using paid advertisements period. That's it, that's all we do. And we don't, we don't go away from that. It's, you know, we, we, we have a live call every Tuesday where we walk people through it, we have a platform and resources to help them do that one thing. And then you can purchase additional support if you want to be more hands-on and that's it. And now I was saying is that's the, that is as a, as a CEO and the leader of the organization. That is the discipline that I try and put on us to not shy away from that because every time I've shied away and did too much, et cetera, everything always goes to . We always take steps backwards when we pull our head, you know, and I'm just talking to myself so many times about it's like, it's, it's forever.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
People will need it in a growth economy. Want to go bigger? When things are pulling back, they need to survive. There's no time we're getting customers is going to be played out. And it's also the most to me. And my perspective, it's like a blank spot in entrepreneurship. Like, just think about it when you're in college or like business school, you learn about so much mergers and acquisitions, you know, uh, Corumbere finance and, um, you know, or, or marketing where they call it price, product, promotion, and structural organizational behavior and all the, you learn all this . But what about the course that says, get a customer , where was that course at? Like, it's weird. It's almost weird. Right. But then you realize it's not that weird when they model everything off of fortune 1000 companies, and then they try and dissect that and talk about that. So I'll build a business when 95% of the businesses that has nothing to do with, and they'll never see that type of structure. There's no customer one-on-one. Yeah. You know, and that, and then sales, like, that's it. And so,
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Man, I thank you so much for talking about like all this stuff and how you think about running the business. This has been like absolutely gold. Uh, tell everybody how we can support you. And, uh, and what you got.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Follow me on Instagram. So you can see my reluctant posts. And like, people are always like, yo engages everybody who comments, everybody go look at my engagement on my last thousand posts. I don't engage with . I don't check my DMS. I don't engage a if I see like, homie's like people I know know like in real life, like I made like, like their stuff, like I'm the worst at social media. Um, but like, yeah, follow me anyway. I'm following you. I'll pixel I'll pixel you or retarget you somewhere online in this space and have you buy our at some point, I promise you I've been chasing some people for eight years and they're like, I finally got in after all this time. You're good. I'm like, obviously I'm not that good. It took me eight years to catch up. I missed something
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Amazing, man. Well, this has been an amazing episode. Thank you so much. Follow Billy Jean on Instagram. You hear Billy. Jean is marketing. I love it. I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Billy.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Thank you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Get a revealing look at the seamy underbelly of the affiliate world how he broke into brand.
Why going with one flow for every platform you’re advertising doesn’t fly.
How to generate massive passive income with card points
Why having multiple virtual cards for ad spend is the only way to get to the next level.
How he and his clients made the rare pivot that turned the COVID crisis into cash.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maor-benaim-19baa546/?originalSubdomain=il
https://www.facebook.com/maorbn
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCopDCYIFFXcx6YEGBNcaJaA
Speaker 1: (00:00)
In this this episode, I talk with Maor or the Wolf who's managing 20 million a year in ad spend for 2020 and egos deep about 30, 40 minutes into the episode on his points of strategy. He's one of the few media buyers in Israel. That's on the Amex black card and this guy squeezes out every point. Uh, you can, so if you're spending money on ads and all about the point game, listen to that segment. I also think when we dive into the four ad segment, mayor is very gracious to open up some of his own failures in the last year, in his own effort to rock his own brand. And it's amazing to see a guy jumped from the affiliate world to the brand world and some of the lessons that he, uh, had to learn the hard way. Um, even though his team was stacked with a players across the board from a media buyers to follow craters, to copywriters, um, and, uh, and, uh, and like, so enjoy this episode, uh, let us know what you think, and that will be, uh, we'll see in there. And the fact is that if you have something that works in this industry, people are going to know about it. So the choice is in daily, how much time you can save it for yourself, the choice is do you want that person to remember you as the guy who was lying to him,
Speaker 2: (01:24)
[inaudible]
Speaker 3: (01:34)
Listening to the rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: (02:02)
All right, welcome to another episode of the rich ed poor ed podcast. This is your host, Zach Johnson with mr. Dylan Carpenter. How are you doing Dylan? Doing pretty good,
Speaker 3: (02:12)
Man. Pumped to get this one. Rolling.
Speaker 1: (02:15)
Yes. Yes. Today we have a dynamic, uh, entrepreneur who is really an affiliate, an agency owner, a brand owner, and a multifaceted entrepreneur. I mean, he's seen, uh, it from retail on, on physical stores. He's got a ton of experience in e-com and spends a boatload of money on ads. Um, I think this year he'll probably have an impact on over 20 million in ad spend. Uh, so I'm pretty excited to have him on, and he's got quite the, uh, quite the case studies to share today. Are you pretty pumped Dylan? Yeah, man. I mean, these are real,
Speaker 3: (02:56)
I've kind of case studies here at sun. It's another concept it's going to be super juicy.
Speaker 4: (03:00)
So y'all buckle up, buckle up cause, uh, Maor the Wolf, uh, who was also a speaker at affiliate world and also a, a coach and a consultant and a mentor, I would say to many of today's top media buyers. I'm pretty excited to have on the show. So mayor welcome. Thank you guys for having me. I'm super excited and lady like, I'm loving this opportunity to speak with you guys and show a lot of my experience and basically case studies and stuff got a ton of it, man. And we're so excited. It's really cool. See, you know, your, your attorney of, of kind of exposing, uh, I think a little bit that underbelly of the affiliate world and, um, you know, you've done a ton of online education and speaking around, uh, just the killer stuff that you're doing on Google, uh, specifically, but today, you know, I really want to dive into what you're up to on the brand side.
Speaker 4: (04:06)
You know, you're a really more focused, you know, on your, your e-comm businesses over the last year. And I really want to dive into, so maybe give everybody a little overview of your background and what you're up to these days. Um, so first of all, I want to start by saying that I think it's mainly just like when you did the overview, I got, I got the small look, um, from me as a brand and me as like, you know, just the scope of my career along, along the time. Um, and I just, I was thinking that it's more about the challenge for me in terms of like I wasn't going on stages. And then I went and be in the affiliate world a couple of times and biggie co who were in a bunch of puddles stuff. And I was even afraid, afraid of actually, you know, appearing, um, on YouTube and filming myself and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: (05:01)
So I didn't see any shell knowledge. And I think that's my main focus nowadays would I would say it's just sharing with them things, knowledge, you know, I was speaking to a potential client or even about now that I might just partner up with. And the other day, like, I think two days ago he finished the conversation. I think he was just like remanded, like some friends or like [inaudible] hooked us up. Um, and uh, he told me after the conversation, do you know how to sell yourself? Like, you're amazing. I told him, listen, it's not that I know how to sell, sell myself. It's just that this industry doesn't matter if you're a brand owner, if you're doing great. And if you never touched digital marketing, the, the entrepreneurial spirit type of like persona genetic persona, uh, it's generally a small human being. You know, even when I look at the, the guys that I would consider the most stupid at the conferences that we go to, those guys are pretty smart.
Speaker 4: (06:09)
So I think that a lot of the industry or people in the industry are making mistakes by trying to wear a mask. And that's something that people really, you know, you can hold the mask for maybe a meeting maybe a week, maybe even a month. But once you start talking about specific stuff, then people see that you're wearing a mask and then you end up losing a lot more than just saying, dude, I can't stand campaigns. Like now stuff isn't working for me, I need help. And I think that's what the industry is really, um, missing right now. You know, that the authenticity, you know, and, and I noticed that when I was going around just like the venue and I was asking people, Hey dude, how how's it going? How well are you doing right now in terms of like numbers? Oh, campaigns, stuff like that. Everyone, everyone like a hundred percent of people were saying were crashing it or doing amazing. You know, that's been by the way, many gems, the analysis weeks that imitation it's like, dude, you're doing amazing now I'm joking. You guys know?
Speaker 1: (07:19)
No, that's hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (07:22)
So he he's like the owner of purple leads and he is the guy who like my big brother. I love them. So, uh, yeah.
Speaker 1: (07:29)
You're talking about James. Oh yeah, yeah. Okay. I thought you were talking about somebody else,
Speaker 4: (07:34)
The guy who actually pushed me and vouch for me for affiliate world to begin with. So I always have like this, he has like a personal note system called Jennifer. So I have in patient he's like Jenny [inaudible].
Speaker 1: (07:51)
Yeah. He's totally the hype guy for the affiliate world. I think we're having them on the show in a couple of weeks. So that'll be,
Speaker 4: (07:56)
Oh, amazing. Amazing. He's a brilliant guy. Knows so much stuff and he's also genuine as hell. Um, so what, what I was trying to say is that I think that's what the industry is. Lady. Um, people are really desperate for a genuine advice for someone who tell, who would tell them, listen, you're not on the right path. The fact that you're trying to leave the land, whatever a thousand more people for Israel, from China, from India, or getting inside this industry each day, isn't going to work. You need to work on something bigger. You need to have a bigger USP. You need to get your answer advantage. You know, the, uh, if you want to get stuff done, they'll some really smart people who came even came from the same background, like a poker type of background to dieting through. Um, and, and they'll still trying to learn this type of, like, let's say, um, mouse course, you know, mice type of like maze.
Speaker 4: (08:55)
Uh, everyone's trying to learn inside this thing, this, them getting like at least twice or three times a day, people who are just telling me, dude, how do I stop learning inside this industry and my main name? And so to them, it's like, wow, if I had to stop right now, I don't know where I would start with. First of all, also the garbage that's out there, uh, in terms of like content. And second of all, you have to approach everything with such a high level of skepticism. Like, is this person actually doing what he's doing? Or he's just trying to sell me something on the backend, which is 90% of the cases, unfortunately. Um, well, I mean, what are you up to these days? Like, I, I feel like you, you kind of came from the affiliate world, but you you're, you're doing some pretty interesting things like on the brand side.
Speaker 4: (09:48)
And so are you helping, like a lot of these people reach out, are you helping them out with yeah. So first of all, I'm writing on that affiliate side or on the brand side or doing a bunch of stuff. And I really divide every single day into those types of like, uh, sections of my life. So first of all, there is the agency and I don't really cool clients these days, to be honest, if someone approaches me and I find their business interesting, I either buy into the business or just also to sort of like open up a white, white label type of like thing. So that's what they do in terms of like, uh, the agency stuff. So I learned some campaigns to some e-com and Legion clients, uh, only mainly like high budget types of campaigns. Uh, the other stuff that I'm doing would be teaching and consulting and just doing those videos for free.
Speaker 4: (10:41)
I have a YouTube channel that I work on really hard. Uh, it's just one of those stuff, like, you know, initially, and I'm going to tell my background story, but initially, like when I was like 21 or 20 years old, I told myself that I'm going to be a millionaire by the time that I get to 30, but it only took me something like 10 months to, to, to be, to get there. So it's like, what do you do when you basically costs of bucket list items more than you can even think of? It's quite depressing. I know it sounds like a rich man's problem, but, um, one of the stuff that I found that that's quite fulfilling in terms of like, just giving back, you know, it's like I found out that I'm not really looking for other people's money. I'm looking for the admiration I'm looking for, uh, just like helping people.
Speaker 4: (11:39)
And I really enjoy the fact that a year after I teach someone, he just sees me somewhere on a conference on like I've had people just like shake my hands. And like w when, when hands was legit and stuff, and just like people approach me and say that they didn't knew what's the URL for the Facebook ads manager was, and now they'll crush and get them doing really nice numbers either by opening an agency or just opening their own brands and stuff and people who are shifting. So that would be my second main point to focus by third point would be just some projects that we're starting to build like now. And some stuff that we're launching, like the album, uh, thing that we're opening up, something that I, uh, was dealing with for the, the, the last couple of years. But, um, but I didn't really extend that to a point where I actually own the business.
Speaker 4: (12:43)
And I actually have a secret project that I can't really talk about, but it's it, you would say that it's going to be a company actually that has, um, a lot of branches in the States, um, that we're launching really soon. Uh, and my main point of focus would be in the last, uh, something like 10, 11 months is known, which is my vitamins and supplements brand. It's the first time that I really took on the challenge of how, how, how cold e-com not white labeling some skin brands, or just like really finding a legitimate nail that hasn't a big on-site advantage. Uh, and that, so advantage is the fact that first of all, my partner has like 20, 20 years of experience in the vitamins and supplements. So he knows how to lead the industry, uh, perfectly. And also he owns the factory that actually produces. So I actually got to make the formulas for multiple types of like protein bars and supplements, and really create the products that I wanted and also handled with a lot of stuff that you don't really handle by, you know, you kind of handle it when you run big brands as a media buyer, but you don't really make those really big decisions in terms of like how to build the customer service, how to really save up money with fulfillment and stuff like that. So, um, yeah.
Speaker 5: (14:21)
Well, I love it, dude. I think you're, you're doing a great job,
Speaker 4: (14:24)
Your YouTube channel, just to circle back to that, I checked those out, like after we connected, you know, this last week and felt like the level of specificity in what you're talking about on your YouTube channel is like, it's so unique. And like a lot of that stuff has been talked away and, you know, masterminds like in-person and masterminds, like, um, or, you know, some courses if you're, if you're really lucky, but like just your whole video on your multiple tie account strategy, uh, that you posted like last week. Uh, I think that's awesome. Like, I mean, the, um, like there's not enough people who are like going into that level of detail. Uh, Oh, first of all, thank you so much. And second, you know, it's just like you remember, we were all, I think, uh, 50 plus year old guys, um, I don't know how it was back in the States, but I remember the newsletter when I was in high school, it was like, there was this one, two, maybe three guys inside each school that had access to all of the like newest tax books or PlayStation or like movies and games and like music and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: (15:44)
Then they would, would just like really be super, like they wouldn't really share and they would keep it to themselves. And that was like, then the way that people just acted back then. And I just think that, I mean, masterminds and like those really private, small type conferences are going to stick, but I think that people are really trying to, to, to keep it to themselves way too much. And the fact is that if you have something that works in this industry, people are going to know about it. So the choice isn't really how much time you can save it for yourself. The choice is, do you want that person to remember you as the guy who was lying to him and sending him in a decent direction and making him lose some money or just sharing that information, uh, in a way that he could adopt it and just look at you in a different way.
Speaker 4: (16:45)
So that's the first thing about my YouTube channel. And the second thing is that I'm getting a lot of feedback, which is kind of fun. People don't hear it yet. The purpose of that YouTube channel, the purpose of this YouTube channel isn't to grow to like a multi-billion type of like subscribers daily. We, uh, type of like channel it's just to inspire people, but people tell me, dude, you're talking about really sophisticated advanced, like high, high, high level stuff. And they're like, I'm like, dude, why, why do you want me to just like open up a video, how to make $500 a day? And just like, you know, I'm not like that type of person who would just like promise people stuff that's not going to happen or use like really shady stuff to, to push it. So I [inaudible], it's also really practical. Right? So like, I, your, your whole video on like your multi account strategy, I've already sent to like a couple of people, right? Like, like, um, when we, when we, uh,
Speaker 1: (17:50)
Sold like with ad card, right, like just self blatant self promotion for a second for talking about her. So we get a ton of people affiliates that are like, you know, they need to spin up virtual cards for every single ad account. And they're really, the conversation just starts with, like, I don't want to get my accounts banned. Right. And like, I,
Speaker 4: (18:08)
You know, I need a virtual card system where I can use any name or any address to that budget,
Speaker 1: (18:14)
But like the level of detail where it's like, Hey, here's maybe like, think about like a multi account straps
Speaker 4: (18:22)
Energy beyond that. Right. Where you're just de-risking or maybe just
Speaker 1: (18:25)
Account for, um, each offer. Uh, and you're like, you literally go like 30 minutes into, not only just like, Hey, you sh like 99% of the content out there would be like, you should use multiple accounts. Right. And then it'd be like a one-minute tip. But like the level of detail, you go into that 30 minute video of like, here's the entire account, you know, strategy on why you
Speaker 4: (18:50)
Want to, you know, use multiple accounts, like is,
Speaker 1: (18:53)
Takes it to the next level. And so anytime we get an affiliate now, um, I, I bookmark your,
Speaker 4: (18:58)
Your link and I'm like, okay, well, if you're running multiple towns, obviously,
Speaker 1: (19:02)
Obviously they need a ton of virtual cars. So they had car and I'm like, all right. And then you should also go check out, like check out this video so you can kind of really learn how to love it.
Speaker 4: (19:10)
Thank you for sharing that. That's like amazing to me. And there's no better compliment in terms of like people who just like show my stuff. I have a couple of stuff to say regarding that. First of all. Yes. It's it's, for me, it's about getting into as much detail as possible. I don't really like case studies where they show yeah. That's where, what they did with my brand. You know, it's like, I see, I see those case studies, uh, type of like books is basically useless because most of the stuff really relates to that specific brand and that specific journey. And I think that each and every brand in each and every platform and time has a different type of journeys. So you just want to duct into maybe just like, do do your own thing. So I just like to get into like the deep, advanced stuff.
Speaker 4: (20:00)
And also, you know, when I was just starting my talks and teaching and stuff, people told me, Oh, you have 30 minutes. Just talk about yourself for like 10 minutes. Talk about stuff that people already know. So 10 minutes, and then just give a couple of tips at the end and that's it. And I was like, that sounds easy. And people aren't stupid. They're not going to going to stay, you know, they're maybe going to stay for like 10, 15 minutes. But, uh, I figured that just like in life, you attract the people who are like you and people like people that are like them. And I see here that even, uh, if the room like 20%, 50%, even like 50% of the room wouldn't understand that level of advanced ness and deepness of like, like media buying and stuff and stuff that I'm talking about, then I would at least, you know, um, get more sophisticated type of like different audience. So people don't actually want to make a change in their campaign. Well, let's get it to man. I feel like there's a, there's a ton of people here that are like just itching to get some level of insight into what's working for you right now and, and, and give them something tactical here. So without further ado Mayo, like what is your rich ad campaign right now? What's working break it down for us. Let's go.
Speaker 2: (21:25)
All right. So
Speaker 4: (21:26)
Reach ad campaign that I'm going to share with you guys would be my own personal boost online, which is my epicenter now. Um, and I'm going to talk about that specific one, but I also, when you listen to this podcast, I want you to really think about how you can do the same stuff and how you can adopt the same mindset into your own brand and campaigns. So boost online is basically just like, I wouldn't say I'm it, but maybe even like a new business that we opened up, just because of the coronavirus, we will, the first ones in Israel who adopted into that situation and recognize that we need to open up an online type of like fitness thing. Um, that was actually a really smart campaign in terms of like how we choose the fact that first of all, I have a celebrity now with me a local, so that will be in Israel.
Speaker 4: (22:26)
So we used a bunch of, uh, uh, PR stuff that people just wanted to host multiple shows. So there was a lot of PR, but we also took advantage of like the marketing and the targeting to those people. And just like strategizing in a way where we built funnels and different funnels for each type of like, um, of like audience. So a couple of weeks that I actually used in that campaign, the first big tip that I could give anyone who's doing that would be just use a tracker and make sure that whatever audience targeting platform that you're doing, you need to open up a different campaign for them and just make sure that they go into a decent flow. So that would be a different AB testing, a different type of like, um, just like a different type of maybe price-point design and copy that they see.
Speaker 4: (23:26)
So just for example, someone, so with my campaign, uh, specific, um, ads on Instagram and knowingly that, that Instagram is a discovery platform. It clicked. And then it got into an [inaudible] that talked about certain benefits and stuff like that. And then he got like 14 days registration for free, but if someone got through, um, my search term, like my blends and search them, and then I sent him into just the payments page, um, directly without even the 14 days trial and stuff like that. So, um, it's, it's just about creating those flows and that, that was a good campaign. Well, we just decided to implement that really slows kind of like method, because most campaigns, I would say even 95, 10 campaigns of people that I consult or agencies that the plan campaigns for the clients, they just have one landing page. Maybe they would do like a generic AB test, but they, what they don't understand is that people who are coming from YouTube are the same people who are coming from the lookalike audience inside Facebook and the same people who are coming from stealth traffic and each, and every like different type of like platform and audience and targeting NTA needs to see a different flow.
Speaker 4: (24:52)
And how, how would you break out? Like, so you talked about like Instagram versus your Google, but like what type of funnels would you look at in terms of, let's say maybe YouTube or Facebook or the Buhler app brand, like on those other channels? So what we did was just like, um, um, two designers and two copywriters, and what they did full time was just like an item life. And that's what we need with the first two months. Um, it took us something like two months to grow to 20,000 unique users, uh, which was by far the biggest online subscription population in Israel. Um, and then we decided to implement that, that, uh, flows that the G will, a lot of people were just like, uh, seeing different funds and seeing [inaudible] and seeing different stuff. So for example, if you went through from Taboola, um, and you came from desktop, then we would start, abcV testing some editorials.
Speaker 4: (26:00)
And after like a week where we got, uh, at least let's say three to $7,000 worth of traffic, we will decide which type of advertorials converts and, and really relates to those people. And we checked a much higher, uh, or larger attribution window than most people, most affiliates or brand owners would just check the first day. But what I recognized from the first month when we have that free television PR stuff, I just recognize that people sign up like the sale window, the attribution window shouldn't be something like at least 48, if not 72 hours. So that was the window that we opened up really new and measure every type of channel and platform. That's what we did in terms of that campaign. And in general, um, when we're talking about good campaigns or just really rich rich ads, basically I think that a good campaign would be the best connection of just your knowledge expert expertise and the momentum.
Speaker 4: (27:09)
So it's just like a way that you catch and you need to eyes once you catch that good way, you need to add it to show. And I don't think there is a better example to it than coronavirus. You know, most people that are out there and writing stuff would say, yeah, COVID-19 ruined my business. People are bankrupt. People are taking tons of loans, but to be honest, from talking with my clients and one-on-ones most businesses that I know who've made the pivots and adoptions that they needed to make a much richer and they have a better business than free. Like they have a better business post COVID than they had pre-K. So, yeah, so sometimes we, we learn more from our losers than we do from our winners. Uh, so while I love your wine, I love your strategy of having a dedicated, you know, funnel and a flow by channel, right? Because like what most people do is, you know, they're going to do a dedicated a funnel just for mobile, just for desktop and like call it good. Right? Um,
Speaker 3: (28:21)
This episode is brought to you by funnel Dash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend in partnership with MasterCard. And if you are an aggressive affiliate filling with dozens of ad accounts, or you are in gray hat or black hat verticals, such as drop shipping CVD or other verticals where you're dealing with ad accounts, getting shut down business managers, getting shut down, or even deep platform from platforms like Facebook and Google, then you absolutely need to check out funnel dash as ad card. We give you unlimited free virtual debit and credit card. So you can have a dedicated card for every single ad account campaign. And you can attach any name and address in the U S you have complete anonymous entity on a card and at the card level, plus one of my favorite features is that you don't have to pre fund or even top off like most typical virtual card solutions today. So if this is you and you're operating these verticals, whether you're an agency or an advertiser, then check
Speaker 4: (29:22)
Ad card@funneldash.com, but, uh, walk us through your, your poor ad. Right. I think you had, I don't know if you've talked about this much over the last year, but like, I think that what you've learned here, uh, what we're going to talk about here on your, your poor on segment is like tons value. Uh, so like breaking it down, man, like what hasn't worked for you because, uh,
Speaker 1: (29:47)
We were online online, like, everybody's talking about your you're winning, but like, I want to get, I want to know that you're not perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (29:59)
So it's like, it's like those poker players, you always see how they win the no, no one actually tells you how much they lost and stuff. People just try and talk about how much they want. Uh, so definitely. Yeah. I think first of all, that most of my campaigns were in successful, obviously like I am. And if someone tells you that most of these campaigns were successful, he's obviously nine. Um, my poor ad, the story would be glow my vitamins and supplements brand. Um, so I approached it and I was like, okay, I'm the Wolf. I have this amazing theme. I know how to an e-commerce that you're an econ major brands and they heads huge success.
Speaker 1: (30:46)
You know, everything, you know, every day you, you made a million,
Speaker 4: (30:50)
10 months. Yeah. I'm like, I don't even have to publish the campaign. The system is so scared from the world that it's going to publish itself. Right. Um, but yeah, so I approached it and we opened up, we didn't even knew what the numbers that we need to do work. So we didn't knew the lifetime value. Um, we didn't knew anything. So the, the problem was mainly just always, just like the, the question was, do I wait and see if the LTV and AOVs and everything really, uh, averaging out what they need because the business model, or there wasn't like being profitable on the front end, it was like losing on the first sale and then getting those recurring type of like subscriptions and return costs.
Speaker 1: (31:44)
But let me, let me, let me understand this. You were,
Speaker 4: (31:48)
You weren't profitable until that rebill hit 30 days later. It wasn't even the 30 days. So sometimes like, um, I, to be honest, I don't really know because we had to peel the corporation and we had to rebrand. So that was the decision that I made. So, yeah.
Speaker 1: (32:06)
Nonetheless though, that's difficult, right? That's a difficult [inaudible].
Speaker 4: (32:09)
Yeah. It's such a lot of folks ration, because I had to deal with so much stuff, you know, I had to make, first of all, even before econ, I had to make the transition between being an affiliate to actually being a brand owner. So actually just like dealing with customer service, dealing with six employees, which is something that I try to avoid almost all of my life,
Speaker 1: (32:32)
Basically dealing with people is what I'm hearing so far.
Speaker 4: (32:36)
Yeah. So I was like, okay, we, this situation where, you know, you keep coming back each night and some, some nights you, you truly believe that your math is right. And sometimes you just open the Excel file and you're like, Oh my God, this is garbage. This is not going to work. I'm just spending $15,000 a day on running ads. And I'm just like funding Facebook at this point. Um, so you have to make a lot of adjustments, but the main story to, um, to, to, to, to this like project is the fact that at some point, um, because of a lot of circumstances, I had to kill that product. And I, and I decided to redesign everything. And I took on everything that I learned and I decided, okay, this is going to be basically my leg sheep project. I'm going to kill it.
Speaker 4: (33:34)
There's no way. This is the biggest challenge of my life. In, in, in so many terms, this is going to work. So I ended up, um, just like hooting a bunch of employees into it. I ended up, um, getting so many big companies and teams involved and just like I had like one of the best popular items out there, which is neat Wilcox. He is a speaker at the affiliate world. Also. I love the guy. He's, he's a part of our team, which is the new name. Uh, we, we have DFO on, uh, um, on affiliate management. We have all chill, which is like, he calls himself. The bolt father is a genius with like building those super advanced AI stuff. We have your four on reviews. Uh, we have Kronos, Joshua chains, um, Singapore, uh, email marketing agency. So we took on an all star team just to create that new, like level of friends.
Speaker 4: (34:42)
We wanted to trade market. We wanted to open up substations with PayPal. We opened up after pay. So we took on like, people who code it. We wanted the system to work fast. We wanted more products. So we created a multi multivitamin type of a gummy, a Biotene gummy, and elderberry gummy. We created the first boat in Apple cider vinegar, protein bar. So we did a bunch of stuff and I told myself, okay, I already, at the end of flow, I was standing on the right numbers in terms of like CPA and LTV. And if right now with everything that I added, this isn't going to work, then no one can pull this econ stuff ever like, like this is way bigger than anything. Like if the average order value and lifetime value was already good. Now I have just more products. I have more ways of like, you know, increasing the conversion rates and lifetime value.
Speaker 4: (35:46)
I have installment plans. I have subscription set up in place. There is no way this isn't going to work. Like I have this really amazing design and copywriting. We have lips like that dedicated inside each platforms. And we launched and guessed what the CPA went up. Something like six times, as much as they had with the first one, like before the rebrand. And we had so much problems with checkouts and with like stuff. And when we finished that, we, and just we're at the point where August was a nightmare with Facebook, everyone's having like conversion rates dropped down by like 24 to 75%. The CPMs went up and you can, Facebook recognizes that there was a problem iOS 14 came out and everyone knows that there is a new tracking problem. CCPA in California came out. So there is a tracking platform in California on this to make some changes through your side.
Speaker 4: (36:52)
So, um, I, I'm still running it and I know it's going to work at the end because we are so dedicated. And I know that everything in my life that I tried to achieve, I achieve only by becoming obsessive. You know, I always tell people that they look at me and they say, Oh my God, this guy has money. He made some success stories of project and stuff. And I tell people I'm one of them. I'm not, I'm not smart at all. The thing that I have my answer, the advantage is just getting super obsessed. Like one of the most obsessive people that you probably know. I don't want to say it.
Speaker 1: (37:40)
Uh, did I? Yeah. Well, I, uh, I agree. We
Speaker 4: (37:45)
Back in my lead pages days, um, one of the traits that we look for in hire when we were hiring marketers and media buyers was the frustrated marketer, the guy that's so paranoid, he's always frustrated because of that. Thing's really ever like dialed in, right. If everything is, is like, you know, never perfect. And you're always like trying to fix, optimize, improve, and like, um, you know, those are the, those are the folks that end up outperforming the, the folks that are just, you know, resting on their laurels and, and not for the best. Yeah. The first time I heard about it was with Tony Robbins. I think I went, I went to a couple of seminars and he tells everyone that if, think about whatever in your life that you achieve, it doesn't matter if it's a girl that you dated, the girl that you're currently dating a business, maybe an amount of money that you wanted to, to have in your checking account.
Speaker 4: (38:54)
Um, and the way that you did that thing that you couldn't believe that you would achieve is just by getting obsessive, just by being super obsessive. You know, I remember myself when I was just starting out. I moved from Joseph and, um, I actually haven't told my personal story. So I'm going to do the super, super duper short version. But the story is that I remember that I was like 21 years old, something, 20 years old, I was still living with my parents. And I remember that my mother told his sister that it's the middle of the month. I can remember how the door was almost opened up. Um, but not enough for people to see that I was listening. And I was like listening to, uh, just talking to my sister, my aunt. And she was telling him that it's the middle of the month.
Speaker 4: (39:46)
And we don't have money to buy food. And you see how the fridge and stuff, just the kitchen is getting, um, more and more empty and we don't have money to buy stuff. And that's where I made the decision to be a millionaire by the time that they get to fail. The, and it wasn't about getting the Lamborghinis. It wasn't about buying the newest smartphone or getting girls. It was just about having my mother be able to fly wherever she wants to go to two restaurants and not just live the life that you live, but was like just cooking for us, cleaning for us and not doing anything. So I, and I also understood that flying out to a vacation when you're a 15, isn't the same as flying out when you're 60 or 70. So I understood that they have unlimited time. And I remember myself moving to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem.
Speaker 4: (40:43)
There was LM being, first of all, the capital of Israel, second of all, the second largest, and also post city in Israel. And, uh, I remember myself being so obsessive getting, getting up at something like five, 5:30 AM for a full year, just signing up once forums going on, Facebook groups, just like connecting with people on Skype. And then I went working at this digital media agency. And in between breaks, I would team for you, uh, like control my, my remote control, my, my, my computer in my house and just work on, on like projects. And then when I got back, I didn't go out. They didn't date. I didn't start. Not that it was too hard to fuck, but, um, yeah, I obsessed to the point where I, I remember myself one night, I fell asleep with the calculator on my phone, still, still on how much I need.
Speaker 4: (41:46)
I feel you. And your 83 all romantic for the full year. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, we're, we're starting to get into, you know, your financial goals and, and your, your, your financial planning aspect of it. And I, I want to jump into this last segment, which, um, I think people can get a ton of value on because you're one of those guys that like, is, uh, super focused on, um, not just revenue, you know, not just top line, but like profit profitability and cash flow across all your projects and, and, and knows your numbers. Right. And you're also finding a ton of hacks on how to make yourself even more profitable than the other affiliate or brand, or, you know, media buyer out there. And so I want to talk about some of the financial tactics principles that you could share with the audience on not only, you know, in the early days, right. Of like being super focused on your goal daily, but now also like at the level of scale you're at, um, and you know, of course, like we want to drive in and we want to dive into your credit card game. Cause it's on point man.
Speaker 4: (43:01)
Yeah. Um, so first of all, to be honest, I never took on a loan and I never had any cashflow issues. Uh, some would say that that's a good thing. And some would say that they haven't scaled enough. Uh, I mean, I know how much I scaled and, um, I never needed that type of like loans and financial stuff because they never went to retail. Most people will say that retail is such a nightmare. So I tried to avoid it at any cost. So my game was always taking on partners who had a major cash flow, uh, just to pull in that project, that specific project. And also, I always had people who believed in me if I needed an amount of money and I had my own projects that always kind of like funded themselves. Um, I just remember looking at agencies and I was like, Oh, okay.
Speaker 4: (44:01)
So they use credit lines. Why would they do that? And I always kind of like, look, the spec that you have, um, that you have that available cash pool in just to inject to any type of project as just like the, the best situation in which you can get, like most people would, would invest their money. And they would have like this type of like managed like family office type of thing, they would do anywhere between 2%. If they bought an apartment somewhere to maybe, maybe maybe 9%, if there was an amazing year, but I would somehow just like low on agencies and stuff, money and get those like three to 2% monthly type of like interest on my money. So, uh, I had, um, just the strategy of like keeping the money inside my account or as much as possible. And also I kind of got like, this is, I'm not addicted to anything.
Speaker 4: (45:08)
I never smoked a cigarette, never tried any type of drug, but being an obsessive character that I am, I got super hooked on credit card points. Believe it or not, that's my addiction. Most people don't know it that's actually the first time that I, I say that. So I basically know everything there is to know about either hotel points or credit card type of like conversion ratios and stuff like that. And I figured out the math pretty soon when I just like figured, okay, agencies are making anywhere between 8% to sometimes with bonuses, if there's like an amazing deal and an amazing like type of uniQure colon type of like clients and they would make 20% maybe. So I figured that with the points that you're, that you're selling and like just making those points just by negotiating the, the, the cashflow and just by negotiating with Amex and visa and MasterCard also, um, you can get something like two to 4% yearly more than you're doing right now, which is obviously a game changer for any agency.
Speaker 4: (46:32)
Um, so most people would use those points to fly out or just to buy stuff with, um, the time managed to actually start to the, in a way where banks really believed and trusted me. So I didn't really have to be positive a lot of money to get those huge credit lines inside my credit cards, like not compliance in terms of like loans or debt. Um, and then I would just use it because, um, I have the cash flow and I was generating tons of money. I truly believe with just like one company that I can think of, not naming any company. I think that I could probably rent out something like three to maybe even five, um, full airplanes for a trip around multiple cities in the States for me, Islam, just by using points at the moment. And I'm thinking about like,
Speaker 1: (47:36)
Which is, which is, which is very useful, right? Because that's your next financial goal is to get three to five planes all flying at the same time loaded.
Speaker 4: (47:45)
Well, because you have 500 friends, this conversation of, of the point game in the media by our space is, is a, is a hot ticket for me. I think you have the right perspective in terms of, Hey, you know, like the agency of the media buyer ultimately gets to dictate how they get paid, right. And, and if you can earn that cash back or those point level of equivalence, that's huge. Uh, but I will credit you now because you were the one that first gave us the side eye idea, um, indirectly, but we'll still credit you is like these points end up just, you end up stacking millions of them. Right.
Speaker 1: (48:26)
So you like a ton of these folks, like they ended up not
Speaker 4: (48:30)
Using these points for like three, five years or like have a lifetime of points and they just kind of decrease in value over time. And you're kind of want to first persons that I talked to you that it was just like, yeah, I don't, you know, like if I could sell it
Speaker 1: (48:44)
Points I would write or, you know, like how do I, you know, actually
Speaker 4: (48:48)
Into cash or an asset. And so definitely there is a way of turning it into cash. And just like you said, if you stick with one airplane, one credit card and not negotiate anything, then you end up with like a depreciation of the points in ratio into a dollars or euros or whatever, whatever you want. But if you know that this is basically an underground stock market. Okay. So sometimes you would have highest points being the hottest thing ever. And sometimes you would have just like the, um, I don't know, the stanza type of like a airline company points being the hottest thing ever. So if you know how to allocate your credit cards and if you know how to negotiate. So the first part would be getting to a point where they talk to you at a [inaudible] level type of like user. So you need to get the coach by Amex, um, and get the, the black codes.
Speaker 4: (49:52)
So you would have someone, um, from like the high touch by deal type of like, yeah. And second of all, uh, it's much easier when you get to private banking level and stuff like that, because you get a lot of like those Burkes and then just like, again, coming from a really poor black, um, you, you know, I remember myself looking at Mazda three and saying, you know, how the hell's someone just being a kid. Yeah. Looking at the new car and not even an expensive car and just asking myself how the hell someone can afford a new car like that to the point where, when you're in private banking and you know how to manipulate the system into giving you so many different things just by having them just like by, by having the ability to allocate in between visa and MasterCard and Amex, having those guys negotiate between them and the approach you just because they, they know that you're doing massive volumes, then you suddenly, you understand how those rich guys just make money really in a festive way. So most people would say that passive income only only exists with real estate and the stock market. I say that passive income exists through the stock market, real estate and points and points. Well, I
Speaker 6: (51:21)
Say, I think that the way I look at
Speaker 4: (51:23)
Points is yes, you could probably get, you know, an annualized basis, you know, two, 3%, maybe 4% cash back across, you know, seven, eight figures of volume. And it was really this use case of like, well, how do you then kind of get your, your, this, this like asset, right? Because it's, you know, high six figures, seven figures of, of, of, uh, asset out of, you know, forcing you to buy five planes, right? So to ultimately access that, that value. And this is really where I think Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is, is a huge like value. And this is something that I I'm going to credit you towards for, for the next several years. Mayor is, is X getting ad card to explore giving Bitcoin back instead of, uh, of cash back. So that media buyers have a asset that they can, um, appreciate and value, right?
Speaker 4: (52:22)
Like in a relatively short amount of time, you know, those points are going to be worth less, or they don't even know how innovative what you're saying is, dude, it's like so small, because first of all, you can't really negotiate with Facebook or Google and even talk to them, but you can negotiate, first of all, the points they show. And second of all, uh, just your terms with the credit card companies. So that's the first point. And second point is just like that technology, just like you said, it's out there, the next step. Um, that's where we all, like now we're looking at how Bitcoin, how Prieto Colin's in general, who go on the next step. Well, it's actually usable where it not only gets the legitimacy, but also people know specifically what it's good for. People know how the answer advantage, um, by best basically bypassing the banking system and utilizing this really innovative idea that you're saying 80 words.
Speaker 4: (53:36)
I mean, just think about it for a second, right? Like if you have, if you're sitting on 5 million points, right. And the value of those points is whatever, like two to 3 cents maybe, um, yeah. You're looking at like a hundred grand of, of, of, of assets. That's, you know, sitting there, maybe like, I know guys are sitting on like 10 X that right. Like 50 million. And they got like a million dollars, like locked up. Right. And it's, it's sitting in this like, okay, that's cool, you got 50 million points. You don't have to worry about travel for the rest of your life. But like, they're just kind of sitting there depreciating. And if you could kind of move that over into a cryptocurrency, but as Bitcoin or Ethereum, like that is going to 10 X in value over the time, by the time you're actually able to start using those points. I know guys that are actually that they live in Israel. It's mostly religious guys, either religious cities that pay just to get those books really. Wow. That's that's, that's it comes full circle at least two.
Speaker 7: (54:48)
Okay, great. Great. All right. Well, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna roll this feature out just for you, um,
Speaker 4: (54:53)
Or, and we're going to sponsor your YouTube channel and you're gonna introduce us. So those two guys that is all gonna work out, uh, well did well while we're masterminding the future of points and curve their currency, and also getting an extra two to four points on the back end of your ad spend. This is one of the longest yeah, yeah. One of the most interesting interviews by far the longest interview. So thank you mayor for going over and just, um, you know, being willing to dive into details and, um, you know, really give the audience some of the golden nuggets that are really just get brushed pass. Uh, so thank you so much.
Speaker 4: (55:36)
Absolutely. Tell everybody, um, how they can get in touch. We're obviously going to link up to your YouTube channel. It's awesome, but it's not really what you're up to next and how they can get in touch. Um, so I'm available on Facebook mainly, but you guys can add me on Instagram and just follow up and make sure that you, uh, show my stuff on YouTube. Um, nothing really special. Like the only thing that I would ask you, if you got to this point of the podcast, then that's something, I would say one of my videos then about, of my Wolf there and just make sure that next time when this all COVID-19 shit ends, whether we're in Barcelona, Vegas, or Bangkok, I don't know what, which conference I am. If you see a really short guy that looks like the will, that's probably me. No, I'm joking. Just like approach me and tell me that you love me. That's all I'm asking for. That's awesome. Very good.
Speaker 3: (56:38)
Very good. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: (56:40)
Thank you guys. Bye-bye
Speaker 3: (56:47)
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or ed.com/review. Thanks again.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Plunge into an insane depth of top-to- bottom details on a funnel that delivers 300X returns.
- Why $5k/month flat fee local clients are a million times more profitable than ones that could scale to millions.
- The psychological reason why running an old ad featuring an out of stock item can still drive massive in-store traffic.
- The little known FB campaign objective that’s got scary-good “big brother” shopper tracking capabilities that others pay tens of thousands for elsewhere.
- Why cheap video-views are worthless if they don’t deliver this essential metric.
RESOURCES/CONTACT:
https://blitzmetrics.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisyu/
Sam Cook is the Co-Founder, CEO, Chief Product Architect, Strategist, and StoryTelling Marketer behind the creation of the SanityDesk Business Operating Network. The business was under development for over 4.5 year by the marketing agency, James Cook Media where he was Co-Founder and Creative Director. Cook also served as CEO of Prism Communications and owned Uncle Sam’s New York after serving as an officer in the U.S. Army. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at Westpoint where he earned a B.S. in European History, he also holds a M.A. in World History from New York University.
Bio:
CHARFEN™ CEO and Co-founder, entrepreneur, author, speaker, and coach, Alex Charfen has spent 3 decades on the front lines of entrepreneurship and business, and is helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs with 6 to 8-figure six-, businesses grow and scale. He started his career as a Fortune 500 consultant, then became a highly leveraged Florida real estate investor who was forced to declare bankruptcy when the market tanked. Rising from the ashes, they built an information product called the Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) where they worked with major US lenders and real estate brokerages and taught other Realtors what they'd learned. He discovered that many of these principles applied to any small business and which led him to form CHARFEN which became one of the fastest growing small businesses in the country with the mission of empowering entrepreneurs. A sought after speaker and author, he’s written for Success, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine. His story has been featured on MSNBC, CNBC, FOX News, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and Investor’s Business Daily.
Social Promo:
Today we get inside the mind of entrepreneur, author, speaker, and coach, Alex Charfen whose epic Momentum podcast that helps visionary entrepreneurs find their path and has gotten 2.4 million downloads. The creator of the Billionaire Code will talk about the #1 thing entrepreneurs need -- but rarely ask for. Why marketing is only a measurement and what the ONLY things that matters when it comes to success. Why all imitation ISN’T flattery and the all too common entrepreneurial misstep that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Key Takeaways :
- Discover what gets startup entrepreneurs out of “the shit” they get stuck in for the first 12 months -- and how to lock it in after they get it.
- How to tell whether you’re a marketer, an entrepreneur or a visionary entrepreneur. HINT: It has ZERO to do with your balance sheet.
- What is the is the single most important thing you can build with clients -- and why integrity matters more than anything
- Why your current mission statement is probably crap - and the 4 things you need to include to create one that moves your business forward.
- What makes “fulfillment” the most fulfilling part of your business model.
Founded in 2017, Undergrads is a labor-only, local residential moving service staffed by trained university students. It uses a platform that lets customers submit moving job requests that students can accept and perform at a mutually convenient time.
Prior to co-founding the company, Thomas Mumford served as a Project Manager at EY CAAT which sells a technology solution that facilitates accounting and tax calculations for cryptocurrency transactions. He earned his BS in Industrial Engineering and Business Administration from Clemson University.
Co Founder, Chris Dryer previously served as the Business Operations Manager of Corkcicle and a Solutions Engagement Supervisor at UPS. He also earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How they bootstrapped their way to tripling revenue their first year.
- Why you should hold off borrowing as long as you can -- and what basic lending principal makes this their go-to 0% credit card
- How they can get into new markets for $0 down just by launching a new ad campaign.
- What lets them turn $1 of ad spend into $7 to $8 the first day of the campaign.
- What they’re going to spend the $250K in funding on that they hope to raise in order to expand from 5 to 9 markets. (It’s NOT technology).
RESOURCES:
https://undergrads.com/
Tom@undergrads.com
Christ@undergrads.com
Kendall Shaw is the founder and CEO of Atlanta-based Maybach Media, a full-service digital agency built to partner with eCommerce and education businesses to drive business growth with omni-channel strategies. Prior to founding Maybach, Shaw served as CAO and Managing Partner at DIGLISM, CEO and co-founder of Maverick Marketing Agency. A graduate of Peachtree Ridge High School, he attended the University of Tampa and is currently certified as a Facebook Verified Account Marketing Partner and a Shopify Marketing Partner.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How he transitioned from drop shipping to successfully scaling an unknown ecommerce product.
- Why a site he built in 3 hours and spent a couple hundred dollars promoting hauled in thousands the first day.
- The counter-intuitive strategy for figuring out how much to pay influencers.
- How testing pay per click and Google quote search on Google helped diversify his blended return on ad spend,
- His 20/20 hindsight advice on leveraging credit versus debt and what he would have done differently.
RESOURCES:
https://www.maybach-media.com
https://www.instagram.com/KNDALL/
Slip into something comfortable as we quiz Electric Eye Co-Founder Chase Clymer and Media Buyer, Ryan Shaw about the phenomenal success they’ve had promoting Pebby Forvee’s trendy side-slit t-shirts. We’ll talk about the uncomfortable client capital and cash flow conversations and why you have to have them. How a holiday and a charity tie-in combined to kick a summer sale into 15X ROI territory. Why an off-core product test crapped out. And why it takes a hundred failures to finally have a Rich Ad success in an episode that highlights a client/agency synergy that blew past a $1M annual revenue goal in 6 months.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Why preparing a client for the BEST case scenario is 100X more important than preparing them for the worst.
• How to approach upsells, cross sells, down sells, bundling, and develop a strategy on the front end to make it all work.
• Why growing slower can be better than blasting through with explosive growth.
• What absolutely HAS to happen before a client can even think about running a single ad.
• How a simple static product shot became the sexy superstar of a super-profitable 21 day campaign.
BIO
Chase Clymer is the Co-founder of Electric Eye, a Columbus Ohio based agency that increases sales for ecommerce brands and the host of Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast, community & educational resource providing online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business.
Today we’re getting sticky with Zach Horvath and looking behind the scenes of the phenomenal social promotion success of Live a Great Life -- an empowering lifestyle brand that started with stickers and branched out to accessories and apparel. Discover the secret of their insane 35% customer return rate. Pinpoint the thumb-stopping power of a flag ad that got 450,000 views and a 2.8X ROA. Roast a campaign that somehow got away with selling people on committing a crime. Then learn from the mistakes of making an unwise debt leveraging move that they miraculously managed to survive.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Discover the secret sauce behind Zach’s outstanding return customer rate and outrageously high LTV - that starts with a cheap pack of stickers.
- Why raising the price of a travel product paid off big during the COVID lockdown when people couldn’t travel.
- How an ad for counterfeit money flew under the Facebook radar.
- What often overlooked financing factor could cause you to pay TWICE as much for a PayPal loan as a Shopify loan.
- Why paying influencers isn’t worth it and what you should spend that money on instead.
Zach Horvath is the Founder and owner of Live a Great Story an Austin lifestyle media company he started in 2014 which is focused on inspiring people to be the HERO of their story through content, events and products. He also serves as Head of Strategyyy at Stickyyy Marketing as well as the owner of ZCLOCO a clothing company aimed at inspiring customers to "Live a Great Story. A graduate of the Acton Business School’s My Entrepreneurial Journey MBA program, Horvath is also the author of Take Over Your City, a guide focused on helping young adults effectively and efficiently move to a new city with tips, tactics and stories from the experiences of successful and not so successful moves.
Get a “God’s-eye-view” of Facebook ad management with Hootsuite/AdEspresso Facebook Ads Specialist, Paul Fairbrother to find out how he successfully markets to 10,000 customers with an $360M in ad spend. He’ll reveal the secret ingredient for positive cash flow, little known ad tracking hacks, and the $1,000 “free”experiments he runs to disaster check customer ad strategies. Then sit in as we pick apart a prepaid funeral ad that despite cheap leads was dead on arrival and bite into a rich and tasty cupcake ad that turned the COVID crisis into a big advantage.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Discover the un-trackable magic of “Dark Social” and why it generates sales you didn’t see coming.
- Why this kind of buying typically lets you add 50% from what’s being tracked to your revenue projections.
- The surprisingly easy way to track attribution for sales that occur beyond Facebook’s 28 day limit.
- What essential success-gauging metric you MUST know before you run a single ad - but most advertisers don’t.
- Why you can’t confuse someone into buying your product -- and the ONE thing you need to do to avoid making this mistake.
BIO
As Facebook Ads Specialist for Hootsuite and AdEspresso which is Facebook’s largest Marketing Partner, Paul Fairbrother personally manages close to $2M in client ad spend a year and has performance-audited campaigns from over 1,000 ad accounts. He also serves as AdEspresso’s Head of Education. Fully Facebook-Blueprint-Certified, Fairbrother also holds all 11 Digital Marketer certifications along with several Hootsuite Academy and Google Ads certifications. Prior to joining AdEspresso in 2016, he served as a social media manager for a global café chain.
Meet Adam Hadi, the marketing mind behind Current -- a start up virtual bank for underbanked hipster and gig workers that has raised over $50M in VC capital, has 1.2 million plus users, and over a billion dollars in deposits. Discover the serious-as-a-heart-attack secret behind the success of their hilarious meme ads. How they win the trust battle against the Capital Ones, Wells Fargos, and Chase banks of the world. Then we’ll dig into some spectacularly bad ads for back scratchers and sunflower seed feeders and the big promise that pays off time after time in Current’s best performing ads.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How to make money by stealing customers that your competitors don’t want.
- What you can do to minimize the upfront financial hit when hiring influencers.
- How to turn what prospects hate about your competitors into something they’ll love about you.
- The amazing advertising power of emojis.
- How to win a guerrilla war against industry Goliaths.
BIO
The VP of Marketing at Current, a leading U.S. challenger neobank built to meet the needs of people who have been overlooked by the traditional banking industry, Adam Hadi specializes in user acquisition and influencer marketing. Previously, he was the Head of Marketing at Draft (PlayDraft.com) and led User Acquisition at Topps Digital after spending several years as an Economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He earned an M.A. in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Economics from Binghamton University.
Settle in for a conversation with paid-traffic savage, Ashton Shanks, CEO and Co-Founder of the Hemon Media Group, a fast-growing agency that’s on track to spend 15M a month in Q4 its first year in business. We’ll light up a super rich 1928 cigarette ad that doesn’t mention a single feature or benefit -- and why it doesn’t need to. Roast an egg-ceptionally bad Alibaba ad and pinpoint the 3 reasons it went south. Then see how to apply the counter-intuitive OPM financial principle of real-estate investing to online ad spend to supercharge growth for your agency’s clients.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The 5 stages of product sophistication and awareness -- why advertising at #5 is insanely challenging.
- How to avoid having dynamic creative ding your ad results.
- The two hottest new tools for getting clear on your 30, 60, 90 day, six month LTV- and which one’s right for you.
- How Amazon ate Uber Eats, and Postmates’s lunch on food delivery -- and why they were able to do it.
- Why the journey to higher LTV should never end at 14 days out -- and what to do to extend it.
BIO:
Ashton Shanks is CEO and Co-Founder Hemon Media Group, a boutique direct-response agency specializing in testing and feedback looping to scale medium & large accounts spending on average, $2.6M at a 4.8X return on ad spend. Prior to starting the agency in 2018, he served as Director of Advertising at Traffic and Funnels, Media Buyer and Digital Marketing Consultant at Shanks Consulting, and Digital Marketing Manager at N2Q Consulting. He studied Leadership at Evangel University and Theology at Northwest University.
Pull up a chair for an epic sit down with Facebook ad OG, David Schloss, founder of Convert ROI who started running ads back in ‘07, almost went bankrupt twice, and now runs about $2B in ads for a ton of Fortune 500 companies. We’ll talk about the insane ramp-up of a 3-month campaign for a no-name iPhone car charger that ripped through $21 million in ad spend and almost wiped out the inventory of 3 manufacturers. Then discover the “duh” reason why an ad for singing training that got 450,000 views hit a sour note on conversion. Why a campaign for workout training is still kicking butt after 14 months. Plus a body brush ad that we’ll roast to a crisp and identify ways that could save it... and more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- The secret to spotting a winning ad on as little as $200 a day.
- The savvy advertisers’ reason you should never blow off Facebook reps.
- Why warm audiences are great for inflating engagement but worthless for this key metric.
- How to game credit cards for (employee) fun, profit, and disaster-proofing ad spend.
- Why patience pays off big time when you make these incremental shifts before you scale.
BIO:
David Schloss founded Convert ROI in 2013, just two years after he graduated from the University of Florida with a BS in Tourism and Hospitality Marketing and Management. The agency, which manages over $2.5M per month in paid advertising via social advertising channels, has a dedicated focus on building relationships with clients interested in an integrated advertising approach. Convert ROI enables businesses to succeed by taking complicated social ad plans and seamlessly turning them into easy-to-follow revenue producing campaigns.
Get ready to spice things up with a conversation with Blake Driver, the co-founder of the brand new Advisory Marketing Agency, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. In today’s show we’ll be doing a taste test of two wildly different video ads for Truff Hot Sauce -- and find out why one out performed the other by 35% at scale. We’ll take a look at the insanely entertaining dancing guy video that took Twitter by storm and why it flamed out faster than anybody thought it would. Finally we’ll identify the single most important quality a video HAS to have to become a long running control. So let’s dig in -- this one’s gonna be tasty!
Take aways:
Why a super-slick brand advertising video completely crapped the CAC bed.
How a no-brainer concept capitalized on the COVID quarantine in an ad that will probably outlast the virus.
A hit? Or a miss? How long should you run a massively funded ad before you pull the plug?
Why one video style NEVER works across all platforms -- and which kind you should run where.
Why there’s no such thing as a “one stop shop” when it comes to getting the greatest variety of ad concepts to test.
BIO:
As a co-founder of Advisory Marketing, Blake Driver has worked with notable brands like Truff Hot Sauce, Black Wolf Skincare, Stryve, Buscemi, and many other direct-to-consumer brands between $0 - 25M. A 2013 graduate of Cal State University, Fullerton with a B.A. in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing, then went on to earn his MBA from Concordia University in Irvine. When Blake isn’t scaling ad campaigns, you will most likely find him cooking on his Treager, surfing at the beach, or cruising down PCH with a group of friends.
Get ready to limber up and see how Curves N Combat Boots, a women’s leggings brand, flexes its marketing muscles as we dig into the ad spend, KPIs, ROAS and CPP details with CMO Jon Flight and Media Buyer Keven Joseph. Find out how they went from $20K a month ad spend to $90K in less than 6 months. Why a crop top introduction spectacularly flopped at the top of the funnel. And how to sell the hell out of leggings with pockets without EVER talking about or demo-ing the product features. Grab a Gatorade because this one’s going to be a real workout!
Takeaways
Why brand 100% drives demand for this uplifting line of women’s athletic gear on a mission.
How they drove $18 target CPAs all the down to a break even cost.
Why you should STOP optimizing videos for views -- and START optimizing for this immediately.
How slicing and dicing a $20,000 investment turned into massive ROAS.
Why taking a “less is more” approach on active campaigns ended ad exhaustion.
BIO:
Chief Marketing Officer at Curves N Combat Boots, Jon Flight has also served as VP of Sales and Head of Business Development for Mobius Media, CEO and Owner of CrossFit South Shore in Massachusetts. A personal trainer as well as marketer he earned a BS degree in Kinesthesiology and Exercise Science from Springfield College.
Owner of Austin, TX-based Run Your Ads, Kevin Joseph has been helping ecommerce brands and high ticket businesses generate a positive return 3X on their ad spend in 90 days or less using Facebook, Instagram, and other paid traffic strategies since 2016. He is a graduate of The University of Texas with a BS in Business as well as Texas A&M University where he earned a BS in Kinesthesiology and Exercise Science.
Tune in to this totally eye-opening exchange with Stephen Nations, Director of Strategy for Drive Social Media - and unofficial “Off-Line Conversion King” who’s had phenomenal success in bringing everyone from tiny mom and pop shops to professional NHL teams out of the dark ages and into the digital world. In today’s show, we’ll dissect marketing diamond engagement rings for a local brick and mortar jewelry store. Turns out that a traditional upscale ad approach translated into (literally) no sales. Find out what they changed -- and more importantly WHY -- to turn a bomb of a marketing effort into a “Ice to Nice”blowout that delivered 28X ROI and hauled in $120,000. Dig into this treasure chest of marketing gold now.
• Why “serious” isn’t always the best way to sell expensive upscale products.
• The 100% worthless, real-estate-wasting phrase you should NEVER use in an ad for a local retailer.
• What Facebook feature to use to sift website info to get the kind of granular data to build out a lot more accurate look-alike audiences
• Why online engagement with an ad rarely translates into an in-store purchase (and what actually does).
• How drilling WAY down on purchasing data unearthed a totally unexpected target audience profile.
BIO:
Stephen Nations is the director of public relations for Drive Social Media, a St. Louis and Nashville-area-based digital marketing agency. He is obsessed with creating compelling content and finding new ways to connect brands with their target audience.
TRANSCRIPT:
Host: Dylan Carpenter
How are y'all? So hey, welcome to another episode of Rich Ad, Poor Ad. Today we have Stephen Nations, he is the Director of Strategy at Drive Social Media. Also does a ton of freelancing on the side. Roughly manages, shoot, 200K'ish a month, and actually has a case study from Facebook on the augmented reality side. So Stephen, man, thanks for coming on, we're pumped to have you, but I'd love to have you introduce yourself, let the people know who you are, and what you're getting into over there.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me, Dylan. So, like Dylan said, I'm the Director of Strategy at Drive Social Media, which is a data-driven social first digital marketing agency in St. Louis, and we have offices in Nashville, Tennessee, and Miami, Florida as well. We run the gamut of what businesses we work with, all the way from tiny mom and pops that have a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, all the way up to professional NHL teams, Orangetheory Fitness, stuff like that. We dabble in a little bit of everything. We do some AR/VR, we do website builds, email marketing, PPC, but our bread and butter's Facebook. I'd say 80% of our ad spend is on Facebook. And really, what I spend a lot of my time doing is, working with these small business owners who are trying to come out of the dark ages actually. A lot of these businesses maybe have been on TV, radio, billboard print, maybe a little email here or there, but haven't really done any data driven, digital marketing, social media marketing.
So we spend a lot of time getting systems set up, capture data, and putting together integrated strategies that have a multi-prong approach where we're trying to pull new people into the funnel, as well as push people down through. And then the really cool thing that I like that we do is, we're able to connect the dots between what happens on Facebook and what happens in the real world. So if you're interacting with ads online, and you walk into a brick and mortar store and make a purchase, whether that's a dentist, a retailer, a gym, a restaurant, what have you, you see an ad on Facebook and then go and purchase from that business offline afterwards, we can connect the dots and tell you exactly how much the people are spending from your ads.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. And I mean, shoot, I'm a media buyer myself, so I totally understand the importance of being able to track money coming in and money coming out. So I mean, the fact we're going to have a local business on here, it excites me. And especially when it comes down to how well they've done. So I mean, as mentioned, we're going to be having The Diamond Family on the showcase today, roughly spending $2-3K a month. I want to say, you mentioned they started off maybe spending 300 bucks a month.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yep.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
You scaled them up. But I mean, based off that, you've generated well over $120,000 in sales on that jewelry side, on a local level from these offline conversions. So I mean, I think this is going to really add some value, it's for a lot of people, and saying, hey, if you can track this, there are so many clients out there to really knock out of the park. And hey, you are the Offline Conversion King. So, I mean-
Guest: Stephen Nations
There you go. I'll take it. So yeah, not self bestowed at least. Yeah. You know, that's the cool thing. A lot of these small business owners, they might've dabbled in Facebook, tried to run some of their own ads, maybe optimizing it for things like likes, and comments, and shares, like a lot of people think they need to. And obviously we know that stuff doesn't drive results. So they go in, they don't have a great strategy, they don't really know how to do targeting or optimizations, and within a month or two they've wasted a couple hundred bucks and they say, "Facebook didn't work." When really, it's just a matter of having the right strategy. You don't need thousands of dollars a month to do well on Facebook. If you start with a minimum budget, you can scale it to where you need to over time without really being too risky.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, spot on. And I mean, the other part about it is, creative is King in these scenarios. So I think I would love to dive in and say, how y'all came up with this creative? Just because, going from the Poor Ad to the Rich Ad was quite a 180. So I mean-
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, absolutely.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
It's super cool. We got three videos on the Rich Ad side, we'll post in the show notes. Y'all check them out. They are hilarious. But then on the other side, on the Poor Ad side, it's very kind of more broad, competitors are similar in those areas. But before we dive in too much, what are you feeling over there, Stephen, the Poor Ad first or the Rich Ad?
Guest: Stephen Nations
Let's dive into the Poor Ad first, I'd rather beat myself up at the beginning.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Heck yeah.
So, on the results side, how did these do?
Guest: Stephen Nations
Terrible. Give you a little background on the business, The Diamond Family, they've been in business since 1978. They're in St. Louis, Missouri, they're very well-known, and they've traditionally had the typical jeweler feel. They're very high-end, they're not Zales or anything like that. They get the best of the best, and everything they do is in that luxury style branding. A lot of dark blues, and blacks, and golds, and whites, and things like that. And traditionally it's really focused-in on what you would expect to see from a jeweler, things like putting a lot of emotion into it, playing on the heartstrings, big dramatic statements about, talking about the rest of your life, and how unique she is, and all those types of things. And The Diamond Family had been a successful business for, like I said, 35 years or so before they got involved with us.
And so, our initial reaction was, hey, these guys have, like I said, done a lot of traditional stuff and we don't need to reinvent the wheel here. We need to take what they've always built on and just show it to a new group of people, do it on Facebook, and be able to track it. So we went right ahead with what had been successful for the last 35 years. Going into building a campaign for a jeweler seems very, very straightforward, we were targeting things like inter-relationship over a long period of time, recently engaged because there's a lot of people that might get engaged before they buy the ring, so they're still in the market. So, just very traditional, straight forward stuff that we did to start with.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. And just so y'all have some kind of insights, and we'll have these in the show notes as well, but I'll read off some copy for these. "So it's not just jewelry, it's a piece of your life. Make sure it's in the best hands, bring it to the family with 150 plus years of combined repair and service. Excellent." So as y'all can see, these are fairly ... It's obvious what they do, but it's not very captivating, emotional. On the emotional side, we do have a Valentine's Day which is, "Hey, the jewelry, 99 bucks. Flowers, free. Chocolates, free. Dinner package, free. Give her the Valentine's present she'll cherish forever. Click now to visit our store."
Guest: Stephen Nations
Argh.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Click now, yeah. So I mean, you can tell it's, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel, but how long did it take y'all to figure out that, hey, these just aren't clicking at all?
Guest: Stephen Nations
So, we generally run our creative for three months at a time, about 90 days. It's not an exact science, it could be that the sweet spot might be 87 days, the sweet spot might be 94 days, but generally we sit in that three month range. We want to give it time to get out of the learning phase, and then give us enough runway to actually draw some insights off of it. So for a business like The Diamond Family, we'll probably run five campaigns that have a split test in each one of them, or a split testing two different types of creative, or two different values. And so we ran these for three months and we spent around, I believe, $4K on them and got zero sales, not a single conversion and a single dime off of them.
Now the good news is, those weren't the only ads we were running at that time, so it wasn't a complete loss. But that being said, if we're running 10 ads and eight of them get absolutely zero results, the campaign's a complete failure. So, that's a definitely a negative ROI campaign, and for small businesses like this in St. Louis, you can't really afford to do that over more than a couple month period of time, before it really starts hurting you.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh definitely. And when it comes to those kinds of budgets, I mean, you really have to give the algorithm a little bit of room to get out of that learning phase. Just because, I mean, you're not spending a thousand bucks a day where you can get that within three or four days, you have to really pace it out where that makes complete sense on the timing range there. But shoot, that'll freak some clients out there, I would imagine. Was it more at the beginning of the relationship, or mid, or how early was it when you started working with them?
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, so that's interesting. When they first came on, they'd been with us for the past three and a half years or so, but we used to have a different package where it really wasn't anything too high-level. It was for businesses who wanted to dip their toe in without diving in head first. And it was a lot of engagement-based stuff, and follow our page ads, and reach optimizations, and things like that. And so, when you're running those ads and you're not connecting the dots with the offline conversion on the backend, you are going to get a lot of clicks on those things. You'll get a lot of likes and comments there, so The Diamond Family was with us for, I want to say almost six months to a year, before we started running offline conversions. So they were happy with seeing the clicks and the likes, because it looks like we're doing great work.
So, when we pivoted from doing engagement-based to doing return-based marketing, and we saw what was really behind the curtain on the other side, it was like, "Holy shit, we might not have been driving many sales for a long time now." So yeah, that was a year into the relationship when we switched. And then maybe six months that we had run similar type of creative where we said, "Okay, we've got to do something different here."
Host: Dylan Carpenter
That makes total sense. The thing that blows my mind the most out of these scenarios is that the concept of family-owned.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yep.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
I don't do too many local ads, but I always feel like that's got to add a little extra flavor to, "Hey, support local business," but that actually had no impact, huh?
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, absolutely. And it's gotten to the point where I refuse to put things on our ads anymore that say like, "Been in business since ... Family-owned. Locally owned and operated," because while that stuff sounds nice, and right now it's a little different situation where people might have a little bit more affinity for a local businesses, so I'm not going to sit here and say, "Across the board at all times that doesn't matter." But by and large, I always say, if my customers want to say, "Hey, I'd like to say that I've been in business since 1950," then I always respond, like, "Tell me the last place that you ate dinner?" And they'll tell me. "Why did you choose to eat there?" "Because it was a good price point. Because it was right by my house. Because it's delicious." Nobody's ever said like, "Hey, where do you want to eat tonight, honey?" "Oh, let's go to this restaurant because they've been in business since 1950."
Or when's the last time you were trying to decide between two roofers you wanted to buy from, and said, "Well, this one's $10,000 more expensive, but they're family-owned so I'm going to give my money to them." So, we realized really quick that, that stuff's not a driver of revenue at all.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. And I mean, especially when you have a lot of big brands out there, the competition is heavy. Competitors are bidding a little bit higher these days. So I mean, it's one of those concepts where you really have to connect with your consumers. So that was a really cool takeaway. I saw you mention towards like, "Hey, there's just not much connection to the business by any means with these kinds of creatives."
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, you're not building any relationship with it at all. It's just the same stuff everybody else says. And at the end of the day, if you're offering the exact same connection, or branding, or loyalty, then the only thing that you have to compete on is price. And with a business like, The Diamond Family, they don't compete on price.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. No, yeah. I'm just pumped to talk about these Rich Ads, because y'all are going to geek out over these.
I know we had a little recap, so I mean, spent a couple thousand bucks and no sales by any means there. Trying to not reinvent the wheel just yet, but hey, just didn't click there. But on these Rich Ads, as mentioned, 28 X ROIs, over $120,000 in sales, let's get into the nitty gritty because you seem to pivot pretty hardcore, but I'd love to have you dive more into the actual strategy side of it. We'll have the videos in the show notes. Y'all totally got to check them out, they're a minute long each, and hey, you're going to laugh your butt off for sure.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, appreciate that. We're pretty proud of them.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah. So when it comes to how y'all pivoted, I know a big thing was that money-back satisfaction, which I feel like may not be Southern-Sue common to be promoted these days. Outside of the money-back side, what other areas were you focusing on for these Rich Ads?
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah. So a lot of it had to do with the targeting. Instead of just shooting a broad spectrum of people that might be engaged, once we started collecting customer data, and we do that through a litany of different avenues, but once we started collecting customer data, we were really able to drill in and say like, "Okay, this isn't just people who recently got engaged, this is men that are most commonly between 27 and 34 years old, that are most commonly coming from these seven zip codes." So instead of having a broad radius that covers 15, 20 miles around the business, we're dropping smaller radiuses that are going exactly to those zip codes we're seeing the most purchases from. And then, The Diamond Family was driving a lot of people to the website, but they weren't very good at capturing information off the website.
So, if people wanted to fill out their first name, last name, email, phone number, so they could schedule a consultation, or reach out to the business and something like that, there was just a lot of clicks, and a lot of friction, and a lot of busyness on the website. So we cleaned up the website, made the calls to action a little bit more clear, made them a little bit more eye-catching. And then one thing that we started to do was, once we were able to get their purchaser data, we ran lead-generation style campaigns on Facebook. And we basically did a giveaway where we said, "Anyone who spends $6,000 that enters for this promotion, will get $1,500 off their purchase," because it made sense for them to get in there, to get people to spend at least $4,500. That was their breaking point where they start to make profits.
So, we would take everybody who went to their website, because we had thousands of people go on the website, but only 50, 60 info captures. We took everyone who was going to the website and then we, from their Facebook profiles, restricted anyone who has either given their email before, or anyone whose purchased before, or anyone who picked up the phone and called, because we're hooked into their VoIP too. So basically, if they have customer information from someone that went to their website, we extracted those people out of it. So all you're left with is the people who showed interest in you by going to your website, but did not identify themselves. Then we ran those campaigns to a bunch of people and said, "If you just click this, drop your first name, last name, email, phone number," to anyone who went to the websites that remains anonymous, that information gets sent to The Diamond Family.
And the beautiful part about that is with the Facebook pixel, if someone goes to your website, but doesn't take an action, doesn't buy from you, they stay in your funnel for six months. But if you can get them to leave their first name, last name, email, phone number, they stay in your funnel for life because you can always target them with a custom audience of an email, or something like that. So then we started identifying 40%, 50% of their website audience by running that, and our data just got a lot more granular, so we could build out a lot more accurate look-alike audiences. As well as those man-made audiences that are built by hand, to make those more targeted too. And then once we figured out who these people are, what their interests are, what they like, we realized it's not really that really high-end crowd that we thought we were advertising to, we're advertising to a lot of people that are in their late twenties, early thirties, that are middle income.
So, we started making our creative speak a lot more directly to those people, because those people aren't looking for the golds, and the whites, and the heartstrings, and everything, they want a brand that they can build a relationship with and connect with. And so we decided we were going to take the humorous playful route, and see if we could build a relationship with the business through that, and that's where the videos came in.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. And just so everybody has some context, I mean, these videos, how professionally done would you say they were? I mean, they're definitely done professionally, but I feel like it's not full Warehouse-quality kind of style of stuff.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, that's a great question though. And yeah, though we have our own production studio in-house that runs the gamut from what you're talking about, The Warehouse-style stuff, to some of the stuff that might look a little bit more, I don't want to use the word amateur, but just a little bit less production quality that people can connect with a little bit more. And so, one of the videos, while we shot it with professional grade equipment, we made it look like somebody was going live on Facebook, while someone else proposes to somebody in the park. Now it didn't quite go the way that you'd expect for a video like that, you'll have to check it out in the episode notes, but we made it look like user-generated content.
And then we took the owner of the business and put him in the videos, and it was him, out in the wild, single shot type stuff, it wasn't a lot of cuts and a lot of editing. So it just felt very real and authentic, which I think allows people to connect with a local brand like that a lot more. You don't even have to say, "We're a local business that's been in business since 1978."
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. And just so y'all have some ideas with what he was just mentioning on the proposal kind of lifestyle video, it was a "wife insurance" is what you had it labeled as. Where it's like, "Hey, this money-back guarantee. You can never play it too safe there," and I'm like, "That's brilliant." But dive more into these, there are three killer Rich Ads, the “Diamond Deficit Disorder”, “Ice to Nice”, and “Wife Insurance”. So that, “Ice to Nice”, what was it you compared it to? I already forgot what it was, but I feel like it's got to ring some bells in some heads.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, yeah. The crazy hot matrix for anybody who's ever seen that video.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. So I mean, it's absolute gold. It's the perfect wriggle room to say, hey, “Ice to Nice”, side of things. So the copy, in case you're curious is, "Hey, couples always ask us, what is the right amount of spend on an engagement ring?" And if you're wondering also, watch our video. But hey, warning, a good sense of humor is required." So I think y'all hit this right on the head, 115,000 views on a local level. That's pretty bomb right there. So I mean, out of those top three videos you listed, what's your favorite on those actually?
Guest: Stephen Nations
In terms of the creative, I think it's got to be the, “Ice to Nice”, scale. I liked the owner, Michael, on that one. He kills it, he nails the tone of it perfectly. Their face says they're taking it seriously, but it's very, very tongue in cheek. And that one, we didn't want to write a script for that one, we wanted them to ad-lib it a little bit more because again, we didn't want it to feel like that super-high professional quality. And so Michael's going through, and basically the cliff notes version is, "The more ice you bring home, the nicer she'll be." And he ends with saying, "If you're not willing to go flat-broke for her, it begs the question, do you really even love her?" And then they ended by when he says that, they both crack up, and they drop their pointers and walk off the screen.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, you can tell it's that final blooper moment, that's just ... And I mean, who's going to forget this? I mean, even on a local level, this has such a connection with the consumer. Is whether it's a hard pitch or not, you're getting in their head, you're connecting with them in some way where it's, hey, if they drive by, "I remember seeing that video." To where that's going to be a hard one forgets where, hey, maybe five years from now, they're finally ready and I imagine The Diamond Family's going to be the first one that comes to mind just because of this video, you know what I mean?
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I mean, you nailed it, Dylan, that's something that we talked about a lot was, I know that we're seeing a lot of 28, 29, 30 here, but let's lower this to maybe, 24, because we can start building that relationship with that younger crowd that in the next three or four years, is probably going to be in the market for a ring.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, 100%. I mean, I'm 25 over here, whenever I see funny marketing or ... I may not be ready for it now, but I mean, that stuff stands out to me to where it's like, hey, I'd rather support a business that goes out of their way with great marketing. So I mean, with me being a marketing guy, I was eating this up and I'm like, this is a goldmine.
Guest: Stephen Nations
I love it.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Well, heck yeah. So I mean, when it comes to those kinds of takeaways, it really goes to show, creative is King in this scenario, to connect with the consumer, understanding who's actually your buyer avatar seem like a huge area. Because even you mentioned, "We were going after the wealthy individuals, richer zip codes." When in reality, the ones who are actually purchasing are middle income, they’re average people. So I mean, I feel like understanding your avatar is the first step in really developing this killer content.
Guest: Stephen Nations
Yeah, 100%. And that's, I go on, and on, and on all day long about data, data, data, data's worth more than money sometimes. You don't know those, you don't know you can't make those decisions. And I can't tell you how often we get partners in where, during our onboarding we ask a million questions, just to see where their head's at. And I can't tell you how consistently it just blows these business owners minds. And people who have been in business for five, 10, 15 years, that give us what they believe their profile is. And then once we get our hands on their data and we figure out who those people are, it's usually night and day between who they think their customer is, and who their actual customer is.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, most definitely. I mean, it's always kind of funny because I always have a ton of clients like, "Hey, my audience is only on Instagram," and I'm like, "Well hey, let's test Facebook a little bit too." And shoot, 95% of the time we'll get cheaper conversions on Facebook and I'm like, "What's up?" You know?
Guest: Stephen Nations Yeah. Yeah. Of course, man, and I love it.
Facebook doesn't lie.
Host: Dylan Carpenter Oh, no. Yeah, numbers don't lie at all. And I mean, even as you said, data's money, and I mean, with Facebook being very data-oriented, I mean, you've really got to spend money to make money in these scenarios, which is the best way to have that investor mentality, I guess you can say.
Guest: Stephen Nations Yeah, of course. And I think people are finally coming around to it. You know, there's this cloud of suspicion, I guess, around data collection in general. And I got a lot of partners that come to me and when they sign on, they're like, "Hey man, I've got to be honest." I had somebody recently say, "You know when Lance Armstrong was doing steroids, and so everybody else that was doing cycling started doing steroids?" I feel like that's what I'm doing with Facebook. I don't like doing this, but I know that I have to do this to be able to compete. But at the end of the day, if you're good at data collection, people aren't ... they're not annoyed if you have good targeting, and people know what they're doing.
It doesn't bother me when I see ads for craft beer, and punk rock, and St. Louis Cardinals baseball, because that's the type of stuff I want to see ads for. So, the better your data collection, the more of a relationship you can actually build with who really does want to buy from him.
Host: Dylan Carpenter Oh, 100%. Well, to get some final conclusions here, I mean shoot, we saw how the Poor Ad performed. Well, it didn't perform at all, it didn't result in any sales there. But on that Rich Ad side, incorporating some killer video content, really speaks to the actual audience generating well over 28 X ROIs, over $120,000 in revenue. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. So Stephen, man, this was super juicy. I absolutely love this. How can anybody find you, website, email, Twitter, what's the best way people can stay up-to-date with what you're doing over there?
Guest: Stephen Nations Yeah, for sure. So, drivesocialnow, is our website. And then as far as finding me personally, I can be reached, obviously I have my LinkedIn profile. I believe, I'm the only one on there with my spelling, S-T-E-P-H-E-N. And then you can email me at stephen@stephennations.com.
Host: Dylan Carpenter Heck yeah, Stephen. Well, hey man, much appreciated. You just broke open the doors for local businessman, and I really appreciate that.
Guest: Stephen Nations I can't wait, Dylan, I had a blast. I appreciate you having me. Hopefully we do it again sometime soon.
Host: Dylan Carpenter Likewise. Likewise. Well, hey everybody, hope you enjoyed this. Leave some comments and notes below, and hey, have a good one.
Listen in on a free-wheeling discussion with Andrew Molz, founder of Monster Agency, home of “Scary Good PPC” from hyper-tested, kick-ass creative that delivers results -- starting with their own self promo efforts. Here we’ll talk about how Monster cranks out at least 2 killer agency video ads every month with eye-ball-snagging spoof concepts that range from the Nightline-ish “To Catch an Advertiser” to raucous riffs on Dr. Phil, Oxyclean, kitschy TV painter Bob Ross and more. We’ll dissect the results of the hilarious but ruthlessly-tested ads that Monster spends $40K a month on to bring on high profile clients like Phil Heath Labs, Mr. Olympia, and two-time Patriots’ Super Bowl Champion, Jarvis Green’s shrimp pate’. Grab a pen - cause you’re gonna want to take notes.
• The reason graphics work as well -- and sometimes BETTER than video - that only Facebook insiders know.
• Why “niching down” isn’t always the smartest agency business model -- and the drop-dead simple mindset that makes it easy to get clients in every category imaginable.
• The keep-it-simple-stupid reason a “Top Gun” concept got shot down in the marketplace -- hand how it might have been saved.
• Which comes first, the copy or the video? -- an eye-opening peek behind the creative development curtain.
• The old school marketing vehicle that -- ouch -- delivers long term results at a fraction of the cost of creating and running Facebook ads
BIO:Before starting Monster Agency in 2019, Andrew Molz served as VP Digital Marketing, Sales and Communications a variety of Dallas-Ft. Worth area companies, including The Reputation Shop,tOnyx Heart, DynaMAXX International, Infrassure and others. An avid researcher self-admitted data freak, he is fanatical about tracking KPIs to create needle-moving A/B tests that result in high-converting, cost effective sales funnels.
TRANSCRIPT:
Host: Zach Johnson
All right, here we go. Dylan, you ready to rock and roll?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Let's do it.
Host: Zach Johnson
Today's guest is Andrew Molz, a founder of Monster Agency, who has, clearly and undeniably, the best agency ads on all of Facebook these days. I literally was watching some of them before this, Dylan, and I laughed out loud. Luckily, Andrew wasn't on the call, but I literally rolled off my chair. It was that funny. But if you guys are in online marketing, and you do Facebook ads, you probably have seen Andrew's ads. How would you describe Andrew's video ads, Dylan, that you've seen in the Facebook newsfeed the last couple of weeks?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Really relatable and hilarious. Everything's going to bring up that nostalgia feeling, whether it's old-school games, Billy Mays, the Texas Hammer. We're in Texas, so that's a big no-brainer for us, but everything is really similar to where it rings a bell, but it's done in its own way, and it just cracks me up. I think it's super thumb-stopping, and it's really catchy to where I bet, shoot, the people who watched the full videos are pretty high up for people who don't dip out, so it's pretty cool there.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, yeah. Well, cool. Without further ado, let's get Andrew on here, and let's talk about which one of these is actually the winning ad that's making him rich and which ad is making him poor. So Andrew, thanks so much for being on the show.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Hey, what's up? Appreciate you all having me, happy to be here and chat with you guys.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, man. So I've seen three of your ads, and I'm going to totally botch trying to describe them, but one is this Adler impression, which is basically like a personal injury attorney style ad, just watched that one. The second ad I've seen is, I don't know, is it like a Nightline style deal, or it's like-
Guest: Andrew Molz
To Catch an Advertiser.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yes. It's so good.
Guest: Andrew Molz
That's what we titled it.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. And then you've got the other one, which is you basically acting as a political candidate, so I would love to dive into those three. My bet is that, and we'll link up these three ads, what I'm talking about, in the show notes, but my bet is those are Rich Ads.
Like those ads are performing really well for you. And I want to dive into those, but I want to know, man, it seems like you guys are on a total winning streak. I want to know some ads that haven't quite worked out as well as those. But they're absolutely hilarious, so why don't you describe those three ads, Andrew. I did a really high-level overview, but, break down the concept for us.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah. We'll think of some stuff that makes us laugh. And like myself, I'm 37, and might not be in the demographic of everybody who's watching, but our targeting meshes up well because we target 30 to 54-year-olds. And I think it's a good mix of having some of that nostalgia, and then having stuff a tad bit more current like the To Catch an Advertiser.
And for the concept of it, it just comes down to what we find as funny. I like to think that we're funny people, and we like to laugh, and crack jokes, and just have fun with what we're doing. And I think it does resonate pretty well with our ads that we're putting out there, especially when we're talking about more so the comedy stuff.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yep. Yeah, so To Catch an Advertiser, that's basically like the To Catch a Predator. It was like that crime watch where he always came out of the kitchen. He was always in the kitchen. I don't know why.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah.
Host: Zach Johnson
You just fully leaned into that, right? And the way you guys, in the video, I don't even know how long the video ad is, but you even lean into pulling up the online chat conversation.
Guest: Andrew Molz
That was pretty clutch. We wanted to have that one and do it in a way that is tasteful, but you still get the idea of what it's spoofing.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. So, how are these three ads doing? I would love for you to tell everybody, obviously, a little bit about Monster Agency and everything you guys do, but I'd also like to just get right to the good stuff here in terms of how are those three ads doing for you? What are the results?
Guest: Andrew Molz
It's those in combination with others, there's two other ones. We've got a Dr. Phil one as well, and then we also have a Bob Ross style one where I'm there painting with an easel and almost…
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. You describe it so well, but you're throwing out these glorious ads, and you're just calling it the Dr. Phil ad, but these are amazing. So break down the Dr. Phil ad for us.
Guest: Andrew Molz
So the Dr. Phil one, it's basically just every one of them is centered around business owners and their problems and not being profitable with their campaigns. That's that one, the Dr. Phil one. But the Bob Ross one is just about a struggling business that's spending money and wasting money on fruitless ad campaigns that aren't generating anything, and they're just losing their shirt essentially, from the bad ads.
Host: Zach Johnson
That's awesome. That's awesome. So how have these video ads helped you ramp up and scale on Facebook?
Guest: Andrew Molz
Really well, really, really well. So what we do with these videos, and we try and come up with one to two videos. I mean, that's our goal for myself and our creative director, Adam. Our goal this year has been to put out two just amazing video ads that are engaging and really funny, so we try and do two of those a month so we can continue to be pushing that out all year long so that when December comes along, we just look back and we're just like, "Shit, we did so much stuff this year. It's just hilarious, really good, really funny."
We don't want to have any kinds of regrets on, "Oh, we should've done a little bit more of this, or we should have paid attention to it more." We do that on the top of our funnel for our ads, and those are really all of our prospecting campaigns, is those engaging, funny ads because if we run something that's more so like a static graphic or it's just un-engaging, we're not going to stay in people's minds. When you see another ad of ours, and it's funny as well, as a business owner, you might, even if you don't have a need, at least whereas you can be like, "Damn, this stuff is funny." And you remember the name, and we stay in your brain and might as well charge rent for how long we live there.
And so when we run our retargeting stuff, I mean, that's really just all testimonials, and we've been gracious enough to have our awesome clients provide this for us, and we run those out as our retargeting. We did start with a little bit of reach campaigns on those retargeting videos just to completely saturate our users who are watching on the top of the funnel and the ones that we want to target, but those leads came in a bit more costly than we wanted. And that was just a test, ended up shutting those ones off and just strictly going with conversion-based ads for our video testimonials.
And then, later on, we layered in some of these static graphics just because, I mean, I know everybody's like "Video, video video," but when you run graphics as well, provided that they're pretty decent, they do just as good of a job, if not better than video in a lot of cases just because I feel Facebook has more available placements for them and more areas to put them, so it's more areas for impressions where I think Facebook's, for videos, you only have maybe nine placements or something like that, but…
Host: Zach Johnson
Nice. Walk us through like it. What's been the return? I think you mentioned before this, you guys are spending somewhere around 40 grand a month, which is a ton. The last time I talked to an agency that was spending 40 grand a month, they were doing like 40, 50 million a year. So I guess you guys have got to have seen some amount of…
Guest: Andrew Molz
And we just restarted and pivoted before our call, was going through that with our rebrand, but we did just rebrand and hey, surprise, we rebrand and launch our ads. And now, all of a sudden, it's a pandemic, so it was kind of weird, but we just rolled with it and kept going with what we were doing. And I'd say probably around the range of maybe like 30. I haven't broken down the math. I'm more so focused on getting the business in, but 30, maybe to like 35, somewhere around there with a K.
Just FYI, 30 to 35K in new business, and that's recurring revenue. We front loaded up a bit, and we spend a bit. But at this level, we truly are just essentially buying our growth. And provided that we've got good stuff, good support, good ads, good campaigns, and we know what we're doing, we'll retain those customers, and continue to retain them, and build that recurring revenue up month over month.
Host: Zach Johnson
So to recap, you're spending around 40 grand a month. It'll bring in like 30, 35K a month in monthly retainers. Right? So you'll actually do business, you'll retain clients for six, 12, 15 months, right?
Guest: Andrew Molz
That's why it's on the front-end, and so I haven't broken down the math on that because we've got a sheet where we keep track of all of our new clients and the deals, and that's face value ad businesses coming in. So that doesn't include the percentage of ad spend that we bill out, so it'll more than likely be quite a bit more than that. But since we don't include that, it's not on there.
Host: Zach Johnson
And talk to me about some of the types of revenue, right? Not all revenue is created equal, right? And especially in the agency game, you could get some clients that are more than willing to pay those retainer fees, but they're not the clients you really want to be working with. So talk to us about the type of clients these have attracted for you. And what are some of those trophy or rockstar clients you're pretty proud of that came to your doorstep after seeing these ads?
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah. Man, it's like all walks of life because I think something about us that's a little bit unique, I guess, in the agency space is that we're not niched. And so you'll have a lot of people that say, "Oh, we only deal with chiropractors, or plastic surgeons, or dentists, or whatever." We don't niche down, and we operate into the mantra of a funnel is a funnel, a product is a product. And we'll accept the client based on what their budget is, and what their needs are, and if we feel like we can deliver on those. Because there's no point in onboarding somebody that's just going to be an absolute fucking nightmare of a client to deal with, and take up way too much of your time there in Slack, way too much dinging us on stuff.
So when we do that, and we operate that way, it makes things a bit easier to market. So it's like eating an elephant bite by bite as opposed to doing it all at once. And so, if we are going to be marketing you a microphone, or a pair of shoes, or a personal injury, we treat it like that's the product. How are we going to advertise this and convey the message at the top of our file, and then rely on our retargeting ads to seal the deal and bring those people across the finish line, and generate a purchase or a lead?
That's how we operate, and that's been pretty good for us so that we can absorb more types of clients, and we're not just niche down to only one niche. I think when you do that as well, your CPMs are higher. Your costs are higher because you just keep going to this one singular kind of niche versus being able to market to all business owners who have a need. So that's been really cool, and that's been helpful for us.
I feel like some people don't really get it when they chat with us. Some of our newer hires, it's difficult for them to get that in the beginning because they're used to being niched down. But once they're like, "Man, I get it. We can do this." It makes you a better, sharper marketer as well when you can say, "Okay, I can market your landscaping company. I can market your shutter blind company."
But back to your original question, some of the wins, I'd say, and we just signed Phil Heath Labs, Mr. Olympia, seven times winner, so that was a cool one. We're working on getting a NASCAR driver on board so that we can be the official agency of one of the NASCAR drivers, which there's only like 42 of them, so we'll promote that on our website. Jarvis Green, a two time Super Bowl champ for the Patriots, I believe he's going to be down here in Dallas probably the next week or so. And we're going to fill in some stuff for his shrimp pate’ company. He wanted some funny stuff that he had seen through us.
So, I mean, that's just what's coming to my mind first, but man, all types of walks of life, people, verified brands. It's crazy what you can get out of running really good creative. And I just equate it to pro fishing in the gulf, and you never know. You can catch a marlin, or you can catch a redfish, you never know.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so talk to me about your break-even period here. I mean, it's awesome that you guys are spending 40K, and you make 30, 35 grand, on the front end. And obviously, in the agency game, you have your setup fees, and you got your fixed retainers, but I mean, if that's anything close to your monthly retainer, you got to be putting a dollar in and getting $10.00 Out over the next 12 months. Right?
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah. I haven't broken down the math. I'll self admit that I'm not the best on being on the numbers. I'm more…
Host: Zach Johnson
Well, it's difficult, and the agency game is really difficult, right? It was just back end revenue, and the LTVs on agency clients we know are all there. Right? You don't need to break all the right numbers as long as you break even in month one with top-line revenue. And obviously, you've got your deliverables and your costs in terms of onboarding clients, but yeah, you're probably profitable there within the 30 to 60-day range I'd imagine, for sure.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah, we're doing really, really well. And I think that if we weren't, or if we had periods where we're spending 40K out on ads, and it's not profitable, I'd probably be like, "Shit, my wife's going to kill me. And we need to turn these off and whatever." I'm the one that's doing all the media, buying the accounts, so I know what's what. I feel like, I think …
Who'd I talk with about this? I feel like I talked with either Nick Shackelford or David Shaw, it's one of them, when I was doing an interview with them. And it's like gambling to an extent when you've been doing this so long, and you're confident in your product and your service and whatnot. And you say, "Okay." Most people would probably roll out like, "Let's do like $25.00, 50 dollars a campaign, but we're just like, "Screw it. Let's do like $150, $500, and this is rolled out, see what we can get out."
At the end of the day, for us, I just, I know that that money spent, even if it looks like it's just super egregious, and it's overspending, I know it comes back to us. So I'm not really afraid to spend there, and I know you've got to spend the money to make it in this kind of game, provided that you've got the right data coming back, and those right signals that you've got a good product, and that people are resonating with it.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about a Poor Ad, man. Let's talk about something that you thought was just totally-
Guest: Andrew Molz
Just bad.
Host: Zach Johnson
Let's talk about a Poor Ad.
Guest: Andrew Molz
You know I'm kidding.
Host: Zach Johnson
Let's talk about one of these ads that you just thought was the greatest idea since sliced bread, and then it just totally bombed.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah. This is one that we're looking at here, this one is ... And we've done these graphics based on our research, and just what we feel like is pop culture in the moment of the demographic that we're trying to hit on. So if I want to hit other people in my demographic of --- ideally, it's 35 to 54-year-old males that are the majority of our clients. It is what it is, and we go to the data. We don't go towards anything else.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah.
Guest: Andrew Molz
So with that, we pulled up okay, what's an iconic scene in Top Gun that we could mash up and make our own, and put a spin on it? And so we pulled this one that was, what's his name, Maverick and Goose, and they're walking. It's something about ... I'll be honest. I don't even really remember much of that movie other than them flying around like that volleyball scene where it's like ... And so we pulled this one. It's like, "I have a need for speed," and that's a corny quote from the movie that I feel like people would remember and pick up when they're seeing it. And it's got our monsters on there, and we craft the copy around that.
So the copy here, we're online advertising Mavericks. We love getting our client campaigns up lightning fast. We'll launch your new funnel ad campaign in 14 days. Do you want me to read through all that? Or ..
Host: Zach Johnson
You don't have to read the whole thing.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
It's a long copy there.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah.
Host: Zach Johnson
I see what you're doing with the crater, though. You have these two little monsters with their flattops and sunglasses. And I feel like it was one of those ads that just ended up too abstract, right? Like…
Guest: Andrew Molz
Too much going on.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, too much. The whole idea didn't come together. I think it would have done maybe better if you just didn't go like the monster in the image. Right? Just leaned more into your other winning ads that you went into. Totally worked because it's like you play the character really well, and you bring it to life. And I feel like just relying on this image here, and the monsters made it too obscure for somebody to catch on super quick.
Guest: Andrew Molz
We normally do those videos. We like those. This is one that we were going to do for the graphic side. These are the only kinds of graphics that we'll run, and we want to make them somewhat iconic and recognizable when you see them in your feed. This one just didn't hit the mark, I feel like. So if you're running a 5K, Zach, and I'm at one of the stopping points, instead of holding up a little Dixie cup of lemonade that you can drink, I'm holding up my sign that says, "Have a need for speed? Get a proposal."
If you're jogging by, and you see that, and I'm screaming your name, you're going to be like, "What the hell is that?" And you just keep on jogging. So if we have other stuff, then I think you can quickly consume it and grasp it, it works out better. There's just too much going on, I think, in this one.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. So how quickly were you able to catch these losing ads in terms of…
Guest: Andrew Molz
I'd say probably about, these ones, like 14 days.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah.
Guest: Andrew Molz
We just have to run it, and that's because we have all of our retargeting ads within their each ad set. But they're all ... We've got, I think, six, or seven, or eight different testimonial videos. Plus, we've got the graphics in there, so it was CBO on there. That budget continues to get shoved at the stuff that converts, and then these ads get a little bit of the spend more, and more, and more. But still, we see conversions on some of the other graphics. And if you look at the click-through rates as well, and just see what the numbers are telling us, and the numbers are telling us on this one that it's just not converting well.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. And you also just have a little bit of a longer sales process too, to get feedback on what are some of the non-data points of what people say when they go on, and they do an audit call with you, or they do a demo. What are they saying? They're not talking about the, "Hey, remember that need for speed ad? That really got me excited." Everyone signed with the Dr. Phil ad, or the Catch a Predator, or Catch an Advertiser ad. And that's the stuff that's really driving performance for you guys on the top of the funnel there.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
And it looks like the call to action is pretty consistent across both those static images you sent over where it starts out. Y'all are being a preferred marketing partner. Have you seen that just work pretty well across the board for the most part?
Guest: Andrew Molz
I feel like that's too granular to be able to pull that out and say that that is something. We don't test that hard on the copy and the specific kinds of points. I mean, it could lead to that, but for us, we're kind of running too fast to be able to pick that up, but I like to just have it in there. If they see it, they see it. If they don't, they don't.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, yeah. I remember one time I went to a ... early in my career. I went to this conference. It wasn't even an ad, but I printed out these little postcard style advertisements for our booth there, and it was right when texting and SMS numbers was coming out. And I was surrounded by all these other genius marketers. And my business card was, “text so and so to get a free proposal”, and it was all this fancy artwork around driving somebody to text message.
And this guy who was one of the smartest marketers in the room, he was just like, "Yeah." He was like, "I bet this was a really good idea in the boardroom, right?" And nobody's texting this number. And he was like, "I can guarantee you that." And I was just so embarrassed. I'm like, "Yeah, it sounded so good, and we worked so hard. And then it just totally bombed."
Guest: Andrew Molz
I mean, it happens. You got to try it and see what works and what doesn't.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, yeah, totally. Alright, so let's dive into this Rich Ad here. Walk me through this. What's working?
Guest: Andrew Molz
This one is, I mean, hopefully, you know that one, the graphic ride from Predator.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yep.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Since that scene where they're doing some high five, thumb war, arm flex show-off, or I don't know what it is, but it's a deal where Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I forget the other guy's name. Dylan, that's his name in the movie. And Arnold comes out like, You son of a bitch," and gives him a high five. And yeah, that's the ad. I think it's a meme as well, so I think that helps a little bit. But I don't know, it's like some testosterone, like hell yeah, higher ROAS.
And so you have that, and then a little bit of the copy up on the top is like, "We're the perfect partner to have if you're looking for strong growth online. We partner with many companies to help explode their growth using battle-tested strategies. So again, we're pulling from some Predator-esk kind of stuff like that, and tested it. And we've got some other stuff in there. I don't know where it is, but ... So this one's done pretty well at dealing to your gut, so I think it quickly conveys what it is. It looks cool. It looks different. The graphics are pretty on point. It's different, for sure. Higher ROAS in 14 days.
I mean, that's like, boom. Get a proposal is get a proposal. Cool, that sounds kind of boring, I guess. So higher ROAS in 14 days, let us run your next campaigns. I think that's quickly digestible. There's not as much stuff going on in the background with these little monsters that look like thumbs that are wearing glasses. I don't know. That's my take on it. And as always with this stuff, we run it. We have a good idea on it just like your text marketing thing, and it's all hunches. And it's all based on stuff that it's not just out of the blue. I mean, we have fairly good ideas and hypotheses on stuff. We're kind of like scientists in that we run it, and let the data tell us what to do next.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, totally. Now, with your copy, is it always resonating with the image itself to make it all come to one together? Are y'all kind of doing the image first or the copy first in these scenarios? What's your thought process behind those?
Guest: Andrew Molz
Oh, we'll do the copy where ... I'm sorry. We'll do the graphics and the video, graphic and the video first. And then, I'll just wing it on the copy.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Hell, yeah.
Guest: Andrew Molz
I'll put up, well, of course, upload the ad, the video. That's not anything difficult, but we all play a hand in putting together that graphic and the video as well, but we're willing to copy. We don't have anything like a copywriter that does it or anything. It's just myself.
Host: Zach Johnson
That makes sense because you have the static images. The copies really just kind of pop a little bit more than those videos, without a doubt.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah, just accentuate and amplify what it is that we're talking about so we can frame it, and ideally, get people to come in that have at least half a brain and understand this is going to cost money. And if you don't have it, then you probably can't be a good match and a fit. But we still get a decent amount of people that have $500.00 On a budget, and their Shopify website isn't up yet, and it's just a bad fit. I like people to come to us when they're ready to grow, not when they're ready to build.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yep.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, all so good. I love that. I love that, man. You're like a one trick pony, man. It's like your go-to way- like...] What am I going to spoof today, and what meme am I going to support a copy? And honestly, it's such a great place to start from a creative place, right? Because you're basically iterating off of these legacy memes and humorous comedies that have proven to be memorable over time, and you're making them your own. And, I mean, there's tons of...
Guest: Andrew Molz
And that's not even factoring in the video game stuff that we run. That's kind of what I'm known for. Early on, before we rebranded as Monster Agency, we had a Mike Tyson punch out one that's still running to this day. I haven't touched it. I think it's got like 500. That one's running. The streetfighter ad for our other agency is still running. That's how we started getting out there and known, and being way different with a really good pattern interrupt, pulling that nostalgia, and then getting people to engage.
Host: Zach Johnson
So walk me through what are the elements that go into a spoof ad, right? When you're going to pull out these elements, and let's say I'm sitting in an ad, and I've got to put some new creative, I mean, you just...
Guest: Andrew Molz
I have a list in my phone and my notepad of ad ideas, and one of them was a really nice OxiClean style videos because I thought it would be really funny. And we pulled that off and did it, and that one came off pretty well. We've got a bunch of other random ones like a marketer in the wild, National Geographic style. We could fill in that one in the woods.
A one-man show with other mannequins on a stick, so I saw some sort of commercial where it's like a person's typing. And they've got those plastic rods, and they've got two other dummies and two other dummies on the on right. And we're all typing, and it looks like we're all, you know what I mean, like the same, something like that. A lemonade stand with a competitor kid, my daughter, running that one. Had one that was going to be ... I was 34 when I was first diagnosed with bad ROAS. I was told my business wouldn't make it. A guru talking, one person in the crowd.
There's a lot of people that will be on stage talking, and it's huge events. We were just going to do that, but flip it. And so it starts off looking really good, and it's maybe me or somebody else on stage talking with the earpiece and stuff like that. It looks like, "Whoa, this guy's killing it." And then it does a pan from behind the back, and there's like one person who maybe has an AARP card. They're like 65. And it's like, "Whoa, what is it?" So flip that on its head.
Anyways, I mean, so those are some of the ones. So I know we've wanted to do one that is a play on words in that talk about ... Have somebody in the garden digging for gold for their return on ad spend. They're talking about how they have a dirty hoe. And we'll be talking about a guy who's a photographer. He has his own photography businesses, but nobody's buying his deck pics, he takes pictures of decks.
We wanted to do a Peter Popoff, get your miracle water in the mail. That one would be pretty funny. A bathroom stall, for a good ad, call 5555, and we could go to town on that one. So we get a lot of those things. So they'll come in and into our heads, and we'll write them down. A lot of times, it's just being consumers, watching something that's funny as hell. I watch a lot of 80s stuff, the Goonies all the time, Big Trouble in Little China, The Burbs. So if I can pull on stuff like that and re-craft it, and just take the funny scenes, and the iconic scenes, and stuff like that without necessarily ripping anybody off or anything like that. We just like to have fun and make these funny, really.
Host: Zach Johnson
One thing that I noticed is these don't seem like all that high budget, right? I've seen click funnels as minor creative ads. They went to town. That was an expensive shoe. Right?
Yeah, of course. But I mean, it's still humor. Right? And there's some spoof-ness in there, and that's like a totally different approach, but I love how you're getting the same result. But you have found this balance of where you're pushing out volume on a lot of these, cranking out a couple of these a month.
Guest: Andrew Molz
And we're able to do that when we're not spending an arm on the stuff, which you don't have to because, whether I tell a funny joke, and I'm in Times Square with a bunch of people around, and everybody laughs, or if I tell a funny joke, and I'm in some dive bar, and everybody laughs, the content is universal. And you don't necessarily need to spend an arm and a leg producing it and putting it together. I mean, you've got to have some sort of know-how to orchestrate it, and pull it off, and have the editing and all that stuff correctly, to an extent. But the days of spending an arm and a leg on this stuff, I really feel like they're gone.
That's another part of our agency that we're pushing is our Monster Lab, where we produce this stuff and make it as affordable as possible. And doing videos like that, we bill out those anywhere from starting at $10k to $15,000 to put those kinds of videos together. Some business owners may balk and scoff at the idea of paying that. And it's really hard to not come off salesy when I talk about it because I've seen it firsthand and how it works, but the evergreen-ness of that shit, and how long you can run it for, and how the comments just continue to rack up, and legitimize, and add credibility, you'll save more money by running a really good video, and running that until the cows come home versus every month you're cycling in new ads because you're trying to get what these videos would deliver.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Right, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys are cranking out two of those a month, right, internally?
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yeah.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
That's awesome. But for somebody to drop 10K and do that twice a month, like 20 grand on creative, they've got to be spending at least 100, 200 grand on ads to justify that level of creative spend.
Guest: Andrew Molz
We can usually test it out and run one, and send along our best practices for their media buyer, provided that their media buyer is competent can run it, and knows how to properly test it.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah.
Guest: Andrew Molz
And I guess you can kind of get a taste of the good life by doing that and seeing like, "Holy shit! This works really well. It cut our lead costs in half. If we're paying half the cost for our leads, that means that our leads will double with the same budget. Why would we not put more money into this?" But it's also one of those things where you just have to see it to believe it. And seeing it costs money.
Host: Zach Johnson
I love it, man. I love it. So tell us more about Monster Agency. And tell us a little bit about your guys' retainers. Where do you guys typically start off to work with clients on a month by month engagement?
Retainers can be kind of all over. They can start as low as 1900 a month plus 5% of ad spend, and go much further than that, just depending on what our scope of work is. Are we handling only paid social? Are we doing paid social plus paid search? Are we doing all that plus email marketing? The complexities of what it is, definitely dictate the price.
And we'll have comments from potential prospects on our posts, "Hey, how much do you charge?" It's like, "Well, I don't know what you do, what you're doing. Every business is as unique as a fingerprint, so we need to be able to assess what you need, and that way, we can architect what it is based on your budget, provided that your budget works for us to be able to put something together." It really just depends on what people are looking at, but, I mean, usually around 1900, at least, to start off with, plus 5% of ad spend.
Host: Zach Johnson
Nice, nice.
Guest: Andrew Molz
And I think that from what I've seen, and just know it from the industry, a lot of agencies charge a bit more than that. And we've ended up around that kind of a price just because we know that it can absorb more clients, and we can still deliver really good value. And that's the name of the game at the end of the day. It's delivering value. But we can drive more business in and deliver services that are needed for that kind of rate, and it makes us much better appearing than a lot of other agencies.
I think 10% to 15% sometimes, is what I hear of what other agencies billing out at for ad spend plus some sort of retainer. I've heard, of course, some people charge just a setup fee and then a maintenance fee or something like that there on after. I mean, there's a million different ways to slice an apple or whatever the hell people say, cut a lemon, whatever.
Host: Zach Johnson
I don't know who came up with that one, but that's off-
Guest: Andrew Molz
I forgot what it is.
Host: Zach Johnson
We were like, "Dude, stop." It's awful.
Guest: Andrew Molz
A million different ways to cut a lemon.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, there you go. There you go. Well, awesome. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much, Andrew. This is awesome. And all your ideas that you came up with in terms ... You rattled off like a dozen different spoof ads that I feel like, anyway, listen, this show would be pretty smart to copy. But I feel like it would not be the same without your brain and your creative behind it, so thanks so much for opening up the kimono here and sharing with us your Rich Ads and your Poor Ads. Tell people what you're up to next, and how they can get in touch.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Business as usual, onboarding clients, making sure they're the right fit. But, I mean, if you want to check out our website, www.monsteragency.com. If you feel like it would be a good fit, and that you are looking to grow like I mentioned earlier, you're not so much in the building phase, but more so, you're ready to hit that growth phase, reach out. Get a proposal, Andy, on our team, will chat with you, assess your needs, get you a proposal, and take it from there.
Host: Zach Johnson
That's awesome, man. Thank you so much, Andrew.
Guest: Andrew Molz
Yep. I appreciate y'all having me.
Dive into a no-holds-barred back and forth with digital marketing rockstars Rohan Sheth and Matt Farmer of GrowRev who’ve built their top 1% agency by investing and managing over $40M in advertising spend across all channels for monster bands like Mastermind.com, ClickFunnels, and Knowledge Source. We’ll talk about the company-killing dangers of running non-compliant Facebook ads that will instantly put you into the poor house. Then we’ll take a closer look at a killer “free + shipping” book offer that not only crushed on response but helped build the client’s email list at rock bottom prices by doing one simple counter-intuitive pivot ..and more, including:
- How to avoid “de-platforming moves” that can shut you down, tank your company, and destroy your ability to advertise on Facebook -- forever.
- The ONE question you should NEVER ask in a headline.
- The go-to offer that used to be a webinar selling staple -- but now is 100% Facebook radioactive.
- The insanely cheap, 30¢ to 40¢ a lead way to capture emails and ROI the hell out of your offering.
- Why RIGHT NOW is the time to focus on building your list rather than selling your product.
BIO:
While Rohan Sheth was still in high school he pulled in over $100,000 from his friends selling pocket bikes. He then transitioned into marketing, selling the 'unsellable'. Today he’s the CEO of GrowRev which manages more than $5M Per year in digital advertising that consistently delivers highly mastered results to high-end celebrities and organizations around the world.
With over 10 years experience managing digital advertising for some of the world’s largest brands, Matt Farmer has extensive experience on all major advertising platforms including: AdWords, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, OutBrain and Taboola, as well as almost all other large web and mobile networks.
TRANSCRIPT:
Host: Zach Johnson
All right. Welcome to another episode of the Rich Ad, Poor Ad podcast. How you doing Dylan?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Hey, doing good ready to crank this one out. It's gonna be a juicy one man.
Host: Zach Johnson
Today we got on the show the partners and founders of GrowRev agency. These guys manage $40 million a year in ad budget across all channels. You name it. These guys are at the top of the game and I'm so excited to have him on the show.
Host: Zach Johnson
It's actually pretty hilarious. Dylan, wouldn't you say like the actual Rich Ad, Poor Ad combo that they sent over?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, yeah, that's badass, the definition of something that will get you shut down. So I'm pretty excited to dive in.
Host: Zach Johnson
It’ll send you to the poor house super, super quick, that's for sure. But these guys may manage ads for some pretty big influencers online spending upwards of $25K a day and with some household names I'll let them name drop. But without further ado, let's welcome Rohan and Matt Farmer to the show.
Guest: Rohan Sheth
Thanks for having us Zach and Dylan.
Guest: Matt Farmer
We're excited for this one. Yes, yeah.
Host: Zach Johnson
Thanks. Thanks for popping on. I'm so excited. I would love to start with Rohan telling everybody a little bit about how awesome GrowRev is as an agency. And then would love to dive in a little bit about your guys' background pre agency.
Guest: Rohan Sheth
Yeah, absolutely. Matt and I have run GrowRev for coming up on six years together now. Matt’s been in the industry, coming up on 11 years. I've been in the industry nine years.
And the way, Matt and I kind of came together was I was heavy, direct response kind of in the affiliate-esque world and selling random shit online through paid advertising. I love media buying.
But I went into the agency world. Me and Matt have known each other since before the 2007 -- 2008 economic collapse. And he saw me transition into the media buying world and he's like, “What the hell are you doing here?” And kind of one thing led to another being good friends prior to this -- he told me what he was running. And I'm not going to ruin that for this podcast, I'm going to let Matt talk about his background and the stuff that he's done.
I was just like, “Alright man, I've built this agency to a certain level, I'm going to just hand you 50% of this bloody company. And we're going to take this and scale this thing to the roof” because he knew he would perform, and he knew I could sell.
So that's kind of how our initial partnership came into play. Fast forward to today. We've got a team based out of Vancouver, Canada. We've got a couple guys that work with us in the United States. Then we're very actively building a team out in Australia since 40% of our clients are in Australia. We managed three of the top- spending info accounts in Australia right now. So that's the overall GrowRev and then Matt, I’ll tee this one off to us so that you can kind of come in and introduce the media buying side.
Guest: Matt Farmer
Yeah, no problem at all. So I've been doing this for about 11 - 12 years right now. Before I partnered up with Rohan, I worked with a company called Digital Brand Services. We had some absolutely massive clients. We worked with people like the Olympics, Sky Sports, ATP Tennis, ICC Cricket --pretty much everybody in the sporting world we worked with and spent a pretty significant amount of money.
I basically partnered up with Rohan because I was really tired of “share of voice” advertising. You know, I'm direct-response at heart. And I love seeing a good old ROI and optimizing around that, versus like hit 100% of boxing fans in the US. That just gave me a lot more purpose.
So I partnered up with Rohan, that’s really kind of how it went down. We specialize in phone events, but we also do a lot of stuff around e commerce etc. Because I've been in the industry so long and have rode the wave. So, started with Google ads, went to Facebook back when I thought Facebook would never be a good platform and that proved me wrong. And now because of Facebook, we jump into stuff as early as we can. So the latest network we've been jumping on is TikTok. And it's been pretty amazing so far.
Host: Zach Johnson
That's awesome, man. That's super cool. Now you guys have some pretty monster trophy clients, I would love to have you guys name drop some of the people you guys have been able to help out in the last year or so.
Guest: Matt Farmer
In the last year or so a couple of clients, we've run traffic for Mastermind.com. So that's obviously Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins combination there. And then just in the recent months, we picked up a tiny little company called ClickFunnels, just joking, where we're helping them and their internal teams scale some of their traffic. So those are two household names I think most people recognize and then we've done tons. If you're in Australia, one of the companies that we work with is Knowledge Source, and they're a monstrous client for that part of the world.
Host: Zach Johnson
For that part of the world over there. I love it. Thanks Rohan, I'm like, you know one of our core values at FunnelDash is not to do business with Canadians.
(Laughter)
Host: Zach Johnson
...but today we decided to have you guys on the show…
(Laughter)
Host: Zach Johnson
Okay which one should we start with -- The Rich Ad or the Poor Ad? What do you think? Let's give it over to Matt. What do you think Matt?
Guest: Matt Farmer
I think the Poor Ad. Just because the Poor Ad’s not gonna take much to go over. It really quickly becomes a Poor Ad and can sacrifice Facebook accounts, business managers. This thing is a gem.
Host: Zach Johnson
So let's just talk about how you can get in the poorhouse with an ad like this. Because an ad like this... if you're spending a lot, getting your business manager shut off and getting your ad account deleted is one thing. But Rohan and Matt have used the word “deplatformed” -- which is a very rare term, but it sounds so scary. What does that even mean? What does the word deplatformed mean?
Guest: Matt Farmer
Basically when you get deplatformed and they do it for certain people and influencers. I'm not going to drop too many names of people. We know some insiders -- especially in the affiliate world -- people who run an affiliate course and maybe have a nickname like Racks. People like that, where if you've mentioned his name in an ad, it's banned and you can lose your business manager.
But in general deplatforming isn't just about losing your manager. Used to be, back in the good old days, you just lose your ad account. Then you create a new one. Get a new credit card. Life would be good. It's not so simple anymore. Facebook's really smart with this, so they pretty much like fingerprint your device. They'll delete your ad account. They'll ban your business manager. You could lose personal access and that's when it really starts to get nasty. And then if you keep breaking the rules, literally your entire name will be pretty much deplatformed from the platform.
So if there's any ads, where they try to mention you, for example, they pretty much automatically get deleted out or banned out from the AI. So they can do an absolutely amazing job at banning you from the platform.
Host: Zach Johnson
And their platform really is like, you know, half the internet right? So like, yeah, I mean, I don't know if it ever bleeds into Instagram too but like you could it could be pretty, pretty devastating for somebody.
Guest: Matt Farmer
And even delete your Facebook page. So it doesn't it doesn't even matter the size of influencer either. We worked with one who had millions of followers and they were literally going to delete his Facebook page. And they'll take your groups too, your Facebook, anything that they can take from you, they pretty much will.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Was this one active or just did get disapproved immediately?
Guest: Matt Farmer
For this ad that I posted? This actually isn’t an ad that I ran. We specialize in policy at GrowRev. So we do policy consulting for companies etc. We do a weekly meeting where all our media buyers have to go out and scour the internet to find ads that are noncompliant.
So every week we have a theme. It'll be like, this theme is MLM or misleading claims, for example, personal attributes, which is this one. So we get all of our media buyers, they have to bring back at least two to three ads under each category pretty much every single week. And then we have basically a discussion about it, why or why not. Because it also helps you find really good workarounds. Sometimes they'll bring one to the table where it's like, wow, these guys found a really tricky way to not use a personal attribute or to not do a misleading claim. You know, there's lots of different strategies there. So, yeah, this one was definitely one of the gems from those meetings.
Host: Zach Johnson
Okay, so let's dive into this ad. So you're not running this ad just to be super clear because you don't run ads like this, but we'll throw it up in the show notes. And it says, “Are you over 40 struggling with hair loss? Sells the only two FDA hair loss treatments which are 90% effective at preventing hair loss. Limited time offer. 50% off three months. Start your regrowth challenge in June.” And then there's literally a picture of a dude like, he's faceless. He has like no eyes and it just focuses on his hair.
Guest: Matt Farmer
I'm wondering if they, maybe thought they could get around personal attributes by not giving him eyes?
(Laughter)
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. Maybe. They’re like I guess like we beat Facebook on this one. And then the headline on the ad says “hair loss can be optional.” That's kind of a weird headline. 50% off for three months. All right, break it down.
Guest: Matt Farmer
Okay, so this ad is not running anymore. I checked before we talked. It obviously got disapproved. This is one of the biggest things that people do. And it's personal attributes. You can't call out attributes about a person, and or how they feel or anything.
So if I had an ad, where it was like, “Do you always feel sad?” You know, “ Go with GrowRev, because you'll be happy all the time”. You know, but this one, because “Are you over 40?” So, you can't call out people's age. You can't say, “Are you 19? Are you 18?”, etc.
Facebook wants to prevent that because it also shows the general public how much information we have access to. And it makes people feel not good or even saying something like, you know,” Are you fat?” They don't want you to have a negative experience with their ads where you read the ads and then kind of feel bad about yourself.
They're all about that positive connotation. But really with these personal attributes, like “Are you over 40?” They broke it there and then “struggling with hair loss” question mark. You can't you cannot say that that is a completely bannable offense. You could completely lose your account for that. They don't want you to call out these attributes, because anyone who's scrolling through and let's say you are over 40, losing hair, you instantly start to feel bad about it.
And it's just it's a negative user experience. And personal attributes is one of the most overlooked and banned policies that we see in general you can't especially You see it a lot…
Host: Zach Johnson
Like personality. Like if I wanted to say “Do you have an awful personality?” Like to what extent? How far can this personal attributes go? Because that's pretty broad,
Guest: Matt Farmer
Like, no it is but you still understand why that they block it. But you just never want to take for granted what people are thinking or feeling. It's pretty much blanket for that. So you could even have something weird like, “You sometimes feel happy and then sad and then happy” that that calls them out. Or “Do you sometimes try to put on pants and trip and fall over?” It's a personal attribute.
You can't call that out. But there's definitely ways around it. You could say “Men over 40 that are struggling with hair loss, love our product”, because you're not asking them. A lot of people, they avoid the word “you”in their copy. There are ways that you can use it.
But usually if you're asking them a question, like “Do you feel...Do you…?” It's best to stay away from that. And in general, I find it's always better to go from a positive connotation than a negative as well. Yeah, so you don't want to make people feel bad.
Like if it was me advertising this, I'd do a case study about someone who had great results and they unlocked some great stuff in their life from it. And it's about them instead of being about the actual person and how horrible they feel that they're currently losing hair.
Host: Zach Johnson
Okay, so obviously, you guys aren't running this ad, right? So let's talk about how quickly something like this put somebody in the poorhouse? I want to hear. You don't have to name names, but I want to hear a horror story of how much money can an ad like this really cost somebody? Like how poor is this gonna make me? Like if they actually get their manager or their ad account banned or whatever? You know, 500 grand a month plus, and their ad account’s shut down. And like there goes an eight figure business.
Guest: Matt Farmer
Yeah, and it’s the whole opportunity cost of losing your account too. So we had a client that was spending like $25,000 a day -- a really big influencer. And they lost their business manager during a launch so it's not like they had to completely scrap the launch. But it was a majority ….it was 70% of their traffic.
Of course, they had affiliates and YouTube. Multi-network is the best way to make sure you're still safe. But at the same time, it's like that opportunity-cost of them not being able to spend 70% of their budget literally cost them millions of dollars. And then they had the headache of trying to get everything back, and even losing personal access to the platform. So they didn't have access to their page. They couldn't post updates. They couldn't do anything and even leverage their organic audience from it. So it was still successful. They're able to run it through other channels, but at the same time, it literally cost them millions of dollars and opportunity.
Host: Zach Johnson
Millions? Not one or two.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, I really heard horror stories of you know, individual access getting restricted where they can't go into turn off the ads and they're just spending so...nightmare.
Guest: Matt Farmer
Yeah, that happens a lot too. Sometimes, if you get personally banned, then it doesn't fully link like when your ad accounts banned. Everything gets paused. But if you get personally deplatformed, you just don't have access to anything anymore, and it will continue to spend.
We've had a couple horror stories where it literally, like they had to start doing chargebacks and eventually Facebook just stopped charging them. But it was a potential nightmare that would have cost them 10s of thousands of dollars in ad spend because they're promoting something that had a life to it. So it's an offer that expired, so they're still advertising their Thanksgiving deal like Black Friday and where we're on our way to December pretty much.
Host: Zach Johnson
I love it. So don't run an ad with personal attributes or it'll cost you millions when you get your ad account and your business manager banned -- worst case you get deplatformed. What are some other things outside of personal attributes that people should not have in their ads that can save them from this?
Guest: Matt Farmer
One of them is misleading claims and that one is very straightforward. But a lot of people break it. And that's a lot of the time what happens is they'll claim that you can make a million dollars. They'll make all these claims you know, like cure diabetes. That's a great one. All those products that you see get pushed around.
So misleading claims is also a pretty big one. One of the really misunderstood ones is MLM and biz op. A lot of people don't know that biz op is actually allowed on Facebook. MLM is not but biz op is allowed.
So with biz op, you just have to define what it is before you actually send them into the like on the funnel, you just have to define what it is. So an example of how you can break this is a lot of people advertise free webinars, and you actually can't call it a free webinar anymore. That's against policy that will get you banned out, or at least your ads disapproved. Because if you're selling something on the backend inside the webinar, they don't consider it free. Because it's basically you're going through a sale and the product itself isn't free.
So you're allowed to actually advertise that. You just have to define on your landing page, what exactly it is that you're selling them into. So you could basically say you have a webinar that's going to show them your program that costs $2,000 on how to rank on SEO or whatever. A lot of people don't realize you have to define it. And “Free” gets used a lot. They never used to crack down on this. But now they do quite a bit where if it's your free webinar, your free webcast, or if you're lying and saying, “my one time webcasts”, which is an auto webinar that runs every 15 minutes, then they'll start to hit you with stuff like that.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
And then what about “before and after”? Yeah, that's a hot one. I'd love to hear y'all get around that.
Guest: Matt Farmer
Well before and after is only for stuff like weight loss. A lot of people don't realize there is a lot of before and afters that you can actually run. Like for example, we have a photography client where we can run before and afters. It's just, there are some situations where you can't run them and you just have to know what they are. But even for stuff like we've had once where it's like in one where it teaches users how to invest in real estate, and we can show a before and after of that house. But on the health side, of course, you can't. They'll hit you really hard for that. So there are situations where before and afters are completely fine. But definitely don't do it in the health space because that's where they nail you.
Host: Zach Johnson
I love it. Okay, so let's let's move on to the fun part. Let's move on to the Rich Ad segment here. Dylan, why don't you kick this thing off? Well, let's read this ad here.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, so I was lurking on this one when you sent it over, but it looks like we get the cheat sheets that will help you understand the basics. So looks like a solid little lead magnet. Killer creative. I click through but of course, download and now I’ve got to give you my email. I love it. I kinda want to go in depth on how that worked out for it. This is honestly super juicy. I know you've mentioned, you've sold hundreds of millions of these.
Guest: Matt Farmer
Yeah, no, and I highly recommend this is one of my clients. So go buy all his products. He's an absolute legend. But this was an example of just... it was pivoting for the current situation that shall not be named. That's another ad policy.
But really, we do a lot of direct response for this guy. We have tons of ads that go directly to a landing page and we do great. We get really good ROI from it. But during the first part of the whole situation, what happened was everything kind of dropped out for a little bit. There was like a two week period where advertisers somewhat felt it, so we wanted to pivot. And what we saw got really cheap and it's still true during this time, is that you could lead gen for almost nothing right now So building an audience has never been cheaper.
But if you have a paywall at the front, it's pretty expensive. So let's say a “free plus book” funnel, or a “free plus ship book” funnel they caught there are a lot more expensive now. And it's almost because like we're advertising in a bull market, people are trying to just justify their ad spend within, the first click pretty much and just, feed the machine.
But for this, we decided he's really good at email marketing, and he picks up a ton from it. So there's a couple strategies here that we use. Number one, it goes to an advertorial so it doesn't even go directly to the offer. And what we did is we got part of his product and we gave it away for free. And that is what works really well right now.
You can get so just to name the metrics, we're paying around 30 to 40 cents per lead on this ad. So, yeah, it's insanely cheap because it's advertising something free and it's content. It's going to an advertorial so you get all the advantages there. And then once you get to the advertorial, in order to get the free cheat sheet -- so we're giving away a piece of the product -- get people addicted, show them the quality, it is a really good product, and people absolutely love it. So we give it away and then they give us their email.
And then after they give us their email, they're sent directly to the funnel that they'd normally go to. What we noticed is we're literally generating hundreds of thousands of emails every single month. He's been seeing the amount that he makes from this go up because they have quite a bit of product.
So once they get an email, they could really monetize it. But the craziest part was after they went through this funnel -- because costs are so cheap on the front end for the click, and for the opt in, and just to get them through --- it's actually higher ROI than just doing a direct response ad directly to the actual product page. So sending them through this, grabbing a lead from it, and then in the end actually making more profit was pretty unbelievable.
Host: Zach Johnson
I'm not even sure how you capture the lead….
Guest: Matt Farmer
Well, you can't really tell because you click to download it or if you hit next so if let's say for example, you click on the cheat sheet, it'll pop up and ask for your email address in order for you to get it. So you just put in your email address. And then after you do that..
Host: Zach Johnson
Gotcha.
Guest: Matt Farmer
And then what we do is we sell them a lower ticket version, but there's lots of upsells etc. So even though after that we sell them a cheat sheet for $7, that's the essential then from there and upsells and there's..
He's an absolute legend when it comes to direct response and landing pages and everything. So you know, they get upsells and the cart value is probably like three to four times that. So basically, we're able to lower click costs, get more people to click through.
So now our remarketing lists are bigger. We got an email from it, so anyone that doesn't convert, we can hit them up with other offers. So then after going to buy the product, we have a higher ROI than we did previously.
So I think it's just a really good example of pivoting. And I find during these times you want to give away something for free. And we're doing that with a lot of clients right now. It used to be where we qualify them with purchasing something, etc. Right now I'm just I'm honestly I'm more trying to list-build, because if I can get an email for under $1 -- I wasn't able to get an email for under that before this whole situation. So it's, it's amazing how well it's worked compared to the actual other ads. Of course, we're still running the other ads, but this just absolutely inflates our remarketing email lists and yeah, we've had amazing results from it.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Now with that coming from a media buyer’s perspective on the front end side are you going ahead and optimizing for those emails out of the gate? Or optimizing for purchasing whoever gets the email and so be it.
Guest: Matt Farmer
We're optimizing for purchase just because that is the main goal. I find when I optimize around lead because it is a worldwide product, then we'll start to get the third world countries coming in at one cent leads. This guy's account is insanely well seasoned. So I have an audience that's 1.7 billion people. And it's extremely ROI positive as long as I optimize around purchase, but not around lead. So right now for this product, I'm always optimizing around purchase and Facebook pixel seasoned enough that it just does the work properly.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, that's snazzy. So what's the kind of conversion rate from the individuals getting the free little cards to actually convert to some sort of paid packages at 20%? 30%? Would you have any of those numbers there?
Guest: Matt Farmer
Yeah, I can. I could go over the brief numbers. We have about a 60% opt in rate. And out of the users that opt in we're seeing around from 25% to 40%, depending on the day. Yeah. 25% to 40% taking the $7 offer and upselling from there, which is pretty unbelievable.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh my gosh, yeah so much data. That's awesome. They're like yeah, now If you could change anything about this what would it be to optimize this whole entire funnel for the most part?
Guest: Matt Farmer
I think the funnel is really well done. We are trying different things with it. There's quite a bit. I think on the ad side it can be optimized a bit more and I could try some more variants. As you noticed the text of the ad is very short and it's strange for this kind of stuff. Long Form used to work really well. But we ran a couple versions of this and one of our best performers literally just has in brackets new blog posts is the ad text.
So I definitely want to do some more testing around text to see if I could get anyone's there. Also some video clips. I think some video would do really well for it. It was one of those things where we got it made it fast. It was hard for us to do video creative of it because everybody's locked in their own houses so we couldn't get film crews etc.
On the landing page side for the actual advertorial, I wouldn't change much. We've tested a lot of advertorials. So honestly, when you do this advertorial strategy, there's huge advantages to it. And it's why we always push people to multi network because if you do Outbrain into Taboola and you can get an advertorial to properly convert, when you push them over to Facebook, you get significant advantages to it. So even though it is another step in the funnel, your click cost is so low, it just builds up your remarketing list and it just gives you a ton more opportunity to convert people.
So once you have a really good advertorial locked in, which can take from 10 to 20 different tries before you find one that really works. Once you've cracked that, it works extremely well on Facebook, and you could run it alongside your direct response ads. It's just a really good way of scaling spend. And when you're constantly trying to spend more and more and more every single month, and you're in the hundreds of thousands, any opportunity you get whether it's going out tomorrow countries are just finding more funnels that you can throw at it the better it is. Because this one generates so many clicks, it helps all the other campaigns too. So, honestly I probably wouldn't change this advertorial. I highly recommend anyone watching to take a look at it and just understand what's happening. I think it's absolutely brilliant. And if you have a product where you can give away a little bit of it for free, advertorial is one of the best ways to do it, in my opinion.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh man, well shoot Zach we got a Rich Ad. So for the recap. We got an ad that can shut you down and an ad that can make it rain.
Host: Zach Johnson
So how much are you guys spending on this campaign?
Guest: Matt Farmer
It's... I won't give exact but it's hundreds of thousands per month.
Host: Zach Johnson
There you go. There you go.Congrats. You're a big deal.
(Laughter)
Host: Zach Johnson
I think you're really on point there though Matt.. really updating the funnel to get a free book plus shipping. You know, those are expensive to run now and especially in this environment.
I mean, just if you reflect back in March, there were all kinds of email campaigns and promotions of like, we're giving away XYZ for free. But really building that into the ad campaign. You know, I think it’s the right move.
So, gosh, congrats on you and your client for being able to push through that all the way through to ads and not just like some email announcement to the customer list.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, that's quite a little study there. But, I mean, this has been awesome, y'all. So how can anybody get in touch with you if they want to check out some case studies Check out your site? LinkedIn? What's the best bet for somebody to get in touch with you over there?
Guest: Rohan Sheth
So the best way for people to get in touch with us is gonna be going to GrowRev.com which is our website. That's where we have a lot of stuff. We are launching a new website here hopefully in the next couple of weeks. We're going to have all of our case studies exactly what we talked about with what Matt’s running. And just breaking things down. Even from the policy end to why going multi network and how that's been benefiting clients etc. And if you're on social, the best way to find me is on social because that's the majority of where a lot of the fun stuff happens and Instagram is rohan underscore sheth.
Host: Zach Johnson
That's awesome, man. You guys are legends. Tell us a little bit about what's next for you guys. Where are you taking the agency? Where do you guys see yourself in the next couple of years?
Guest: Rohan Sheth
Next for us is pretty much gonna be scaling what we have already built. Obviously we've hit the epitome and on one end of info. So obviously taking all that knowledge and helping as much of the masses as we can, from the info side that people have got offers that are converting that are just stuck with it.
They're stuck at $1,000 to $2,500 a day. And they want to get to that $10,000 plus a day so we're going down that route. And one of the things that we're really excited for, and we're going to chat about a lot post-podcast, is going to be partnering with you guys.
And then all of our smaller clients, too, that we've picked up through COVID in the last few months of craziness is just going to be helping people just rebound with some funding. And then help them get their marketing together and scale there. So we're actively building a lower tier to our agency. Because a lot of times in the last little bit, GrowRev has been niched into that high ticket agency. Where it's working with the clients we've mentioned. But now it's like, okay, let's make a bigger difference with what we can do and obviously with the products that you guys are offering. It's a perfect opportunity for us to scale.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, you guys are a little bit of an elitist. Let's just be real.
(Laughter)
Host: Zach Johnson
Love it. I love it. Well, you guys have been super awesome and gracious in opening up. And giving us a little bit of peek into the numbers but also being very respectful to your clients. So I hats off to you guys for just doing that in taste but also really feeding the field to the to the audience. I think everyone's gonna really appreciate this episode. That's it. Dylan! Take it away, man. This was an awesome episode. Give us a little recap. Let's close it out.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Thanks for tuning in. I mean, shoot, if somebody wants to figure out how to get banned that Poor Ad, best way to get into it. Want to figure out how to have a really cool content marketing kind of lead gen funnel -- best way to knock it out there. So If any questions pop up, y'all feel free to reach out to our guests here.
Join us for a juicy discussion with Chase Diamond, founder of Boundless Labs -- one of the world’s top e-commerce email agencies, where we’ll find out how he regularly increases new client email revenue from 0% to 15% to 25% to 30% a month or more. We’ll dive under the covers of a killer email campaign for a weighted blanket brand that had an open rate of about 53% and a click through 4% or 5% -- but that wasn’t the reason it rocked. Then we’ll pick apart the anatomy of an email layout and point out the layout pitfalls that all too many marketers fall into…. and more.
- Why testimonials suck compared to the social proof power of these platforms.
- How one Facebook ad ended up driving 60% of a client’s revenue.
- How to solve catastrophic mobile app email mistakes from the top down.
- The absolute best incentive to get customers to leave favorable reviews -- it’s not what you think it is.
- What you can do to get out of your agency echo-chamber and into the mind and buying motivations of your best customers.
BIO
Since launching Boundless Labs in 2018, Diamond has helped his agency’s clients send hundreds of millions of emails resulting in over $40 million in email attributable revenue for high-profile clients like The Chive, IBEX, Original Grain, TUSHY and Vinyl Me Please.
TRANSCRIPT
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Cool, cool. How's it going everybody? Welcome to another episode of Rich Ad, Poor Ad. Today we have one of my buddies Chase Diamond online. He is one of the partners at Boundless Labs. He is the Chief email marketing (guy) -- done roughly $35 million plus in revenue for his clients, all via email marketing. So while we dive into the ad side, we're going to be mixing in some emails with this as well. They have some good email practices, bad email practices, and kind of all the shenanigans get involved there. But hey, Chase, thanks for hopping on today. I would love to have you dive into a little bit about what you're doing. A little background there so people have some kind of insights there.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, appreciate you guys having me. Thank you.
Host: Zach Johnson Definitely.
Guest: Chase Diamond Awesome. So yeah, currently run Boundless Labs, we're a team of about 12 people and we're specifically focused on email marketing for e-commerce. So full service email marketing agency, we work with about 35 to 40 clients right now. Most are selling seven and eight figure brands, an email typically accounts for about 20% to 30% of these brands’ revenue. So it's pretty significant. So at a high level, that's kind of what I do. And that's what I'm up to today.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, man, that's awesome. When it comes to a lot of the brands you take on, what percent of revenue are they sitting at originally versus kind of once you get your little wheels spinning over there to end up at?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, so let's say we kind of run the gamut. Some brands literally are doing almost next to nothing, right? So their email attributable revenues are sitting anywhere from like zero to maybe like 3%, right? So it's very minimal. And then some other brands that come to us or maybe doing 10% to 15%. They kind of feel like they've done everything that they've can, and they don't know what they don't know, right? So they're looking to bring in a second pair of eyes and ears and to bring in some experts to help them.
So typically anywhere from just starting out to maybe 10% to 15% on the high end, and definitely over the course of maybe three to six months of working together, we're pretty consistently able to get these brands to be doing 20%, 25%, 30% of their revenue.
And again, that's not for every brand, right? We've got some brands that are doing well higher, some brands are doing 40%, 50%, 60% of the revenue from email. And some brands are also doing 10% or 15%. Right? Maybe they started at zero. So it really just depends, but on average, it's about 20% to 30% of the revenue coming from email after a couple months.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
That makes total sense. And what's the size of these kinds of businesses you are working with? Or have they been around the block a little bit? What's the lifeline or timeline of the businesses you're working with there?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, so in e-commerce, I think we've probably touched almost every single vertical. Everything from like CBD to skincare to haircare apparel, to fashion to jewelry, accessories, you name it. Most of our brands do in the ballpark of about one to $20 million in annual revenue. And they typically have been around anywhere from maybe nine months on the short end, all the way up to five, seven, maybe even 10 years for some businesses. So again, like it's that's really what I love about the industry that we all work in is that some of these brands become this overnight success and other brands that could have been more established and are growing steadily. So it's really fun to have this really well rounded kind of mixture.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, man, I love that. So I mean, from your point of view, what's been one of the funnest clients to work with? One you've had a lot of free reign on their messaging or you've been able to have fun with their copy. What's one of those dream clients you've been able to obtain over there?
Guest: Chase Diamond
So for me, if you guys are familiar with The Chive, by any chance, they're like the men's millennial site. They're really popular. Not that they're not popular today, but they're really popular when we were like, maybe in middle school or high school. You guys know The Chive? Like The Chive for me and all my buddies growing up, obviously, you know, as young dudes, it was like this coolest site ever, right?
Like, oh, man, that'd be such a fun company to work for one day. And somehow, in 2018, I got connected with their chief strategy officer. We had hit it off and I've been consulting with them ever since.
So I work with them specifically on their e-commerce brand The Chivery. They're an eight figure e-commerce brand really leveraging the cult-like following of The Chive and they create tons of cool graphic tees and apparel and coins and they have really great partnerships with like Bill Murray and other people. So for me just growing up kind of like looking at this brand as like, “Oh, this is so cool”. And now being at a place where they look to me to advise and consult them on email related practices -- has been really rewarding and fulfilling.
Host: Zach Johnson
Oh The Chivery and Bill Murray -- like you can't like can't go wrong with that. I wonder if there were any like failures when they were rolling that out? Because like I feel like that's been such a win.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, I don't know too much about that partnership. It was kind of a lap around before I got involved, but from what I've seen and what I've heard, like, you know, Bill is such a great guy that to your point I got a great partnership. Every year they do a golf tourney together that just looks like absolute madness, right? Like, it looks like the best time ever. So I gotta imagine they probably had some things that haven't gone their way. But they've had a lot of things that certainly have gone their way. So hats off to them.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah. And I would even imagine he breaks into a whole new market for them when it comes to their audiences. So that's super snazzy there. But sweet. Let's get down to business. We'll be having some of these actual ads, email screenshots all within the kind of show notes for the podcast description. But let's go ahead and dive into some of these top ads and top emails.
I believe we have a brand, Calming Blanket, where we have the ad below some special offers and how it ties into email leaving some killer reviews on the ads and how it affected acquisition costs.
So we'd love to kind of dive into your top ads for the Calming Blankets as well as the kind of strategy behind it. And how you incorporated the email side of it, because the way you explained it earlier, it's quite a game changer. I feel like many brands could implement this and do some wonders there.
Host: Zach Johnson
Chase, tell us, tell us what's the Rich Ad, man. Lay it on us.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Awesome. So, yeah, I'm just gonna start actually really quickly one step back with what we did and why we did it. So, this brand, Calming Blankets, they're basically a weighted blanket that you could know wear as kind of a “hug”. That you could sleep with to help you feel grounded and calm. So again, they can't say these things in their ads, but it's really around helping people with anxiety or people that have some kind of fear or some impulse for attention and need for care and love, right.
So these blankets, they range from about $200 to $300, maybe $400 in price. And this company was doing really, really well initially just running ads top of the funnel. And we had the idea kind of jointly on if we could leverage the traffic from email of people that have purchased to send that traffic to different ads every week to different ads every month. Different ads every quarter. We got to imagine that we could increase the social proof, organically, which would then tie into the added of so just really quickly finishing up on this email and then we'll go into the ad piece.
We basically sent an email about two weeks after someone had received their item. Just saying, “Hey, so we'd love to have you share a comment on a recent Facebook post about how your purchase has improved your life. Please include an image please including video, include a sentence, we'd really love to hear from you. And if you do this, we're actually going to get you entered in this sweepstakes to win a free king or queen weighted blanket which is worth $349.”
So basically, we're incentivizing the people that purchased to leave a review on this ad. And to your point, it helps decrease the cost of acquisition. So now that you have the story, talk about the ads that sound good.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, let's totally do a quick run though. What was the opening click through rate on the actual emails themselves
Guest: Chase Diamond
So, off memory, I was looking at this preparing for tonight, I want to say the open rate was about 53%. Click through was 4% or 5%. And this was at scale. They're getting thousands and thousands of people every month. So it really does add up over time.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yeah. Especially being on ads. I mean, all you all you need are like four or five of those bad boys, and it'll do wonders there.
Guest: Chase Diamond
So I've got two ads that I’ll add as a screenshot that you guys could see in the show notes. These were two of the dozens of ads that we sent traffic to and send comments to over the course of about a year of working with this brand.
So looking at this first ad, basically, the ad had a review from someone from a customer, right? So we basically had all these people leaving ads, reviews, and then we made one of those reviews actually into an ad itself. And then we started sending other people to this review. And people were like, “Oh, I want to enter my comment, I want to enter my thing too, because I want to win this blanket. I want my comment and my thing featured on Facebook ads”. And basically, it was this really great quote that we got about how, when this lady used this blanket, she felt so much calmer.
And then we offered this discount code of save $90 with code WINTER right? So we were running this one over the holidays, this one's a little bit older of an ad. But this ad was really where they spent a lot of their traffic and therefore a lot of their conversions came from.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, that makes total sense there. Any idea on what kind of revenue those ads brought in or how the results have changed? I know you mentioned the acquisition costs kind of dropped there, but any kind of figures on the full spectrum of the numbers side of things.
Guest: Chase Diamond
So I don't have a specific number in terms of like, what the acquisition cost actually was or what that looks like, but this company was doing about seven figures a month in revenue and majority of their revenue outside of the email. Email probably accounted for 20% to 25% of it. Majority of the revenue came from their Facebook, Instagram, and a little bit of Google, but mainly Facebook and Instagram, right? So this ad across the other ads they had, I got to imagine probably was driving 60% of their revenue.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, wow. And so they're really only using a couple ads at a time. But those ads were just super flavorful on the social proof side of things.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, they were basically using the same kind of ad formats, and then just updating them based off the season, right. So in all of our emails, instead of the one that I'm looking at right now saying code WINTER, if we're about to do it right now, it would be SPRING, about to be SUMMER, right. So that same kind of structure is what we followed both in email and in ads, right. So this ad might be updated, what's new, creative, and before a little bit warmer weather, it might say, save $90 with code SPRING.
So we were really focused both on ads and email. Again, we didn't run the ads, but this was a strategy that was very consistent across both channels. That was very relevant and very timely, and because we had so many people on the west and so when people purchasing, it was okay for us to switch from one app to another because we were able to provide that social proof so quickly, it didn't really matter if we had 500 comments on a different ad, we could pretty quickly get 500 new comments on a new ad.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Man, that is wild there. That's a cool concept. I just love how you can just do the spring, summer, winter fall. I mean, this is something you could do a couple times a year, which is just, you know, it's like having a one Black Friday sale or, hey, you could have three or four a year you know, it's one of those kind of concepts and make the most out of this. I love that style.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, what I've found is, again, like we're very focused on the email side. But what I've found on the email side, but also appears to be true on the Facebook side that a lot of our clients that we work with have really great lifestyle and product photography. So their ads, the stuff in the emails, everything is always so on brand. It's always so timely and so relevant. I think that's really been the key right in terms of differentiating is the fact that we're speaking to people the way that they want to be spoken to. Based off the current landscape of how people want to be spoken to, right? Obviously, with everything that just happened in the world, things are changing, and people are kind of catching up. And the smart marketers are able to have their pulse on what's coming. And then everyone else reacts, right?
I think being proactive and early on top of these trends on top of this craziness in the world, and obviously, having a sense of like, how should you display these things? And maybe maybe you should even take a pause for a few days and not display things, right.
But I think being like, really great people, being really great marketers is knowing when to show things, and when not to show things. Knowing how people are going to feel. And we've always leveraged the user base, we've always asked customers for feedback. We've always asked customers to fill out surveys, we've always asked customers in Facebook groups that we have for our brands. Like how they feel. What they're thinking. And what would they think if we tried x y and z, right. So we're basically always testing our hypotheses around ads and email with a small group of loyal VIP type folks, just so that way we can try to get other people's thoughts other than our own.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yeah. What better way to get feedback from the customers directly? That's the frickin best way to do it there. Well, heck yeah. So we have the anatomy of a solid ad with a killer email all mixed into one. Let's go ahead and rip apart losing email on this side of things. Because with the way you have it set up on the anatomy of a losing ad, I want to dive into each one of these points to gauge “Why didn't this work?” and how to make it better.
And just so everybody kind of listening has some insights, we'll have the anatomy of a losing ad as well as a losing email and a winning email with the breakdown of why and how to strategize there. But let's dive into the anatomy of that losing email. He posted as well here.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Awesome. Yeah, so you guys will get to see all this but with this losing email, what we noticed was that the header was only desktop friendly, right? So you absolutely have to start designing to make sure that your emails look just as good on mobile if not better than they do on desktop, right? So in this current email, unfortunately, when we opened it on mobile, it just looks atrocious, right. And that's a huge mess. What we did notice over the kind of the COVID time, is a lot more of the traffic to our e commerce stores was on mobile, a lot more purchases were on mobile. So again, mobile mind. Also, too, with this brand, they had a lot of their social icons and brand slogans at the very top of the email, and I feel that that's better suited at the footer. We really want to keep the header -- the first thing that people see -- very simple, right? So just use your brand logo and your top nav navigation if needed, and then have everything else kind of any other noise towards the bottom right. People don't need to see your social icons at top. They don't need to see your brand slogan to top save that from the bottom. You're wasting really precious real estate. Does that make sense? So far?
Host: Dylan Carpenter 16:00
Yeah, that makes total sense, especially the whole desktop and mobile side of things. Because I know we see a ton of conversions via mobile. So that's probably a huge indicator there on you know, big starts were, hey, making a mobile friendly and desktop friendly. Gut with me being super email illiterate, can you actually have separate designs on the email mobile side versus email desktop side of things? Or is it kind of kind of one size fits all there? I really don't know.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, it kind of depends. Like, it depends on how you're building your emails, right? Are your emails, mainly text based or emails, mainly image base? Is your email just literally one long image right? Is it slice and dice so it really just depends but in Klaviyo which is the ESP that we're using. ESP just means email service provider, or email marketing platform. You could actually render and switch between mobile and desktop previews.
So we'll basically build first on desktop, and then we'll check the mobile preview. And then we'll make adjustments as needed. A lot of the times blocks and things do render properly, and they do transfer over fine. But there are other times where we'll notice something is kind of messed up or screwed up. And then we'll go in and specifically fix it on the mobile version without touching the desktop, right.
So I'd say probably 75% of the work that we do is done on desktop and mobile in one go. And then the remaining 25% is just a second pass through the second look, some separate testing just to make sure that it does look really great on both.
So then, going into this, this next part of the email again, you guys will see this. There's just a block of text, right. And our feedback here is basically using sub headers as needed to break up long body text. So when it's too much text, people aren't going to really read it, it's going to be confusing. So having some kind of text hierarchy is key. And that is done through incorporating fonts, a different weight, the different sizes and different colors. So again, this will make way more sense when you're actually looking at it. And you'll see that in a lot of these notes as well.
And then also we say don't use all caps for the body. It works well maybe for a sentence or a few words. But anything more than using that it's just kind of difficult for users to digest, right? When everything's in caps, it makes it feel like everything is important. And having two paragraphs of everything that being important means really, nothing becomes important. Right? So that's also another tip. Does that make sense, guys?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yeah, that makes total sense there. So from your perspective, what would be the biggest thing to change on this losing email that you would make that would probably make the biggest impact in a positive manner there?
Guest: Chase Diamond
I think here, it's just too busy looking at. They're trying to cram in way too much. And so few sections, right. I would probably, you know, really focus what's the goal of this email? Like, what is the key here? Because we don't really know what this email was trying to solve or trying to suggest. There's no call to action above the fold. Right? So people are wondering where do they click? Where do they go? How do they know what to do? I think just really taking a step back and be like, what is our goal for this email? Our goal is to get people to read this email and then they'll have info about our company.
Okay, great. Cut out all the other noise in our goal to drive conversion, right? Okay, let's, let's make it conversion focused. Let's make it really simple to understand. Let's make the call to actions really clear. Let's provide people information or if they've just scan this, they understand it. Is the call to action to get someone to go to the blog post? Have a few sentences about the blog post or sentence from the blog post. And then just have a really simple call to action that says, read more, right? I think keeping in mind user experience and designing for that is really important.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
That makes total sense there. I mean, when I see that big coupon looking thing in the middle of the email reminds me of those old school grocery store things you pull off the wall for the most part.
Guest: Chase Diamond
That's crazy. And then kind of the last two things on this email is they have this product section where they talk about what's hot. And there's three different products they focus on. Our recommendation here is to give the product enough spacing, and give the text the ability to breathe. There's way too much information there without any differentiation. So you're not really too sure where to look or which one you want to focus on. Right? So it's again, it's just too noisy, it's too busy. And it's not built for mobile.
So when you're when you're showing products, keep it simple. You don't need to have every single reason why someone should buy that specific product or every single detail about it. Just give people enough that they want to click through. And then when they're on their site, they could see a really beautiful layout of the product land.
And then lastly in this email, again, they stuffed everything in the header like there's now no footer information, right? There's this blob of gray space and openness, where it's a good place to have the details that you tried to get up moved to the bottom.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yeah, that's a huge gray spot there. People can get lost in here pretty quick. Or even as you mentioned, you want to lead it to something to click through. I love the whole cliffhanger man mentality that makes them want to click through to where this one is just a ton of information without a doubt.
Guest: Yeah, this is very quickly going to probably get deleted from people's inboxes. Right, like barko spam delete, like, I don't know what's happening here.
Host: Zach Johnson So, Chase when you say this is the Poor Ad here what were the results? Give us an a and b here of the night and day performance of winning and losing.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, so this was a much older one because again, there's no way in heck that we design and do these types of emails anymore. This way early on in our days.
When we first started we really sucked mainly because my partner and I this time we're doing all the designs and thankfully to this day now we have a design team that's way better than we ever were or could ever be.
But from memory, I think this email did decent on the open rates. I think it was like a, I don't know, like a 15% or 20% open rate, which is decent. And then I want to say like the click through was almost like it was close to zero. Like it was probably 0.2 or something. I don't even know where people would have clicked, right. I don't know if we even had links on these images. Yeah, this was a hot mess.
Host: Zach Johnson
That’s awesome. Also the Rich Ad here. What's that performing at?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, so the the ads related to the blanket that had a north of a 50% open rate and I think it had a 4% or 5% click through which is pretty decent, you know, a couple weeks after purchase --- especially when we're asking people to leave a review on a Facebook ad, right? Like no one really does.
Host: Zach Johnson 4% or 5% click through on that and then your losing one is almost 0%.
Guest: Chase Diamond
I think we got fired pretty quickly from that losing email. I think we're going to last in a few weeks or ...
Host: Zach Johnson
We're just saying you know, how much money did you lose on the on the Poor Ad and like you just lost the entire account, right?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah. They made no money and we had our retainer yanked.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
There you go. And what was your retainer?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Man back then it was cheap. Like they basically were paying them to work with us at that point.
Host: Zach Johnson
Man this is so putting you in the poorhouse. I love it. They weren't even a profitable client. Email. If you were doing the design yourself. This is great.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, so real quickly, my background is in cold email, like high volume, cold email building communities like looking scale. If communities acquired over a million or 2 million email subscribers through non paid acquisition.
Yeah. And then Nick Shackleford, who I know you guys know, and a good buddy of mine, he's like, Dude, what are you doing on this cold email stuff? Like, this stuff is so spammy. You need to come into this e-commerce world. I promise it's gonna be way better.
So I came into the e-commerce world. Nick sent me a course to take a quick course. It's like, dude, I'm so ready. I'm gonna crush this right on like a client. This one and one other. I think they literally are paying me like 250 bucks or 500 bucks, right? Like I was just begging for like experience and the case study.
So thankfully, they didn't lose that much. Right. But it just created through the evolution of when I actually was designing the emails in my team, somebody asked me the day about it, right, like
Host: Zach Johnson
That’s so awesome
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, so now we're charging a lot higher rates because our work is so refined. And the funny thing is we have a really great reputation in the space of having the most beautifully designed emails. So it's just really funny to see the evolution of where we were to where we are now like in a two to three year window.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh yeah, and just so you have some context we'll be having this losing email or talking about as well as three or four top emails based off different products. So you'll be able to see some of these juicy ones he was talking about. Shoot, they would be ready in revenue.
Host: Zach Johnson
I was talking about this Rich Ad email like what is that? What do you think the revenue is that that came off of that?
Guest: Chase Diamond
So related to the email have that access like that email itself asking for you is doing like two to $3,000 a month. right Like the point of the email wasn't really even driving you again like granted sometimes in Klaviyo sometimes in platforms attributions, not 100% accurate so some of that came from other things but you know, it's been about a couple thousand dollars a month in revenue, the email itself, but the ad those two ads and I think they probably had a handful of other ads like I think they had about doesn't add that they had pretty much focused on and rotated between.
I mean, again, they were doing like seven figures a month in revenue, and a majority of their revenue was coming from Facebook and Instagram traffic. So I gotta imagine these ads were doing, you know, 10s of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
Host: Zach Johnson
And you know that you remember the monthly spend,
or like, give or take?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, truthfully, we're not as kind of up to speed with how much customers are spending. And a lot of these customers scale pretty quickly. Some of the numbers that they told us back then would change in weeks.
Basically what happens is we've come into some of these brands, like this client, for example, that was doing some email, but not a ton of email. And we were then producing hundreds of thousands of dollars in new revenue that they never had every month. So they're able to go from $50,000 to $100,000 in the first couple months of working with us. And I want to say now, they're pretty consistently spending, I would guess, mid six figures on ads a month.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah. I've seen some He's at all now. So I wouldn't be surprised there.
Host: Zach Johnson
So basically like this, you know, the high level strategy is like leverage your email to like hack your ad engagement and your comments.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, exactly. And then for this client also, they're based out of Australia, and in Australia, New Zealand and places like that...not the consumers here don't -- obviously consumers here go on places like Trustpilot and Yahoo. They look at reviews, they look at your phone, they look at all these things, right. But we found customers and other countries really look at review platforms very heavily. And that's how they make their decision.
We're also in the same post purchase flow on the email side, after we asked for the comment on a Facebook ad. We also then were asking for a review on a third party review site, because we wanted to really jack up and increase those. So after we had enough ads on our own website ... after this client had enough ads that had 100 reviews, 500 reviews, 1,000 reviews, like, at some point, they all become the same.
So we started focusing the attention on the Facebook ads on the third party review sites. And we just started noticing over time, we were just crushing it, like conversions would increase. And we never understood why until after we figured out the fact that customers that wanted to buy already consulted these sites, and as we built these sites up, and as we built the ads up, the whole conversion as a whole just increased.
So yeah, it's using your email to harness the power of your customers to build you up on other platforms. That way you can keep building this ecosystem.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Shoot, especially when you can bring in 20% or 30% of the overall revenue via email. I mean, that's a huge other area to really optimize and focus on without a doubt. So I mean, it's email stuff, it’s nowhere near dying.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yet if you think about another part of this software is ads blog, if you think about your email channel, right, other than whatever you pay your internal or your agency manager
And whatever costs you pay for ESP, everything else obviously minus product costs and whatnot is profit, right? So we work with mainly seven, eight figure clients, as I mentioned, on the low end, our brands are probably doing $40k- $50k a month in email revenue on the high end, they're probably doing like, half a million dollars in revenue potentially even more.
After you take out our cost of a couple thousand dollars a month, the cost of their email provider, a couple thousand dollars a month that the product costs but then they're literally sitting on 10s of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in profit, that they're then able to reinvest back into the top of the funnel. They're then able to reinvest into more inventory. They have all this extra cash that they could do whatever the heck they want with it, frankly.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yeah. And that goes a long way with all that data. Data is money in this industry without a doubt.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Heck, yeah.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
So yeah, I mean, that was super juicy. I mean, we got the nitty gritty info on the kind of results. Where you know how those Poor Ad emails impacted your relationship with the clients.
But it's cool to see how you've evolved over time because, I mean, I'm on your newsletter and I love seeing all these emails from random brands -- hey, this is a super sick one. I'm like, Man, I'm opening so many doors on the email sides of man. We love what you're doing over there that you're definitely the email king, but I pay attention to all of these. So I mean, shouts out right there.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
But heck yeah, I mean, everybody does a pretty good little one, they're diving into the email, some ad orientation there. But when it comes to that social proof, it'll make a difference on that bottom line, without a doubt.
And on that Poor Ad side of things, the click through rate speaks for itself in comparison to that good email going to 4.5% from not even 1%. So I mean, that is an indicator there on what works and what doesn't work.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, absolutely. And again, a shout out you'll see a bunch of really cool things like there's a winning email teardown and there's three or so email examples from our clients that performed really well in their four different use cases, so definitely check those out. And if anyone has any questions, feel free to hit me up.
Host: Zach Johnson
How can people do that Chase?
Guest: Chase Diamond
Honestly, I'm like eight years late to the game, but I've been on a Twitter tear lately. So hit me up on Twitter. That's a platform that I'm sharing kind of daily tips and tricks. My username is ecom then chase diamond. So ecom chase diamond. There you go.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yeah, definitely sign up for that newsletter, y'all because I mean, there is some juicy info in there and whether you do an email or not, I mean, you can definitely get some value out of this. I mean, I joined like three months ago, I don't even do email but I love looking through those. Sign up for that.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Thank you.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Well, much appreciated for hopping on man. We love this. It was a different kind of outlook on the ads and email side. But hey, once again, man, thanks for taking the time to have some fun on this Rich Ad, Poor Ad podcast with us.
Guest: Chase Diamond
Yeah, you guys. Thank you so much for having me. Enjoyed it as well.
Listen in on -- and learn from -- this eye opening discussion with 27-year-old, monster online-brand-builder Joshua “Snow” Elizetxe about how he turned Snow Teeth Whitening into the #1 oral care brand in the world. We’ll talk about the tactics, tools, and strategies that drive his phenomenal cash-flow management that lets him self-fund the company -- and gives him instant access to $10M to roll into R&D. 100% debt and VC free. Then prepared to be impressed by a fly-on-the wall campaign that crushed -- and shocked by a “try before you buy” offer that almost tanked the company...and more, including:
• How Josh got insanely rich earning $60,000 a year.
• The anatomy of a “ripple effect ad campaign” that has generated a virtually un-churnable customer base.
• The priceless financial lesson Josh learned from a company that sold bologna to Walmart at a breakeven price -- and ended up being bought for $1.3 billion.
• Why the oldest, tried and true offer in the world nearly assassinated his business -- and what he did to dig himself out of the mess.
• How to cash in on the customer converting power of celebrity endorsements -- using $0 of your own money.
BIO:
At just 20 years old, Joshua “Snow” Elizetxe graduated Summa Cum Laude from the W.P. Carey School of Business and Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University with a degree in Information Technology while running a successful company -- Pocket Your Dollars -- from his dorm room. After graduating he started Foresold, a private holding company for high-performing online companies. The company bootstrapped (absolutely zero outside capital) its portfolio into becoming a leader in several hyper-competitive industries. 9-figures in sales. In 2017, he founded Snow Teeth Whitening, a direct to consumer leader in oral care and oral cosmetics that has over 1 million fans, and customers in 175+ countries around the world.
TRANSCRIPT
Host: Zach Johnson
All right, all right, all right here we go! Dylan, you ready to kick up another episode of the Rich Ad, Poor Adpodcast?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah man you know I'm honestly a little cold but I feel like it may be Snow!
Host: Zach Johnson
Yes, we have an amazing guest, an amazing entrepreneur on today I'm so pumped to introduce. You guys have probably all heard the brand. You've seen it everywhere online. It's the number one oral care online brand. TrySnowcom. These guys are killing it. if I could overuse that term, 10s of millions in revenue, nine figure valuation, 2.6 million visitors in traffic in April alone. And a phenomenal entrepreneur. So I'm so excited. Welcome to the show, Josh Snow. How’re you doing?
Guest: Josh Snow
Hey, what's going on guys?
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, man. We're so excited to have you. You are like the epitome of a “Rich Advertiser” that has taken paid ads to the next level man. So we're excited to dive into not only the winning ads, which you obviously get to talk about all the time, but like what sent you to the poorhouse. I want to hear about the losers today. So tell everybody a little bit about you. For those that may not have heard about Snow, give us a little overview of the brand and your entrepreneurial story as well.
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, absolutely. So we're on Instagram as Snow. Snow is essentially an oral care company. But we like to think that we've reimagined the oral care space and really met at the intersection of oral care and beauty. So we consider ourselves as much a personal care brand as we do as a beauty care brand.
And so you can see from the products we create -- we create every single product ourselves. It's something that we hold very close to us when we're thinking through which products we're going to provide to our customers. There's a reason why we still only have a handful of products years into it. It's because we are focused on developing hero products that we can sell for the next 50 years and feel comfortable about. We also make iterations upon our products, but at the end of the day we are an oral care, beauty care brand,
We're primarily direct-to-consumer. We've got about a million social media followers -- we're really close with our customers. And they now pretty much dictate what we do in terms of which products they want to see us come out with next. We've been kind of coined is, like the “Apple” of oral care in the sense that not just from our packaging and the quality product we produce, but the anticipation and the excitement from our customers of what is Snow going to reimagine next. What are they going to do next? And so that's exciting.
There's also a lot of pressure on us. That's a good way of making sure that the products we do come out with are something that not only that we would use on a daily basis, but something that we could recommend at the highest level.
My background has been for more than half of my life now, in terms of years in the online marketing space. So I stumbled into entrepreneurship when I was 13 years old, literally. And I've got websites sitting on my old computer that date back to when I was 14 years old. And so I'm 27 now, so I started 14 years ago, building websites, designing websites. I've self taught 100% through books and YouTube and Google. I kind of learned all that myself and was fortunate to discover search engine optimization, which led me down a path of online advertising and then into paid advertising, once I had a little bit of money to do it.
And so by the time I was 16 or 17 years old, I was managing a lot of money for clients -- just paid ad management. Nobody knew how old I was.
Host: Zach Johnson
What kind of ad budget did you get to manage on a yearly basis when you had your agency?
Guest: Josh Snow
So when I was just 16, 17 years old, I was in charge of millions of dollars of management at that point.
Host: Zach Johnson
That's awesome. Good way to bring it in. So one of the things we're all about at FunnelDash is helping advertisers deal with more cash and more liquidity. One of the things that I'm particularly impressed about from the outside looking in is how much Snow has been able to not only handle the day to day, just insane level of growth, but we all know that growth is expensive. It requires a ton of cash right? And so margins are typically super small in D2C and ecom.
I want to talk to you about how you've done it. Inventory. How you manage cash flow, and at the same time invest so much into R&D. I mean one of those is typically the one to give right? And most ecommerce brands don't have that much cash to invest into R&D.
So you’ve clearly done a great job, because you're self funded, right? Like, that's the beauty of this whole story is that you've gotten this level of scale, which means you have to be incredibly disciplined with your cash management and the investments that you make.
So how have you done it, man? Open up the kimono Josh and and shed some light on some of the tactics, tools, strategies on how you finance the growth so quickly.
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, you bet. I feel like that's something that typically when I'm on when I'm doing an interview or on podcast or on the news or anything, there's always an excitement around the celebrities that we get to work with.
It's which, duly so, it's the incredible caliber of celebrities that have not only purchased and used our brand, but also endorse and talk about our brands. So when we're talking in front of a group of other entrepreneurs or other people in a position where they're thinking about cash flow management, particularly in a bootstrap or self funded scenario. Because I find the media sensationalizes -- so and so raised 100 million dollars, so and so raised 50 million bucks. It's kind of like, what about that company that didn't raise any money and they're still making leaps and bounds?
And we're now, in April and May, just the last two months, you know, we became on multiple metrics, the number one oral care brand in the world,particularly online. We're an online company for the most part right now, in terms of web traffic and social media, metrics, all of that. And we've done so in a short amount of time carrying zero debt at the moment. We haven't raised any outside capital. And that takes an extraordinary amount of discipline but it's also not my first rodeo.
So I want to preface by saying, it can be your first rodeo to be able to do something like this. But, it's not an overnight success story. I think the first thing is that I pay myself $60,000 a year. That's what I paid myself for a long time, right. And that's the only money that I was taking out of the business. And so that meant I had about 40,000 a year to live on.
But luckily, I've been doing this for so long, I've been fortunate to build and sell a few companies that I essentially decided to live off of my savings and not have to put the pressure on Snow paying for my Ferrari. It's like, for me, Snow is not a vehicle for me to get a nicer house or for me to get a nicer car for me to spend lots of money on dinners and First Class flights. It's about proving something to the marketplace and doing something for other entrepreneurs showing what you can do if you look at things at a different angle. And so, to answer it tactically, the job of an entrepreneur is to make the next best affordable step.
So, what's next? Is it the best next step? And then, lastly, is it affordable? And is it affordable right now? So I'm constantly prioritizing on and using my form of judgment to to understand -- and it's not a perfect science, I'm wrong. Sometimes it feels like I'm wrong way more times than I am, right. But the ones that I'm right on, count for something.
And so, for me thinking through, whether it's leveraging our credit lines... so, you know, American Express. We've got significant credit lines we've built up over time with American Express just by spending so much and paying that off over a long period of time. And also calling them up and understanding what it might take for us to get more credit extended to us. So whenever we have an opportunity to expand our credit lines, we take advantage of that even if that means that we're breaking even on some of that spend, it allows us to have the buying power.
I think that I learned something when from one of my buddies I was hiking with. He founded a company called Bar S and they're I think they’re the second largest manufacturer of bologna, processed bologna and, and hot dog meat in grocery stores. Oscar Meyer is number one. But anyway, he sold the business for $1.3 billion cash to Mexican food conglomerate.
While he was going through that process, we went for a hike. And he said, “You know, Josh, we sell to Walmart at a breakeven.”
And I go “Why would you sell to Walmart for break-even? It doesn’t make sense.”
He goes, “Our hotdogs, our bologna has cost $1 since, like 1996. Our price has never gone up. In many ways, we're considered a necessity for the public. When times are rough like during the recession, our sales skyrocket because people aren't buying the expensive brand name or they're buying our brand.”
But he goes, “We work with Walmart because Walmart buys so many cases of our Bologna in our hot dog meat, that they allow us to gain economies of scale that are unimaginable when applied to our other retail accounts”.
So they might be selling to another account, another grocer, and making so much more on the margin point basis because Walmart is allowing them to buy 1 billion pounds of bologna meats. They're doing that at breakeven, but it allows them to make money in other places.
So what I try to do is I try to zoom out and think through and at a very basic level, this is not some ad recommend, but if you broke even on all your advertising spend, and your sales and maybe you made 5% profit, but you had a 2% cashback card or you had points etc, you know, but it gave you buying power for you to be able to leverage that later on.
That's kind of the extreme version of my thinking. Profit first. So it's very important when you're self funding and bootstrapping a company, make sure that you're making money on that first sale. Make sure you're understanding exactly how much did you spend?
When we got started. It was me. Still at that point, I was crafting the Facebook ads. I was managing the media. And it was one plot from Facebook ads. And it was one plot from Shopify. And I can see very clearly, what did I spend today? What did I make today? What was the cost of goods? What was the refund rate? And I could see day by day, week by week, because it was so simple.
At that time of Facebook ads, Shopify knew exactly how much money I was making. Now it's become extremely complex, being omni-channel retail, being on everything from TikTok to Snapchat. So it becomes a little bit more difficult, a little bit more complex to gain the granularity and the specificity around how much we're making on a day to day basis.
We have those numbers as close as we can, but I'm also thinking about the business in it perhaps a different way than some others might think about it. For me, I understand that it's incredibly... the oral care market is pretty much the hardest. I would never recommend anyone go into oral care. It's incredibly difficult. There's a reason why there are only a few of us.
I needed that challenge where I was at in my life, I needed something to keep me busy. I needed to spend 50 years on something. But for me, I'm thinking about market share, mind share. So first, I think of mind share, then I think of market share, and then I think of mouth share.
And when I think about market share is, how can we carve our place in this deep seated marketplace by having uniquely differentiated products...products that work...products that are at a higher quality, higher aesthetic that carry our brand forward?
Then mindshare is at the top of the funnel, is how can I control the conversation around oral care online? How can I control that kind of theory, that thesis that I'm trying to push forward? How can I do that? Paid advertising is one of the fastest ways to do that.
Because we’re seen by 32 million people a week in our ads, over 2 million a month who shop with us. That's a captive audience. It's like having your own TV show that you can craft the narrative in order to own that conversation in the consumer’s mind. And so mindshare is very important because mindshare leads to market share. Mouth share is something that I've been talking about internally at Snow, which is how do we own more of the mouth? Meaning, instead of just a teeth whitening kit.
Now we have our toothpaste, which is sold out right now. We have our floss, which is almost always sold out. We're thinking through what are the other products to gain more mouth share. So once we have mindshare, we can gain market share. Once we have market share, we can build out our mouth share with those customers.
And so that's how I'm thinking about on a long term basis of how do I build brand equity. So utilizing things like loans, working capital, credit cards, etc. As long as I know that I'm making a few percentage points, I'm paying all my bills, and we're good. I can operate because I understand my data intimately. I can operate for a long period -- metaphorically eating ramen noodle soup in that aspect. Because I know that if we do this even a fraction of the way, right, those people come back and we realize the incremental cost for acquiring customers.
Host: Zach Johnson
I love it. So, I mean, the first thing I want to assume all the way back is is just more sound fundamental principle of like, you're not raping and pillaging your own business for cash to fund your own lifestyle. That needs to really be celebrated, especially in our entrepreneurial community where the second they're hitting eight figures they're just pulling profits out and it's really preventing their scale to nine figures and not right. So that's awesome.
You use this term, ” buying power” in terms of your relationship with Amex. I think that's really interesting.. I want to highlight as well... is you're looking at advertising In the sense that like, this is just an entire engine. Most people use customer acquisition like, yeah, if I can break even, I'll make it up on the LTV. But you're the first person that I've ever heard, say, if I can build an engine and put it on, and I'm just breaking even on the ads, but ultimately, I'm building out like a massive buying power and massive, credit lines with Amex so that you can leverage in whatever ways and opportunities pop up. But that's incredibly, a different mindset shift to really push somebody to a level of scale that you're adding. Is that a fair recap of what you're saying there?
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, I think that I when I discovered that your capital is the highest form of leverage and capital can come from intellectual capital and come from relational capital, relationship capital. And so, if I've got $5 million of a line of credit, I've got another $5 million of working capital. I've essentially got $10 million at my fingertips at any point that I utilize to pivot the business to be able to do whatever it is I need to do. And I think that, instead of looking at it on a day to day basis, I'm thinking about, I'm willing to lose a few battles to win the war.
Host: Zach Johnson
Sure, yeah. So what are your thoughts on I mean, obviously, Amex is very short term debt in terms of capitalizing a business. There's all kinds of rabbit holes, you can go down and get yourself in a dangerous spot pretty quickly, right? So you've got your short term, obviously, you haven't raised any equity. So what are your thoughts on some of the revenue based financing options out there? How have you funded some pretty substantial inventory purchases? Do you just negotiate with vendors and talk to us about the different tools that you've used? Or has it all just been Amex cards? Like is it that simple?
Guest: Josh Snow
Well, I remember before Snow when I was starting other businesses...I can't do it anymore because I have all of them... but I typed in zero percent APR credit cards for business and personal. And I literally got every single one that I could utilize. I remember back in the day, it got me that 150,000 hours of buying power that I'd have to pay back for up to 18 months.
So that was powerful back then. For Snow, I thought about it in a very simplistic way. I utilize the holding company of Snow is not called Snow and the reason why is because I had existing credit lines built with another company I had that I utilize to give me a head start of building that foundation of credit worthiness. So that's that's one tactic I utilized. But now when I look at working capital, when I look at revenue based kind of payback which essentially is the modified version of working capital.
You know, in many ways my take on it is for example, Clear Bank has figured out how to sell working capital loans which I call “ loan dolphins”. There's loan sharks and there's loan dolphins . Loan dolphins are friendly. You want to pet them but they're much more quick, they're very fast and they'll hang around you a lot more often. And then you've got the loan whales like the big banks and the lines of credit on those guys you don't want to mess with because one flick of their fan, they'll destroy you. They kind of control the currents in the water and the dolphins are friendly in the sense that Clear Bank is like “Don't give up equity, get money here.”
In reality it's very secure... like if I could own Clear Bank right now. That's one business I would love to own because I bet you they're making hand over fist with money, and profit.
I think that Shopify’s Working Capital that they came out with. There's a reason why these guys, PayPal Working Capital. There's a reason why they're doing this. And it's because it's making a lot of money. So, I just try to understand what percentage of profit are we making on a monthly basis? How comfortable can I feel paying off these things. And a lot of times, what we'll do is we'll forecast when it's going to be a slow time for us. So let's say July, August and September, we're going to be slow for us. In fact, let me flip this the other way, we know that Black Friday and Christmas are gonna be big for us. So what we'll do is we won't utilize working capital during those times. So then, when January 1 hits we’ll utilize the last three months of bank statements and all the tractionwe have to get a huge working capital loan.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yes. I love it. Basic, right? Basic cash flow planning principles here is like I see all too many ecommerce companies having an awful Q3 and they're trying to ramp up come November. And they're hitting us up for capital in late August. I'm like, dude, you had phenomenal numbers in November, December, January. Why couldn't you hit us up then? And it really limits their upside potential, you know, and Q4... so brilliant strategy. And I couldn't have said it better myself. It's awesome.
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, I mean it's useful in the sense that... I want to go back to this buying power principle because we have case studies with Facebook themselves. And we're able to, because we have access to capital, we’re able to do a big deal or we're able to negotiate with... for example, you make your money on the buy, and you make your money on the sell.
And so when we're looking at vendors who are our manufacturers who produce our products for us, we can forecast what we're going to sell for the year we've at least have an idea. And then we double that and say if we were to essentially pre purchase or pre allocate this amount of inventory, what type of unit economics in terms of discount. So instead of paying $50 per product, can we get it for $40 per product. If not, how much will we need to buy in order to get it for $40 per product? And I try to understand those unit economics intensely because when you're selling 100,000 units a month, and you're saving 10 bucks, there's a million dollars straight to the bottom line.
There's also things about supply chain management in the sense of, if you're sourcing anything from overseas, like electronics, for example. You're either choosing to put something on a plane or choosing to put something on a boat. And the better off you have that forecasted, the more you can save. You know, we could save a million dollars a year, without even blinking, straight to our bottom line by utilizing more efficient supply chain planning.
And this is not like rocket science. It's literally a Post It note. It's like how much do I sell in the last 30 days. Multiply by 12. Double that. Go to my manufacturer and say,
”Hey, if I promised to purchase at least 1X of that --- your 30 day sales multiplied 12 -- say if I'm going to stick with you exclusively for 12 months and at least purchase this, what can you do for me?”
And then he says, “Okay, I'll give you this, I can do this.”
And then you go back and say, “Okay, if I doubled that, just saying, if I was able to, we don't know. But if I was able to do that, what could you do for me then?” And then saying, “Do I have to pay 100% of the inventory up front? Or can I get terms Can I pay 30%? You make the product, pay another 30%? It's in my hands, and I've got net 60 to be able to pay you back.”
So now you start the flow. What happens you start to stack your terms. You've got vendor terms that you're paying out for your product. You've got a credit line with Facebook ads, so you've got 60 days to pay them. And then you're paying them with a platform like Melio payments, which allows you to send an ACH using your credit card. So now you've got Amex floating you another 60 days, but you're really sending them a wire transfer they're getting as an ACH.
So I can essentially, artificially or not, create my own payment. So I can create up to 180 days of cash flow management where I don’t have to pay that back for 180 days -- which allows me to do so much in the meantime.
Now you have to be careful, because if you go too crazy, you end up not making money, you’ve got to pay that money back some way, shape or form. But there's ways for you to talk to the manufacturers you work with, even if you're only ordering 1000 units. Or even if you're a service based business, there's an opportunity for you to ask for prepay for example, or whatever it might be.
And we negotiate terms on every single front. So that way, we protect our cash in our bank account, like no other. It's like a newborn baby. We try not to have too many people touching it because it can get sick. And so we try to preserve that as much as absolutely possible.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, I think just to highlight that, again -- you're nailing on point like if you can stack your flow and you're spending a million a month on ads and you don't have to pay that bill for 180 days. I think that's pretty extreme and very dialed in.
For most people, they're paying off their ad bill every 30 days. It's like dude, if you can even accomplish like 90 days or 120, you're talking about three to $6 million of operating capital that you didn't have to go get a loan for just by being strategic on stacking your cash flow strategies. So I love that.
Well, dude, this has been awesome. Love all the education you're giving everybody here on the finance stuff but I want to get into the good stuff. If we can switch gears here and dive into the Rich Ad, Poor Ad segment. Dylan, you ready to kick this thing off?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'm sweating. Right. That was intense.
Well, sweet, man. So yeah, I know. You mentioned some campaigns that didn't go so hard to campaigns that went pretty well. Would you prefer to start with the campaign that did not go so well? Or the one that went well?
Guest: Josh Snow
Let's go with the one that went well.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Let's go with the Rich Ad. All right, here
we go. Go ahead and storyline behind it and dive in.
Guest: Josh Snow
So for the one that went well, okay, so that it's more of a strategy in the sense that
when you visit our website you're gonna get retargeted right? So something that has worked well for us and continues to work well for us is that I brought on Rob Gronkowski as a partner for the American football player. He's got a few million fans online, but people buy from who they like and trust and that necessarily that you know, doesn't mean that that's you at that point as a brand.
And so, you're fresh, you're kind of a stranger to them. So what we've been doing is across our influencers, including our own customers, we've been utilizing user generated content, whether it be a celebrity like Rob Gronkowski, or a smaller influencer that has 10,000 likes on Facebook. We're getting them to try the products, we're getting them to talk about the products. Even on their iPhone, they're holding their iPhone, they're using the product, talking about their results, how much they love it, etc. And we're running these ads from their pages. So you'll see an ad running from Rob Gronkowski’s page talking about what he loves about Snow and why he uses the products etc. And so you're not just seeing retargeting from our brand, you're seeing a sequence of retargeting from different pages.
We also work with our editorial partners. So if it's someone like BuzzFeed, for example. We're talking to any blog that is writing about us and are willing to write about us and say, “Hey, can you give us advertiser access to your page, so that we can pay we'll pay 100% of it, we'll give you 2% of the ad spend” or something like that. So that we can run ads from your page regarding this content, your page will grow from it, your website will get the traffic etc, will pixel it. But now I'm running that against lookalike audiences from a blog like ILoveTeeth.com, and that's someone else's blog. It's not ours.
But when someone visits our website, they're now getting retargeted. From an article that says why Snow is the number one choice, we recommend. And it's from a third party page on a third party website. And then they might also see Rob Gronkowski’s from his page showing a video of how he uses it when he's working out.
And you say, wow, all of a sudden, it creates this ripple effect. You've got user -generated content, editorials, celebrity influencers, and then our brand stuff on. It significantly decreases the cost to acquire that customer. And they also retain for a lot longer, because the trust factor is built into it. They're seeing third party referrals, talking about your products. It's that sequence of ads that does really well for us.
Typically, in that aspect, it's talking to the exact points that that influencer is talking about, I'm talking about, you can literally hit up your customers. Or you can hit up your friend who has 5000 likes on Facebook, and say, “Hey, would you be willing to get some free product, I'll pay you a few bucks. Make a video and then just add me in two seconds to your ad account?”
And I'll start running ads from your page. So running ads from up your pages, whether it be another person or another blog or another celebrity has been very effective in amplifying the success of our marketing.
Host: Zach Johnson
So one of the things, just to highlight that Josh, HubSpot did a study, he said that coming from influencers and celebrities they retain longer and they're worth more. And ultimately, they don't churn. So HubSpot did this whole study on why are some customers worth more and stick around longer?
And most marketers, I would say. start with the products or the follow up sequence, or the rebill was too pricey or they start with all the tactics. And HubSpot did this study. And they found out that the biggest driver of retention and LTV was not any of those tactics, but it was how they were sold and on which funnel they were sold.
This is very true in the world of finance. Like when we fund somebody’s ad spend with AdCard or AdCapital. It's actually the same. A part of why we strategically sell and partner with digital ad agencies is because they're the ones that manage the ad budget, right?
And then they refer the client in and they're a trusted adviser. So the default rate in finance is way lower because it's coming from a trusted advisor and influencer. I think that this is absolute gold for anybody selling subscriptions, selling financial products, somebody that's really relying on LTV post-30 days. Not only the conversion aspect on the front end, but the LTV aspect on the back end of selling with user-generated content influencers and third party endorsements. Would you agree?
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, no. So, it does help a ton. They're not going to necessarily buy right out of the gate from a Rob Gronkowski ad yet, but it might capture their attention. Or just seeing it, even if they don't click on the ad, just seeing that it starts to build in FOMO seeing it six to seven times. Not just from yourself, of course. If it's coming from your page, you're going to say the best things about it. But if it's coming from other pages and you're being really open and honest with them, they may even say something like, “I was super skeptical to order, but I did”. And it showed up, here's how it's showing up. That genuine nature of it works really well.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Now, I do have a question. Man, I think you brought this up back at I-Stack in Vegas. I don't know if it was last January or January before that. But you mentioned sending products to your friends. Essentially running ads from there paid as an advertiser. But when it comes to getting some guys like Mayweather, like, I remember you mentioning, he's got all the money in the world. He's not like the pressure of money, but it was more something very relevant to him or his own line. He could essentially flex on that rather than getting an extra percent of the sales. How do you kind of go about that scenario, if I explained it, right, which I may not have.
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, we do. We do a myriad of contracts depending on the celebrity, how big they are, what they're open to what we're open to. But for example, Rob Gronkowski is an equity partner in the business, he didn't put any money in but he's a part of the business.
He's essentially lent his social capital to the business and became a huge fan of the products before he became a partner. But, there's the equity scenario, which people revert to that, because well, it’s a piece of my company. It’s “The Rock” Johnson. He gets pitched out all day long. Doesn't mean that he's interested in it. You also want to be very careful where you just doling out equity in your company.
So what we try to look at is, how can we structure it so that it's much more akin to a licensing deal and endorsement deal over a long period of time -- if it's the right celebrity. If it makes sense for certain of our products for certain of our audiences, whether it's a younger audience and those that are coming back to buy again.
So we try to understand where in the funnel does this celebrity make sense? If it's someone that has mass appeal, like a Justin Bieber, we would want to put him at the very front of it to grab that awareness and to get people interested into it, and then wrap them around everybody else.
In that scenario, we've done everything from equity to just straight up cash, to royalties on the sales of those ads and the sale of those products to licensing fees so we can continue to utilize the licensing of that content and the imagery. Ongoing payments. We've done all kinds of different structures, we've done mixes of those sometimes.
So it becomes more and more complex, but there are luckily a lot of books out there for people that want to become managers of talent. And so I started to read up on what happened in the 1940s. If I was a celebrity agent and Coca Cola wanted to do a deal with them. How would I help my client structure something like that where it's a win win?
There's a lot of literature out there. It's simply just the online version of that. So instead of a 360 deal where you're, you know, getting your brand, all over their clothes and stuff, it's like, “Okay, if I were to run Facebook ads from this person's page, utilizing their face and then holding our product, how would we justify paying them? And what does that look like? “
In general, you can find out if you, if you take a look at some of the smaller celebrities or influencers that you say, while making 3X, return on ads pend versus 2X for an ad spend, and there's some longevity behind it, you could run it for three months.
You can make 50 grand in profit three months running off of this kind of D-list celebrity. Imagine if I had an A-list celebrity that was like them, but a much more popular version of them. A lot of times we'll work with celebrities that used to be A-list or B-list celebrities and are now D-list celebrities to just to understand what that type of celebrity might do for our business.
The types of deals are all around the table. Now whether it's up from cash or it's a royalty or it's a percentage of ad spend that we use with their face on it. It's like a licensing deal. Or we're creating branded products with them where they get royalties.
There's a lot of different types of deals we do now. But that's more for the bigger guys in terms of the bigger celebs, but anyone is willing to do a deal if the deal is right. It’s not about the price. If the deal structure is right, a lot of celebrities are looking to make money on the back end, not just upfront cash anymore, they post on their feed. So a lot of times we're paying them to not even post on Instagram or we don't want them to post or don't even post at all. We just want to be able to license that content to us for our audience.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah. You know, we're talking about stacking the different cash flows. Do you ever ever negotiate net 60 net 90 terms? You know, 160 terms? Or do you not really use that on the influencer side of things?
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, we do but so for example, let's say a celebrity wants it let's say it's ... just for sake of simplicity $100,000. You’re like, “Oh my gosh, a hundred thousand dollars cash. Like, you know, I've got it, but I don't want to risk it .” Because you should never risk your business on celebrities that you don't make money on when they post for you. At least we don't. It's not the good old days where you could pay him 50 grand, they post, you make 100 grand the next day and you just keep doing it.
Now you have to be really thoughtful around how you're utilizing that content and stuff. But if it's like a $100,000 deal, I might say, hey, okay, let's do the hundred thousand dollar deal. But let's do $25,000 upfront. And now let's do it in tranches, which some performance bonuses at this content as well you can make up to $150,000.
There are ways that, as long as the agent is able to bring the celebrity a deal that is in that six figure range, the totality of that deal, then it's able to slide through. A lot of times you don't have to put all the cash up front, you can essentially take the profits you're making from running as an ad and pay for itself over time.
Host: Zach Johnson
Yeah, so money, okay. All right. Let's dive into this Poor Ad here, shall we?
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Yeah, I'm curious on this one. It sounded pretty enticing. But yeah, you want to kind of give us a spiel here, I believe it was a try-before-you-buy offer.
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah. So we decided sometime last year to do that. We are a premium brand sso it's not the cheapest product in the world in terms of cost for people to try out our products. We said, “Well, you know, what if we gave them an opportunity to try before they buy, which is like a free trial model.”
It's like Warby Parker -- take three glasses home. The ones you return we'll refund you. The ones who keep will assume you want to keep and charge you for them. We went with that model and said, let's do it. We know our product is phenomenal. We love our product. Our customers love our product, but there's friction. People don't want to necessarily spend 100 bucks on something they don't know it's going to work for them.
So we said okay, what about this, we'll just charge them shipping. They'll get the product to use for 21 days. And if they end up keeping the product, we're going to assume that they started to see results and they want to stick with it.
We know that we have a very low refund and return rate. So we know the product’s great. But it backfired because our product is not a mattress where you can try a mattress at home. Once you unbox that mattress and you lay on it a few times, it's pretty much yours and trying to return that thing is a nightmare.
Our products are very small, and they are higher priced. So when someone's taking that leap of faith to try the product, they're a lot more likely to say “I never got to even trying it. I'm just going to send it back because I don't want to pay for it right now.” And so because it's small, you can send it back very easily. So that backfired in multiple ways.
It also backfired on the look-alike audience side of things. What was a rich audience set that our Facebook was finding for us in terms of rich, I mean in terms of a very deep layer of data. Like these are people that spend over 100 dollars with Snow, let's find more of them.
It started to go and find people who were looking for free products, people who maybe never would become a Snow customer to begin with. So the look-alike audience, the pixel started to turn on us within seven days. It started to find a lot of people who are “quote unquote”, bargain shoppers. And as a premium brand that's kind of the last kind of cohort of customers you want to spend money acquiring.
Not that we discriminate. In any case, we have customers all over the spectrum. We set up literally 160 countries in the world, but it's something that the look-alike audience said, “Oh, okay”. We're driving a ton of conversions. Because by the way, our customer acquisition cost was cut by like, 90%.
We were driving credit card signups for pennies on the dollar. We're sitting here saying, “Let's scale it to the moon, because even if a fraction of them stay on with us, we're going to make a lot of money off of this”.
So we scaled it prematurely. And what ended up happening is that people started using these pre-loaded cards, prepaid cards so that when we rebilled them, it wouldn't work. They started ordering 10, 20, 30 of them with different names. So they're getting all these kits for free.
It really just backfired on us. People were really commenting in the ads saying, “Just use the prepaid card. That's what I did. they put $5 on and then they can't get you haha.”
It started to snowball in the wrong direction and it ended up getting us in trouble with PayPal. And that could get us in trouble with our payment processors. It became such a nightmare. And then everybody was like, “Hey, I didn't know that we were going to get charged for this. I thought it was a total totally free product”.
The messaging wasn't done correctly. So what we thought was our knight in Shining Armor with the try- before-you-buy ended up really becoming something that nearly assassinated our business.
Host:
Get yourself out of that man like that. That puts you back pretty far it sounds like
Guest: Josh Snow
Well, in many ways, shapes and forms, we're still getting out of that. So that was like a year ago. There's still a lot of collateral damage from that in terms of merchant processing in terms of chargeback rates in terms of a lot of things
We just shut it off. As soon as we recognized what was going on, we shut it off. What it did though, is we ended up sending out like 25,000 products that we only were able to charge for maybe a fraction of those.
So it depleted our inventory. We weren't able to recover very quickly from that. We lost all the money on the inventory. And we got in trouble with our payment processors. Ee started to get a bad feedback score on Facebook because people were irritated because they didn't understand that it was a try-before-you-buy, not a completely free product.
We had to just realize like, okay, that doesn't work for our business. We're going to focus on driving sales on the front-end. People have to pay for this product. We can do discounts but they're gonna have to pay for it. So we had to essentially just revert back to what we were doing before that. But it took about six months to dig our way out of that mess.
Host: Zach John
Wow. Yeah. Oooh That puts you to the poorhouse. Oh, yes.
Don't do-try-before you buy. You heard it first here.
Josh it has been amazing. Thank you so much for just opening up and being so transparent and sharing all these insights. You're the king of oral care but also, just a monster at cash flow management. So, congrats on all the success you've had. Tell everybody what's next. And, how can any of the listeners support you?
Guest: Josh Snow
Yeah, you know I am very, very deeply invested on multiple levels, on brand -building. My life on the entrepreneurial side has become focused on brand building. I love the direct to consumer space. I love the commerce space. I love the SaaS space as well, but I just love the brand building aspect of business and what that can do over what is sometimes a short period of time, but certainly over a long period of time. So you can find me... I'm very transparent with the business...everything that I'm doing. You can find me on Instagram at Josh Snow, and then anything Snow related, we're on Instagram with the username snow and our website is trysnow.com.
Host: Zach Johnson
Awesome. Awesome.
Host: Dylan Carpenter
Thank you so much, much appreciated, man.
Guest: Josh Snow
Thanks, guys.