Transcription
So, a software company decided to fly me out to New York City to test their platform out for my online business. And it's a company called _____, and they're a very young business that has already processed about a billion dollars at the time of this recording. And they claim to be powering the future of the internet economy.
Now, to be entirely honest with you, I knew nothing about this company before I visited their headquarters. But after meeting their team and playing around with their platform and really learning about what they're planning to build in the future, I could say that I am more than convinced. I'll be using ____ to run pretty much all of my businesses now.
In this video, I'm going to be reviewing and really breaking down their platform for any of you guys who runs, say, like an online business, or even like a physical brick-and-mortar business like I do. In simple terms, I would say ____ is an operating system that lets you build, manage, and scale pretty much every aspect of your business directly from your phone.
Now, right now, it's being used mostly by creators and businesses selling digital products, memberships, and services online. It does basically everything you want an all-in-one platform to do. And the best part is, it's completely free to use. They just take a small percentage of your transactions because they're basically a payment processor, which I'll cover more in a little bit.
I've been using ____ for my info product, my software company, my agency, and I'm even starting to implement it in physical brick-and-mortar businesses as well. And the more that I've been, you know, using it, I can say that I really wish that I had this starting out on my entrepreneurial endeavors. It would have made my life so much easier.
So I want to show you guys what ____ is, how it works, and I'm going to give you five reasons why I think it's a great option for anyone who sells anything online, and even if you run like a physical brick-and-mortar business, especially compared to some of the other alternatives out there. I'm just going to show you that today. So let's go ahead and jump into my computer and break everything down.
Hey guys, welcome to the channel. My name is Blake. I'm the CEO and co-founder of idefy.doai, which is my AI software company that helps businesses implement AI solutions. I'm also the creator of the AI Academy that helps people start and actually scale their businesses using AI. So if you're new to my channel, welcome. If you found any value or you want to see any more videos just like this, make sure to leave a like, a comment, and also make sure to subscribe. Okay, back to the video.
All right, so the first thing that I want to share with you guys is just how clean everything looks in my community. You know, coming from the software space, I've learned that UI, which stands for user interface, which is basically just how everything looks, is the most important thing when you're selling anything online. You know, I recently moved my community from Circle, which, if you don't know, is an online community platform. Unfortunately, the feedback that I got from my previous Circle members: low engagement in my community and just the limitations of trying to integrate my software was really, you know, just difficult for me because I literally had to send users off of Circle's platform, which wasn't ideal at the time. But as you can see, you know, ____ just has so much more to offer, and I'll try to cover as much as I can in this video. This just looks super clean on the computer, and what's more impressive, it even looks even better on the phone. If you're looking to build your own, maybe to test out for yourself, I'll leave the link down below in the description.
Now, an overview page is the very first thing that you'll build in the onboarding process. What you see took me about 10 minutes to build since I had all the design assets and copy from my Circle community. This is basically a pre-built landing page template where you can send potential customers or drive traffic to convert more sales. So instead of using ClickFunnels, Squarespace, or GoHighLevel, or any other landing page builder where you have to start from scratch or choose from dozens of templates and you still have to customize them, like this is already included. You literally just, just have to fill in the information, and also you don't have to pay for website hosting as well. As you can see, I have the URL, the AI Academy, and it again, it just looks super duper clean. And let me tell you, as a marketer, this page is optimized to convert, and you shouldn't waste time designing the perfect landing page anyways. You should just focus on making sales instead.
As you can see, I have my video sales letter along with some photos about the AI Academy. It tells a little bit more about my community. You can see how many people are in the community and how many people have joined, the ratings and reviews. So if you're an info product, it shows the legitimacy of your course. If you're a business, it shows potential customers who has purchased and lets them also read reviews. It shows exactly what you'll get upon joining or the purchase, which are actually the apps, which we'll cover in a little bit. And as you can see, it shows information about the creator. You can call out ideal customers. It goes over pricing and benefits. And what I really like about it as well is that it has frequently asked questions so that customers can actually make like a good decision, and creators can drive more sales.
Now, my favorite part about the overview page is, if you scroll down all the way to the bottom, there is a built-in affiliate program system where you can customize incentives for anyone to refer people to your ____ and actually earn a commission. This literally changes everything. You know, imagine if you're a physical business and your customers can get rewarded for referring more customers to your business. Not only will this make your business more money, but acquiring customers this way becomes free, and historically this has been very difficult for a lot of brick-and-mortar businesses. I believe that's the reason why they just haven't been doing it in the first place. And on the flip side, this is how many successful online course creators have scaled their businesses. You know, it's the same exact strategy that Andrew Tate used to make millions of dollars per month with the real world, and he actually got people to take long-form pieces of his content, clip it into short-form videos, and distribute those videos on various social media platforms, sort of like creating virality with their unique affiliate link. And this basically decentralizes marketing for the creator in a way that benefits the affiliate who makes passive income off of a product that they didn't build, but also the creator acquires more customers at no cost. And again, has everything in here built in. They also have a folder where you can upload any content to help affiliates promote your ____ instead of using a Google Drive, although you can do that as well. So again, this can all be built in about 10 minutes or so.
The next thing that I want to talk to you guys about is apps. Now, I'll try to cover as much as I possibly can, but I know that I won't be able to cover all of them in this video. There's just way too much, but ____'s apps completely blew my mind and was honestly the main reason, reason why I switched over from Circle. You can add any of these pre-built apps to your ____ within just a few clicks. As you can see over here, you can even white-label them as your own apps as well. And guys, as a creator looking to build an online business, it's almost as if you're building your own software because you're choosing different ways you want to add features to your offer. And if you're an existing brick-and-mortar business, you're essentially creating more ways to add value to your customers.
In the AI Academy, I expanded beyond Circle's basic features, which were the classroom, the community, and the calendar. And as you can see, I created something a bit more comprehensive and engaging. So let me show you. Now, the Course app is actually where I host all of my video courses. So if you wanted to create a course, you can actually configure lessons to be completed in order simply by toggling it or even generate completion certificates, which is super cool. If you wanted to create a lesson, you could do it in many different ways, as you can see here, like the multimedia, text, the video, etc. You can even build quizzes if you wanted to. Typically, most ELMS or learning management softwares would require third-party video hosting like Wistia, which can be pretty expensive, or they'd have you use an unlisted YouTube video where anyone can technically copy or share that link to get access to the video. And to solve that problem, ____ includes video hosting, which is insane to me that you don't have to pay for it.
The Community app is actually where all of my members engaged, and it's very simple and even more engaging compared to Circle, honestly, because it just, you know, Circle just feels like a Facebook group basically, and you know, this feels like more like a casual group chat rather than like a discussion thread, as you can see like right over here, although you can build those as well, which I'll show you in a little bit. Calendar app is where I host all of my weekly calls so that all of my members can get live support from me and my team. As you can see, I have weekly onboarding calls for new members who join, Q&A calls for existing members when they want support, and even notifications when I upload a new YouTube video.
The Help Desk app is a ticketing system that streamlines any inquiry where my members could submit support tickets and request for help. This is actually very helpful when someone gets stuck building an AI automation, you know, where my members can just fill out the information over here, which is basically like a form submission. They can describe their issue and and even post a Loom video in here recording their issue, and then when they submit it, they can chat with me inside of here.
The Prizes app is actually a wheel where my members can spin to win prizes daily. As a creator, if any of my members wins a prize, ____ can actually handle the fulfillment, like gift cards, AirPods Max headphones, PS5s, video games, or even a t-shirt. I've also included custom prizes like 30 days for free in the AI Academy, one-on-one private coaching, or 100,000 tokens to use my AI software. So let's go ahead and test my luck and spin the wheel to see if I win something. Oh, so close, but it's okay.
The Challenges app is where I create bounties where people can complete any of these challenges within my community and actually win cash bonuses. Again, just like prizes, this is a way to promote more engagement and gamification in my community, which again was something that was very difficult to do in my older Circle community. If my members leave a review, I'll give them $10. If they share ____, I'll give them $10. If they complete all the courses and receive a certificate, I'll give them $100. If they clip my content and hit 100,000 views promoting the AI Academy, I'll give them $100 plus a 30% affiliate commission. Again, these are just examples of challenges I'm running in my community just to give you a better idea of what you can do with yours.
Now, the Announcements, the Introductions, and the Wins are all the same app called Forums, and this is essentially what Circle tried to do with their community. You can actually set the permissions for users to engage or not get notified, like how I have set up here in my Announcements. The Introductions is where new members could come and say hi to the community and actually make new friends. Wins is where members can share their wins, and other members can get inspiration. And lastly, I actually have a forum called Action Steps that goes along with some of the video lessons in my courses where members can actually watch the video and complete action steps where they have to comment in the discussion with which I just showed you.
Now, something really cool that ____ allowed me to do is actually embed my own software into the platform simply by providing a URL. This was the issue that I had with Circle because I had to literally send users off the platform. As you can see, it just opened up a new tab, but ____ actually allowed me to implement it literally within the platform. And the way that I set this up is my members in the AI Academy has to pay to get access to my software, which is an AI content generator, an AI chatbot tool, and an AI automation builder. I'm not going to go too deep as to what this is; I'll make another video on it in the future, but the fact that you can embed a web app into your ____ opens up so many doors as to what you can do with your business.
The last thing that I want to mention is the Calendar Bookings app. I'm actually the most excited about this feature because it opens up so many opportunities, specifically for physical businesses that operate by appointments and you want to charge for your time. This is also a great way to productize your service if you're an agency, a consultant. And I'll give you an example right now. I have a portfolio of tattoo studios with over 50 artists at this point, and right now I'm in the process of getting them all set up on ____. So I actually have a free community called the Future in Community that shows artists and studios how to build, manage, and scale their tattoo business, and I have two different templates: I have the Artist template and the Studio template. As you can see, if you click on the Artist template, if we click into the Calendar Bookings, you can see that tattoo artists can productize their services and actually collect deposits in advance. So if you click Book, we can see the times that the artist is available, and if you click here, it'll actually take you directly to their checkout page where their customers can actually pay for their deposit in advance, in addition to all of the other cool apps that the artist has to offer. As you can imagine, I'm just scratching the surface. Again, I wasn't able to cover all of the different apps. Really, it's up to you to play around with them and try everything out yourself.
Now, one of the really cool things about ____ is the payment processing side. Believe it or not, this is actually their strong suit since they're a payment processing company. And one of the biggest challenges of running a business is payment processing. You know, it could be such a big headache for a lot of you guys. Payment processes are just notorious for holding money, kicking businesses off of their platform, and really just being a pain in the ass. And, and you know, I've had many instances where my payment processor has held hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I was in a sticky situation where I literally had to pay out employees, and it was one of the most stressful times I've experienced in business. But ____'s entire business model revolves around payment processing, and they're very, very good at it. I personally haven't had any challenges myself. ____ actually moves money super fast. Last week, I was able to process $3,500 using a payment link, and I've never had any holds. ____ also has an amazing dispute resolution center that's able to fight chargebacks for my business, but at the same time, they're very good at serving their customers who buy, so it's a pretty good balance overall. Payment processing with ____ is a very good deal with everything that I'm getting as a merchant, just fee-wise. ____ charges 3% of your transactions plus processing fees if you use ____ payments. This is actually very cost-effective since it consolidates nearly every aspect of your business into one platform. This allowed me to eliminate many software subscriptions I was originally paying for, saving me hundreds of dollars a month and thousands of dollars per year.
One of my favorite features is the flex payment options I can offer to my customers. As you can see in the AI Academy, I kept it pretty simple: $30 a month or $270 a year with a 25% discount. ____ actually handles all of my user subscription payments automatically. I can also offer lifetime access through a one-time payment, or I can set up weekly or recurring custom payments with extensive customization options, or, of course, if I wanted to, I can make my ____ free. Now, if you head over to the dashboard, you can also create one-off custom payment links as well. This is basically like sending an invoice, and what's really cool is that you can set the stock or the amount that's available. So if I wanted to sell a custom quote project, I would create a pricing link, I'd set the price to whatever I choose, let's just say it's like $5,000, and I can set the stock to one so that only one person can use this link. And as you can see, users can pay with credit or debit cards, ____ payments. I can check this off and have them pay with PayPal, or I could even accept crypto if I wanted to. That's really cool. I've even seen ____ offer financing options like Klarna or Afterpay built into the checkout, which is also super cool. You know, if I offer something like, say, like a $5,000 tattoo, then one of my customers can get approved for financing, then Klarna pays me the $5,000 up front, and the customer has to pay Klarna in smaller payments over time. So if you sell something expensive, this can literally be anything. This could be a great way to actually drive more sales offering more flexible payment plans. And guys, remember, the journey of the relationship actually starts after the initial transaction. That's why it's so important for this process to be seamless so that your business is able to provide layers of value once that's done.
Now, the next thing that I want to cover is ____'s Marketplace. This is a hub where creators and businesses can list and sell their memberships, their digital products, and services. Think of it like the App Store where people can browse and discover new offers, making it easier for creators to gain more exposure and hopefully convert more sales. So at the time of this recording, as you can see, ____ has processed over $700 million in transactions from creators and has over 5 million users on their platform. You know, their Discover page receives more than 2 million views per week on Discover, and they're reporting over $55 million per month in their Marketplace. They also claim that your ____ will rank on search engines using something called programmatic SEO, for any of you guys who knows what that is. And if you actually want to list your ____ on the Marketplace, you do have to go through an application process, so just make sure you go through the onboarding; you'll have to set everything up the right way. I'll definitely record a video tutorial on this later, but if and when you do get accepted, ____ will take a 30% commission if they sell any of your products or services through their Marketplace. So the Marketplace ranks various ____s in different categories. Okay, as you can see here, the Most Addicting, which is based on the most time spent inside of each ____ for each user over the last 24 hours; the Newest, which is basically the ____s that got accepted today; the Most Reviews, where it ranks based off of the most reviews over the last 7 days; the Hottest Affiliate Offers, which is ranked by the affiliate earnings; the Bounties, again, you know, we covered that where you can integrate cash rewards for completing tasks in your community; and of course, the Most Money Made, which is essentially the highest earning, which I believe is the most revenue generated within the last 24 hours. So that's said, you know, you can also filter based off of the niche as well up here using the same ranking system. And honestly, being accepted into the ____ Marketplace is just such a huge milestone since it provides a free channel to attract new customers, get more sales, and also strengthen the top of your sales funnel.
And what makes a good company great is really the team behind it. You know, during my experience at ____ headquarters in New York, their team absolutely blew my mind. Number one, they built an incredible company culture. You know, running an in-person business myself, managing tattoo studios, I could tell you that this is like the hardest thing to do in business, and you know, these guys have cracked the code. And ____ has over 80 employees at this point. They've created a thriving workplace where everyone is well taken care of. In fact, you know what I'm still trying to, like, wrap my head around is, like, the fact that a lot of my friends in the online business space have decided to move out of their hometowns and work there, you know, which is the second thing I've noticed. You know, a lot of their employees are actually creators in this internet economy, and like that blows my mind because you now have this, like, organization where, where more than half of the team uses the platform since a lot of these guys have their own communities and offers, and like they're running their online businesses using ____ as the main platform to do that. And you know, since they're like their own users, they're able to understand the platform better and create like this flywheel effect of feedback, and as a result, which takes me to the third thing that I've noticed, which is like they move extremely fast. You know, they're already starting to think of ways to integrate ____ in many different types of businesses, both on the online and physical world, like apartment units, you know, uh, tattoo studios, which is exactly what I'm working towards, or like local gyms. And you know, during a whiteboard meeting, you know, we discussed four developer updates that they pushed out, like, on their platform within like 40 minutes. You know, I, I can't even make this up. The last thing that I've noticed about their team is they're incredibly ambitious, you know, especially their founders who actually work and think really far ahead in the future. I actually got the chance to speak with Cameron and Steven in like their vision with ____, and it really just extends beyond where the world is heading, and I, I genuinely think like they're very passionate about pushing the boundaries of innovative technology because you know, we're literally seeing this in action.
So guys, that pretty much is it for this video. There is so much more that I unfortunately wasn't able to cover, but I tried my best to cover the five things that I thought were the most important things: like the ability to just have a clean user interface, drag-and-drop applications, seamless payment processing, a growing Marketplace, and really just like a super cool team that really cares about their customers, and it, you know, it makes me convinced that they're going to pave the way towards a brighter future for businesses, which is really what this YouTube channel is about. And that said, I highly encourage you to get set up on ____ and start experimenting with some of the features just like how I did. And you know, if you run an online business or if you're a physical brick-and-mortar business and you not only want to save yourself like so much headache just trying to build all of this yourself, but like you genuinely want to give your customers much more value, then I would highly encourage you to get set up on ____. God forbid, like, please don't try to use dozens of different softwares to try to build this yourself; like, you will shoot yourself in the foot. But like I'm telling you, like, from my personal experience and like my honest opinion of this platform, I love it, and I think that this platform is phenomenal. So if you're curious about signing up for ____, I'll put my affiliate link down in the description below for you to get set up. Again, it's completely free to use their platform. I've never recommended any other tools like this before. So if you guys like what you saw and you want to see more videos just like this, then I'd love to know your thoughts in the comment section down below. And that said, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next one.