Transcription
You guys are blowing up right now. You guys are doing half a mil a month selling AI websites to local businesses.
I just believe as a beginner, you see all these videos online of even guys like you or me talking about oh, how we do half a million a month or $200,000 a month. And I think a lot of beginners don't start because they see these crazy numbers and it just seems so far out of reach.
How many clients do you guys have paying you right now?
1,300. Like, 1,296, so basically 1,300 clients, yeah.
How long have you been in business now?
About 2 and 1/2 years.
You started out this company by yourself, but now you have a business partner, right?
Yes. Oh, yeah.
So, what's the split? You're sales and marketing, he's operational?
Yes, exactly. So, yeah, we literally 10x'd in like a year.
Why do you think that is?
Because I
What did you do on a day-to-day basis? Did you just wake up and set some numbers for yourself? And where were you getting the leads?
Where I would get the leads, this is the craziest thing. So many tools that you can use to scrape leads off the internet. What I would rather do is unlimited leads, man. And then once you figure out how to run paid ads, dude, it's like creating a machine where you can put a dollar in and get $3 out. I'm such a big proponent of simplicity. If there's one key message I have, it's just simplicity. I don't think you understand, dude. We were literally at $100,000 a month only selling these two things and we got there.
I saw a recent clip that you put out that said your whole goal is to show people how to get to 5 to 10k a month as quickly as possible. Tell me about that.
Yeah, man. I just I totally number one, thank you for having me, but I just believe as a beginner, you see all these videos online of even guys like you or me talking about oh, how we do half a million a month or $200,000 a month. And I just remember being a beginner and being like, dude, what the hell? That just seems so unattainable. And I think a lot of beginners don't start because they see these crazy numbers and it just seems so far out of reach. So, I like to talk about, dude, if I can get my community or my members to 5 10,000 dollars a month, from there like they're going to be able to go off on their own and figure it out from there. But as far as the actual technical stuff, I truly believe it's okay. We need to do some kind of cold outreach cuz I'm assuming if you are watching this and you're a total beginner, you don't have money for paid ads. So, you could be doing cold calling, cold SMS, cold email. Number one, you have to have balls, right? Because you have to be able to reach out to people who don't know who you are and be like, "Hey, I have something to sell you." Um and then as soon as they do enough cold outreach, I would say as soon as their financial situation allows, start spending money on paid ads. So, that's kind of what I say to my people and I say uh for me personally, I did cold outreach to like $3 to $4,000 a month and then from there, I start running paid ads. And once you start running paid ads, it's significantly easier than cold outreach. I know you have experience with cold outreach as well. It's uh it's kind of like just chewing on broken glass. It's very, very brutal to do. So, that's my philosophy.
Well, cold outreach works especially in the beginning because you don't have any money for paid ads. So, yeah, I I mean, I totally agree. You need to generate some cash flow to in order to actually get things going, start running some paid ads. What would you recommend be the best, fastest method for somebody who is new to get their first paying customer?
Yeah. Um I would definitely say cold calling. And again, I get pushed back on that sometimes because cold calling is you you call it like you can call it like uh low motion or uh high effort and then like it's one-to-one, it's not one-to-many. But with cold calling, the majority of beginners, they're not good at sales. They're not good at talking on the phone. They're not good at talking about their product. So, with cold calling, you kind of get two birds with one stone. You could potentially get clients, but you also get good at selling, at talking about your product, objection handling, doing you you're stacking all these skills that you don't even know you're stacking while you're doing cold calls. It's kind of like I always think of that scene in The Karate Kid where he's having him put it put down his jacket, pick it back pick it back up and put it on. And then kids like, "Why the hell am I doing this pointless action?" And then, you know, three, four months later, he just all of a sudden knows how to fight. Right? So, you're just building so many skills with cold calling and that's why I think it's the number one thing for a total beginner with no sales experience to make money online. Once you get good, then you can start doing one-to-many. So, cold email, cold SMS, uh paid ads or something like that. But I just don't see anything that's as good as cold calls. And one more small thing with that is let's say you do cold email or you do cold SMS, you're still going to have to talk to these [ __ ] on the phone to sell them your [ __ ] right? So, uh regardless, you're going to have to talk to them face-to-face. With cold calling, you're already getting good at that process. So, uh yeah, big W for cold calling.
Yeah. And I get asked that all the time like what is what is the fastest way? And it really comes down to like the trust, right? Walking into a business, being able to shake hands with somebody, look them in the eye, build rapport that way. They're going to trust you uh much faster than sending them a DM or an email.
I actually hate that. We'll talk about that in a second.
Right. But, in person is the fastest way to build trust. On the phone is probably the next. Email below that. SMS below that. A lot of people don't want to make those phone calls though. They don't want to do cold calling. What's a good way for people to build confidence or get over that that fear of cold calling?
Yeah. Uh number one, don't be a [ __ ] um obviously. And then second, I would say do 100 cold calls. It's It's It's It's that simple, dude. Like my first cold call, I was so scared. I I had my buddy do it first and I saw him do it. I was like, "Fuck, like" And my first cold call, I'm shaking, palms are sweaty, mom's spaghetti. Like I'm stressing out, dude, like for real. And then I'm sitting there like, "Why am I scared to talk to a stranger on the internet? This is like crazy, right?" And 50 to 60 cold calls in, the fear is gone. But, like I would argue most beginners quit before they even do 20 cold calls. I bet you most people don't even do their first cold call. They [ __ ] sit around with their dick in their hand watching videos about how to cold call, watching videos about how to do it, reading books, blah blah blah, as opposed to sitting down, making 100 cold calls. And like, dude, if you're a beginner watching this, just do that. And like number one, the fear will go away and you'll be surprised how good you get after 100 conversations. But, mainly the fear is gone. That's what I noticed. On like call I don't know, call 10 or 20, the fear was just gone. And I'm talking like almost like anxiety attack. I was so scared to make these calls. Um and I'm thinking to myself like, "Dude, if I'm scared to do it, most other beginners probably are, too, right? Unless you're just a G and have ultimate confidence, which most beginners do not, you know?"
Right. And I think for a lot of people, having a good script, which I know you guys do, and we can talk about it in a second, but having that script, knowing what to stay or to say, and being able to just stick to that will help you build that confidence and not have to worry about like, "What am I going to say? How am I going to open the conversation? What am I going to sell?" Also, we're going to talk about what you guys are selling. Your script is big piece of what you've done, right? Tell me about that.
Yeah, so I actually don't believe everyone should just blindly look at my script and be like, "Hey, if if they're selling AI websites to contractors, like, I should just blindly copy this, right?" Uh, I tried a lot of other scripts before that one worked. It's kind of like fitting a puzzle piece into a puzzle, right? It's like certain scripts will work better for certain people depending on the personality. That's why I say like, "Dude, just go do 100 cold calls and see kind of how it flows, how you are, and then try my scripts." I know you have scripts as well, try your scripts. Uh, go on YouTube and try out different scripts and maybe do 50 to 100 cold calls with each script. Um, and just see like what flows naturally for you. I've tried I I watched your videos back in the day, I tried some of your scripts, they didn't work for me at all because it felt unnatural, right? And that being said, I'm sure your scripts have worked for hundreds of people, as well. It's just about the person doing it, right? Um, but as far as what our script actually is, it's it's so dumb. Um, but it works, right? It's literally just calling a local business and we call it the Julie Becker script, and it's like, "Hey Nick, um, super weird, my family friend, Julie Becker, gave me your number and said you guys do super high-quality work, but you don't have a website or anything like that, right?" And that gets past that first wall, and they're like, "Huh, Julie Becker, don't remember." If they ask any questions, I say, "I don't know, man, it's my mom's friend, but let's talk about that website." Right? Um, and again, if you are a little [ __ ] and you're like, "I don't want to lie and make up Julie Becker," you can just go to their Google profile and look at their reviews and just find a random review and say, "Hey, this guy said you did super good work, but you don't have a website." And that gets them that gets past that first barrier, and I know you know this, but cold outreach, if you can just get into conversation and just let them not hang up on you instantly, you've kind of already won, you know? So, that's our script, um but again, dude, there's so many different scripts. Try a bunch of them and see what works for you.
Right. Yeah, the the script, I mean, make it fit for your voice. The email template, people say like, "I've sent thousands of this email template, it doesn't work." Make it fit for you, you know, adjust it for your list. I think a big piece of being successful with cold calling is the list and the leads that you're calling. I mean, you've sold How many clients do you guys have paying you right now?
1,300. Like, 1,296, so basically 1,300 clients, yeah.
So, a lot.
That's a lot. That's a That's a lot of clients to manage.
You have like 40.
40 clients, a lot a lot less to manage. I mean, there's So, you've made that call You've made that that script an essential piece of what you're doing. You've made that same call through that script and closed all those deals, basically?
No, no, no. A lot of that came from paid ads. Uh my first probably 20 to 30 clients were through cold calls.
Mhm.
Um so, I used that script to do that. Friend of mine was like, "Dude, doing cold calling and cold outreach, like, you can't I don't care what people say, you cannot scale a business to multiple six, seven figures just relying on cold outreach. It's very rare. People have done it, but they built teams around it. Um if it's just you, like, you have to do some form of warm inbound, meaning some kind of paid ads, or you have to have people coming to you.
Search engine optimization.
Exactly.
AI search optimization.
Exactly. And lastly, another reason I love cold calls, it's like training in high high elevation. You go for a run at 10,000 ft. 10,000 ft, you're probably dead. But, if you go for a run high elevation, then you go for a run on normal ground, you're going to be better, right? The breathing's going to be easier, the workout's going to seem easier. So, when you get good at cold calls, and then you switch over to paid ads, it's so much easier because you you've trained and and you've done all this [ __ ] with cold calling, which is way harder than paid ads. So, when someone picks up the phone and calls you, they know what you do, they know what you charge, and they're interested in your product, it's like it's a walk in the park for you, cuz you've been over here you're cold calls this whole time, which is 100 times harder. So, that's why I love cold calls. It's just everything about cold calls, number one, I don't actually love them, but for beginners, it is the best thing you can do to get good quickly and get your first client. My personal opinion.
Yeah, and cold calls with emails, with going in person, all those things together work even better than just the calls, right? Having that multiple approach, different touch points. I mean, for us in our agency, we do we do search engine optimization, so we rank high, people come to us, but we do a lot of the outbound cold calls as well. Um we run ads, so we retarget people to visit the site. I feel like all those things together, don't you agree, kind of really help you with your conversion?
Agree and disagree. Um I obviously completely agree for someone like you at your level. Again, I think it's probably the biggest mistake to tell someone who's never got a client, "Hey, you should send 50 DMs, you should make 50 cold calls, you should do 50 cold DMs, 50 emails."
I totally agree. I'm not I'm not saying start out of the gate doing all these things, yeah. Uh incrementally add those things in as you get some traction.
Completely agree, yes.
Yeah. Okay, so you started out doing these cold calls. Uh you got your first 20 clients through cold calling?
20, 30 clients. I got to like 4K at three or 4K a month, whatever that is, at someone 97, 197, a couple on 297.
Tell me what you're selling.
Yeah, so we're basically just selling AI websites to contractors. Um
So, contractors, only contractors, is all you work with?
Yeah, so it could be anywhere
you started out in that niche.
Yeah, it could be anywhere from a dog groomer to a handyman to a plumber to an electrician, but essentially we just copy-paste the same exact system and sell it to all of them, right? We sell websites, we'll add an AI chatbot to their website, uh we'll do some basic Google SEO, and we'll help them get Google reviews. And again, till like $100,000 a month, we literally sold Google reviews and websites. That was it, which that's all we did, that was our only offer, we had no upsells or anything like that. It was just we knew this was working and this offer was doing well, so we just continued to scale it. And it's like $100,000 a month is a lot of money for just selling websites, right? So, it just goes back to kind of my whole thought process is how simple can we keep it, especially for beginners. Um and beginners always think like it's saturated like there's no way someone pay for websites, all this stuff. It's like, man, they will. And people are always going to need websites and local businesses are always going to need help with marketing. And they don't even have the time to set up for themselves. So, it's just like I think it's a never-ending goldmine, honestly. I don't even think the word saturated is even should even be in a beginner's vocabulary, to be honest with you.
Yeah. And I actually really love the leading with the websites. I saw a stat recently that said there were 28% of the businesses in the United States that don't have a website.
I think it's even higher, but yeah.
But so like let's just call it a third, right? A third of the businesses in the United States that don't have a website. That's a freaking huge number. And also, in addition to that, websites have a shelf life. You know, what was created 5 years ago looks outdated today. So, all the people that do have websites are going to need new websites. Having that type of foot in the door offer with, you know, your scripts, calling people, letting them know, asking them if they even have a website. I think it's a great a great way to get their attention and start the conversation. So, you're selling a AI website package for $300 a month. That's it. There's nothing else included with that?
That's what it was for a long time. I think we added up added up sells and around 150. I don't remember where, but like we barely had any up sells up until like a very very far point. We just knew that the $300 297 was working. And I again, like I'm such a big proponent of simplicity. If there's one key message I have, it's just simplicity. And like I always use that reference of I don't think you understand dude. We were literally at $100,000 a month only selling these two things, website and Google reviews, and we got there. Right? Because as a beginner, you come and you see guys like you or even me at this point and you're like, well [ __ ] now they're selling all this different stuff. They have all these up sells, cross sells, yada yada yada. It's like, yes, we do now. You do. I do. Cuz you obviously have your own successful agency as well. But that's not how it started. How it started was just super simple things because as a beginner, you need to sell one thing and you just need to get good at the process. Just as many reps at bat as you can possibly have, um I I think is the key. So, again, I love I love upsells and and cross-sells and doing all this extra stuff, but it's like I like to just put that in people's mind. $100,000 a month selling a $297 website and Google reviews. Like, period. Full stop. Uh I I just I always like people to understand and like have that vision of like how simple that really is, you know?
That is very simple. It's like completely productized. I mean, very easy to scale. Clearly, you guys have thousands of clients paying you per month. So, I want to jump back to your your kind of journey, your hero's journey of success, because, you know, going from How long have you been in business now?
About 2 and 1/2 years.
2 and 1/2 years. That's
more, yeah.
insane insane at the growth that you've had. So, you were getting clients cold calling until around 20-30 clients. What did you do on a day-to-day basis? Did you just wake up and set some numbers for yourself? I'm going to make 50 calls. And where were you getting the leads?
Yeah, two great questions. Uh I I don't I never really set numbers at all. I kind of thought that was stupid. Um I just kind of woke up and I just took daily actions, which
So, you're exhausted?
Yeah. [laughter]
Literally to exhaustion?
Literally. But, yeah, man, for probably 8 hours a day. And where I would get the leads, this is the craziest thing. There's all these tools you can use. Outscraper, uh scrape god, uh and then uh whatever. So many tools that you can use to scrape leads off the internet. What I would rather do is hire a virtual assistant for three or four dollars an hour and have her go and manually put leads into a spreadsheet for me. So, I can literally curate the list perfectly. Be like, "Hey, I want businesses." And I'm sure you can do this with scrapers as well, but scrapers give you a lot of dead phone numbers, out of business. There's a lot of [ __ ] with it if you don't clean the list. So, you can hire a virtual assistant. You can get a list of 100 leads for like five bucks, right? And hey, I want businesses between five and 25 Google reviews with no website. Or I want businesses with 20 or less Google reviews with a website that doesn't work, even better. Or a website that looks like [ __ ] even better than that. So, I have this very targeted curated list, and I would just sit there every morning and just go through the list and call and call and call and call. Um so, I would hire a virtual assistant. I think that's the best thing to do if you're starting out with cold calls. Don't use Outscraper. Don't use a scraping tool. Hire a VA. It'll cost you 10 bucks for 200 leads. Call that and then repeat. Literally, that's what I did for months. Months and months and months. Yeah.
I mean, what was your expectation? You would tell them like, "Give me 1,000 leads this week." How many calls How many leads would you need to
I never got through the list. Cuz if you have a You can You can You can hire a VA and be like, "Hey, I want you to do this exact thing for 10 hours." Uh what is that? 10 * 5? Is that 500 bucks? Ish? Um whatever it is. And you have thousands of thousands of leads, right? 500 bucks to have an unlimited list that you can just continue to call for it. Like, you're never going to That That list is going to take you so long to work your way through. So, I would just have little notes in the spreadsheet. I'd pick up each day where I left off and then just call. And I literally So, I'm [ __ ] so stupid. I literally used my phone. I didn't even use a dialer, right? Now, you have dialers you could put that list into and just get, you know, 10 times the conversations. So, I did it the most brain-dead get away you could ever do it. And I it was just pure volume and and pure uh swings at bat, right? By the end of the cold calling, like, man, I swear to god, I could sell someone if I was in a [ __ ] coma. Like, I knew the script so well and what they were going to say before they were going to say it. Like, I just had so many reps um that it was like almost unreasonable that I wouldn't start getting clients, right? And my goal was one client a week from cold calling. And I thought to myself, if I can get one client a week for a year straight, I can get to like $10,000 a month, right? And I was only selling uh I started with a $97 website. That was like what I started with. Um and yeah, that was like the almost autistic mindset I had. It was like, "I will do this every day for a year and maybe get to $10,000 a month." Obviously, things changed as I got more experience, but that was the original uh That was the original thought process.
Nice. I think that's super approachable. I mean, especially the price point. 97, 297. If you're trying to cold call somebody and sell them $5,000, you know, for their SEO campaign or Google Ad campaign, that's definitely not going to work. They're not going to trust you. They're not going to um um you're not going to have any authority with them. They don't even know who you are. So, you started really taking off at some point, 20, 30 clients, like you said, you're you've only been in business in 2 years now, and you started out this company by yourself, but now you have a business partner, right?
Yes, Michael, yeah. And boy, I love him.
So, what's the split? You're sales and marketing, he's operational?
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Mike had his own company up until he scaled his to like 15k a month. I had mine at like 30, 35. And then we just decided to partner, put the commission or put all the money together. And then I was like, "Hey, I'm front end, he's basically back end." Right? I'm right hook, he's left jab. That's literally it. Wait, that doesn't make sense.
How long ago did that happen?
Um about 2 years ago. I would say we partnered about 6 months into the business, 8 months.
Oh, wow, very quick.
Yeah, actually Wait, that's a complete that's I almost almost I guess 13 months ago, actually. Uh so, yeah, we literally 10x'd in like a year. It's crazy. Once we came together, dude, we just went we just went off.
Why do you think that is?
Because I was [ __ ] at operations and he was [ __ ] at sales and marketing.
Right. So, you both have your skill sets, and now you get to stay in your own lane and do those things really well.
Like yin and yang, right? And again, but the key there is cuz I get asked this question all the time, like, "Should I get a business partner?" Me and Mike both had successful companies before this. Like, he was doing 15k, I was doing 30-ish. And the thing is, we would have been successful without each other. We just knew that, you know, we could probably get farther together. Um and I think it's very important to probably at the start not have a business partner, I would say. Unless you have someone with a completely unique skill set to yourself. Uh otherwise, I think you have to do it yourself, cuz I always had respect um with Mike, and he always respected me, cuz I was like, "Bro, I know you've been through the same [ __ ] I know you have the same systems as me. We're selling the same thing." Like, he knew I could do it without him, and I knew he could do it without me. So, there was a very uh like a lot of mutual respect there. And uh yeah, man, it's probably been the best decision I've ever made in my life, honestly, was partnering with him.
You guys had no idea who each other were. Like, you don't have 5 years of history. You just You were like part of some group together and you guys were recommended to work together. So, there's a lot of trust there. How did that
Yeah, that's a great question. Michael actually slid in my DM and he was like, "Dude." He was like He was like, "Man, like I see you're so success- successful and you're getting all these clients. Like, can you teach me?"
have a screenshot of it?
Oh, I have a screenshot. In the description below. Uh but no, he didn't say exactly that, but he did He was like, "Hey man, I saw you're doing cold calls. Like, I'm doing cold calls. Can you help me with my script?"
Mhm.
So, we got on a call, started talking. I realized like, "Dude, this dude's a freaking legend at automation back-end stuff." He's like a little Elon Musk, right? And he kind of realized He was like, "Damn, Kai's really good at marketing and sales." So, we always knew like that's what he was good at, that's what I was good at. So, I would help him with marketing and sales. He would help me with automations. And then I basically flew his ass out to Hawaii like an Instagram girlfriend. And I was like, "Hey man, you're coming to Hawaii. We're going to lock in and build our company side by side together." And then we did that for a long time. He saw a lot of success, so did I. And then eventually it just kind of made sense to partner. We were like, it was kind of like a no-brainer. You're good at this, I'm good at this. Why don't we just come together? And then since then now we've just been abs- Like again, best decision I've ever made.
But fundamentally, the business is still the same regardless if you have the partner. You're still selling the same product. Uh you just have somebody else helping you with the fulfillment operations. That's his kind of department. You're still the sales and marketing. So, now you have more time to do the sales and marketing. That allows him to do what he does with fulfillment better. At some point, now you guys are selling this same service. You really started to ramp things up. So, walk me through what happened to go from What were you at? 20, 30k a month to
Yeah, we we went from 50,000 When we combined companies, we were about 40 or 50,000. And then um
Selling $300 websites.
Yeah.
Crazy.
We got to 100,000 just doing that. And then we got a sales team and all that stuff. And then yeah, I think a year later it's been like a little over a year, I think, we're at almost half a million. Um so, yeah, dude, freaking crazy.
And I I guess we have to give credit to GoHighLevel, right? GoHighLevel being the platform that you've built your business on selling these $300 AI websites. And that really
That's the key.
Yeah.
Yeah, cuz it GoHighLevel allows you to copy-paste a product and resell it over and over again. And I always wanted a lifestyle business, and I saw As soon as I saw GoHighLevel, I was like, "So, I can build out I can basically build out a whole software and not know how to code. I don't know [ __ ] about software. But I can essentially build out a whole software and a whole system and then copy-paste that exact same system to everyone, right?" And I always knew whatever I was going to sell for $300 a month, it had to be copy and paste. I couldn't be doing all this custom stuff. I couldn't be doing their email marketing, walking their dog, doing their social media, being their therapist. I had to be like, "Hey, man, we're going to build you a website, help you get Google reviews. It's going to be the same copy-paste template. Do you want me to change the wording? We can customize it to your business within reason." And just copy-paste that to every single person. So, at that point, it's like, "Cool, our product is is templateized. All we have to do is do sales and marketing." How much energy, how much time can we spend in sales and marketing and just get as many clients through the door as humanly possible? And if we get, like we're doing now, two or 300 people in the door every month, now we can cherry-pick those people and be like, "Hey, we can also upsell those people to paid ads or upsell SEO or upsell more services." Because now we have so much volume coming in the door, we can just cherry-pick who we know is going to do well and charge them a [ __ ] ton more money. So, it's always been about high volume. Um just as a beginner, it's like, "Hey, I just need to get the reps in. I need to learn how to sell. I need to learn how to build a product. I need to learn how to onboard." Um so, that that was the key, and GoHighLevel allows you to all that stuff so simply. It's um Yeah, obviously I'm I'm an affiliate, so are you, but fantastic software, dude. 10 out of 10.
Yeah. What I think is crazy is that you've taken a lower-ticket product, and you've essentially made that the business. Like, that $300 per month AI website has taken you to thousands of clients, half a million a month in revenue without even a back end, essentially, right? Do you have a back end at this point?
We're working on it, coach. We're working on it. We're working on it. We're not We're not all as We don't have We don't have your level of I guess back end skills, right? Like me and Mike are understand like we're groms. We're very new to the space.
No, but I think that's amazing. It's so much There's so much potential there. You have all these people that already know, like, and trust you. They like your products. It's really the next logical step to everything you're already doing that you already know. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But, I mean I would expect you guys like I saw the podcast with Mike. He wants to hit a million a month. I mean, that's the way to do it, right? Just
Upsell your clients.
Get a back end into this low-ticket product line that you have. And um your conversions for sales in that point is going to be massive cuz they already like you guys.
That's exactly what we're trying to do right now. It It only took us the, you know, $500,000 a month to realize, "Huh, maybe we really have some more stuff to sell them, right?" We actually lost a lot of clients before we realized we had need to have a back end, right? Um and again, like I I think it's cool for again, if if a beginner's watching this, I just I hate I just remember so vividly being a beginner and people talking about all this crazy [ __ ] they were doing. I'm like, "Bro, there's just no way I can do that." So, my dumb ass was like, "Websites, I can do that, right? Local businesses need websites." So, I just like I don't know. I just I love all the upsells and the cross-sells. I just don't think they matter that much for someone who's like brand new, you know? For someone like you who already has an established agency and me now, like I mean, dude, us getting to 100 200k a month before we even knew what an upsell was, like that's crazy. Like we literally like knew what an upsell was, but we we just never did it. Um so, yeah, man. I mean, I think upsells are the route to a million dollars a month. Uh but we I mean, we'll see how it goes. I'm sure we're going to run into a a [ __ ] ton of roadblocks with that as well, but we'll figure it out as as the punches come, as always.
Yeah. Well, you definitely have a lower barrier to entry with the lower ticket stuff. Like people are going to say yes. I mean, again, I said this already, definitely don't want to sell thousands of dollars worth of stuff coming out of the gate. So, um you were able to take this productized low-ticket service from cold calling and bringing in lots of customers regularly, predictably. Did you have other sales people help you?
No, dude. It was just me doing cold calls. And again, like I think it's cold calls until you have the money to spend on paid ads. And once you switch that from cold outbound to warm inbound, somebody somebody coming to you, you're just going to scale to the moon because it's so much easier to do warm inbound than to than do cold outreach. So, I just I think that's the strat. And I you have hundreds of students as well, so do I, but it's like across the board, that's what I've seen work the most. Literally that.
But what about for the people that say running paid ads, Facebook ads, Google ads too techy, too technical, too difficult to do? Who runs your ads?
Yeah, I'm a [ __ ] idiot. I figured it out.
[laughter]
I figured that [ __ ] out from scratch, dude.
That was That was an underhand softball for me.
Oh my god.
And And no, I'm genuinely curious about this. I was telling you earlier, this is pretty much the reason I wanted to have this conversation was to talk about what your ad campaign is because I believe that is You know, you went from cold calling to bringing in all these clients, and now you're scaling. You're scaling with with ads. The great thing about ads is you can turn an ad campaign on tomorrow and have people raising their hand and reaching out to you.
100%, dude. I think it's And this is the I remember I had my best friend leader, who's also doing what we're doing as well, but
Also my boy, right?
Also my boy. Yeah, shout out leader if you're watching. But I remember when I was starting to learn Facebook ads. And you cuz you said too techy, right? And I had that exact same thought. And I remember like like starting to learn about it. I was like, I don't want to do it. I'm going to keep cold calling. And he just looked at me. He's like, dude, like paid ads I think is just like a mountain. And like there's no way around this [ __ ] Like you're just going to have to start climbing. And then And then that day I was like, he's 100% right. Like launched my my first ad in like 6 hours, 7 hours. Complete [ __ ] Automation didn't work. Tracking was wrong, but I went through the process. I was spending like five bucks a day. But I learned the technical steps to do it. And here's the thing, bro, like there's no way around it. Like you're going to have to sit down and it's not that complicated. Like I'm not a tech guy and I learned it. And then once you figure out how to run paid ads, dude, it's like creating a machine where you can put a dollar in and get $3 out, right? It's like that's a no-brainer. I just want to stuff as many dollars in that [ __ ] as possible and get it out and then scale the company, right?
It's funny you said that about like the mountain thing or he said that because I feel like I have been at different times in my career at the bottom of that mountain looking up. And it usually always is, I mean paid ads are common theme, um but it's always with a skill, you know, like I wasn't good at sales either, but I was at the bottom of the mountain, figured out how to do the sales. Always at the bottom of the mountain. So, it's funny he said that cuz I definitely have that metaphor in my mind, especially yeah, especially with paid ads specifically because I actually do think that running paid ads for most people is too difficult. So, how have you cracked the code and figured out like what is the stupid simple method that somebody could use to get a Facebook ad set up tonight with a small budget to get some leads coming in?
Yeah, I mean number one, an image ad, literally this simple. Contractors, $297
have a niche? Does it have to be niche specific?
Doesn't have to. Small busi- Small businesses, $297 a month, get more jobs. Click below to learn more. That's the simplest [ __ ] ad I could ever give someone that like by the way, we ran that exact same ad. We had like a 2.0 ROAS for months on it. Died. But like we ran that exact ad. It was contractors, get more jobs, $297 a month. It was red, white, and blue.
price on the image.
Yes. So, that's funny you said that. Everyone told me never to include your price in the ad, right? Um as always, I was like, "Suck my balls. I'm going to do what I want." Um so, I included my price in the ad and it just popped off, right? Like some of my first ads because it was so straightforward. It was like contractors, we charge $197 a month. Here's exactly what we do. If that sounds good to you, click below. It was just so straightforward and at that time, almost nobody was including their price in their ads. So, I think that was really, really, really good. And then again, know your niche, bro. I'm working with contractors. They love straightforwardness. You have to be polarizing. I've gotten a contractor saying, "We'll never work with you cuz your CEO is so unprofessional and like flagrant and he says all this crazy shit." Me, exactly. And I'm like, "Okay, yes." Seeing my ads, exactly. And even my videos and all this stuff to do with with our business, I would still rather that because I'm polarizing. And contractors love polarization. And contractors get hit up so much by marketing agencies. It's like you have to do something to stand out. And so yeah, that was the paid ads strategy, just stupid, stupid simple. Get more jobs, $297 a month, click below. Who are you Who are you showing that to? Like your targeting? Are you Are you getting really kind of in the the details of I don't even know how to target someone on Facebook. You just put United States, go. Actually, you know what? I think we just have it all. Yeah, we just completely chat approach that [ __ ] Yeah. Have you seen it? There's like There's like the Virgin Media There's like the Virgin Media buyer who's like, "How do I get a How do I add a .2 CTR to this [ __ ] ad?" And then there's like the chat approach where it's like, "Open targeting, no split test, just rip." Honestly, I I've also been following that model for a long time because beyond that, it's it's beyond me to be completely up front, you know? And and I know there are people that are really good at running paid ads, you know? And funneling people into their business, getting into the technical you know, Alex Becker for example was a guy that he People don't really know this, but his career really like hinged on his ability to run ads. And even now it is with with Hyros, you know? He's like he's a freaking black belt media buyer. People don't even know that about him, really. It's never been easier to run paid ads than it is right now. And that's the point that that I'm trying to make, too, is like an ad Ads are easier than ever to make, right? You have AI. You could take that template that that have and use something like Higgsfield or, you know, whatever nano banana, make me 25 versions of this, enhance it for Facebook ads. You could have unlimited creatives. Do you do that?
No.
[laughter]
Do we Mike, do we do that? I don't know. So, Mike gives you your creatives now?
Mike has a whole weird nerd system now on the back end where it's like
Images Well, you shoot videos.
I I just film the [ __ ] I look pretty on camera and I'm like, "Yo, Mike, figure it out." He does it.
How much are you guys spending
Too much.
a month?
Uh anywhere from 100 to 150 grand a month in paid ads. Yeah.
Okay. Uh something So, I want to talk about that profit margin in a second, but something you said about your ads that I think is interesting is, okay, definitely you have some something to do with your your niche there, you know, you're targeting contractors, you're being upfront, you're being um polarizing, whatever. So, that that definitely to me seems like there's a piece helping you with that, but that $299 price point on there I know why people say don't add your pricing there, and it's because most people don't buy a marketing service like they do a pair of shoes, you know, like an e-commerce product, you know, uh a ser- like Google Ads or website, usually you want to talk to somebody. So, putting your ad there, putting the the price point upfront, are people going to that ad and buying, or do you have to actually talk to them from the ads?
Yeah, great question. You're going to have to I'm sorry to break this to you if you're a beginner watching this, you're going to have to talk to these [ __ ] There's no way around it, dude.
Well, it's totally different if they're reaching out to you, though.
It is. It's way easier, dude. But, we've we've tried it and I I've never I've not seen somebody crack a low-ticket model running paid ads uh that's able to get somebody straight to a checkout page. Like, you're going to have to call them. You're going to have to do a strategy
reason, right? It's it's not an e-commerce pro- People just don't buy it that way. But, but what I wanted to say is I think it's interesting that you put your price there where it it
deflates the risk for them to get on that call, 'cause they know what you're going to try to sell them. And that price point is like, they're like, "Uh, I'm on lunch. I'm just building this house. I'll get on this call with this guy and see what he says. I hate my website guy. I can't get a hold of him. That's like normally the thing that they they experience, right?"
So, man, that's that's interesting. You think that model showing the price would go, would work in other industries? Do you know anybody else using that?
>> No idea. I mean, I I think again, me and Mike kind of pioneered the whole low-ticket thing. I mean, there were people doing it, but it's like everyone told us it wouldn't work. Like all the advice I heard was run paid ads, charge more money. And I just had this vision of this lifestyle business with, for whatever reason, it was just a 100 paying me $100 a month and that's 10k a month. And I thought to myself, as a beginner, I want a lifestyle business. I want to be able to go do whatever I want, live wherever I want. And I could probably do that with $10,000 a month profit a month. And I always had that low-ticket recurring revenue. I didn't want to be anyone's [ __ ].
So, it's like if you have 100 clients, right? And one of them is acting a fool, it's like, "Hey, man. Sorry, we this is not going to work. We have to let you go." If you have a $10,000 a month business and you have two clients paying you $5,000 a month, if you lose one of those clients, half your business is gone overnight. So, you're essentially just a glorified employee and their [ __ ]. They say jump, you have to say how high. And I just never wanted to be in that in that position, which is funny. I'm sure we'll have this conversation. You actually sell higher-ticket stuff. So, we'll talk about that, I'm sure, later 'cause I'm sure me and you will have some healthy disagreements on which model's better.
>> No, I yes, I I agree. I mean, like they call that concentration risk, right? Where you have one client taking the majority of your income or your revenue or one thing or one sale or one channel. And and I totally agree. Like I I would never want that as well. And and for the record, like yes, I sell expensive stuff. Um I'm more of like, yeah, I would like to have people paying me, you know, 50 clients paying me 5,000 as opposed to 1,000 clients or whatever the math is.
>> is, yeah.
>> It's like, "No, we're not going to We're not going to [laughter] do that, guys." Um but I don't want to deal with that many clients, you know? Same same as you, it's a lifestyle business for me. And what Both models work, you know? It's just comes down to whatever you want in your life and how it looks. Um but the point I was trying to make is I don't start out by selling people of things for $5,000 or $10,000. I start out by selling giving them something for free or, you know, giving them a free website or selling them a giving them a free website, just pay hosting. And at that point, now you can say, "By the way, and this is, you know, why I'm saying this to you about the upsell process is it always is the next logical step. You have a website, let's bring some traffic to it. Let's optimize your Google Business Profile. Let's Let's give it some reviews. Let's post your social media." Again, all things that you can pretty much do through HighLevel, which is Shout out to HighLevel for making it simple for that.
>> And they already know like and trust you, which is the biggest point of what we're saying is like they already they already are paying you money. It's so much easier to get someone who's already paying you money to pay you more money than just get a stranger to pay you a [ __ ] ton of money up front. So, I completely agree with you.
>> Totally. So, I want I want to reel it back into the the Facebook ad campaign 'cause I said I want stupid simple ad campaign that anybody can set up. And I do believe that that's pretty straightforward, right? You have an ad, very simple uh low price point websites, no targeting, turn that on. What's the daily budget that somebody should put on there in the beginning when they don't have a ton of money to get going? And then talk about increasing the budget. And are you profitable from day one? Does it take a week? Does it take 2 weeks? And you said you do have to get on the phone, right?
>> Yes. Yeah.
>> But they're But they're basically much easier than the cold calls.
>> Yes, so much dude. So much. The first time I got a call from a warm from a Facebook uh ad, I was like, "Holy [ __ ] like this I was like, Do you know who I am? Like Like is this real?" Like I thought I was being pranked by someone. I was like, "Holy shit." And I closed that guy that day. Um but yeah, dude, it will take you 1 day to figure out Facebook ads and launch. I used to say I would want people to have a couple thousand dollars saved up. I've since then come to terms with the fact that I think that they should just do that [ __ ] as soon as possible, even if they can only spend $5 a day. The reason for that is not necessarily they're going to blow up and get clients, but I know for a fact if someone's spending five bucks a day and they start getting a couple leads and then they start closing on those leads, they're going to be like, "Why am I only spending five bucks a day? Let's spend 10. Let's spend 20. Let's spend 30." So, I used to teach and say have a couple grand saved up to do that. Uh now I would say, "Dude, if you have a couple hundred bucks, get your ass on the Facebook platform, learn all the details, learn the tech stuff, learn the buttons, learn how to do the tracking." Uh 'cause it is a little techy, right? Um again, it's not complicated. You can for sure do it. There's so many freaking videos online with how to do it. If you can spend $5 a day on paid ads, get your ass on the platform and learn how to do it. That would be my advice. So, I would say start today.
>> So, what kind of lead flow can they can they expect from $5 a day?
>> Yeah, you'll probably get um not that much, to be honest with you.
>> Yeah, I mean, you're not you're doing $5 a day, but like
>> maybe a lead a day, if that, probably way less.
>> Okay. But, yeah, you get a lead a day. You have nothing going on. You're going to treat that lead like
>> the holy grail, dude.
>> the most beautiful woman in the world, right? You're going to go look out You're going to Facebook stalk her, you're going to go on Instagram, you're going to be like, "Wow, I can do all these things to help you." So, when you do reach out, you have all these things that you can help them with. So,
>> And they already know who you are 'cause they signed up for your for your thing, right? They they They you're not you're not a stranger then. And like that first that first switch between a cold call and a warm lead, a cold lead and a warm lead, dude, night and day difference. Absolutely insane. And and then from there you know the buttons. And if you mess up, you're spending five bucks a day, you're not spending 500. So, it's like you have so much room for errors. And then it's like now you're climbing the mountain. Now you know how Facebook ads work. Now you know the buttons. Now when you watch videos about Facebook ads on YouTube, you're not a [ __ ] idiot. You actually know, "Huh, I've seen that button before on the Facebook ad manager." Right? 'Cause I watched all these videos on ads before I ever had run an ad. And it just confused the [ __ ] out of me. Same thing like that was the same mistake I said not to make earlier. That's like I know I need to cold call, let me go read a hundred books on how to cold call as opposed to just cold calling. Right? So, the same exact thing with ads. People watch all these videos on how to do ads. Bro, go in there, click the button, spend $5 a day, and figure it out. And then just go from there. It's a mountain you might as well start climbing.
>> Yeah, I remember when I was getting started, I had started optimizing my website for Google. So, the moment I had actual lead flow coming in, it wasn't from paid ads, which you know, I was I didn't even have the budget to to do that, right? We're talking about 5 hours a day, pretty much didn't even have that. So, I was more learning the skills to get on Google and figure out how to make my website show up for people looking for that. But, the moment I had people actually coming in, getting on the phone, is when I noticed my skill level, it just completely changed, right? Like, my skill level for talking on the phone, for figuring out what I wanted to sell, how to price point, what my price point was, what the what things to say to actually get somebody to to buy, right? And all that stuff was then added to my website, added to my social media. So, I I totally agree, like, there's something to be said for getting out there and just doing something, generating some sort of activity, even if it's a $5 budget, even if it's just investing a little bit of time to you know, get a Google business profile, set your own website up, learn how to make yourself appear in Google search, because that's something that you will add value to another business and then charge a fee in the process.
>> 100%, dude. I mean, across the board, like, if there's one thing I can say to beginners, like, the most valuable thing you can do is just take raw action. Like, every single day, just do a thing. And like, I know that sounds very woo-woo, like, what does that actually mean? But, it's like, okay, if you sit and watch this podcast and and you hear me or you say, "Dude, we sell websites and we did cold calls." Bro, just spend a day learning a little bit about GoHighLevel, learning about websites. The next day, pick up the phone and just dial something. That's what they've done. They've just seen something, they've turned off their brain, and they're just like, "Okay, I'm going to go try this." Monkey see, monkey do. And that's what I still do to this day, which is why my YouTube started doing well. I took your advice, I took Pavel's advice, didn't question it. I I like, "Hey, they're telling me to do this. I'm just going to start making YouTube videos." And now my YouTube is has done very well. But like the level of thought and planning that went into it was almost zero. It was like, "I know these guys are successful. They're my friends. Like I talked to them. Therefore, I know that I can do it, too. I'm going to ask them for a little bit of advice, and then I'm just going to go do the thing." And I I learned so much by just making videos that if you look at my first YouTube video, and I'm sure you could probably relate to this, first your most recent one, you're so much better, right? Just by doing the thing. So, yeah, man. Just take action.
>> Well, I think one of the most important pieces that you just glossed over was you're getting information from people that you could actually trust. You know, there's a lot of bad information out there. I mean, there's a lot of shiny objects out there. You had the luxury of running into, meeting, knowing people in your network, your circle of saying like, "Okay, I know these guys. They're clearly doing it. They're putting me on to this. I am going to, with blind faith, um follow their instructions." And so, not everybody has that luxury, but fortunately for anybody watching this, I will put links to both of our courses, communities. You guys can make decision whenever you want. Kai is obviously specialized in his low-ticket marketing agency. I'm more of a value ladder type person, walking people from low ticket to higher price services. Okay, so we were talking about the Facebook ads, super simple way to do that. $5 a day will get you some leads that'll churn up the waters, that'll give you some activity where you can get your chops, right? Practice some sales, practice running some ads. And delivering the fulfillment, as you said in your model, is very simple because you essentially let the software do it for you. You can How long does it take you to set up a website for one of these businesses?
>> I don't know, dude. Now, 20 minutes, probably. But like again, we were paying virtual assistants. We'd give them uh again, if you're a beginner, you can hire a project-based virtual assistant to do everything for you. Costs you $40. And you only pay them than you get a client. So, it's like the I always tell people, dude, the second you can stop pressing buttons and just have the product literally built for you in a couple hours, do it. Right? Because what's your only goal then? How do I do more sales and marketing? How do I do more cold calls? How do I learn how to get people to buy my stuff? That is all you should be focusing on for the first year, literally, maybe even 2 years. That's what's great about GoHighLevel. They've given us the opportunity to have a copy-paste product that we don't have to think about. And the thing is, you don't even have to [ __ ] guess if it's valuable, bro. You've done it. I've done it. Like, obviously small businesses will pay for this [ __ ] So, just copy that, literally.
>> Yeah, one of the I mean, there are a lot of things that I like about it, obviously. I'm a big proponent of it, too. But, so many people there are so many AI tools out there. So many tools out there. There are so many things to watch. What I like about GoHighLevel is they are there's there's three founders, right? There's like the visionary CEO, you got the tech guy, then you got the actual like marketing agency guy. And they're all great, just like, you know, you and your business partner. They've got their strengths and skill sets. I like that the tech is great. It's got the great vision. They they're looking at new things. They're adding new They're constantly adding AI, all the newest, best tools interconnected into it as as part of the hub. But, then you have the marketing agency side where they make it very easy to sell all these things to people. You don't have to think about what should I sell? How should I sell? What what is new that's coming down the pike for local businesses. They just add it into it before you even know that it's there. There's probably 30 things in there right now that you and I could sell right now. We had no idea even existed. That for me is safety. You know, I don't have to think about that if I don't want to. I get to cancel a lot of tools and just pay for the one. I think that it's amazing platform for that. And honestly, I didn't really even mean to just
>> Give GoHighLevel a plug.
>> [laughter]
>> Um I I was going to say, you know, you you mentioned that you guys are spending too much on Facebook ads.
>> Well, we we also scaled extremely fast, dude. And like when you I mean again, I don't want to get too technical, but when you start entering the upper upper echelon of half a million a million dollars a month like and go as fast as we did, like shit's going to break. Right? And and my whole thing and me and Mike yell at each other at least once a week about this. Mike, if you're watching, I [ __ ] love you. But when you scale a business that fast, the back end breaks. And I'm a big proponent, I love speed, but when you have customer success issues and we have customer success managers, they can't handle the clients, we have back end systems that are broken. At the end of the day, like if our ads are working, which they obviously are, um but if the back end is broken, you're essentially just pouring water into a bucket with a bunch of holes in it. So, for me, I I again, even at the beginning, I would get a bunch of clients and I would make sure my back end systems were good. I actually forgot the original question, but uh I just don't like how we're spending that much on paid ads. I think the back end systems could be tightened up because again, we have 10% or 8% churn. For anyone that's listening, that's a lot of [ __ ] money we're losing every month on half a million dollars a month.
>> It is, but not I mean for the volume that you have, I mean, you guys can I mean, that's a that's a decent number to like fix, you know? It's not like too much. I mean, we're at 97% per month retention.
>> Yeah, that's Dude, that's like a 3% churn. That's insane. If we were at 3% churn, somebody We're selling our company for 100 mil tomorrow.
>> Right. We basically only lose one client or no clients every single month.
>> mogged. I I just got churn mogged hard, bro. [ __ ]
>> No, but I'm just saying like it's 3% 10%. Those are big numbers in the grand scheme of things, but incrementally from 10 to 3 is not like you If you're at 20, I'd be like, "Holy [ __ ] this business model is broken." Um but anyway, the the point I was trying to make is so you're probably spending around 100 grand a month. You're What's the profit margin on 500,000 a month?
>> so we fight for one to one on the front end, meaning if we sell somebody for $300 a month, we want to uh have it cost $300 to acquire. Right? So, we're always fighting for one-to-one on the front end. If we can get one-to-one, we're golden. That being said, when you add sales people in it, when you add customer success managers, when you add engineers, which is all the things that we have at our level, it's going to be extremely hard to get one-to-one on a $300 product, which is Excuse me, A, while we have upsells now to bring cash forward, um and B, if you're a beginner watching, you don't have customer success managers. You don't have a sales person. You're doing all that stuff yourself. So, if you don't have very much money, this is why this is amazing. You can pretty I'm pretty confident to say it's not that hard to run paid ads as a total beginner and get a return on ad spend for $300 'cause you don't have all these other crazy costs. Right? And the odds are like if you're charging 300 bucks a month, usually they're going to stay 2 months, so you can essentially guess that it's 600 bucks right there, right? So, you have 600 bucks to play with to get one client. Um so, that's our margin on that. I know I little went a little off topic. It's just I don't want beginners watching this or someone thinking about this model to be like, "Wow, so they're not even getting one-to-one on the front end. Like, I don't have enough money to run paid ads." Yes, like we're not now, but when me and Mike were at $100,000 a month, we were getting like 1.5 on the front end. Meaning, it was costing us like 180, maybe 200 bucks to acquire a $300 a month customer. We were extremely profitable.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> You're selling something that is a monthly subscription. So, I mean, all the money is made in the back end.
>> Right. One one one-to-one on a monthly subscription is like the holy grail. You know, if you can do that, I mean, you're you're a printing machine because month two, three, it's just it's compounding over time. Now, you just want people to stay. Um so, I mean, that's Yeah, I think you guys are killing it with that.
>> Yeah, it's a lot of money though. It's it's it's crazy 'cause when you run paid ads and even when you get into business, you have to you have to make it into like a video game.
>> Have you been holding the bag? Have you been caught holding the bag before? Like with your with your ad budget? Like have you sunk like 30 grand in and then just like was not profitable and you know because because you're one-to-one because that's what you really focus on. And see in in info world when you're selling courses and products and coaching all that stuff, a lot of these guys like some of the guys we were talking about earlier, you know, they're selling uh uh training a course a coaching for 10k or 20k. And so they're dumping in 10k hoping they get that one sale and they're dumping in you know, 20 30 40 50 hoping to get three sales. Sometimes it doesn't happen or Facebook changes their you know, their tracking platform and now you have a $100,000 ad budget. So for your model, I know we're kind of getting into the weeds and kind of higher level here. The point I'm trying to make is it's safe in the in the route that you've gone with focusing on the one-to-one. And I will add in you know, we are talking about a lot of things in terms of growth and scale like not everybody wants to build a business as massive as like what you were doing.
>> [ __ ] I don't want to build a I don't want to build this business as big as big as it is bro. My partner's making me do it. So sorry, go ahead.
>> Is there is there uh is there a limit? Do you see yourself cuz I I do think you're really smart with like the healthy rate of growth. That's been my experience too. Like I've grown things very quickly very fast where it wasn't sustainable and they've like crashed, you know, and we had to fix it. So what what do you feel like is the Goldilocks zone for you guys?
>> I mean dude, I I me and Mike talked about this. I wanted to be like 100 200k a month. Um but again, Mike kind of changes mind on me and again like the dude is an absolute machine. Like I'm not going to say no. Um I think probably a million dollars a month in the next six to eight months and then from there we'll probably take it to five to 10 in the next two or three years and then from there look for an exit. And then from there man like I'm good man. Um Again, I I just this was never my goal. This kind of just happened. I think a lifestyle business was the main goal and I think that's what a lot of people want. Like you said so many people don't want to scale these companies to millions of dollars a month. They don't want to have a team of 40 employees or for you like three but for us like 30 or 40 'cause we're we're idiots. Um, they just want to have a nice lifestyle business. So, quite frankly, again, if you're a beginner watching this, if I could redo this again and I had a second second go at this, I probably scale it by myself to 50 to 80,000 dollars a month. I would have three employees, and I would keep it extremely lean, right? Maybe maybe four employees. I'd have one sales person to take the sales call calls for me. I'd have two customer success managers to deal with the onboarding and client issues, and I'd have one engineer to build out the product snapshots and actually have the customer success managers like give them a product to present to the client. So, you could easily do that and be hands-off with four four employees, and you'd probably running 70 65% margin while still growing your company a little bit every single month. That's what I would do if I was a complete beginner today restarting. I would not do this whole 40 employee [ __ ] Mike, if you're watching. Absolutely not. But, it's fun, right? 'Cause he's we're doing it together and we're friends, and it's definitely a journey.
>> Yeah. You basically described my business.
>> Yeah.
>> My agency.
>> Yeah. Which is basically I would do what you're doing.
>> Yeah. Well, it's it's not it's not the main thing for me, you know, there's a lot of other things going on, which is the benefit of having a lifestyle business. It allows you to do other things. I mean, that's my definition of it. What are some mistakes that you see people make in you know, in in starting this type of business? Like, what are the most common three things that you're always like berating into people, don't do this, you know?
>> I would say number one is spending, you know, two weeks figuring out your business name and creating a logo and an LLC and, you know, deciding what your business name is going to be and what your website's going to look like and all this [ __ ]. That's probably the biggest mistake by far. The second is What's the second one? Probably like asking and wondering like thinking about stupid [ __ ] that doesn't matter. For instance, I get questions all the time from people who have zero clients, Kai, how do I prevent clients from churning? Dude, you don't have a single effing client. Why do you care about churn? It It just doesn't matter. You haven't even got a single client. Why are you worrying about this? Uh even as something as simple as "Kai, I'm not sure how to onboard a client." Dude, you haven't even got a client. How about this? How about you ask me how to onboard a client once you have a client? I'm happy to answer the question, but I'm not going to sit here and teach you how to onboard a client when you haven't even had a client sign up yet. So, again, that's extreme, but that's that's the thinking that got me to where I am now, and that's every single successful person has that thinking. They just do [ __ ] and break [ __ ] and then they go and fix it. Um so, I would say just just overthinking as a beginner. And then the last uh last thing would probably be thinking the false assumption that this business model or any business model is saturated. Saturation literally doesn't exist. The majority of people will quit before they get their first client. The second majority of people will quit before they hit $5,000 a month. And the vast majority of people are going to quit sometime in the first year anyway. So, your competition is zero. People are [ __ ] stupid. People are lazy. It is unbelievably easy to win today. Put down your phone, stop watching porn, lock in for a year, and dude, you'll change your entire [ __ ] bloodline. I swear to god.
>> I I agree. I think actually the space that we live in and that we're talking about helping businesses, marketing, I think it's actually growing right now. With AI, all these businesses that were, you know, comfortable. They were sitting at the top of Google, you know, getting organic leads. They had a great Google ad campaign going. They had a great Facebook ad campaign going. They're all suffering from what I've been calling AI guilt. You know, they know their competitors are out there using these tools to crush it, and they're like, "What am I going to do? What are we going to do?" And that's where people like me and you come in, and now we have this opportunity to I mean, I think the greatest opener right now is like is are tools like ChatGPT recommending your business?
>> I literally just started using that in my ads the other day. It's I just want to say what you just said is so key because there's never been a better time ever to get into business than now because you can literally use that AI angle AI angle you just talked about. And what you just said about small businesses suffering from AI guilt. Every small business knows they should be using AI. They haven't the slightest clue how. And guess who's going to help them with that? Big Daddy Nick. There you go.
>> And if you I mean, you can test this thesis yourself. Like go go about your day, you know, go to your barber, when you're sitting in the chair, ask them, is ChatGPT recommending your business? He's going to be like, what? How do you do that? You can do that? Every business you talk to, and I know because like our sales teams, they're doing their outbound calling, they're they're using that as their opener, they have been for a while. The response is like it's been huge. We're selling AEO packages, GEO packages, which is essentially an SEO campaign with a couple extra things. Uh if you're not being found in Google, you're not going to be found in ChatGPT. ChatGPT gets all of its data from Google. So, you have to start there first. Um but that being said, it's not saturated, and I believe that the time that we're living in right now is is actually becoming bigger and bigger. It's booming, and I think people that are watching this video, if they have some of these limiting beliefs and they're thinking like it's too saturated, I know other people out there that are doing this. Like just put yourself in the position that we just, you know, that we just gave you, essentially. Ask businesses if they're being recommended by AI tools, and you'll actually come in in a completely different position than all the other people that have been out there for the last 10 years selling things. So, the opportunity is new. You just need to approach it from a different angle, and I I believe that the AI guilt one is is a great term and and a great phrase.
>> I think that's the best the best thing out there.
>> I'm I'm not 100% sure why the majority of people quit and fail, honestly. Um it's an interesting thing to think about. I I I think a lot of it is uncertainty, and I think it takes a certain type of person to be able to be successful. Um you have to have just like this crazy I don't want to call it ego, but you have to have like this weird you almost have to be selfish and be a little almost like an arrogant piece of [ __ ] in a way. I remember thinking like my first couple clients, I remember thinking like I don't give a [ __ ] like I'm trying to make this work. I have to make money. And almost being like, I I don't care if I get you results or not. Only because I knew that if I messed anything up, I was more than willing to refund them. And I thought to myself, okay, the most harm that I'm doing is I'm wasting some of their time. And I'm sorry, dude. I'm on a mission here. I'm trying to make money online. Thankfully, they all my first clients randomly ended up getting amazing results, and they're still paying us. But I remember having that mindset of like, okay, worst case scenario, Kai, you mess up for them, you will just refund them. You don't care about the money right now. You're just trying to get good. to get reps. You're learning more from those first couple clients than like like they're really getting from you at that point. They're really doing you a favor by letting you work for them. So, yeah, man. Um I don't know, man. I don't know why people fail. I think you have to have I don't know. I mean, what do you think? Why do you think most people fail in online business? Cuz they do. Most people do.
>> I think most people fail because they never start. You know, the vast majority of people that like I see out there that want to do this, that are even just on the fringe, that I mean, in any business, really. It's really just that initial leap, you know, to start actually taking action. And if you think about all the people out there who want to start a business, whether it's online or whatever, in person, the amount of people that actually do start one is very small. And the amount of people that do start one that are there and get their first client is significantly smaller. And the people that go that have their first client, they get their next client is so much smaller. It really is just coming, you know, it's it's I think it's directly proportionate to your daily activities, you know? And for us in this business, really, it comes down to how many conversations are you having with business owners so that you can sell things to them. So, if you're having zero, you're not going to sell anything.
>> What do you What do you argue as a beginner the single most important thing you can do, the single most important milestone that you can hit is to get the first person, a stranger on the internet, to give you their credit card and pay you money. Cuz I I would say that that was probably the most valuable thing you can do 'cause I think the majority of people quit before they even get their first client.
>> Oh yeah, there was a guy back in the day that created a product where he he was like his whole goal was just to teach people how to make a dollar. Literally, a freaking dollar. Because once you get that dollar, you're like I think I can do this. There's like totally different mindset of actually collecting money than being just a fantasy world, you know? So, I think there's definitely some truth to that.
>> It's so funny you just said that 'cause it took me 10 days to get my first client. I closed him on a David, if you're watching, I love you. Thank you. Dog groomer. But it took me Yeah, dog groomer, dude. The absolute worst. No, no, no. Some random dude online. By the way, he's crushing it on Google now.
>> Nice.
>> Um but yeah, I sold him for a $97 website for a 2-week free trial. So, I didn't even collect any cash up front. But the fact that me and my partner at the time went from "Dude, we're going to start a business, this idea" to "Holy [ __ ] we just got a stranger to give us his credit card. We have a credit card right now from someone. He trusts us. We could charge this [ __ ] right now for $97. Like this is crazy." And we just screamed. Bro, I remember ran downstairs, told my mom. I was like, "I'll be a millionaire. I figured this [ __ ] out." Like me and my boys were there. Everyone was just screaming. Like I didn't even get paid. I just got a stranger on the internet to give me money. But that's when it became real. And dude, the motivation that I had after getting that first client, oh my god, dude. And that's why I teach and I preach this to the end of time. Get one stranger on the internet to pay you money if you want to start a business online. It's the most life-changing thing you can do. I just remember that experience so viscerally and being like, "Whoa. I just did this [ __ ] in 10 days. I just went from idea to somebody gave me their credit card." So, dude, like I just I I'm such a proponent of I don't even care if it's free. Just get somebody to Get somebody to pay you money in exchange for service, dude. Literally.
>> Love it. Last question. You guys are making a ton of money now. What are you going to do with it?
>> I don't know, man. [ __ ] retire my mom, buy my girlfriend a handbag, maybe get a cooler gaming setup. But yeah, dude, at the end of the day money again, this is one of those stupid things I'm going to say that if I was watching this years ago I would have been like you're a douchebag, but money doesn't really change that much. It just gives you more options and it amplifies who you are. And again, man, money is great to have. It's it's such a good thing to solve problems. Being able to get my mom private health care. She just had surgery. Being able to employ a full-time nurse to be there for her, fantastic. Being able to fly out my girlfriend first class from California or or Texas. Just it just Money doesn't make you happy, but it definitely helps negate a lot of things that could potentially make you unhappy. But as far as answering your question, what's next? I have no idea, bro. I'm trying to figure that [ __ ] out every single day. So I guess we'll see where I am in a year.
>> Well, man, thanks for being here.
>> Thank you for having me, bro. I appreciate you.