The Crazy Genius Who Made $90M Selling Digital Products Online

98 million generated. You always say you're a growth partner, not an agency. Why is that? By the way, we're operating them at the highest level beyond what I think most people respectfully are doing in the space. I think we've hit a million a month within person. Yeah. And you guys were like, "Oh, we need more." This guy had less than 100,000 people following him on Instagram, about 10,000 people on his email list, and we made about 10 million from that list. All profit, no sales team, all email marketing segment. Instagram as a platform is to get you awareness, but it doesn't build depth because you can't. So, if you take that time horizon and you say that with all the content I post over Instagram, it probably equals out to about 4 to 6 hours, right? YouTube's a faster way to do it because I can get your awareness through Instagram and then get you to come over to YouTube to consume more.

What are the most important decisions that someone has to make today if they don't want to be dead in like four or 5 years from now?

Before we start, small apology for the setup on this one. It's not our usual standard, but the conversation with Ahmed was way too viable to sit on. This is just a one-off thing. Let's just get into it.

All right, Ahmed, welcome on. I'll say Ahmed just for the case, right? Why do do your thing, dude? 98 million generated. You always say you're a growth partner, not an agency. Why is that, by the way?

Um, I think it's the term growth partner has lost its definition. So in today's space, everyone is kind of throwing around the word growth partner or the term. And that's why I've kind of disassociated myself from that. Mh. But it is a real role and it's a real thing to be an operator in a business. What the info space has done, I think they've just diluted itself.

Feel like you're targeting me right now, right? And just didn't feel doesn't feel right about what we represent because we feel like we we're truly building businesses. We're we're operating them at the highest level um beyond what I think most people respectfully are doing in the space. So for us to put ourselves in the same you know bracket for us does not I mean 90 90 million is different to you know a typical growth operator is 3 million generated in their bio right and yeah is w verified but I think for everyone it's it's also it's a start. Yeah. Yeah. I think also it's a start.

Well, I think like I think this is why today is super important. Yeah. Like my goal today is for people to actually see like what a real operator has done at scale and someone who actually like Okay, you you played the game right for like what seven years, eight years. Yeah, about that. Right. Like I think more, right? Cuz you were 17. About a decade. Yeah. About about a decade. How does that make you feel? You feel like Uncle a little bit? A little bit. But kind of feels it's honestly just came out of nowhere. I'm like, damn, it's been that long. I feel like everyone that's typically watching has like like one to two years of experience and like now everyone's a consultant. Everyone knows all the sauce. Yeah. But you actually have that depth of experience. That's what I want to go through today is like all the systems you have behind it. You talk a lot a lot about like organics cuz organic now potentially getting into paid but the organic strategies you have and they might see on like a typical like guys YouTube video of a breakdown is different. Like we had a call last time. remember the first time we had a call and I saw it. My boys are like, "Yeah, like Ahmed's different." I'm like, "All right." And then I seen it and then I and I spoke to your operator, right? You're had a call. And he's just rambling for like 30 minutes, bro. Like, "Oh, we need this this." And I'm like, "Damn, like these are different systems." Yeah. And that's what I really want to go through today. Um, but before anything, I haven't seen you talk about like I see you on Ryan's pod kind of quickly talk about like your story, but like not in depth. So it's like where did you actually start? How old were you? Because I saw some stuff about like 15 years old, 17 years old. Your biggest client you met him in like like through family in a village or something. So like where did everything kind of like start for you?

Yeah. So it was was high school, right? So 24 now. I was like around 15 16 when I started. Yeah. Just like everyone else who's a growth operator today. I I had to start with somewhere too. So like I had um you know that that was my first kind of entry to the space and and back then also I'll say like it info wasn't what info is today. Yeah. Um it wasn't even personal brands weren't a thing. Like I remember this is when before the Instagram update and it was still like the old UI. I don't know if people remembered it. Yeah. Like it was that time when I started and so like Instagram posts didn't just go viral. It wasn't like viral wasn't a thing part of social media. The only person that was talking about personal brands at the time actively was probably Gary Vee. Okay. Like that old. So like that's that's how that that's when I started.

So how did you discover it though? Info. Yeah. I came across someone who's who's a really good friend of mine and uh we we're still really good friends today. And you know he was starting this thing which at the time I just uh it was we started in person actually first. So it wasn't online at all. Online came later, closer to COVID, like before CO a little bit. Um, and so it was these inerson classes that we started with. And so we were going we were going on a on a tour. We we were hitting Dallas. We went California, New York. New York was our main that's where our main audience lived. Okay. And so we had um like multiple classes there. We did Miami, Toronto. Um and that that was like for a year.

So you would like run these inerson events. I would be the operator behind it. Right. So like inerson webinars. So honestly back then kind of right I I don't even want to uh give give ourselves too much credit. The the thing is the timing of where the industry was. It was so different. I probably still have a screenshot. I'll show you off camera. Uh of like the offer. It was on a notes app. Yes. And and we would send that as a DM with the Stripe checkout link and um people would pay that. That that was the sales process. Um posting on stories, testimonials, no ads. It was it was all organic at the time. I think what helped us take flight was uh we got on this one podcast that gave us like a big boost of traffic and again back then even podcasts weren't a thing. So it was like right time, right moment, lightning strikes and then we capitalized on it. And I I still think that's a big part of business today and like it always will be like timing is so so important when you do something.

So that was like what year? Maybe 2017 to 2019. Okay. How old were you at that point? 1617. So you were running around the US doing inerson events at 1617. Yeah. So you're you were flying across the US doing inerson workshops. Yeah. Through notes app and stripe links. Google Sheets as our CRM. Okay. Or Excel at the time. I don't even know. Something.

So you're like 16 17. Okay. When does the transition make to like the online space? Unintentionally right before co happened. I think we were like, okay, like these aren't scalable because it requires us to to do a certain number of events and and fly out. So, it's like, okay, we're capped. Yeah. Unless we can figure out how to do more events at scale, which is going to be harder. So, that's when the online component came in and we just created a a high ticket at that time. Yeah. um Kajjabi stitched together with like Discord and like every other thing just duct tape it together. Um and we launched that and from there it was kind of almost like a no-brainer to just stick to online. And yeah, I think at the time the few people that were like selling really well, Tai Lopez was doing a great job, Russell Brunson was crushing it, I mean still obviously like you know one of the gods in our space. Um Grant Cardone. So I think taking inspiration from these people to see that wait a minute like yeah they're doing inerson stuff but they're also online so what are we missing?

Yeah. What's the biggest month you guys had in person? Yeah. I think we've hit a million a month with in person. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys were like oh we need more. The timing of it was it just Yeah. Like at that time holy [ __ ] you could make more. Yeah. So you guys were doing a mill a month in person. That was the biggest that was the biggest on average. Yeah. Yeah. On average, how much? I mean, it depend on how many classes we do. So, it fluctuated a lot, right? Okay. But but at the peak, I think we've we've hit that. And you were how old? Yeah. I think still like 17, maybe 18 around that that time. But yeah. And you had like a rev share on that, right? Or you had like Yeah, we had we had a partner. We had a partnership. Yeah. So, what the hell? It was again, it's timing like I credit a lot of that money. I mean, I will say I've been more smarter with Yeah, I can tell you're you're very low-key. Yeah. I mean, I just it's not my like be humble. Everyone just everyone has a different way of spending and I think for me personally, I just What's your way of spending? Travel, huh? Travel is probably travel. Um, like there's certain things that I probably like will spend on that I won't compromise on, right? Like I mean, it's good. You're saving for the kids. Like I I won't like for example like to me I won't spend like a an exaggerated amount on like like a Balenciaga jacket or something. You know what I mean? Like one thing that's really important is a taxes. Okay. Most people in our space don't know about that. So it's funny cuz that's like that's like the most basic thing ever. Yeah. But like like I think a lot of guys in the info space make money and spend it. 50% of that income you're making is probably going to go to taxes. So So like 50% of that's gone. Do you have a war chest? Yeah. Because I think I I got this from from one of our my mentors where it was like, you know, you always like it'll never always be rainbows and sunshines. You're gonna have peaks and valleys through life and business. And if you don't have a war chest to to fall back on, yeah, it will cause you to make moves out of desperation and emotion that will probably ruin your reputation or brand. And that's things that you can't get back, which happens a lot in our space. Yeah. And so that's why I think for me, do you feel that's helped you like keep on making the right decisions? I feel like like I can tell from the fact that you didn't want to bring up obviously the person's name which if you did like I'm sure you can make more money but you realize over time that that's probably going to earn you a bigger ROI because that person knows okay I can bring everyone to Ahmed and it's not going to just like milk me I was saying that to my friend that work with the guy that I told you I was like don't get shortsighted focus on the relationships and over time it all pays off you know and I feel that's definitely something interesting to yeah to talk about I think personally it's I don't know, maybe it was the way I was coming up. Um, the way I saw the people in my life do business, it was just like if you're making a certain, especially when you're in helping someone on the sales side and you can see exactly how much someone's making. Yeah. That's a very private thing that I that I feel like again in in our space now, it gets just blast everywhere, right? And so I think everyone that we've ever worked with, have come across, privacy has always been the number one thing. Uh, and that's built our trust to work with people.

That's funny. I've never heard anyone like in this like anyone that I've known actually like mention like that. Yeah. I mean, it's and there's nothing wrong about sharing, but I think there's a way to share without making the other person feel kind of almost like bad about working with you that almost like you're you're you're releasing this publicly about me. So, what else could you potentially be doing? Right. And it creates this other stuff.

That's that's funny cuz that's one of the issues that we deal with. Yeah. Like we've had some people come accounts come on uh to track you and people are like, "Yo, like don't tell anybody." And I'm like, "It's obvious. I'm not going to tell nobody." And I get asked all the time, bro, the world's different now, you know? I get asked, "Oh, how much is he doing?" I'm like, "I'm not going to tell you." Yeah. People keep asking. Obviously, they ask about specific people. I'm not going to tell you. And I had an account come on. He's like, "Oh, like we didn't want to get on because there's another company, which I won't name." Yeah. Who like literally have asked for numbers, they just give it to me. Yeah. So, they're like picking their payments like structure and who they're letting see them how much money they're making because they're scared someone finds out. And I had to have a call with them. I'm like, "Bro, like no one's going to find out. Don't tell nobody." Even my best friends will ask. Like, I'm not telling you. And and that that's something you just build like reputation is something you just build. It takes years, you know. Um and the faster you try to I guess build it. Yeah. Through any other mechanism, it's not going to work, right? Like it just takes time. and and word of mouth till this day is the strongest like you know if I'm hiring someone I'm going I'm going to ask this guy this guy like hey I've seen that you worked with him what do you think about this guy right like and it's like I'm going to trust this person's word over what you have to say right that's just every big company does that right

That's something I'm curious like for you to touch up on obviously we'll go into like scaling offers after but yeah uh you from what I've seen when I talk to different people is I've mentioned you some people and I can tell you have like very specific relationships So obviously you're not like super known. You're getting more into organic content and everything, but I think a lot of people that are watching can tend to be very shortsighted and sometimes they don't maybe realize that a relationship that you might do the right thing now and it comes back to you in 10 months. Oh yeah. Right. But like that's a long time. But that's actually really worth it. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things you have and I think not a lot of people have this where it's like okay like I can bring this guy anywhere. I can take him into any meeting. I can meet have him meet any friend and I know that if he meets my friend, he's not going to bring up my friend's like revenue number. It's another guy or he's not going to try to use it as a way to flex it. It's like he'll just be cool about it and I don't have to worry about him being anywhere. Mhm. And I feel like I feel like a lot of people don't realize that on a dayto-day you look for those people, right? You look because everyone wants to make new friends, right? Of course. But the more high level you are, the more people like the highle guys are looking for new trusted people. Yeah. Not like new guys that are making money. Sure. And I feel like a lot of people, especially in the space, they don't get it. And so what's what's that like done for you over the past like 10 years? And how do you like go about your relationships and how far are you actually thinking?

So I I think biggest thing with relationships is is be human and and again maybe this this is something that innately that I've done from day one. Yeah. I think is maybe probably because of the way I was brought up and I was raised. Yeah. uh because I didn't really learn this particularly, but I've seen the people around me who were older that ran uh businesses in you know different industries um not in the online space and how they've handled relationships and I was like okay like this is the proper way of doing it. Um, but I I think it's just like high integrity and like you stay transparent with someone. You show them that you actually are doing everything, especially if you're in a partnership. You're you're working for a mutual benefit. Yeah. But you're in their best interest, right? And so, um, getting that trust, it it still starts with it starts with a conversation, but like it everything that you do from that conversation onwards is a reflection of like how that person is going to keep judging you. As humans, we judge each other, right? Like the minute I walk through that door, everyone you have a judgment of someone, how they carry themselves, how they like dress themselves, whatever. So, I I think it's um a bigger thing to just just make sure that you're not again shortsighted by the the smaller monetary goals. Yeah. Because we've never focused on that specifically. That that was always a byproduct of having a great relationship. To to give you context, I was I was talking to our COO and he was giving me the metric like over the years like our average client stayed with us for probably like three years. We hit our goals. That person in 3 four years is a long time for someone to change their ambition and go into a different industry or whatever. So, it's like kind of like, yo, you guys helped me do what I wanted to do here and and now like I've I'm I'm moving on to this and I'm I'm not planning to stick around in info or selling education for the rest of my life and that's totally totally normal, right? But but even those conversations, those are had 12 months in advance. Yeah. Like I knew I know like even people that we're working with today where they're like, "Hey, like here's a number I want to hit. I'd like you to help me hit it, but then after that I'm moving on. You respect it. Yeah. It's your business. What do you want me to do? The thing is you say that, but there's a lot of people that I know who have gone through similar instances and they don't have the right reaction to it. Right. It's like, "Oh, why is he quitting?" D like, "Oh, because it affects the revenue." And they're very like I think the world's become so comparative, right? It's like, "Oh [ __ ] I'm going to lose 25% of my revenue. I can't go on IG now and say that I made this like and everyone is around their friends and everyone just flex all the time. So it's like it's very hard for people to understand that it's a long-term game. And realistically speaking, you're in it for 20 years, you know? Like we're in it. I I I see it as like all right like I might know this person, I might know you, but like realistically like something could be interesting maybe in five years, you know, because that that's the truth about life, you know, like you don't build trust over time. You probably meet someone and then you're like, "All right, this guy is probably this person, but then in one year someone tells you something good about this guy and then in two years another person tells you and then in three years you're like, "Oh, he's actually a pretty cool guy." You know what I'm saying? Let's maybe work together. Everything compounds. Yeah. Um, and I feel like unfortunately nowadays, like I talk to like a lot of people that I know are friends like on the younger spectrum and they're super shortsighted and I'm like, it's just not worth it because then you go meet with the other guy, it's like, oh yeah, he did this because of this, this, and that. And then now you have closed doors.

Yeah. I haven't touched on this part much online because it's more on the growth operating side if you want to say, but when we meet someone to potentially work together, we never start right away. like our recent partnership and in one of our mo more successful ones. Me and the guy have a a super great relationship now obviously as we're like working together more and more. Um but it took us eight months of just going back and forth and speaking to one another, not interviewing each other and it was both sided because they wanted to make sure they did the right choice to partner with the right person. Mh. And we also if we partner with the wrong person can equally just be as detrimental to the business as successful for the business. So like we took our time and and a lot of the times that I'm looking at the criteria we have a certain framework of what ICP like looks like for us that's like the ideal person we want to work with. And you know, I'm constantly trying to see if you check off those boxes, right? And and one of those, for example, is like trying to understand like what motivates you. Yeah. Because, you know, certain people just want to hit a certain number and then they're not motivated by that afterwards. And that's fine, too. But I need clarity on that before going into a marriage technically because we should align on on the goals here. And that that way I can balance the long-term projections of where we're taking this stuff. But, you know, we we take our time. And I think as you get further up with working with more and more better people and and bit bigger partnerships, you start to value that more because you actually understand the second order consequences of making the wrong decision. But when we when we were starting, we partnered with anyone. Yeah. Because we didn't know the difference between right or wrong. And so that's fine to go through, but um eventually you start to develop this pallet for like, okay, this is a good partnership and this isn't.

So, okay, the part that I want to go into now is actually scaling the offers, right? And one big thing you talk about a lot and I think which is really clear is you're still in the game, but you went through like three different market cycles. Yeah. You went from in person to the early online where super easy. Then you went through the phase of making like 67 million launches off of just email. The good old days, right? Um I think when when I first got got into like info was like 2022. That's when it was still good, right? It was like easierish. Yeah, it was it was on the It Yeah, it was still good. Yeah, it was still good, but it was like getting there. You're like looking at the sky like I miss it. Yeah, it was it was still hard. It was getting harder. Yeah, it was getting harder, but that's what I remember people would still kind of say sometimes like, "Oh, I don't want to work with a sales team." Or like, "Oh, like let's let's just not have a sales team." I was one of those guys. Yeah, let's make a bit more shred off the webbby. I don't want to do sales. And then sales team started become a thing. Um, but obviously like you scaled through all that and everything. So getting into the part of like scaling, what are the three like you said there's like three cycles you went through? Yeah. Run me through like what those three cycles looked like and then the difference and what actually happened.

So I think cycle number one was the inperson thing that we were talking about. Okay. And I I think it's hard to define that cycle, but I think the best way I can put that into a term would be it was very nuanced. Yeah. Because the demand for something like that was so much but the supply was so little. Yeah. Because like I was telling you there was less than five people at that time who were offering at least in the online space on Instagram and like had a personal brand selling like coaching services or inerson trainings. Yeah. So when there's not when and trading is one of those things that it's like a demand like it's it's an international market. It's it's one of the biggest markets out there. So like it was one of those moments where you could throw anything on the wall Mhm. and just it would work.

So, when did it start to get sticky? It was always sticky around that time, right? Like you could you could do a webinar and it worked, right? When we launched the online version of it, it worked, right? Like it it was such a un it was such an interesting time because for me as a marketer, by the way, I think I also got so misguided because everything worked. And so I was like, "Oh, are we just really good at what we do?" Yeah. And then you reach like you go to the valley and you're like, "Oh [ __ ] I'm not as good as I thought as this." So I'd credit all that to just timing. We were at the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right offer to the right people and we checked off every single box. Yeah. Well, you you also made the most of it in a lot of ways because you can argue there was less education on it and there was less like people that have experience on it and it's like Yeah. It could if it could feel riskier in a way. What do you mean by that? Like Well, like if less people were doing it, yeah, sure. is more obvious, but then it was also less obvious to do. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also less obvious of of oh, I should do this instead of being in high school. Exactly. You know, it's like now it's like you have everyone's doing it. It makes sense to do it, but you guys still took a risk when like no one was doing it. So there's like there's still a balance there. 100%. Yeah.

So when when did you when did you become like I would say like a real like operator? When did you start to operate like in the online as a real business and like you started to face friction the market and like you had to develop like real strategies. So I think after that time it was like phase the second phase when we went to the online version of it. Okay. We kept scaling this first offer and then afterwards we again it was one of those kind of moments where pathways just kind of go separately wanted the person the offer owner wanted to like evolve into the next chapter of his life and the next business. So like for me it was even the agency part was so unintentional because I never planned on doing it anywhere else working with other people. So right after I got connected with um someone else in the space that was coming up at the time still like not many in that category still um but there was like it was getting there now where there was like personal brands were a thing and content was like a thing right um and so we started working with one person that person connected us with another person that person connected us with another and so at this point we're working with like multiple people at that same time all through light network and word yeah just just word of mouth and um I I will say I don't think there someone at that time doing what we did. Yeah. It's like and also we unintentionally stayed within the same niche. Um but you well you talk about that you talk about like um like picking your audiences properly. Yeah. What do you mean by that? Are you saying for the creator or for the operator? No, for the on the creator side like knowing their you talk a lot about like knowing their audience, knowing what you're getting into beforehand. Yeah. Obviously in the subniches like in the trading space and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How important was that for you when you were like scaling up the business? It it was I'd say it became more and more important as things got more competitive. Back to the thing about like everything works. Yeah. When you're in a bull market like that, things are just going up, right? You're not really focusing on that. Yeah. Right. At that time, we're just targeting trading as a whole. Okay. Was day trading, trading, swing trading, whatever. Like it was just trading at a whole. later on, especially now, uh we were talking about it before the pod where you were like this small channel is making X amount. Yeah. Right. And the verticals within niches, especially when when the market's that big, there's the on the at least within trading, there's people who actively day trade, right? And then there's on the other spectrum, they have the investors, right? The guys that actually have real capital that are like, "No, I want to invest into companies." Yeah. Right. And so that spectrum goes very wide and there's a lot of breaking points in between. And so you can go very deep in one vertical and maximize that. I think at a certain scale and for certain goals, I think we've kind of mapped out that like a certain market will be better for you. But that will come back to who you are as a brand, right? Like if you're not an investor, I'm not going to tell you to go target an investing audience or or that type of crowd. Vice versa, right? So it it does come back to who you are as a prof as the professional like what makes you credible. So I'll always base I'll go off of that. So when we're looking at and partnering with let's just say traders I'm looking at are they day traders? Are they trading options? Are they trading futures? What happens to a day trader? What do you do? So then we have to go go deeper into that. Right? So we start there and then eventually it's like depending on their skill. Can they branch out to other stuff? Someone's watching right now. they have a client or they're speaking to other clients. How do you properly leave that an offer? I think for us right now, it's always been this, but I think more than ever, it's credibility. How are you proving to the market because I can't This is the one thing as the operator you can't do. Yeah. I can't take you and put you in front of the market and basically portray that you're number one. You know, you know what's interesting? one of my um like he used my program like two years ago and he's becoming like really good now. Yeah. And um he's like started now to like say no to offers. So like I I've seen the first like set of like operators who now like deny offers. Yeah. Before it's like they just take on everyone. But like now that okay like the sales call is like all right show me your business numbers or like what are you doing? Can you prove it? And like they'll ask them for like very hard questions. Then we we we used to also like do that. It's like can you prove it? Yeah. Everything's legit. D okay cuz if not the offer is going to die. And I think a lot of people now rely on these launches. Yep. But you only rely on launches if there's no like credibility and consistent trust. But if you have an actual business Yeah. like the whole point that that person can still run that business. I just saw a guy yesterday was in like the FBA space say I'm stopping my business Amazon FBA. It's like spend more time with students. And I'm just like worst thing you can do, you know. And he's had his best month in info. Yeah. And I'm like, it's gonna it's going to kill it. It it's gonna Yeah. I mean, you'll have that spike, but I think it's along with credibility, it's longevity. Yeah. One thing I'll say that doesn't get talked about enough in our space is if you were to rewind 10 years ago, five years, I I'll even say five, six years ago. How many of those brands that you can think of from that era are still relevant today? Right. I think Iman's a good example of someone who's constantly evolved. Usually what I see is after three years either you get comfortable with the success you've had and you think you've made it and so that usually will be like you thinking that you know you're going to you're going to your fall your fall off basically begins but it all starts with relevancy right but it's like you look at comparison like to other industries like let's just even say like basketball right I don't know if you watch but if you look at like LeBron for example right for him to be the age he's at right now to play at the highest caliber and stay relevant for 20 years in the league. Yeah. Right. Look at all the other NBA players who have not been able to outlast even 10 years. Right now, you bring that into like music. Let's look at Drake for example. Yeah. Every album he's dropping is a hit after hit after hit. So, it's like when you look at these paradoxes of like these other people who've been able to stay relevant for a really long time, they've been able to make it at the highest level. Like it it feels like to me why it's coming pretty obvious. You spend insane amount of time picking the right partner. Yeah. More than like anything. I spend most because obviously we're going to go into strategies and like we talk about like conversion cycles and like show rates and all that. Like it's obviously more obvious to me now than what I saw in the like the podcast you did with Ryan and your presentation you will spend way more time Yeah. picking the right person than like you know trying to just land a new one. But the question I think for anyone who's watching right now is like okay like you know say they listen to you like okay I'm going to get really picky you know and I'm going to really just pick the right person. How do you develop that when you need to make money you need to scale you need to do that or do you like develop it over time and as you scale you get more and more picky like like what's the advice you have for anyone watching?

So, I'll give I'll give two pieces of advice, right? There's two pathways you could go about. Like when let's just say you're starting out, you don't know the difference between right or wrong. You're not going to know who's the right I didn't know who who the right client I had to go through enough bad partnerships to know when we see this come through the front door. No. No. Yeah. Right.

What are some things that tell you like, okay, what are like some people you have been interested and you've spoken to them and you're like, ah, hell no. Or like you found a red flag after some research. If I'm being honest with you, it even has less to do with the brand and the marketing stuff. It's probably about who they are actually as a person. What's like the weirdest one? Like don't say like you can't leak. I've had encounters. I I guess the biggest thing is like I I'll have people sometimes approach me and they'll like coming in with this energy of yeah I want to hit this exaggerated number million 2 million a month and I'm I'm willing to do no work. This is so interesting because like we're actually talking so much more about picking partnerships. Yeah. Like there's obviously there's a lot of styles we're going to go over, but like that's it's really interesting to me like how much you think about that. And I feel like in a way you end up attracting only those people. Yeah. Because you give off the energy if you only accept the best. And like Yeah. I I've never really heard of anyone like really talk about that. I feel like a lot of people talk about acquiring customers, like acquiring partnerships and just scaling, scaling, scaling, but no one talks about like picking the right person, picking because you picked your own subniche, your own vertical, and then in that vertical, you pick people that have the right personality, and then in those people, you pick and choose the people that have the right business habits, have the right behavior, who are long-term focused, who will keep working, keep making content. So, it's like I'll tell I'll tell you why. Yeah. Right. The the phase that I'm at in my career Yeah. I need to genuinely be excited about the brands and partnerships that we're working with. I'm not going to be able to sell and market for just anyone. Also, I do think if we're going to play this game at the highest level, there are those unicorns that exist like the Grant Cardones of the world that have built a hundred million dollar empires. Yeah. Right. And so for me, it's discovering that because that is what's next in terms of like keeping this, you know, growing this thing. So who who is that person that we can take maybe not to that level exactly but close to it even right so I think for us the goalpost has just changed so much and so we've had to adapt the way we go about acquiring that partnership more selectively but I wouldn't recommend that for someone who's starting out however I will say this if you're starting out and you're just taking on the the fastest way you're going to learn is by taking on enough work to understand the right or wrong partners, right? I think also throughout this whole process, by the way, you're not just acquiring partnerships, you're acquiring skills. I think the only thing that has stuck with us is through each partnership, we've acquired more skills because each partnership demanded more. Yeah. Let's just say this partnership requires paid acquisition. That's an arm that we're actively building. We've been organic for such a long time, but markets changed. Yeah, now we're we're shifting into this. But if if you're not willing to take that risk or you're not comfortable with that and you're like that's not what I feel comfortable doing, that's okay, too.

If I could go back in time, something that I I'm I'm still happy and fortunate about the way everything has gone. But also if you can find a company or a part or a partner or a brand or someone that you look up to that you genuinely feel like this person would be amazing to work under and get experience. I think that is so underleveraged even a company like WAP. Yeah. Right. The culture these guys have it's admirable. We're here right now, right? Like we literally you ask them, hey, can we have a space? I'm like Yeah. And again, that's that's just a relationship we have obviously. But but if you go downstairs and you look at the way like look at those guys working over there like the culture they have is is admirable to someone like me who's building a company. And so for us it's like if you're starting up right now and and you're able to to be around an environment like this that will probably save you more time, right? And I I think the same thing happens too where someone will will take on a gig like this. They'll do it for a year and then they'll like back off, right? But I know guys I I've known Wap for a really long time. Yeah. Um, I know guys that have been here for four, five, six years and if you look at what they're able to do now and how many partnerships, relationships and and the network effect they have, massive, right? So, there's no right or wrong way to go about this in in this industry. But, for example, forget [ __ ] let's just say you go work for Alex Herozi. Dude, you know what's funny? One of my friends I just had food with two days ago. Yeah. He's one of like I won't say his name but like he's one of like I'm always like top reps in like top five or four and he went he went through some like visa issues of like not but they still work. They're like the only exception he made. We were talking about like him being there for a little bit and him being there for like longer. And we he kind of had the conversation of like oh like you know do I do this? Do I not? And I'm like, I feel like at this point, you made a good point. Like, you just just learn. If you can go somewhere where you learn the fastest and the environment is built, it's probably better than doing your own thing. Cuz when you're doing your own thing, it's you versus you and it's you with you. When you're around an environment that like literally pushes you, like I have friends that have worked here obviously and they're like, dude, they push you to the brim. Yeah. And I feel like that's where you want to be because naturally the habits you build once you do your own thing, you will skyrocket. And it's my dad's a neuroscientist so we always talk about these things and he'll give me stories of like people that he knows that like oh look this guy worked a job for 20 years and he left and he became like a nine figure entrepreneur as a way to get me go to school right but like I think there's still a point there to be made which is when you acquire so much you never get the ROI day one. Yeah. But then that's why there's people that work at these PE firms they leave and then boom they have like a $5 million fund. People are like exactly oh like how did that make sense? But I think it sometimes I see some of these guys and I'm like, "Oh, it would have been cool to work at like a meta

like 10 years ago and be like the head of like media for them right now, dude. Imagine like you'd be [ __ ] Trump or the president, you know what I mean?"

Like, so I think that's a really good point. And uh >> yeah, so I think that that's that's the other thing is like find great companies and brands to work with that you admire. And like uh one guy I like uh I'm I I watch a lot of his content uh now, Dom, he runs Bum Energy.

Oh, that guy's correct. Yeah. Raw energy terrain. >> Yeah. Amazing. And that that's a guy who's a definition of a real operator. >> Yeah. >> And so I like the term operator defined by the right person and he's a perfect example of that. >> You can say it. >> Absolutely right. >> He keeps taking hits at me now. That's I think I ruined it for you. >> Right. But but like but for example, if you can shadow someone like that >> Yeah. >> for two three years, you will save yourself so much time. >> Yeah. because you're going to have to learn it either by figuring it out or by like learning it from someone else, right?

And so >> I I went through the pathway of learning it myself, which was hard and we went through a lot of [ __ ] and we figured it out. But I think I also >> for in my circumstance had the right mentors and people to keep guiding me along the way. >> It's a choice though. >> I think inherently if >> whatever whatever's >> if you look for it, you'll find it. >> Yeah. you know, my current adviser right now, like I knew that I needed someone to like, you know, be there to like G-check me. >> Yeah. >> And I think and I look for that. I'm like I want people in my life who will tell me like >> like you're you're being stupid right now. >> I think some people they think cuz they have their own business like they don't need that and like oh like they're the man. Yeah, >> but it's like you surround yourself by those people and >> you need that cuz sometimes you're on your high horse and like >> you you need the people or the environment around you to keep reminding you that you're one day away from losing everything, >> right? And and it's a really harsh way to look at it, but that's business. >> You can be one decision away, one bad decision away from >> ruining a lot. I've seen it, right? A lot of these personal brands that were up here >> Mhm. and went here overnight only came from one bad decision. Was it was it out of greed? Was it out of an emotional movement? Combination of all of those things, but they made a choice and and that's it's going to be something they live with. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's a big part for sure.

>> All right. Going into scaling offers, let's get into some of the juicy stuff, right? I saw you had a presentation like a couple weeks back. You put on YouTube. >> I don't know why it doesn't have more views to be honest. I watched it. I was like, this is sauce. Um, but you started the presentation and you're talking your the first thing you said is uh a lot of people don't make the most of what they have. >> Yeah. >> That's like a thing you talk about a lot which is like >> you talk a lot about segmenting audiences selling at like different intent levels obviously going into like you know what you qualify as a lead MQL SQL. So >> first things first like for anyone to understand who's watching what do you mean by that? I think that word maximizing I don't know from day one when we started I just felt wrong if we had a hundred leads coming through the front door and we didn't from a marketing or sales point of view did everything to have the best touch point with all 100 leads in this era of like traffic and you know getting a bunch of leads that gets so missed. >> Yeah. Because the easy or lazy way to go about to me this is lazy marketing is get enough traffic to make up for the 3% that you're going to convert like naturally you're going to convert about three to 2% of your audience. So if let's just say your goal is to make x amount just get enough traffic and then just sell to those people and that's it. >> Cool. Like I don't I don't have anything against with that. Like one thing I've always said is there's a thousand different ways. >> Huh? >> You sure you have anything against it? >> No, I don't. I mean I I it's for everyone has their own way of doing it, right? So for like for me it's like if that's your way of making money and you're and you sleep well at night with that, cool. And and also I can't if you made 10 million and I made 10 million and you had a VSSL funnel and I had a different funnel. >> Yeah. >> What who am I to tell you you're wrong, right? Like it's >> kudos to you, you know? So I I think there's like >> this weird arguments around like this is the best funnel or this is like who cares? >> But I do feel like what you talk about is like >> it's a bit more important than you're saying it is. like taking one list and just all right the same email sequence the same welcome sequence the same reminders for the webinar the same you're treating them the same way you're se you're not segmenting your list properly >> yeah yeah >> like that's you're leaving so much money on the table I feel like that's like still something that >> like the whole point of us talking about this right now is I want people to realize that like you're able to like three to 4x anyone's organic revenue >> just based on how you segment and that's like crucial so like how do you like how do you think about it as structure.

>> So, I think this this goes a little bit back into buyer psychology, right? >> Okay. >> And I learned this through um Taylor Welch um who's who's been a big influence on the way I look at marketing. And so, anyone who asks me, he's been a big inspiration. But when you look at the way, let's just take all these people in this room and let's just say you have that Red Bull, right? >> Okay. >> And >> sugar-free, >> whatever, right? And so, it's like if you were to go into that room and you say, "I have this product, right?" and you ask them when they would want to buy this. One person might be tired and they need it right now. One person is like, "Hey, I'm going through a weird diet and I can't take this for for a month." Right? >> Okay. >> The next person might be like, "Well, you know, I might need this in a couple hours or I might need this tomorrow morning. I have an important meeting." Right? >> I think what people forget is everyone has so many different circumstances in their life that influence their way of buying. Now, what you have to do as an organization and a marketing company or whatever offer you have is to do your best to keep showing up for that person for when they're ready to buy from you.

So, essentially what you're saying is, and you also spoke about the fact that on average you reduce >> Yeah. >> time to conversion by 24 days for everyone you work with. >> You're basically saying is that when people come in um and I guess this jumps into like how you treat like you said you have a lead >> Yeah. Then you have MQL which you have marketing qualified lead and then SQL. >> Yep. >> Because I think I think that'll obviously help them understand how you segment. >> How do you qualify each of these three? What do you consider a lead? >> Yeah. So like I'll stick to the example of it, right? So like let's just say someone comes into your funnel, they opt in, name, email, phone number. That's a lead. Keep it very simple. Now the next thing is MQL, right? But the only thing I got from the lead was just your contact info. I didn't get any information about you. I didn't understand anything about your current situation. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. You just opted in. >> Okay, >> that's it. So, that's a lead. >> Okay. >> So, I'm not getting from a marketing point of view like someone might approach me and be like, I have a million leads. >> Doesn't matter. >> I don't care. And and so like the manhat reply, so like if you say I have x amount of leads, but 20,000 replied, right? I would still classify that as a lead unless one of the replies consisted some sort of form or way for them to give you more for information. Right? So let's just say naturally lead. Then you go into like application, right? Someone fills out an application. Now Yousef is telling me that I'm struggling with this. I need help with this. >> This is what my, you know, situation is >> and I'm telling you as a company, this is where I sit. Right? The first thought I think that will come up for most people is how do you well I'm sure before you were to segment but each answer takes them into a different bucket. Are you now also like using AI to segment like because people are going to think okay like okay how do I not end up with like 20 different 30 different audiences like what's the right amount of audiences you'll typically have >> honestly the more you can segment I don't think that'll ever hurt you because you'll have a more targeted way of reaching out to those people. Okay. But how do we keep a person from who's watching from like creating like 20 different audiences, right? Like >> Sure. But but that's why I think stick to the overarching system, right? Stick to lead, MQL, SQL, and then client. >> Okay. So, >> lead, >> that's the simplest segmentation format. >> Okay. Lead information, MQL is like you have some type of information on their motivation or their current situation. >> Current situation. I have more information about you. >> And then what's SQL? >> So, just because you gave me information doesn't mean you're a client. We talked about partnerships a lot. Okay. Right. So, so for whether B2B, B2C business, like I don't, you told me, but I have to now vet that information. Right. >> Okay. >> Now, there's only two ways we vet if someone is sales qualified. Either you've purchased something from us in the past. >> Mhm. >> So, we know that you are an active buyer, >> okay, >> and you're applying again. So, that tells me that you had a good experience before or else you wouldn't be applying again or buying from us again. The second thing is um we manually reach out and this is where the sales process component kicks in. I don't believe that through marketing unless you have a form where you're explicitly saying click this button if you have x amount to invest in yourself. >> I don't believe that works because even if you look at across our industry 50% of the time that that information is inaccurate. >> Yeah. >> So how do we get to accuracy? >> Okay. >> Because I don't want to just segment for the sake of segmenting. I want each segment to be defined and have 100% accuracy for what they stand for. Right? So when someone says salesqualified, that means that if that person potentially comes onto a sales call with us, the likelihood that we should convert that lead, a salesqualified lead versus a MQL should be significantly higher.

>> Okay. One thing I want to touch up on, you mentioned in a previous like video >> that you only qualify someone as SQL if a sales rep >> Yeah. >> Told you that the person's qualified because you you say like your thing is anything anything but that. >> Yeah. >> It's no proof. But the question is like the question I have is two things. So how do you treat your MQLs and your SQLs differently? because it seems like it's so important. Every step to you is like so crucial you have the right information >> that I can tell that way SQL probably gets treated a whole different way >> and you don't like to mix those people. So how do you treat those two lists those two people differently? >> Totally. So I mean like like you said so sales qualified for me I need a human to verify the information I received from you. >> Okay. >> So we'll have our setting team our outbound team reach out to that person and say hey so and so person we saw that you submitted this. >> Okay. And depending on the conversation time, so naturally, like one of the metrics in the sales world, right? Like if you had a conversation for more than 90 seconds or 2 minutes, >> naturally like that's going to lead into a a set call or like a qualified person. Okay. >> Or else you probably shouldn't be on the phone for that for that long, right? Yeah. >> If that's accomplished, that person can now move on to the sales team's calendar and they can go on. Now we get into like this is where marketing Yeah. >> shifts into now sales. We're outside of the funnel now, right? because it's like it's moved on. But for MQL, the thing is our outbound team would will still probably call a lead because they haven't made the next step to fill out this application. So when I'm contacting the lead, I'm not telling the lead, I don't have any information about you. So the way we're programming our sales team to speak to them or our marketing campaigns to speak to them is, hey, can you why aren't you making this next action? Like what's the objection? Right? something in their brain tells them that I am not ready enough yet to apply or fill out this next thing or whatever it might be to make them a marketing qualified lead. And so the conversation we're having with them is to just get them to do the next next thing. The conversation we're having with the MQL people is to validate and confirm if that information is accurate so they can move on to the sales team's calendar. I think it's super interesting because um actually one of the main switches I I had made like year and a half two years ago was I had like a normal free course and then at some point I would talk to like so many different people on the calls and I'm like half of you guys are not even ready to be here. >> So we switched like a free course on like school but like right before Hermosi was even doing it. >> Yeah. >> And then we literally like I I remember we had like different friends of mine had like offers they were running our training offers um and the offers were like I would say like [ __ ] the bed. It was going straight to VSO. Yeah. >> And they were had no account for like consumption rates. And I remember we switched and the friend that I was telling you the offer they have, I'm not going to say how many subs they have, but all the numbers they're doing is because they change how they were trading leads. >> So now it's like instead of like you said, right, and I think you talk about this a lot, which is the time for them to convert. >> And if your average time for someone to convert is like 45 days or 60 days, >> then if it's day 20, it's like it's probably not the right time. Yeah. >> So the way this the way they started to do it is we would like like push to the free course and then the whole setters and sales team's role >> was like and a lot of guys back then I mean you guys were already doing it but like back then it was like oh why would you do that just like just try to set them anyways >> but they we kind of switched the funnel under we create like a new pipeline and that was like my the best thing that we ever did >> which is taking people through like >> what they needed to learn at that point >> to get the first win with us >> to cut that time down >> and then pitch them. Exactly. >> And then so with a lot of the setters, they love the offer too even more because all they had to do was guide them through >> uh like digesting certain like like pieces of information. It was most likely not structured as much as yours yours are. >> Uh but it was very focused on like okay how can we get them to consume more >> more cons like increase the consumption rate and they'll buy anyways. >> Exactly. >> And so you if you can be the one to guide them through that >> then you win. But ours was very sales process focused and I think less like retention marketing focused. >> And when I spoke to your your COO, it was very retention focused and very systems focused. Like how do you >> how do you scale those systems? >> Yeah. >> Um because anyone who's watching is going to think, okay, so I'm basically running my offer like a noob. >> Yeah. >> Right. And then now they're trying to get to like the extreme level of treating every lead properly. So how do you >> treat leads like properly without getting lost in the sauce and everything? Yeah, I mean I think th this is going to come down to how well your operations and backend data management is, especially at scale. >> Data management, no one talks about that. >> You spoke to our CMO and our operator. We are like super uh dialed in with >> I was getting hard qualified to get on track. You are not. It made sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. And so for for us and and this is a common thing any sales advisor or people that we've brought on >> um I'll usually have my operator on the call with me and any data point we can show you the full customer journey >> and you can ask me exactly how many people are sitting in that pocket and I'll tell you marketing is understanding the psychology of implementing this. Now, how you do it is actually going to come down to like the systems and the back end and and everything, right? >> I I think the best way to describe it is like hygiene, right? Like how hygienic is your CRM, right? Because if you go in there and you just see a pile of leads >> Yeah. >> Well, you got a lot of work to do to start cleaning this people these people up, right? >> So, I think something's going to come up for a lot of people is like, "Oh, like my offer is not as big as yours." But the I know it's the reaction, but that's how people are going to like, "Oh, yeah. if I make that change like we only might make an extra like 15 20 25 >> but over time you keep applying that >> you with the bigger offers the bigger opportunities >> you will print a lot and I'm sure that seems like that's what happened with you >> so so here's the thing if you can't do it at the small scale you're not going to do it at the big scale >> okay >> so it's just like it's it's it's habits right so if my CRM from day one >> is clean organized like we've and by the way we've had a CRM like this was like from 2021 1 to 2023. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. This guy had less than 100,000 people following him on Instagram, about 10,000 people on his email list, and we made about 10 million from that list only. We did 15 cohorts. It's like a legendary run. We did 15 cohorts. >> That is more than legendary run, bro. That's >> all profit, no sales team, all email marketing segmenting. back to that thing, the the offer we had at the time, no one else was, no one had an equivalent offer. Everyone was doing self-paced. We went into live online courses. That was like a cohorts had its like run. I I think actually cohorts are coming back. >> Wait, wait, wait. Cohorts are coming back. What do you mean by that? >> I think cohorts have like a the pendulum always swings. I think cohorts are going to be a big part of offers going forward. Challenges are kind of like cohorts, but they're like smaller segments. We were charging more mid-t high ticket prices for those cohorts though back then. But like, but to that point, those 10,000 lists of people were so valuable. There wasn't a big audience, but we knew the value of those people was a lot. What if I told you everyone on your list is worth X amount like and they're qualified? >> You would want to make sure that you have a proper process to hit all of those people properly, right? Like great messaging and everything. So, his list was super super qualified. It was a small list relatively to people who have hundreds and thousands of people on their list, >> but you know, our open rates were like 80%. >> Was 10,000 the total list or is it what you cut it down to? >> Probably a little bit more, but that was like what I would say the qualified pool was. It wasn't like, you know, we went from 100 to 10. I think it would have been like maybe 15 to 20 and then we just segmented down to those 10,000 that we knew that were just the people we wanted to do. Now, this is also at the time this brand was the most relevant. the offer did not exist. No one else had this offer at the time in the trading space. >> Yeah. >> Um price point was perfect for people to purchase. Yeah. Right. Back to that thing. It's like we checked off all those boxes. Timing >> it contributed. >> But the thing is most people that are running offers right now. >> Yeah. >> If they're doing it right, it's because the timing is also right. >> Right. Like if an offer is doing well, like all the AI stuff that's doing well now, remember the first time someone ran AI offers two years ago, year and a half ago, they were not doing that well. I don't know if you I don't if you remember they were like no one was accepting it like oh it's gonna die then it died down now it's back. So it's like >> anyone who's running it off right now who's watching probably has is in some type of trend. >> Yeah >> in some type of way they're in a trend. So it's like >> like I feel like like I don't want I I don't think we should discredit some of the things because I think they have more value than you might think because everyone is in a trend in some way >> where everyone is in a moment of luckiness. >> Yeah. >> You know >> everyone has their peaks. >> Exactly. So the question for me right now is like how are you like say you have a SQL and MQL like >> I'm guessing you have them on different lists. Do you email like how often do you email them? How often do you SMS them? Like >> because now everyone's going to be confused. It's like okay how do I even treat them differently? So like how do you approach that?

>> Back to let's grab the Red Bull and go to that like office example, right? You go to that office and you have this Red Bull sale and someone's like I don't trust that brand. What type of emails are you going to send to that person? It's not going to be, "Hey, I got a discount for you." >> Okay. >> Because that's not gonna work. >> Yeah. >> Because I still don't I think that I think that brand's gonna kill me. >> That's a good point. >> So, I'm going to send you educational material and say, "Here's why this brand is healthier than the other options. >> Here's proof and the case study that we did to do that." And now that that's going to bring this person closer into, let's just say that takes that person to be like, "You know what? You convince me, I'm going to opt in now, right? they took the this is before the the traffic even opted into your funnel. like we'll say like the skeptical person like >> right so let's just say they go and take the next step and they go into MQL now right >> I want more information about this >> maybe they're ready to buy maybe they're not right so now you as a marketing person what you want to do is either extract more information from them >> and if you can't extract information the other indicator that we care about is how many actions you've taken in our ecosystem right if we see that you're watching our content, you're opting in for webinars, you're opening our emails consistently for the last 90 days. I'm you still care enough about us to keep responding to what we're throwing out there. Right? Okay. >> Now, based on that, maybe I'll go to you and say, "You know what? I have a special promo." >> Mhm. >> This one time discount for this Red Bull >> that I'll offer you and I'll send you this another package for free to help out. >> Who's going to say no to that if they're in the right position? >> Exactly. Now, let's just say you get the opposite. that that was the hardest spectrum of a person, right? Like this is someone who's skeptical. Now, let's just say someone's ready to buy. They're coming in, they opt in, they apply, boom, boom, boom, they're going right through the funnel >> all the way, and they make it down to SQL. You can sell that person tomorrow right away. >> Yeah. >> But the first person, look how longer it took me to sell that guy. But look, it was based on the circumstances, the beliefs he had around the product. And that's goes back to customer like cycles. Like, are they even problem aware? Right? And then it's like from problem aware okay like now it's like okay do they want to even hear about the solution? I know I need more energy.

>> So when you're like when you're because a lot of people will create like the application forms or type forms >> blindly. you're creating them based on signals and how many signals can I get and the more signals you get allows you to segment >> and you can I'm guessing you can also combine different signals like >> has money but super skeptical or like has no money but is like super amount of money like so you just >> I'll give you like an actionable segment that anyone can apply right away and that'll improve everything like that's going into the weeds of what's actually in the content of the marketing that you're doing right like what we just talked about right Now, I'll take it to a level. Let's just say for like forget the content piece. If you're uh using whatever email sending provider, almost all of them, >> yeah, >> should tell you how many people have opened up an email in the last 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days, whatever kind of like those are like the brackets that we look at right now. I'm not going to tell Yousef, who hasn't even opened our emails in the last 180 days to book a call with my team. >> Yeah, we should. Yeah, we should probably talk about that cuz a lot of people don't like a lot of people will email like >> a list of 50,000 and they be like, "Oh, my open rate's 25%." I'm like, >> "No, no, no. They're going to what they're going to say is, "Oh, my show rate's so bad." >> Yeah. >> Why do you think you're emailing a guy >> who doesn't even know your first name >> to book a call and he probably just did it in the spite of the moment. That's like something that like um sure you did it more in detail, but like I I have like we we actually um there's a guy that I knew like obviously not a lot of operators come on so I just refer different people to different guys. >> Yeah. >> And he was like yeah dude he has a list of like 70,000 people. >> Yeah. >> Like all right. I'm like who has clicked on any email recently? He's like hasn't sent an email in 6 months. I'm like bro. >> Yeah. >> Doesn't mean anything. And I was like send an email and then just cut like after a week like cut whoever didn't reply or cut who didn't like go for the freebie or click. >> Yeah. He's like, "Oh, why would I do that?" I'm like, >> and I think like this is a detail, but like a lot of people also burn their emails by keeping on sending to people who have never corrected. So, you're you're basically saying that like you keep on cutting the email list down, >> but because you're cutting that, you're making more money. >> So, you're like trimming the fat to make more money. >> Exactly. Right. Back to that example. If you kept emailing that guy about the Red Bull >> and you're just like, "Hey, buy this thing. Buy this thing. Buy this thing." you're going to turn me off and I'm going to unsubscribe from your list. Right? >> Yeah. >> Some people don't unsubscribe. They just stop opening emails. But you don't get the marketing indication until they unsubscribe. Right? >> So, we willingly, but like it's not that I'm neglecting the rest of my list. >> That that's where the maximization part comes in, right? Because trimming down >> boils down the people that are actually willing to buy from you. Amazing. You're ahead of the game. But what are you doing to the other 100,000 people that are on your list that still want something from you, but you're giving them the wrong thing at the wrong time?

>> So, so you have to map out that segment accordingly. And so the skeptical people, send them more value, send them more content, feed them consumption time. Right now, like a big metric for us is we're aiming to get at least each lead >> to consume about four to six hours of content. That could be like a live webinar that they've attended or a VSSL they watch or we can track that they've watched and then like kind of go off that. Right. >> You mentioned like in your presentation that >> before people needed like well remember the very Nick Cosman thing four, five, six years ago was like seven touch points >> and you mentioned now there's like a new research that was done. >> Yeah. Yeah. Google >> and it's like Google did a research and it's like 60 to 80 touch points >> from taking someone cold to like a customer from the minute they find out about you. >> And so you you then said that like you the thing that you go for is like four to six hours. And it's funny because this goes back into what I want wanted to go over now which is you actually even though now you're kind of getting into paid, you've always said that you only work with people that are on YouTube or like all of your brands are YouTube focused. Is that does that tie back to like what we just said right now the touch points and everything like the four to six hours because the 4 to6 hours on Instagram is impossible. >> Of course, >> obviously I've also done the research to like sell people and be like you probably should track YouTube like because >> they someone would have to watch like 480 reels to equal like >> you're not going to get not optimizing for consumption time. >> So like why YouTube? Which obviously ties back to consumption rates. >> Yeah. Yeah. Consumption like it's just longer format, right? like someone who for example like Instagram as a platform is to get you awareness but it doesn't build depth >> because you can't right and and you could over a longer period of time >> depth. Okay. Yeah. >> Through stories for example, right? Like I know a lot of brands who are who do really great storytelling through their just Instagram stories. >> Yeah. >> But if you follow some like follow someone for a year or two and you've been consuming their stories for two years. >> Yeah. It's funny because like when I first saw your stuff, I was like, "Oh, okay." Like, you know, but then I watched one of your YouTube videos and I was like, "Okay, >> yeah, >> this makes sense." >> But like because we've did a study because one of our in one of our uh offers we did uh we just did an inerson um kind of just meet up with them and we asked them, "How long has it been since you've been following me on Instagram?" Because this person was only on Instagram >> and it was like one year, two years, one and a half year. That was the average time someone was following this person before they bought something. >> Yeah. >> So just like So if you take that time horizon and you say that with all the content I posted off Instagram, it probably equals out to about four to six hours, right? YouTube's a faster way to do it because I can get your awareness through Instagram and then get you to come over to YouTube to consume more. So, if you look at it naturally, if if you have a strong YouTube and you're going to Instagram, it's kind of almost like >> Yeah, I think I think it comes back to the trust factor, too, that we said like the trust factor and the credibility. You can't lie on YouTube the same way. And like we we even ran because we've had some offers that are purely IG, lower AOV. >> Yeah. >> Lower close rate. >> Yeah. >> Um lower everything's just lower. It's just everything's like horrible to run. Mhm. >> I think even when we were running it like the like the agency, we if it was only Instagram, I knew it was going to be a nightmare >> and it's a nightmare for the sales reps for everything. So, I think like >> interesting you bring that up because it probably makes your whole company easier to run >> and you've mentioned most launches like are like YouTube focused. >> Yeah. Yeah. You I mean YouTube YouTube's a pillar that we have across every offer that's a non-negotiable for us. It's one of our things, right? Like if you only have Instagram, that's fine. Yeah. But then it's okay to optimize for more consumption, right? >> That's why webinars do so well. Everyone's running webinar funnels because it's like >> it's a it's a cheat code to forcing consumption. >> Mhm. >> Uh and they work, right? Because >> running webinar from YouTube is like >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Right. Bro, when I used to I used to run my offer, um I would literally would get calls from YouTube and they would jump on the call. I'm not Well, I'm not even kidding, by the way. like and then he get on the call and we talked for one to two minutes and uh he's like he's like don't pitch me. I'm like what do you mean? He's like don't pitch me, bro. I already worried I already saw your content. I just wanted to make sure you're human like real. >> Yeah. >> I was already dead ass I didn't say that. I'm like payment link sent you know like the guy I've had that so many times like I've had people be like yo I watched your ski mask video. I had like a ski mask that everyone went viral made like 200k from it. It's like best thing ever to me. YouTube is like I mean obviously it's haram say it's heaven, right? But it's like it's the greatest thing ever and I literally like and then I had a sales rep. >> Yeah. >> And he told me he's like bro like >> cuz I was I was very much so myself in the content. That's what I want to talk about next is like the type of content that actually works and what you look for the signals. >> Yeah. >> But he's like this guy just came on the call and as soon as I showed the deck he was like no you don't have don't pitch me. >> Yeah. >> Like it's like he owed >> Yeah. >> It's like he owed us to like not take our time. which is like for anyone's on Instagram, they don't understand what that's like to have people just get on calls and just or like apologize for not showing up. >> Yeah. >> Like that only a YouTube lead will apologize because >> it's like, oh, they've already spent time with you in a YouTube video itself. So >> like again like obviously we talk about YouTube, but like >> what types of content or people have you seen to where it's like, okay, this content, you know, I might see a YouTuber do because some YouTubers actually don't make money at all. Mhm. >> I feel like a lot of like YouTube like addicts think everyone does. There's a lot of YouTube channels who don't make money, >> you know, and they'll have a lot of traffic. I've seen it myself. I go in, I'm like, "These are these are horrible." >> Mhm. >> So, how do you qualify like a good YouTube channel or like a good YouTube audience? >> Yeah. >> To like a bad one. So I think let's look at one of the in my opinion one of the best YouTube channels or one of the channels that's >> if they were to optimize to sell more they probably would make a killing and and they do uh like if you look at Hermosis right but like if you look at how much reach he has to business owners it's B2B >> so really you know qualified market the other thing is >> um the type of content he's making it's not lifestyle Yeah. >> It's not um it's it's all value. >> I had that on my notes. You said lifestyle content is dead. >> Yeah. I mean it's I I don't like not to drive like if it's it's just going to get you popular. >> Yeah. >> But I mean if you're telling me that I'm going to buy this thing or do this trip and I'm going to get this much like you're going to attract the people that want that, right? So I try to say the the people the reason why Hermoszi has so much success and he talks about this is he's been able to take complex topics. >> Yeah. >> And he's been able to boil them down into very simple stuff that any business owner can understand at the mass degree. >> Yeah. It's funny because that goes back to >> that's like copyrightiting his own. He talks about the fact that he just writes >> and then you were talking about buyer psychology which is like if you don't understand biocsychology you can't write to the right person. Exactly. >> At the end of the day, like an email is a letter. >> Yeah. >> It's like a personal letter that someone receives. If you don't understand who you're sending a letter to.

>> Last time we were on the phone, you were kind of like like going like a bit psych over AI and you were like, I'm taking like complete days. >> Yeah. >> To just learn about AI. >> Where do you like I think this leads back into where do you see the info space going? Where do you see AI going? like how's how seriously are you taking it >> and how are you imply like applying AI into your offers >> in like a a very efficient way. I mean I think the next thing and I think um what was that I think Y Combinator they did a study on it recently and the next kind of trillion dollar industry is like service-based agencies using AI right talks about it as well I think the opportunity vehicle right now is over the next one to two years maybe one year maybe even less >> if you're able to build a structure around that >> to do the same because where most agencies fell behind before was in order to scale to a certain degree you needed a human power and human resources to manage a hundred clients or however many people at like an enterprise level. Now to do that same level of work, you need a fraction of that headcount, right? And so if you can strategically build the systems, tracking, operations, agents >> to do those little mundane work, but you have the drivers >> because I don't I and that back to the thing. If you're a driver and you can drive a marketing department, operations department, growth department, sales, you will still need drivers to operate that vehicle and those agents, right? >> But if you're someone who's working on those mundane tasks aside from that, I think those are people that are going to get left behind. So for us, naturally, everyone on our team, it's like, what did you use AI for this week? Like what are like if there's a mundane task or something that takes hours of your time to do, why are we not working on actively making sure that we're taking the right measures to reduce the time it takes to do this task >> to, you know, go faster with less resource and less time, right? Um and ideally, I think the force function is let's just say we had 50 of our ICP clients, would we be able to handle the work right now? Absolutely not, right? And that's not also like a goal for us either. We we don't want to work with a bunch of people at that level at a partnership level. But it's like, okay, like what if, right? And it's like a forced function way of thinking that forces you to now like we're at this point and I think I finally got to this point now where I can trust my team enough >> to step away from the business for a couple days without being the operator who's like, "Oh man, I got to send an email for my client." Right. >> Yeah. And so that that all comes down to again you having a powerful team that knows that they have to use AI to keep driving the company forward but then also being you know led by that first. Yeah. >> I think AI will also like I'm I'm someone that forgets. >> Yeah. >> Right. And I think AI the one thing it does a lot is usually you need a lot of humans for them to consistently do the same task on a weekly basis to get the same output. But all they're doing is like a couple steps and it's like workflows. >> Yeah. >> So, I think it's like one thing that's super interesting is like it's made my life 10 times easier >> and I think it's allowing people that are more like visionaries who have the vision >> to get slowed down less by these simple like dumb processes like they're like P&Ls. >> Yeah. >> I just built like this system now where like >> I just get it. >> Before I used to have to go and put all these CSVs into these different place, >> MCP on cloud and I just get it. And like now I get more creative time. >> Exactly. >> So it's like for the people that are like more creative, visionary who are going to try like crazy stuff. Like >> I'm not saying this is crazy, but like this is the fifth podcast that I filmed this past week. It's like my fourth city and I can do that because things are more like >> process and automated, right? And so it's like >> I think naturally it's going to go there and anyone who doesn't adapt >> is the the speed of execution that you're going to be able to go compared to someone that's not using EI is insane. So it's like where do you see the space now going not only as an operator of the infospace itself but where do you see the whole info space going? You spoke about life selling again like being a thing like where do you see what's next and like what's the what are the most important decisions that someone has to make today if they don't want to be dead in like four or five years from now >> in a space like this distribution and relevancy is always going to be number one. >> Okay. So if you're someone who as a creator and as a brand can always get attention and stay relevant, >> it will be a very hard time to take you off the chessboard. So that's an edge that naturally you'd want to have. >> The other thing of like trends come and go, right? Like webinar funnels were a thing at a time, they disappeared,

Now they're back. Those things will will will happen. Yeah. But I think naturally, for example, offers, every single one of our offers right now have some sort of AI component to them.

Interesting. We optimize and change our offer almost every six to eight months, depending on who it is and what it is, but we're always evolving our offer for the future, right? Like for example, when we first started offers, it was just the same old course, community support. That's it. Weekly webinars, I guess, right? The second wave we added on top of that was with that plus software, right? The third layer we added that onto that was AI now, right? So like that always kept us different when it came to selling to people because our proposition compared to the rest of the market was always one step ahead. So I'm always thinking from a product and value exchange point of view, what can we do to separate us, right, from everyone else? So I I think there's a lot of opportunity there for people to just work on their offer. Like if you if you were to not touch anything on marketing, but you were just to go back to the basic fundamentals and make your offer really freaking good, the rest of the functions, even if they're done poorly, you'll still have a better outcome, right? So, I think it's the order of what things people work on. Some people will obsess about marketing and sales, and that's a rat race you're going to have to keep playing if your offer sucks, right? So, let me get the let me get the main thing sorted and make sure that that's bulletproof and then I'll work my way back into the marketing and sales and traffic and paid or organic YouTube, whatever.

So, I think that's the the bottom line is it's it's the most competitive I've ever seen it's been. So, back to your point about like the FBA owner you you knew. Yeah. I think it demands more from the creator if you don't already have the proof or credibility to back yourself up to continuously even the guys who've proven that they've done something or achieved something you have to keep proving yourself to the market to retain their attention right like if if you um are yelling about the success you had in 2021 imagine like I stopped doing what I do as an as operating we'd not be here today.

Well that for sure. Right. But like I'm not talking about personally I don't like to talk about wins from what we did last year. Talking about what we're doing now, right? And so like that keeps us like as a us as a business ahead of the game. But like that's the same thing you as a creator need to do is like what are you doing to continuously tell the market like no no no no I'm number one and I'm staying number one because when you're number one everyone wants to come down to take that territory from you. You're the target. You have the biggest target on your back. number two wants to come for you. Number three wants to come for you, right? And no one cares about them because you're number one. Yeah. Right. And so they have this underdog advantage. So if you're not protecting that territory with that mindset, you're going to lose. And I've seen it so many times. So I think to protect that, you keep what what got you here in the first place, right? Like that's that's that's something that you still have to keep part of your DNA. And the minute you lose that, people are going to have a harder time trusting you, buying from you, all of the above, right?

But look, look at I think the best example is demonstration in public and Hermoszi did that with a $100 million launch, right? He built the offer book, he built the leads book, and then um he built his last one, right? So when he went through that whole thing, he demonstrated how to build an offer, how to get leads, and he did all of that for the launch to his new and final book to the trilogy, right? But he did that, that was a demonstration that went on for three years straight where he showed up every day and he showed exactly how he's building great offers, how he's acquiring leads. Because in order for him to acquire leads, when he made the offer book, he didn't have a dominated YouTube presence or a social presence if you look back in time.

Mhm. It was when he launched the leads book, he took that part seriously because he needed to accredit everything that he talked about in the book to realtime success, right? And then the last book was about 100 million and the whole trilogy was so he needed to do a hundred million on that launch, right? But when you do that much, you know, proof publicly, it's hard to deny that you're someone that's hard to trust, right? So, even if you take one piece of what Hermosi has done, I think he's done the best to to accomplish that. And he's still going. He's not stopping. Imagine after that last book, he just stopped posting, right? The man posted 35,000 pieces of content. He's probably going to post more, right? And he's working on the next book already, right? So, it's like to play the game, you got to keep playing it. And I think a lot of people stop and and that's what leads them to not be right.

Okay. So, if you had to leave everyone in here with a single piece of advice, Yeah. what would that be? I I would tell anyone whether you're creator, operator, anyone in business to not get so swayed by what you're seeing online about because everyone online is showing the highlight of their life. And I think it's easy to get caught up, especially when you're on the comeup that you're behind and you're constantly going to feel like you're behind because of the way social media is portraying it. And use that as motivation, sure. But I think at the fundamental level, you want to focus on what is going to keep you around 10 years from now. I focused on skills from day one because I knew that was the one thing that would be hard to take away from me if everything else like you would if you were to leave me on the corner of the street with no name, no nothing, I have skills that I can walk into, not just in the info space, but any business. that that's the next thing for us is like how do you take these skills and you go into real businesses where you can build real equity.

But I wouldn't be able to do that if I didn't have the skills. You go into that with a massive advantage. And so I think it's fundamentally just stick to the core basics of like what's going to keep you around. And as long as you do that, you'll be here for a very long time. But all right guys, uh Ahmed Sadik for you. Thank you guys for yourself and yeah, thank you for coming on brother. make sure happen in like 24 hours. So yeah, that'll be it, guys. And then um we'll speak to you guys soon.