5 Live Callers Get Startup Advice from Hormozi & Shaan

0:00 I wanna try something different. Okay. It's the hormose hotline. Take five listeners out of the crowd. Have them call in. Tell us about their business, tell us a business problem. Cool. So this is the hormose hollow. Let's do it. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never look at it. We got flow here.

0:21 Flow, I want you to give us the what's the name of your business and give us the one minute Description of what you do. Give us a sense of where you're at revenue wise. And then we're gonna get to what's your biggest business problem and we're gonna try to help you out here in a couple of minutes. Yeah.

0:35 Like I said, I'm Flo, I live in London, I own a company called Wentworth Protection. And so what we do is we install uh security ballards on people's driveway. If you don't know what uh it basically Like a metal pole that you put on your driveway to stop your car from getting stolen. Um started business as a side hustle in January twenty twenty four, so we're now like a year and a half in.

0:57 Um it's just me and my best mate. Um we both still do this as a side our thought. We've got a couple of information, guys. Uh first year we did just uh two hundred and fifty K R This year we're probably gonna do five hundred. And kinda the biggest issue we're having right now.

1:13 is content. The problem you solve is people in the UK are getting their car stolen and there's some You put a pole in the driveway that pr prevents that. That's correct. Yeah, car theft is just through the roof in in the UK, especially around London. So this poll comes up through your drive and I mean even if someone gets into your car they just actually

1:33 Okay, got it. So you get two to fifty K, the you're one, five hundred, you're on pace for five hundred K. This year and give us the quick and dirty on how are you getting those customers today. Cause you said it's a side hustle. So where where are you getting business? Yeah, yeah. The first three months of baked me purely door to door, Saturdays and Sundays just knocking on boards, which by the way, in the UK people find that really, really strange. Yeah. It's about kind of a fifty fifty mix between Google Ads, just like search and

1:59 Mainly SO. So we get loads of organic leaves coming as well. And then a little bit of refloral in there. All right, how much do the polls cost? Uh average tick is five thousand bucks. Okay, so what's so what's your uh What's cost you?

2:12 To install. Uh we go on roughly fifty fifty percent margin, so like Paying the information guys and buying the units. Um it's about fifty percent of of tickets. Okay.

2:22 Got it. So you make five hundred bucks in gross profit per That sound right? Right. Okay, got it. So what do you want to have happen?

2:30 I love money. Okay. Got it. So what stopped you from doing more door to door? Honestly it's a time constraints currently. It seems like that the

2:39 The conversion rate on door to door and the amount of time that it takes, it just doesn't equate to extra effort put into content. Or writing more blog posts or trying to reach out to commercial partners, that kind of stuff. Okay, so One of the big things is like I think you have to get a little bit narrower in terms of how you want to get leads.

2:57 'Cause you got you're super resource constrained right now. Like you don't have a you know, a ton of capital that you can like put to work or anything like that. And so it's like you've got you've got search, you've got SEO. You just mentioned commercial partners, which I'm guessing you're doing through outbound. Is that how you're getting it? And you also said content. Yeah, correct. Content is basically the nut that I'm trying to crack. I I inherently know that content can be really big this biggest. I mean.

3:19 Like we did a viral TikTok two days ago, did a million views and it's just not translating to any increase in kind of leaflet. Yeah, so okay. I wanna I wanna rewind for a second. I think that So fundamentally, because you have these you have these three ways that you can reliably get customers, and then you have this other way that you would like to get customers, but aren't really getting customers from yet. Does that sound right? Yeah.

3:39 Okay. So Why not like what are you spending on g on on search right now? About three Km up. Okay, what do you make back on the three K?

3:49 Uh LTB CAC about three to one. Three to one. Okay. So what stops you so you're making nine grand a month roughly off Google? Yeah. Okay, and then SEO is bringing in how much? Uh

4:01 Oh. out the same. Okay, what do you spend on SEO? Uh honestly, I'm just doing it all myself. I buy back links every now and again, but I'm just doing all the writing and all the tags myself. Okay, got it.

4:13 And that's bringing like nine thousand a month as well. Pretty much, yeah, about fifty fifty. And you stopped doing door to door, right? Now you're not doing it anymore. You stopped doing it'cause you got tired of it or'cause it stopped working. No, it's just we it was such a grind in the early days. It was like that was the way for us to get the business off the ground because we had no money in, we just have to hustle speak to people. But at the moment it's like I still have a job, I have a kid, my father has a job, he has a kid. Yeah. And trust is find any time. Yeah. No hurt.

4:44 Heard. Okay. So and then the rest is referrals. Uh yeah, it's referral, there's a few little platforms like Next door, check a trade box. I guess we get a dribble in three those.

4:55 But but those must be small,'cause you basically said about ten K from each of these, that's twenty K a month, that's four hundred eighty K a year. That's basically what you said you're on track to do. What's that just twenty, right? So that's so that would get us two fifty. You said your your run rate's five hundred? Yeah, correct. So a lot of this is is pounds, so the numbers I gave you. Oh, all right, whatever. Yeah.

5:15 Big picture. Um More better new, right? So if you've got If you've got search and you've got SEO.

5:22 You do I will s I will like I am staring at the door to door thing. I'm not gonna I will come back to it. But What do you have to make in order to quit the job? Uh we could quit white now. Um I j I'm just a little bit of a pussy, to be honest. Okay. Yeah.

5:36 Um, well then how many hours are you dedicating to doing this versus The job. Uh it's like forty hours on my job and fifty hours on the free wake moment I'm working on on the business. I got it. So let me ask you a quick question. If you actually just went door to door for forty hours a week, I'm not saying you do this, but I just like to ask the hypothetical. If you went door to door, basically replaced your job with spending a hundred percent on door to door, I'm not gonna say you do that, but just hypothetically Uh would you be able to replace your income if you did that? I think

6:02 Probably not. I mean it just just like running really quick numbers, let's say I get Let's say I do make two sales a week or three tails a week from door to door, which would be really impressive for us at this point. That would bring in fifteen hundred growth. Yeah.

6:15 Fixed. A month. That wouldn't cover. Okay. Great.

6:19 So then what stops you from spending Uh like Ten grand a month on Google Ads. Yeah, great question. So we just scaled our Google Ads from fifteen hundred up to three K. Okay. It takes us about two or three months to get that to scale.

6:33 Okay. Is that Every problem has already been solved. And so one of the things I would ask is can you work backwards from a business that already is doing what you're doing? So are you the only guy doing this? Are you the only company that offers this service? Um if not.

6:49 Who's that company and how do they get customers? Yeah, yeah, they're the couple of much, much bigger players in this phase, and I think what they've cracked. And they're just really, really, really good at organic. They just get like maybe five to eight X the amount of traffic that we get. When you say organic, I don't think you're saying that the incumbents are amazing at TikTok. What do you actually mean when you say they get organic?

7:11 Sorry, I literally mean like Okay, so they rank SEO as you can. Delete. Hm. Well, let me ask you this question. Like F so if I bought if I bought your business tomorrow, my first ads would probably meta be meta ads.

7:25 Because Like the the making meta ads work. Yeah, make making meta ads work and the the thing that you have is one, you have a clear fear, like People are afraid of cars their car getting stolen. And I'm sure you can put some stats up on the board that shows like big arrow to the right. Oh my God, cars are leaving, right?

7:41 And you also have a service that is that is tangible and visible. Like you can demonstrate it. Much harder to say, Hey Like in a in a in an ad, I'm really good at SEO. It's way better to be like Look, car got stolen. Like literally, you just like like you could just do a before and after of like, look, guy with a mask on, gets in the car, walks out, and then right afterwards guy with the mask gets in and then he's like, Oh no, this one it's literally the the ads that I would mirror are the carjack ads. If you so if you Google that.

8:08 It's the little like the bar user steering wheel. Yeah, you put on the steering wheel. Those adds and then you just go local targeting. Do a you know ten mile radius or whatever that is in kilometers. That I would bet you right now would get you the like that would scale Like really high. Like you could probably get to ten, twenty thousand a month.

8:28 We did we did met ad in the early days and I told myself it didn't work, but it was just the crane was just terrible. Yeah, I'm sure it was. I mean advertising works. It's not like meta ads don't work, right? It's like You just needed to get the process done, but If you just do a very simple narrative ad with your iPhone demonstrating the product and the problem that it solves and keep it under sixty seconds. I guarantee that you'll be able to get leads and then all you have to do is just call them, get a deposit on the phone for you to show up.

8:54 And then and then roll the deposit towards the the thousand bucks, which is like hey It's a hundred bucks for an assessment. It's just to make sure that you show up and if you suck at sales then say, Hey, just put a card down. And then I'll only bill you if you don't show. It's just to make sure because I'm gonna send a truck and a guy out there. It's just we don't wanna get no showed. Uh, most people will be fine with that. And then you just roll it right into the thousand bucks if they just decide today. And that gives you a little bit of urgency in the sale when you show up. Even better, we don't even have to show up. We we can just

9:20 We can just do the whole thing. We don't we don't really do fight the can't do a question about it. Wait, you you just install it on first go. You there's no scouting. Explain that? So you just go out and install First shot, right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, they just send us a picture, we say let's go for it, they send us the fifty percent deposit. Yeah, okay.

9:36 Great. So that's I mean, literally it's a phone sale. So if I'm looking at all this stuff, the first thing I would do is say, like, let's see if I could triple, you know, triple Google ads. You already went to three three K, I'd be like, can we get to nine? And then it's like cool, that buys you your job back, right? If it if you got it if you tripled and you kept Rows the same, would that allow you to quit? Yeah. Right. And I would I would before doing meta, I would keep hitting Google ads until I can't do it anymore. I would buy all the traffic. And then once I'd maxed out Google locally.

10:04 I would a hundred percent put all my stuff in meta ads. What the rationale on keeping going on Google rather than just running with like doing now every every extra penny in the method. Because you haven't done it yet. If you're making money somewhere, make as much as you can first. And then once you can't make any more, more, better, new.

10:24 Yeah. So Flo one last thing that I think is important is You basically said something that I think is Uh emotional.

10:33 But not logical. And I think you could counter Either emotion with emotion or logic with logic, but don't try to co counter emotion with logic. So you have you basically were like, I haven't quit my job, why? 'cause I'm being a bit of a pussy about it. So I think you gotta have a conversation with yourself.

10:47 About V how you feel about that? Do you want this to be a forever side hustle? Or would you actually like this to be your main business? And if so, where would you get the courage and the conviction to do this? Because you have some evidence. Do you have currently enough evidence? Would you like some more evidence? What would that take? Because

11:01 You know, you're gonna be limited by your own bandwidth in this business. And so we could give you five strategies that would work, but if you only have ten hours when you're fatigued to go execute them. You're gonna walk away saying, Ah, it didn't really work'cause you didn't really try it. And so I think for your long term success, you gotta be able to go go all in on this. And it maybe maybe now's the time, maybe it's not only you know that.

11:20 But it sounds like that's something to address. Today. Uh and try to figure out How do I want to think about that? I know how I have been thinking about it. But how do I want to think about that going forward?

11:30 Right. What's the narrative to myself about that? So don't answer that now, but I think that's something worth doing. That's a that's between you and your therapist. So yeah, but but but I think it's important to answer that. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have gotten success started on the side. I don't know a lot of entrepreneurs who finished with it as on on the side, right? So

11:48 Unlikely that that's your end outcome with this is that this stays a side hustle. And so the question is How do you get there from where you are today? Yeah, yeah. I love nothing more than than being in the game, so I think that's where I'm headed. All right, Flo, we've been charging one ninety-nine a minute. So you're you owe us some money now. Thank you for calling the hormosy hotline. We will see you later. Thanks, dude. Appreciate you. Let us know what happens.

12:09 Thank you, thank you, thank you. See you at the book launch. Hey, let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsor, HubSpot, who's making this episode possible. Listen, if you're trying to build something big and I'm talking about a hundred million dollar or a billion dollar company.

12:23 One of the most important things is to focus on the market. Where is the opportunity? You are like a surfer on a surfboard, and you're trying to find the biggest, best wave possible for you to go on. Well, HubSpot has put together a cheat sheet. That is studying and sort of reverse engineering what's working today. So they're looking at the top performing industries that you could be looking at, the funding routes that work the best, and the growth strategies that the fastest growing companies are using. So If you want a one pager That is a cheat sheet on the uh the big company playbook. You can get it right now. Just either scan this QR code that you see on the screen or click the link in the description below.

12:55 Alright, back to the show. All right. All right. What's up? Who am I speaking to?

13:04 Carson, pleasure, man. Tell us about the business. So yeah, my name's Carson. I have a recruiting bit that I tell my client Hiring should make you money.

13:15 Not com to time. That's why I build Diamond Connect. Uh I'm a customer. I use this business. Work with a lot of companies like True. Classic. Okay.

13:28 Got it. So you what uh do you do support or what what uh what roles do you recruit for? Yeah, really all roles. Uh Too near two roll. Getting PMO for Sean. Did perform it, create it, retention.

13:42 Social media, head of ops. So a lot more on the marketing and Revgen side. Carson, here's your ad, Carson. Yeah. Carson found me my CMO for my ecom business, who's now the CEO of the econ business. That's that's as good as you can do. All right, what's the what's revenue right now? Right now. Per watch here did one point six.

14:01 Yeah. This year tracking it hit around two. Okay, got it. So uh what's the what's the issue with holding it back? Evening. Uh being a contingency focused recruiting A C Ultimately.

14:15 allowed us to, you know, get a lot of clients in the door. Yeah. It does come with Uh Oh, the walls. Yeah.

14:25 Um and so I think really like We've learned once we unlock the first hire. I see the value and stick with that. Mm-hmm. Kind of building that.

14:35 Oh. Roll with them to Um what we're doing. Okay. And what's the issue with your current way of doing it? We we have like a really good process.

14:44 It's just we have a lot of clients that Sort of like Paul Odds Roll just a lot of potential table. for candidates that we have that are interviewing. And I think there's a lot more potential of kinda getting more of a streamline profit, me getting left in the weeds.

14:59 Carson, let me ask you a question, because I think Ask a better question, you'll get a better answer. Is your question how do I streamline operations? This is an operational question. Or is this a scaling question of okay, I did one point six, I did two, I wanna get to five or four year. And right now I don't feel like I'm able to do that because of either A, my business model or B my operation. So W is your question on the business model and the growth side of things, or is it on the operation?

15:22 Yeah. I would say more on the business side, like the first two set. I guess I kinda fed it in two questions, but Mainly I want to scale, right? We're we're about to hit two million this year. I see a lot of it, Angel.

15:33 I want to figure out how how do I pick this contingency recruiting business to five. Seven million being so late. Yeah. So how do you get customers right now? Really like ninety eight percent referral.

15:44 Uh yeah. Really good palab. Really good. Cut would be And a lot of people in the ecom space.

15:51 Just such a new space. Yeah, we get a lot of referral that way. Got it. So um If I mean fundamentally It I'll say I'll ask a different question. If you double the amount of people who are asking for, you know, roles right now, would you be able to handle it?

16:06 I would think. I think I would need to Um Bring on maybe a few extra recruiters of jail. But ultimately like these clients use me.

16:15 Because of me and the relationship we have. Sure. I'm trying to figure out how do I stay in the week. Um but also kind of still ramp up and scale, right? Like Yeah. So I'll cut you off for a second, just to yeah, so Basically the the the question that I'm asking, I'll I'll tell you the intention by the question, which is Are you demand constrained or are you supply constrained? Right. And so right now if I were to say I can go send you more business, could you handle it? If the answer is yes, then we don't focus on the supply side, we focus on the demand side. If it's I could handle more, but I'm sorry, I I I I've got more people than uh than I can handle right now and I need to go get more recruiters. So which side is it?

16:48 Yeah, I think we could more. Okay, great. So your demand constraint. All right, so from the demand perspective, if you only have referrals, then you need to have it input output. In the business to get more leads.

16:59 Okay, so So it's actually gonna be so Best way versus the best way for you will be two different things. So you've got your Uh you've got the core four. Have you read the book?

17:11 So you've got You've got warm outreach. You've got cold outreach, you've got content. And then you've got ads.

17:18 And then on the other side you've got affiliates, right? Okay. So Based on your background, you get um recruits via Outbound? Yeah, like outbound outbound or really all

17:33 Yeah, when you when you recruited my CMO, it's because you're you're blasting people on LinkedIn. Hey, would you be interested? Hey, I got some you're doing outbound to get candidates, which means You have the skill and muscle of outbound already, you're just only using it for your supply. What if you used it for your demand? Light bulb moment. Let's go. So there we go. So fundamentally, you already know your your metrics for your outbound funnel, which is like, you know, we do a hundred connects and then hundred connects get us whatever, five meetings, and then five meetings turn into one fix or whatever it is, right?

18:03 All you have to do is just turn that external, same exact funnel. Yeah. Really just focus more on the outball. Yeah,'cause it's your main game. It's your main game. I wasn't gonna be like, Hey man, learn ads. It's just like

18:13 I if you were like, you know what, we're real'cause the the secondary thing, I'll just be transparent with you. because of the nature you're recruiting, you probably have access to very good marketers. And so if you could go recruit a CMO who could run the ads for you to go get those customers, that would also be a play. But in terms of I if I'm gonna give like the absolute I had to bet my baby on the fact that you'd be successful. I would say do more of the thing that you're already doing, just change the c change the target. That's it.

18:36 And since you've recruited for a whole bunch of different roles recruiting for customers, if you think of it like that, is I think the the natural step and you can for sure scale that to the moon. Okay. Question on the Being a continuity focus, right? Like lost scheme of the game.

18:50 Uh obviously it's low risk for them, higher war for us. How do I really kinda like Demand sort of more communication, making sure clients are pausing those. There's a lot of things out of our control that scale. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out how I Two things.

19:04 Two things. So are three things. So one is gonna be the customer vetting. Right. You have to have certain types of customers. If you have shitty customers, they're gonna treat you shitty. If you have good customers, they tend to be more professional. So part of that's gonna be what is our ideal customer, number one. Um number two. Uh the contingency thing, the question is whether it's a feature or a bug.

19:20 Right, like this may just be a c and like this happens all the time. We'll have these conversations where like what if we decide this isn't a problem anymore and all of our messages of the business are fine. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know, HubSpot helped Tumblr solve a big problem. Uh Tumblr needed to move fast. They were trying to produce trending content, but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign. But now They use HubSpot's customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds. And the result.

19:46 Was huge. Three times more engagement and double the content creation. If you want to move faster, like Tumblr, visit hubspot.com. Alright, back to the show. So what are your margins right now? Probably about Fifty percent.

20:00 Right. Okay. So your margins are fine. And the the issue that you have right now is just like it's Like sometimes customers don't do what I want them to, and I get it, and your preference is not for that. So The only tiny tweak you could consider when you have more demand, but you don't have that, which is why you have no leverage. Um, is that you could say, Listen, our way of doing this is that you put a card down

20:18 It is success based, but if you don't follow our process, we bill you a penalty because you're wasting our time. So you can do that. It's an easy easy fix on the front end and say, Listen, the roll is fifteen grand for the you know, the the price range you're looking at. We get thirty percent, whatever the hell it is. Right, but we charge five if you waste our time. Now we don't wanna charge you anything. Right. We don't want to charge you anything. Now, if you get a little bit more again, this is where supply and demand come becomes important. If you continue to get more and more demand, then you start to have more and more the leverage shift to you and you say, listen, I do half now and half when we complete the role. Because I've got and if you don't want it, that's fine. I got ten other guys behind you.

20:51 Uh. Yeah. So you have no leverage right now? And it makes sense. So Number one, I don't think you have a f a steaming fire because you've got fifty percent margins and things seem to be going okay. You got ninety eight percent referrals, which means you're good at what you do. So I think we just need to put some more in the front end, which is gonna be take the outbound engine, point it towards customers, and then be hyper targeted about the customers that are gonna be the best types. And ideally you probably know what they look like. Like if you take the top twenty percent of your customers now that are worth the most, the beauty of outbound is you get to snipe who you want.

21:19 And so You can just say I'm only going after people who I know are gonna do five rolls a year. That's a good that's a good way to put it that way. Yeah, Carson Carson, I think I think what Alice just said is huge for you. I would not have used you had you been like give me a twenty K retainer for this role.

21:34 Why? Because you were a college kid. You're like twenty two years old. You haven't even mentioned that. You were doing this while you were in college. And so I think you use that to your advantage. So I think that reframing it in your own mind as a feature instead of a bug, I think will do you a lot of good. Uh again psychologically because it's your own Mind as a founder that drives you nuts. And once you just literally just relabel the same experience you're having, you will have a new experience. And so try try that out. Uh along with the outbound.

21:59 Was that helpful, Carson? That was super helpful, both of you. Uh thank you so much. Rock and roll, baby. Crush it. Alright, let's take maybe one or two more. What do you think? The weather is cold, but the deals are hot.

22:13 What's up? You're on the line. How how you doing, Jordan? How are you guys? Oh we got a group call. We got the co founder in here, is that right? My co founder is here. All right, you got Sean and this is Alex. Can you give us your give us your names and your business name and then give us a one minute

22:28 Description. What do you guys do? And how is it going revenue wise? I'm Jordan Egbert, Justin Frober, my co-founder is also on the call. Our business is elite travel hackers and We help business owners take their families on thirty to fifty thousand dollar Lungry vacations for little to no money out of pocket using credit card points.

22:47 And we do that in two ways. The first thing is We help them optimize and maximize the number of points they're earning per year. So most people will earn one point per dollar on their credit card spend. We're typically able to get At least the three four X on those concerned. So You help'em get more points and then you help them spend it well, yeah.

23:06 And then we help you spend it well. But first class flights, five star hotels, luxury travel. Wonderful. So Jordan, is the business working right now or is it broken right now? Yeah, what's revenue? What's yeah. Yep, business is working. You're doing about forty K a month right now. Um We do have some hurdles that we've come into and and I'll let Just to kinda go through those. Oh he's the he's the guy who deals with the problems. Okay. I'm gonna guess that you're demand constrained. That's gonna be my guess. I could be wrong, but go for it.

23:36 Um yeah, so uh last month we actually got a a really big box. We scaled uh eighty five K. Awesome. And uh spend a lot of time uh refining systems, processes, automations, getting the next round of staff hired so that we can make the next big push on Uh lead. Um right now the majority of our business comes from referrals actually. And then twenty percent of our business comes from like organic traffic. And then we only have a twenty three percent close rate.

24:03 There. Um so there's a massive gap between the referendum and organic close rates. Are you saying eighty percent of the business was referral, or you had said that that was the close rate? No, sorry, sixty nine percent of the business's referrals. Okay.

24:17 Ninety eight percent close rate on referrals. Okay. Okay, everybody closes. And then the rest of the business is through organic. Do you just mean w uh web traffic from Google search or do you mean content based, you or you know, a mix of everything. Content based. Okay. Is your question uh like try to state the question as crisply as you can. So what's the question you guys have? How do we build trust faster and and increase Uh close rate from cold traffic.

24:39 Is there a tweak in our offer messaging? All right, I'm gonna we're gonna I'm gonna rock your shit in a couple of seconds. So just tell me. So what's the price point right now? Yeah, three K to fifteen K. Okay, so it's it scales depending on their whatever. Uh number of trips they're taking. Yeah. And how much they're spending out of pocket. Okay, got it, heard. Um, and so right now I'm assuming that you have the same sales process for referrals as you do for people from content.

25:04 Yeah. Yeah, that's the issue. So every tr every traffic source has to get treated differently because they have a basically If you think about a a a customer on a continuum, there's a certain amount of information that has to get uh consumed in order to make a decision. And so what you need is a microwave. You need something that's gonna heat'em up really quickly. And so right now, walk me through the click to close. So if someone sees some post or some real

25:24 They then what DM you or they go to your link or they comment, they get a mini chat like What do they do? Quick. Yeah. Yeah.

25:31 Okay, so they DM you, got it. So after they DM, there's a setter in the DMs, right? Correct. Okay. So GM setter.

25:40 And then what happens after that? Uh into South Calendar. Okay. Okay. Got it. And that's it. That's what happens. Is anything else that Like they can st in between set and close.

25:53 There's a sixty second warm up video saying hey, come with this. Yeah, these data points so that we can maximize what you're doing. Yeah, so you're missing a VSL. That's all. All right, instead of a commercial break, I'm gonna tell you a quick little story. So a few years ago, I got really into crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, I was all about it. And I wanted to be at the center of the action. I didn't want just want to buy the coins. I actually wanted to be, you know, on the edge. I wanted to be a part of the community that was actually building this thing. And look, I'm not a genius. I don't know how to

26:21 build a uh a blockchain. Uh, but I did realize that I could create a newsletter that would keep people up to date on what was going on in the world of crypto. That's what I had uh wanted. I wanted to know what's new, what's interesting, what should I pay attention to. And I had friends that had sold their newsletter companies like Sam had built The Hustle, Austin had built Morning Brew, and they had sold their newsletter for tens of millions of dollars. So I thought, How hard could it be? I launched a newsletter called The Milk Road. It was a daily crypto newsletter and it grew like wildfire. We grew it from zero to over quarter million subscribers in a year. Partly because the content was good, but partly because people were crazy about crypto. And that was a good time to be doing this. But

26:56 The reality is that we wouldn't have been able to do that and build that business that we ended up selling a year later for millions of dollars. had we not had Beehive. Beehive was the reason we could do it in a year because If we didn't have that, we would have had to build all sorts of custom stuff or pay expensive consultants to do things or use five different tools and try to stitch them together. Beehive just did it all for us. It was it is the best way to start and grow a newsletter.

27:19 And email news this little secret of the business world because they're free to send, they're free to grow. And you could build this incredible relationship between you and the readers. So check it out. Beehive is actually offering 30% off your first three months if you use the code MFM30. So go to beehive.com and then use the code MFM30 to get the deal today. There's a link in the description. So two things. So here's here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna write a seven minute VSL. All right.

27:42 And Very simple. Uh You'll probably It it it it follows the same concept as a YouTube video. So you'll have a promise.

27:51 You'll have a uh pain that they're gonna help them avoid. You were going to uh give them a plan of how it's all going to work. Um and then you're gonna have proof. That

28:00 You can help them do that. And that's gonna be in the first sixty seconds. And then you're gonna have basically belief one, belief number two. And Belief number three. So basically the the three biggest objections that people bring up typically on on sales calls. You're gonna break those down as FAQs during the thing.

28:16 And then um and then you'll put your sixty second this is how you prep for the call. All right. That's what you do. Now you're gonna script that whole thing out. And then I also want you to take that and put it into a PDF. And then you can send it'cause some people, especially the more ballers, they're bigger readers than they are watchers. And so you could say, Hey, here's two ways to consume it.

28:35 Um Just watch it before the call and then when you do that close call, the first question you ask after you say, Hey, how's it going today? Uh then which you don't open a call that way, but it's you know, whatever. Um Then you say, Hey, did you did you get a chance to watch the video, which you should have already done, like the closed or should double check that prior to the call.

28:52 And if for some reason they have not done it, you say, Hey, no worries, I'm gonna go grab a cup of coffee, you can go play it, and I'll come back in seven minutes and then we can talk about it that way. I'm not just blabbing a whole bunch of stuff because that way you can see the visuals and you can see everything as tight as humanly possible. It's the best use of your time. Got it. That's literally it. Now, the second thing that I want to do though is I wanna kinda br shift your belief a little bit, because you said we're only closing twenty three percent. Twenty three percent isn't dog shit. Like I would say that you're you're gonna probab like if you just do this, you're probably bumped to like mid thirties.

29:18 But that's That's just not it's not it's not weird. That's just like a normal close rate. And referrals are amazing. That's why everybody would love to have referrals, but like if you if you Like if you really want to have your get get your mind blown, start running ads, it's gonna be way worse than the content leads. So um

29:34 You want to treat warm like cold. And you treat cold like cold by giving them more information prior to the close. That's l like if you only to do one thing, that's all you gotta do. And you have an increase in close rate. That being said, that's not gonna take you to five million a year.

29:50 That's just gonna give you a maybe a fifty percent lift on whatever you're currently doing. And so Once you do that, you still have demand issues, which means that you still need to have a reliable like basically like how can we make more and better content? Which is the the larger and more important question.

30:06 But do that first. Yeah, solve solve that one problem at a time. And at the end of the day, you wanna have your growth equation. I think that's what he's talking about, which is Today. I forgot what you said you're converting twenty nine percent or something like that. Like

30:18 Actually a pretty decent number. If that if that number was forty, what happens to our business? Right, because you don't want to put a transformational amount of effort into something that doesn't have a transformational result on the other side of it. And you could just napkin math and save yourself a lot of pain if that's what the situation be. It might be that You can actually just double the number of referrals you're getting. by doing something simple. Maybe today you're just getting them and you're not actually asking for them intelligently and

30:41 And ramping that up where you already have a ninety eight percent close rate. So Just make sure you do some napkin math on like What does the top a funnel look like before I go try to beat my head against the wall increasing this conversion. You can increase your conversion and you should. But it is worth doing some napkin math to see.

30:56 If I did this, would this get me where I want to go? Or is this just one block and I'm gonna have to figure out Two more things after that, but at le it's at least good to know that going in. Hey Jordan, would you have a referral script you use right now? I'll I'll take that one. Um Yeah, so at the end of um

31:11 Uh every onboarding call. Um we're asking them who else they know. Um how do you ask him? Uh just hey, do you think anybody else uh could use our services? You've seen what it's like to do our credit card strategies. Um can you connect me via text or email?

31:28 Yeah, so I would tweak that. This is just a this is just a little golden B for you. Uh compliment them first. So you can reframe it. So you're like Dude, you're an absolute pleasure to deal with. My God, I talk to a bunch of different business owners every day. If I could talk to only people like you, I would. So what other successful business owners like you do you know? So that compliments them twice before making an ask and most people are way happier to give you a referral

31:50 Also, when you say, I want other people who are successful like you, you'll also get better referrals overall. Got it. Makes perfect sense. Yeah. One other one that might help there. Uh, I think you said this r really well with the gym business. You're like people are in the maximum amount of pain when they show up the first time into the gym because Th for them to have shown up, that means they they acknowledge the problem and have walked into your hands, how hard how hard could it be to sell?

32:13 In your case, you actually have a different situation, which is When somebody's on their way, you know, back from their vacation that you just booked for them for free and they just had an incredible Life changing experience. It's probably a good moment to go ask them how was the trip? And um and then see if they you know, what are what are they thinking for more trips as well as Do they know anyone else that's looking at this?

32:32 You're gonna have you're gonna be riding a momentum uh a huge wave of goodwill in that moment'cause you just they're gonna be on the high of their vacation. Planning a vacation is work. Experiencing and enjoying the vacation, that's that's when they're in the sort of peak state to be able to ask as well. And on the offboarding call that Sean's referencing, if I were getting really tactical with you, what I would do is when I call them up and say, Hey, how's the vacation? I would ask, Do you have any pictures? Now they're gonna be like, right? And you say, Hey, so what friends would you normally send these pictures to?

32:59 If you want If you three way me then you could say, Hey, I got this whole vacation for free and send it to your friend, just three way me in. And then you're rocking and rolling. Yeah. Helpful guys.

33:10 Yeah, for sure. As I asked my first girlfriend, was that the best eight minutes of your life? All right, fellas. We'll see you later. See you guys.

33:20 Right. Hermose Hotline. Yeah. Here we go. All right. Caller number nine, you are on air. What's your name?

33:30 Hello, hello, I'm Davi, Alex Sean, great to be talking with you. Davi, where are you calling in from, Davi? From Brooklyn, New York. All right. Davi. Single, married. Oh wait, no wrong show. Here we go. Davi, tell us about uh what's going on. What's your business? So

33:47 I am a content creator and a little bit different than probably a lot of the businesses that call in because I have A big audience and I have all the traffic and I have absolutely no idea what to sell about. You need a money model. You have distribution and no product. Is that what you're saying? I got distributional product. Oh, okay. And I won the school games last year. That's like and I expect you in May and I was

34:13 About to ask you the question I'm about to ask. And your assistant came in and said, Alex, you have a wedding you need to watch. That checks out last year and then I saw Sean's tweet yesterday and I was like You know what? Dude if if your life was a movie, this is this is that this is the moment where it comes full circle. All right. So what what is the question you've been waiting a year to ask? Are you an entertainer or educator, real quick? I w it leans towards education. I mean, I make content for college guys and young guys about how to get internships, how to get jobs, how to date how to Manage creative thoughts, how to make money. Like it's it's really just virtual big brother stuff. Okay.

34:49 I have Two hundred million views. Three hundred fifty thousand followers. So a big army of young dudes. I wanna make a big swing of the what? Per month, per year, per what? Two hundred million views over the last two years. Oh, what do you what do you get in monthly?

35:07 Five to ten. Okay. And this is TikTok we're talking about? TikTok and Instagram. Yeah, five on eight.

35:13 Okay. Okay, go on. And so I have this big army of young dudes that could do Okay, in community, I can do a mentorship, but I think that there's a bigger play there with. maybe employing a lot of them or building an app and launching it across college campuses and I just

35:31 I've been building this audience and I I'm not sure. What's the big swing that I should be making here? But before we start being no it alls and telling you what to do. Have you already tried anything? Um I mean I've just I'm I committed to making two or three short form videos a day for the last couple of years outside of my day to day.

35:47 Uh. Um So I haven't tried much. What's your day to day other pursuit? My mom is a physician coach and she was doing twenty or thirty K a month and now we're doing

36:02 Two hundred thirty last month. So basically just building high ticket sales, marketing, fulfillment. Oh for burned out doctors. Got it. Well, I'll tell you a secret. Burned out doctors have more pain and more money than broke college guys. By an order of magnitude.

36:19 I know, I don't wanna keep freaking with my mom. Okay, that I'm Yeah. I mean if you think there's not a big Big uh

36:28 There's not a big prize here then. Maybe I'm mark up wrong tree. The question is what do you like what do you want to have happen if you're like oh I think I've so I'll s I'll tell you c I'll I'll I wanna give a little a tiny reality check, um, which is like five to ten million views a month is not bad. It's also not crazy. So like you have enough to do a business for sure. This isn't like I've I'm sitting on a hundred million dollar like you're not getting a dollar review. I just wanna like put that put some perspective there. Also

36:53 Your TikTok views are not worth nearly close to what your Instagram views are. It's probably a factor of ten to twenty X difference in terms of the value per view. Yeah. Especially if it's a little bit more meme, a little bit more humor. Any like that, it's just like you can just you can just drop it to through the floor. Like

37:10 Education versus entertainment, the the revenue per per Huge difference. Okay. I just want to Just level set there. So fundamentally if you've got these guys

37:21 And they want what careers? They want jobs? What It's not like I'm like Mr. Internship. I'm not saying that I'm the best conduct career ever, but they looked to me for

37:32 Input on all this life stuff. Like whether it's how to land their first date, how to get an internship, how to Whatever. And I get a bunch of DMs that are like, dude, you spoke the thoughts that were in my brain. You like you know me so well. And I think I've built up enough trust with them that If I wanted them to like quit a job or come work for me or do something. So that's why I'm thinking maybe I could build something. Yeah.

37:54 So I'll I'll um I'll give you just a little bit of a continuum that exists for you. Right. And this is super common for people who are content creators. And it all the the the continuum exists on on a risk continuum. And so on one side all the way to the end, you have start a business that you're going to do everything for. All right. That's like that's all the way on the other side. It takes the most skill, but you have the most risk. All right. On the opposite end you have I'm gonna be affiliate of something, which is I'm just gonna promote someone else's stuff. And I'm gonna get a percentage, right?

38:22 That's the that's the other extreme. Now, next to that you've got sponsorship. So if I'm really good at that, people start paying me ahead of time. And that's a hundred percent gross margin and it scales as I scale my my content, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In the middle you've got partnerships, which is like okay, I'm gonna be the exclusive guy. who promotes this specific thing and I'm gonna get some shares, or get some royalties, whatever it is.

38:43 that I can negotiate in that deal and I'll just let somebody else run the business while I just continue to promote. Next to that, you've got white labels. All right. So it's like okay, I don't wanna I don't wanna actually run the business, but I do wanna have my own brand and I wanna have all the equity. And then the very last one, which is what I started with, which is like you own it all. Right. It's you you you source everything, you manufacture if you want to do products.

39:05 And so those are kind of like those are kind of your options right now. Um if you wanted to get in the business. Now you can de risk your current thing by a lot. By trying some stuff on the left and seeing how it performs. So you can basically you have the luxury of being able to test product market fit before doing anything. Okay. So you can easily affiliate someone else's thing.

39:24 See what the demand looks like. And if it crushes, then you're like, Oh, I got something here. And if it doesn't crush, then you didn't have to like do all the other shit uh associated with that. Oh, that business. Right, exactly. So you have this really nice position that you're in. So Number one. I would probably work my way from least risky to most risky as I basically validated whatever thing I want to sell.

39:42 And then secondarily for TikTok, I'll just give you a little hack. The people who ca who the the people I've seen who monetize best off TikTok. Their their CTA on TikTok is DM me on Instagram. Yeah. And then they work the DMs on Instagram for for whatever reason.

39:57 IG just converts way better to monetize than TikTok does. So they just drive they just use TikTok as a traffic platform to send a convert on the script. Got it. Can you give me an example of some of the things that you would try affiliating for? Well

40:11 Yeah. So you you you said a lot of stuff. You're like you have like dating stuff, you have like you know, which probably gets into like looks maxing and all that stuff. I don't even know. Um, then you've got like I wanna get a job stuff. Then you've got like Biz Ops stuff, which I'm not like the biggest fan of, but like you could you know, whatever. Um So like you have a lot of different pieces there.

40:31 Um, and then obviously there's just like services that you can charge for them. But the thing that I really hate about this particular customer is that they're broke. And so the easiest I mean, I I don't think the idea that you had on starting a school community is a terrible idea because you can You can have a very large community. You can continue to serve them and you can have a low ticket price point that'll kind of like you can you can use that as an initial launch pad.

40:53 build the community and then t be like basically say like tell me what you guys want and I'll do that. And then you can monetize in the meantime. Does that make sense? Yes. That's a that's an e that's like the easy, super low risk, like doesn't

41:06 Does if you're like, Hey man, I wanna make a hundred million dollars. I don't have a clear path for from where you're at right now to get there besides just like starting as though you didn't even have the brand you have. Well, i if you had a fleet of loyal guys that maybe you could turn into good salespeople or turn into ambassadors, or if you had to launch something across college campuses, like if you had this resource and it was your only foundation to get to Hundred million dollars or ten million dollars. What would you do? If you can train a skill Which I didn't hear, but that you just mentioned that sales thing. If you can train a skill exceptionally well, then you can absolutely source and place salespeople for large door to door companies.

41:42 that and a lot of college guys are willing to just like relocate after college anyways. And you know, make six figures a year or six figures in a summer if they crush it. Um, for that. And those companies are happy to pay you know referral fees upon success of those of those types of guys. And if you can develop a long term reputation as being very, very good. at training them, like you can very easily run cohorts where you say, Hey You're gonna fly out to this place, we're gonna spend a week, I'm gonna train you, and then after that you'll graduate and then you'll go out and into the world and be fruitful and multiply.

42:08 Uh, you could very well charge, you know, probably five thousand dollars somewhere in there. Um, for people to come out, learn how to sell, and then basically you have a bunch of connections from different people that you can use your own. content to go source those relationships with. So just get like get a vivid, get a you know, get some of the bit, get a alarm system company, whatever. Um and get those ones to just say, Hey, will you take

42:26 Take people from me. And then you can also make money on both sides there. That like The best thing that you can do for those guys is use them as the product. Mm-hmm. I got a question for you. Soul searching question. Are you trying to be a content creator who makes money?

42:39 Or you're trying to be an entrepreneur who uses content to make questions. Wow, that's a great question. Gut instinct, you can change your mind later, but just gut instinct. Wh which one did your heart go to the case. You have to fully commit to this for life. Ha ha Um I want to be an entrepreneur.

42:54 You want to be an entrepreneur. Great. So I think the constraint of What business can I start using this TikTok audience for this customer is actually not serving you at all. What business do I want to be in where I see an opportunity and I Feel passionate about solving it.

43:08 And I'm gonna flex my content muscles. probably as one of my growth levers to do that. And this all this did was this was the gym where I was working out and building that muscle. But I didn't build it to use it in the gym. I built it to use it in the real world somewhere else. And so I think that sometimes you have to pick the constraint properly, the constraint of

43:25 using it in this bus using it using their current TikTok audience is not the right one. The other thing I would do is I would try to get real. So Yeah. Not only Is a certain number of views different.

43:35 per platform. But just as a simple test, right? If you went to a college campus. If you just tw put on TikTok and put on Instagram, hey, I'm gonna be at Penn State. If you wanna h come hang out. I'm gonna be at this place from this hour to this hour.

43:46 How many people do you think would show up at Penn State? Probably between ten and hundred. Ten or Okay, that's a pretty big spread. Um I I think you should go try it. I would be surprised if the number was a hundred.

43:57 I'd be shocked if it was a hundred. I'd be surprised if it was even ten. And the reason I say that is because the way that the nature of TikTok and the nature of short form content is that they're not loyal to you, they're loyal to the feed, and you might show up from time to time. And so the reason to do that Is to Basically um

44:12 Wash away your tie and your connection, your f your invisible sunk cost. But I've already built this audience. 'Cause actually what you're what you built was this the muscle of short form content. you probably haven't built an army of people who like, listen, and trust you. Like you will get more views, let's say, on this on your TikTok than I will get on my podcast.

44:29 But if I tweet something out that I'm going somewhere for my podcast, I'll get people there because I spend hundreds of hours in their ears. It's a different level of connection. And so I I say all this to just say if you really want to be an entrepreneur, break out of that constraint of How do I sell these college dudes who I've been entertaining with random TikToks about random shit? Um

44:45 And what's the best business I can build in that tiny, tiny box to be like just get out of the box and then build the best business you can. And I bet you'd kick ass that way. Cause you seem like you're somebody who's pretty high agency and pretty kick ass. But don't constrain your don't tie one hand behind your back. And Davy, I'll s I'll soften what uh Sean said, which is normally not my role. Um but I what you can use the brand for, let's say You don't sell to this audience and you don't sell them as the product either. Let's say you just say, like, I did this thing and I learned this skill. You can still use it to recruit for whatever business you want, and that is actually still a massive W. So you can just skim up you say you've got these guys who are super low and want to work, it's like great work for me.

45:19 Yeah. Cool. Yep, I appreciate it. All right. Awesome, brother. Appreciate you. Thanks for calling in. Appreciate it guys. Thanks. All right. Awesome.

45:27 There we go. Ha ha. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my law in it like my day song. On the road, less travel, never look at it. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion dollar moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist, and with billion dollar moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders, and she looks for what she calls the unexpected.

46:08 Leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like my first million. Check out billion dollar moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again. Billion dollar moves.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.