Transcription
Basically, the with everything, like the only way that you grow is if you're in pain. So, like if you're not, if it, if if you don't feel like you're struggling, then you're not doing the right thing. And I think this is important because everyone wants to like feel good and feel happy and experience pleasure, but if you want to grow, the only way to do it is through pain. That's literally it. So, if you want an indication as to like, am I making progress or not, it's like, are you suffering? And if you're not in pain, then you're not growing.
I mean, we get this from like a, we literally have it. It's called growing pains, right? When you're growing up and you're in, you know, pain because your body's growing. But it's the same thing; like, some reason in business people don't understand that like, if you look at any other like field, like like an athlete for example, or anyone who's becoming a professional, like the only way that you experience expansion or growth is if you're in some sort of pain. And what you guys need to learn to do is basically just find the most painful thing and just keep doing it.
And this is why setters or reps or anyone in your company, including yourself, the second you stop growing is when you stop feeling pain. Which is why when you get to the top, there's no pain. And then it's kind of an inevitable thing. Like it's kind of like you said, like Harvey, like when you were saying like, you know, you've got the reserves and there's that comfort and stuff, like it's it's kind of contradictory because you're here because you want to grow your business, right? And you want to make more money and you want to grow and you want to experience growth, but the only way to do that is by finding painful stuff to do. So, I just kind of want you guys to remember that like, is it's not an easy message to deliver because no one wants to feel pain, but you kind of need to, otherwise you're screwed.
Yeah, man. Feels similar to Harvey in that regard. Like, got enough money, comfortable like you've described before, can fly around if wanted to. Where to, where would you suggest to look to find the pain?
Well, it's kind of like, so you're here, right? You know, for a reason because you want to grow the business and you want to expand, but you know, you've kind of got this comfort thing, but you just need to like dig into that need for growth and like really explore it and really understand it and talk about it and properly sit with it and think about it because it's it's kind of funny because the fact you've asked that question means that being comfortable is slightly painful for you. Do you know what I mean? Like, there is pain in it because you're not growing. And so what a lot of people do is, you know, the comfort thing, the complacency thing, it's kind of like a shield that you hold against the pain and you tell yourself like, "Oh, I'm I'm good."
It's a hard thing to figure out, but it just depends. Like I don't have like a silver bullet answer for that unfortunately. I think maybe it's just like a way that you're wired or something. But the fact that you're here means that there's like a psychological thread to pull on because if you didn't care and you didn't want to grow and you truly had enough, then you would just you you'd act that out and behave that out. So I'd suggest just trying to explore that, and I you know there's there's no playbook or answer to that.
I think one thing which works and we did this at the beginning of the year is make a big investment in something, like spend some money on something where like you almost have to feel you almost have to you have to justify it or you have to sort of work work to make it justifiable, like we did this with the um call Gordon thing, like we didn't really need it, but we felt like we had to sort of make some sort of painful decision where we put a lot of money into something so we can kind of you know fuel that sort of urge again, like a I see a lot of people that buy this mastermind, like it kind of clicks like it turns kind of what this was.
Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. I The for example, I see a lot with you like you've made that I'm sure you kind of already knew what to do, but I could see it with you that sort of click as soon as you made that sort of big mastermind investment, like it all of a sudden turned on. Um which helps a lot. Of course, the more money you make, the bigger that sometimes has to be, but it does work to There's no answer. It's kind of just a struggle. Yeah. And like if you're not struggling, then you're not growing.
Like you know we're experiencing this at the moment where like you know we're at 8 figures and we want to get to multi-eight figures and you know B and I have got used to like a certain way of living and a certain lifestyle and stuff and we've kind of realized that like you know what what happens when you plateau and you try and break that plateau is usually at the beginning you dip right and you go down, but then what happens if you're so you know let's say that let's say that you've grown to a certain point and now you're you're plateaued and Let's say that you've been here for, you know, 3 to 6 months and you've sort of been at the same level. And what usually happens is in order for you to get to the next level, which might be up here, is you usually have to go down a little bit because like, you know, you're going to have to start investing stuff, you're going to make slightly less profit, you're going to make a ton of mistakes and they're going to cost you a lot of money. But what happens is because people get used to a certain sort of emotional state here, which is basically just comfort. As soon as they start dipping, they then revert back to this behavior to get back to the point in which they were before. If that makes sense.
So, what you need to learn to do is sort of weather this emotional storm. Like, we're doing this at the moment where like, you know, we're now spending like 10 grand a day on ads. We're like trying to aggressively hire sales teams. We're making a ton of mistakes, losing more money than we're used to. Revenue can dip slightly. And like, if we're not careful, you just you just aim to seek back to that sort of comfortable zone, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Few times now. Yeah. And then you you you kind of revert back to your old behavior and you start going back to the plateau because you know for a lot of entrepreneurs this is like this is the safety net, right? This is like the the the um the sort of uh like what would you call it? Um this is the cave, you know, the the safe place evolutionarily. This is where you know you're safe and if you want to get more food, you've got to go into some danger. But then what usually happens is you know you get in all this pain and then you see this and then it happens again and you got to learn to do that again. Um any drowning expansion just requires you to be in a lot of pain. The more pain the more progress basically. Any questions on on the pain thing?
Yeah. Do you do the same for employees or like people you work with? Do you try and pull out that pain motivator when you start working with them?
Yeah. Because it's like I know that as soon as someone starts feeling like comfortable and happy, like they're going to just drop off a cliff. And so how do you like how do you find that I guess when you start either when you hire them or like when you're in your conversations with them? How do you pull out what motivates them more intrinsically?
Well, it's not you don't necessarily have to understand like their intrinsic drives. You just have to be able to create pain for them. So like you know the sales rep plateaus and gets comfortable at a certain level. You need to be able to like pull them aside and be like, "dude, why are you like chilling? Like, why?" And you you can only do that if you do it yourself. And so this is kind of the thing is like you know a company once again it's it's the top-down thing like you need to seek pain, which basically is you just finding the thing that sucks the most and then everyone under you will start doing the same thing. But if you're just like kicking back, chilling, and like you just want this automated business, then you'll make a hundred grand a month and you know, you'll be chilling, but you won't be able to expand like that.
You know, when you're trying something new and you said sometimes it'll go down before it goes up. How do you know the difference between, oh, I'm just learning and like it will go up soon and I'm just doing something stupid like I Well, usually usually you are doing something stupid. Oh, but told well say say like say for example you know um let's say that there's you know three different things that you can try to get you there. So for example with us with the ads like we need to try guarantee-less ads. We need to try new funnels. You know we need to try new business structures and stuff. We need to add more product. We need to do this that and the other. And it's kind of like the the fortunate thing for you guys is obviously you're here so we make these mistakes and then we tell you what to avoid and stuff which is the whole point of like a mentorship or a mastermind. But, you know, if there's three options, one of them is probably going to be optimal and and good, but usually you're gonna miss it at the beginning. So, you know, transparently, candidly, like the last couple of months from a profit perspective for us haven't been that good. Nowhere near as good as we used to. And that's because we are making mistakes and we are trying new things and we are experimenting with new things and testing new things. And in order to break this plateau, you have to restructure incentives. You have to hire more people. You have to build more systems which costs a lot of money which then you look at this this profit thing and this balance sheet thing and it starts dropping and you think [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] like I' I've now got three new team members and the profit share's gone up here and I'm now making less money, but you need to have the foresight to realize that all of that will pay off if that makes sense.
Do you find that there's validity in what most business coaches will say is like you need to operate from this place of abundance and then everything changes and that's where you scale the business because it kind of sounds like you're definitely not that way inclined or you have to find the pain or manufacture the pain.
Yeah. I think like the whole idea of operating out of a place of abundance is like I mean you manage your emotions across the three dimensions of time. So you want to the abundance thing is great to think about the future because then that gives you this sort of promised land and this this outcome that this pleasurable happy thing that you're moving towards, right? But if you convince yourself that you're wildly abundant in the here and now and you're not, then what happens is you're going to believe that you are even though you're not. And now you're stripping yourself of any motivation or pain. But if you use it as a sort of carrot where it's like you're moving towards it, then it's fine. Do you know what I mean? But I don't really buy the whole like, you know, my life is so abundant. It's amazing. Because then you believe it and then you end up like comfortable and then you're like, wait, my business isn't growing. What the [ __ ] you know?
Yeah. basically just paying as much as possible because like the last couple of months for us with this like seeking this expansion have been really painful. You know, suddenly like profit share dips and then like the company starts making less like money and you're spending more and like things are breaking and but that's kind of that's just like anything like to experience expansion, you know, like the only way to get out of this is to be like is to kind of it's sometimes you can just spike straight up if you if you have the right decisions, the right mentorship, etc., etc. But you get to a point where there's no playbook or there's so few people that have done it that you're more inclined to make a mistake and then you learn from that mistake and then you sell the solution to that mistake and then it gets you back up.
Yeah. Um yeah. So we're going to talk about the appointment booking thing. Um and we're going to do this in three parts. So you guys all want to talk about setting teams, right? And like systems for booking appointments. I want to see I want you all to hold your hand up in a second here. And what I want you all to do is with a show of fingers, how many times have you watched Acquisition Genesis? Okay. So, average mean is like one or two. The the reason I'm asking that question is because if you want to build a setting team, if you want to build a sales team, we all understand that you need to know how to sell. If you want to build an operations team, you need to know how to operate. If you want to build a media buying team, you need to know how to media buy. If you want to build a content team, you need to you need to know how to make content. Right? All these things we understand. The same thing is true with setting teams. Like you can't just like hire a bunch of setters and expect it to work out. Now you can with Easy Grow and you can use DM sourcer and you'll get some results, but ultimately the main thing you need to understand is like how the mechanism itself works.
Hey, it's Charlie. Just a quick thing here in case you're wondering what Easy Grow is and you're not sure and it doesn't make any sense. Easy Grow is our program, okay? And it basically teaches marketing agencies, coaches, consultants, and B2B service providers how to get more clients and stuff like that. If you want to check it out, there's a link in the description, but you might not, and I don't care if you do or not. But I thought I'd explain and give some context in case you weren't familiar with it. And like the reason that we are so good at acquisition and appointments and keeping our calendar full is because Bo and I have enough competence to basically teach it.
So the first piece of homework I would give all of you guys is watch Acquisition Genesis like five times because you know you've got up here you've got setters and then below setters you've got systems and then below systems you've got foundations or first principles. So my point here is all of you guys want to talk about this bit. Can you see the board? All of you guys want to talk about building the setting team and filling the calendar and stuff like that. But can you define feedback loops? Do you understand inputs and outputs? Do you know how to read a spreadsheet? All these things which most of you are competent enough to do. But second to this is the systems thing and then the foundations. And basically like watching Acquisition Genesis once or twice is not enough for you to understand how to build a 10-person setting team and book 2,000 appointments or a thousand or 500 appointments a month. Like it's enough to get you started and to give you some sort of clue as to what moves you need to make and stuff, but the foundations are so important and you need to understand it well enough so that you could almost make a video on it and teach it. So that's the first sort of piece of homework. And I know it's a lot to ask. But then again, it [ __ ] sucks and it's painful, right? Which is the whole bloody point.
Yeah. What's the time frame you would do it? Like every watch it every like quarter, every Well, it depends because it's not there's no like it's not like a binary time frame. It's like if the main problem that everyone or if the main problem you have is booking appointments, then that's the big bottleneck in the business, then you should just drill this non-stop until you understand it. And then if the appointments start failing again, then you watch the training again. Kind of like like you've done with the sales stuff.
Yep. You know, you can watch the sales stuff over and over again. I mean, Jack, you have this right with your with your sales at the company where you came on and Jack just [ __ ] crushed it. And then basically he forgot the foundations for like a couple of months and started going off on like venturing off some unbeaten path and just not closing any deals. And then I had to say to him like just go and rewatch the sales training like 10 times because if you forget these, you're [ __ ] that if you forget the foundations of, you know, really it's basically just science, systems and psychology, if you forget about the scientific method and iteration, if you forget about systems thinking and systems theory, and you forget about psychology and, you know, making compelling offers, then you're just dead in the water. And it doesn't matter like I've heard this from a few of you guys where you're like, "Oh, I just want to hire like a setter who already knows what they're doing and can just come in and book appointments for me." But it's like we all know that basically in every role that's near enough impossible. It is maybe you'll find someone that's a killer, but it it's very unlikely.
So yeah, if you're wondering the foundations, and we're not going to go into this because it is all in acquisition genesis is literally just systems um psychology and um science like like you guys all understand the iterative scientific method process, right? of versions and testing and stuff. But hands up, how many people have actually tested let's say let's say how many of you have actually done like four or five proper scientific tests for your outbound efforts. Yeah. So very few of you. That's the point is it's like you can't just hire a big setting team and be like, "Yeah, there we go. Great." you know, and even like using the stuff in Easy Grow will work, but if you really want it to work and you really want to, you know, get the exponential results and build, you need to sort of build your own thing, your own scripts, your own processes and stuff. And the way that you do that is by becoming an expert in it. Like the reason that we find it so easy to book appointments is because Bo and I have got these things basically as part of our identity at this point. And therefore, you know, building the systems is very easy and very straightforward. And like you know it literally that just little show of hand shows it all. How many of you have actually done like scientific testing and applied Acquisition Genesis? It's not enough to just like watch it in like 1.5 times speed and take some notes like you need to actually do it.
So we'll talk about the system thing quickly. So you should all be familiar with the diagram I'm about to draw. And this is kind of I know this is like basic [ __ ] that you guys are probably all familiar with, right? Systems thinking, but we have our processes, we have our inputs, we have our outputs, and we have our feedback. And then we have our environment. And I know you guys all know this, but if you really knew this and you really understood it on a level, none of you would struggle with appointment booking. Like if all of you guys understood how to properly use the scientific method, if you all understood how systems really worked and you knew psychology to a tea, then you would know what to do to build appointment booking systems. So for all of you guys that are struggling with appointments, there is a gap in your knowledge on one of those three things because how could it possibly be otherwise if you know how your market works and you know how the human brain works and how to write stimuli that triggers the response you want and you know how to build like systems and you know how to um do the rest of it.
Like, do the scientific method; you'll find the answer. So, like, for permissioning, like through, like let's say, for example, cold email, like uh, according to the scientific method, you would only change one variable at a time, right, for it to be tested in like isolation, right? But let's say the environment changes where you have to introduce enough variability to be able to have good deliverability for that matter. Like, how do you then go about testing that and not just have one change or one variable at a time, but have to like change entire like copies? Just so that this is the man is you're you're you're thinking too small. So you're thinking about like having you're thinking about having a single test.
So what we do with our research and development is at any given time, I mean, so how many tests would be run at any given time?
Like, five.
Yeah. So at any given time, like if you run one test changing one variable at a time, then you can only ever iterate and test one thing at a time. But if you build a comprehensive system, you can test, you can run like eight tests at the same time, and then you find what works eight times faster. Like your progress is limited by the volume of testing that you do.
No, it's so true. Like that's true. Like uh, we are testing like four or five things at a time, but they all have, let's say, two to three different variables in them. Four variables at at the same time, just so that we can get through the deliverability aspect. So it kind of like gets what do you mean get the deliverability aspect?
So at this point, I feel like in cold email, like you can't necessarily have just one copy. It has to have enough variability in like words and how the sentences are structured just so that it can pass through the algorithm.
Yeah. Otherwise, you're just tanking your deliverability.
Yeah. Which is very different from like let's say from like a year and a half or two years ago where you could like have the same copy and you could like change the subject line, but like have five tests of five subject lines. But now those in in themselves have to have enough variability so that the algorithm doesn't pick up on that.
It's oh, so you mean like every email you send has to be slightly different?
Yeah. So like how do you control like well, okay. So I mean, you basically you would pick the part of I mean, is that true? We don't you talking about spin tax and like spin tax plus like variability on top? Like even spin tax, we noticed that it was not variable enough and then like having different variations. So like one, you know how in in you can have different variants for a first email and then a second email and a third email. So having like so it depends what you're variating for, right? Spin tax just for everybody. Spinax is when every single cold email that you send to your market, you have to use some variations in the words you're using, right? So you'll say like the system, a system, and system, right? Just so that you can get past the algorithms with cold email, right? But you don't you have to control how much you're variating every single iteration, right? So instead of having a whole email that is completely customized that you can't control, you just say, "Right, I'm just going to use a personalized first line." And then that's a variable that you can control. Now the granted they're all going to be ever so slightly different, but you can control it as best as you can. Okay? Right? Because with cold email, yeah, cold email these days is hard. You can't do this standard scientific method for that. But you can choose which aspect that you do want to control, dude.
Like, for example, just every email just sign off with a different name and then instead of saying thanks, just say kind regards or like put a comma at some different point. Do you know what I mean? Like those those little like when it comes to an experiment like you know whether you say thanks at the end of an email or cheers or all the best or kind regards or warm regards, that's not going to change your conversion rate in any way, shape, or form. Maybe by like a 0.1%. Same thing if you sign it off as Par or Charlie or Tom or Josh or anything like that. It's not going to make a difference.
No, so we we do that like we used to do that like a year and a half ago. I'm talking about like changing like the first lines itself and also like variability in the offer and how it's like structured in terms of like but I don't I'm not convinced that you need to do that. If you if you personalize the first line and you sign it off differently every time, surely the email looks different enough to everybody.
Well, it depends what you're customizing. Like, so for example, if we are going to do a completely different body copy for every single individual person we target, we're going to make sure we're like we're mentioning the pain points, right? And the pain point we mention is going to be the same for every single avatar we target is in the same niche, right? Um, so we control that aspect of it. When we say the offer, that's always in the same part of the email, right? The main variance that you can pull from a test with cold email is the pain points you speak about and the customization that's relevant to that specific lead, right? But they're going to be different for every single lead, but you're still talking about the same thing, and that's still going to resonate with that specific type of market in the same way. So instead of changing the whole copy, you're just changing the painoint you're speaking about relevant to that specific person. Right? Does that make sense?
I think the the point that I'm making is like easy grow and the systems in easy grow and the you know the the copy and the scripts and stuff like you can copy your way to multi6 maybe seven figures, but if you want to get to multi- seven figures eight figures you need to build your own thing, and you can't just use like blindly use the same DM sorcery script like it in order to get to multi7 or eight figures you need advantage, and the only way that you achieve advantage is by building your own thing that no one's copying. Doing your own thing. It's kind of like it's kind of like people that want to run ads and they just go to my ads library and they just copy my ads. It's like you're never going to you're never going to get to like multi seven or eight figures doing that. And the only way that you arrive at your own thing is through systems science and psychology. So if you understand the foundations which is just acquisition, genesis to a tea, then you can build your own thing.
Like, you know, I I know that easy grow works and you can you can use the the DM sorcery scripts and stuff and you should still follow the same frameworks like the personalized videos or the looms and stuff, but the people that crush it and come in are the people that watch Genesis and they understand it really well and then they build their own thing, and the only reason they have the competence to build their own thing is because they understand the foundations well enough to do it. But even even I did that. So when I was running the setting team um and I first came on board, Charlie gave me a script to use for outreach. And full transparency, I used that for about two weeks. I used that for two weeks and then I just started changing things cuz I watched Access and Genesis like I I would schedule an hour every single morning to just go through the theory side of things and then iterate. And by the time I actually started hiring setters underneath me, I'd gone through, I think, 11 or 12 different variations of like an entry opener message to use. And most people, they just use one, see a little bit of success, and then start hiring setters. But I wasn't I didn't feel comfortable in hiring setters until I knew that I had something that was airtight. You know, I think sorry, mate. Setters aren't thinkers. They're not creative. They're just doers, right? And you need to view your appointment booking system. Well, setters are like they're doers with goals and aspirations. They want to be somewhere in their life. And you need to view your appointment booking system as a vehicle for them to get to where they want to be, right? And you use that by incentivizing them by paying them, right? Um, and if your system is airtight, then the setters can just come in, follow the rules that you set for them, and get to where they want to be in their life. Right? So, it's like an ecosystem you have to build.
I think what people think is that they they go into DM Sorcerer, they go into Terminator Looms, and they think that's the only way to get appointments through cold outbound or cold email. And like what I can tell you is think of think of it like think it really is like you're a scientist trying to discover stuff because I can guarantee you that there are hundreds if not thousands of opening messages, strings of words put together that would crush, but people just haven't found yet.
Mhm. You're kind of like some [ __ ] like archaeologist just trying to dig it up. And then when you find it like there could be a string of because really all it is is just words. So there could be a string of words for an opening message that you could put together that could get a 20% appointment booking rate. You just have to find it. And the only way you find it is is through iter iteration and testing. For example, we've got an R&D test at the moment with cold email. Um, basically reaching out to people with a really simple email. Basically, how is how does it go? It's the one where we're like being their friend or something. We just reach out to people via cold email and we say, "Look, we've got an appointment booking system. I'm booking five or seven, maybe sometimes 10 or more appointments every single month. Can I explain how it works?" And it's like, we're not like pitching them. We're just saying, "Hey, we got this cool thing. It might be a good fit for you." And we're more like targeting a specific person rather than trying to talk to the whole market. Because most people they try and craft like a cold email copy or an outreach copy speaking to that whole target avatar and people can smell that when you when you reach it to when you when they receive that in their emails. So you almost want to speak directly to one person, be their friend, use abbreviations and actually just try and help that one person. Um, and that's just crushing for us to there's just so many like I can just I can picture in my head like all of these pieces like blurry pieces of copy with like question marks on them that would work. It would be like, imagine if you got a cold email from someone saying like, "Hey man, saw we're in the same space. Um, I thought I'd help a brother out. I've I've got this system that I've just found. Um, it's not perfect, but you know, I've booked like six or seven appointments this month. Um, I haven't closed any of them yet, but I think some of them will. Um, if you want, I can just send you a loom just explaining how it works and you can check it out. If you don't want to, no stress, but I thought I might help you up."
No one does that.
No, that's like a new thing, and there's hundreds of those like off top of my head. Maybe you could, I don't know, put myself on the spot here. Maybe you could reach out to someone and just be like, and just send them like a question mark with a point just appointments question mark. Like, this is the thing is that there's just so many that could work. People could reply being like, "What do you mean appointments?" And then you'd have to like think through the next thing. But there's so many different variables that that could work. But what happens is people come into people rightfully so. They come into easy grow for the systems and they just want to blindly copy and paste them which is more than enough to get them to you know to add as as proof shown by a lot of people in this room to add six multi6 sometimes seven or multi7 figures that if you want to build a sustainable machine it has to be your own and the value in easy grow is not in the scripts and it's not in the you know processes and SOPs it's in the foundations because the only reason that we arrived at DM sorcery or terminate aloom or the coal calling script is because we knew the foundations. It wasn't something that we just stumbled across. It took us like 50 tests to find and we're still testing stuff now. So, and then yeah, you are ultimately constrained by how many tests you run. people like people think like and this is my fault because I didn't say this in easy grow and I probably should have changed it is people think you can only run one test at a time you know but if you've got like four or five you're going to find the right thing four or five times fast it's like if you were an archaeologist trying to like dig something up and you've got like 10 dig sites you'll you're 10 times more likely to find something than if you've got one if you've got one setter and you're trying to work out like the the opening hook message like how can you run four, five tests at the same time?
Well, this is this is kind of what we're going to get into this afternoon of like I think that if you're at the point where you're trying to test things and you don't know quite what works yet, then you shouldn't have a setup. You don't test it with setters. Full stop.
Yeah, the setters should ops manager/setter. Well, it's the same thing. It should be you doing it, but then I haven't got it's like it's capacity and and resources because we got an inbound system like I need to fulfill the sales calls on that. So that's like my priority. So I've kind of outsourced the setting to to Jen who's also doing ops but it's so yeah I don't I haven't run the system outsourcing that to like an assistant isn't necessarily going to work. It won't work. She's not got the pain to want to solve it as quick as you do.
Right. For example, Charlie, right? He was sending personalized looms for three hours every single morning and doing then eight sales calls in the afternoon when they were first scaling up here in money. I dude, I was still doing DMs at 100 grand a month for myself. I did it for two weeks. So, I got some understanding of it. This is the thing, man. Like, your ops assistant, she's not as incentivized as you. She's not in any pain and she's not as smart as you. like giving that like try and just just get having her figure it out. It won't work. It needs to be you. And I get you know you've got sales calls and [ __ ] but ultimately man like if if booking if if building an outbound appointment booking system is like the biggest thing and the biggest bottleneck for you moving forward then you have to make time for it. You're not you're not trying to scale it yourself, right? All you need is a proof of concept.
Yeah. like 10 videos a day, 10 emails a day, your own approach. Test that for as as long as you can until you just find something that's starting to stick. Then increase the volume ever so slightly. The minute you got proof of concept, hire a setup and and do all the scale from there. This is the thing, Chris, is like you're you're in the stage now where you shouldn't even be trying to set appointments. You should just be trying to figure out what works. And if you put your attachment on to booking the appointments and then it doesn't work now you get all annoyed and frustrated but you just need to figure it out. So oh sorry will when you are looking when you're testing new things you obviously have a setting team now right so you're not the one that is actively sending stuff anymore right?
I still send Trojans every single day. No, I um it it's honestly I'm guilty of it as well because for for for a few months I didn't I stopped doing setting and then I noticed my skills was going down. So I noticed that I immediately had to start doing appointment setting again. So I started crafting cold emails and sending manually. I've started running DM sourcing the program myself the last two weeks um just so I can learn and have that feedback loop because if I'm not on the ground doing it myself then how can I teach my setters how to the only reason he has to do that is because of you guys because it's an R&D effort. So once you've got a system that works that is your own that no one else can copy or can find and isn't being used by a thousand other people then the halflife of that system should be a good couple of years.
Couple really.
Yeah, because like but even then, okay, let's say we fast forward a couple years later and you're at whatever you are. I feel like you should be able to maybe it's just a belief of mine, which isn't true, but like I feel like you should be able to find someone like Will who can then like if if the system broke for example, Charlie, right, in a year's time DM source 3 wasn't working anymore, like would you be going back to doing the setting?
No, because because like the the setting team you the setting team is a springboard to profitability uh and cold traffic testing to then run ads. So you shouldn't have a setting team once you're at like multi7 or near eight figures. We only have one because of for R&D purposes. But my point is that you you find you build your own thing. You prove it to work. No one else is doing it. It works specifically in your market. you can rinse that thing for a year or two before you see any diminishing returns because no one's copying it, right? And by that point, it will have made you enough money and given you enough proof of concept for you to start running ads. Then you're free of it. So if I've got the ability to spend like $500 a day on ads, which I'm doing, you would recommend just do all that iterative iterative testing scientific method, do all that through my ads rather than try and do the other?
Well, it depends. It depends entirely on how profitable you are and like how well the ads are going and stuff. Because if you're spending $500 a day on ads and your sales conversion, your show rates north of 60%, your sales conversion rates north of 20% and you've got a great AOV and you've got great retention, a low refund rate, then you just go hard on ads. You skip the setting thing because you found proof. The reason you do the setting thing is to find proof of concept so you can run ads. It's to it's to battle test your show rate and your sales system and your product because the reason you want to do the setting thing before ads and and figure that out is because as soon as you run ads you enter a very dangerous territory which is basically if things don't work you start to lose money and you know to lose money in an info business is you've got to try really [ __ ] hard to do that you know so the setting team thing it's not forever it's just this it it's this little training ground to then eventually run ads basically and you so the only way it's going to work at the sort of seven multi7 figure level is finding your own thing.
Yeah. So so my my particular issue with this is that run ads, they do really well. So I've got the proof of concept. It's great. But then when they start to die off, I haven't got anything to back it up. But I guess I'm not doing testing.
That's the thing though, man. That's that's a media buying issue. Yeah. That's not that's not an ads issue because if that was true and ads just died off, we'd be [ __ ]
Yeah, it's true. I don't do nowhere near enough creatives. I don't do enough testing. So that's that's the focus I should be doing, not yeah. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. You know, like, you know, I'll record like 25 new hooks every month or two. Yeah. I don't yeah. You know, and then like Billy's watching it like a hawk and
Then we've got new funnels being tested and stuff like, um, ads don't just fall off.
Yeah. Unless you do, you know what I mean?
Yeah. Thanks. So with testing, you're just fighting entropy basically, of the market.
Yeah, pretty much. But like you only need to test until you find something that that works consistently. It's kind of like a sales script. Like you know you'll build it and it'll work and then bang, you're good. But then after a year or two, like it might start to stop working because you've reached out to everyone or everyone else starts to use it and stuff like that. But like when we found DM Sorcery at the beginning, like DM Sorcery and Terminator Looms were how we got to multi-7 figures. You guys have to realize we got to what, like 250k a month without outbound.
And the reason that they worked so well, like our appointment booking rate on DM sorcery was like 12%, something, and our Terminator Loom appointment booking rate was something like seven or eight percent. And that was because we made them ourselves. And the reason we could get to multi-7 figures so quickly and so easily was because like no one else was doing this. No, no one else in the market had seen it. And so for basically 18 months we had free reign. Now everyone uses them and they still work, but they just, you know, less less effective. If you guys want to learn like how did we do it, the only reason it worked is because we built our own thing. It wasn't because of the things, you know, it was because we built them ourselves. They still work. You can still get to, you know, 100k a month, 200k a month with them. It's just a lot harder. But you need to build your own thing. And then that's if you want to copy us, that's that's what you do. You copy the building.
You know, when you see running multiple tests is that in like different areas or is it with the same thing?
It would usually be in the same thing. So like, for example, the the cool thing that we have is we did all of our testing, the terminal loom system, DM sorcery system, um, we built in the northflow days, so for our agency and we were like, oh, let's just try our luck and see if they work here. But I remember for me to find the DM sorcery opener and the the script for the the VSSL, I think I must have ran like in the gym niche specifically, I must have I I reached out to every gym owner like two or three times and like, you know, I would run I'd have like I've got them on my drive. I had like 15 spreadsheets and like, you know, [ __ ] like 40 50 iterations and like thousand tens of thousands of messages and then like I was like, oh [ __ ] this thing works and then when you find it like bang. But fortunately for you guys, like I didn't know all of the like I knew the acquis, but it took me like a couple of years to figure out how to actually do it myself, like the building it and the foundations and stuff, but you guys don't have to go through a couple of years because you have the foundations from Genesis. You know how to test, you know how to build systems, you know how to regulate your emotions, you know how to track metrics, you know how to manage metrics, make decisions, etc., etc. That I figured that all out by doing it myself. It took me years, which is then why I was qualified to teach it.
So what I'm trying to understand is like more tactically when you're running multiple tests, how do you know it's not interfering with each other?
Like, oh, you're not supposed to test one thing at a time. You have to like you get [ __ ] off massive lead source and then you segment it and you bucket it and you make sure that there's no crossover and stuff like that. There's like there's like a lot of infrastructure behind it, but it's pretty simple to figure out if you think about it.
Okay. Yeah. Like there'll always be some overlap and some interference, but what usually happens is one variable just crushes and it's so obvious what works. Um, because like the first iteration of um of the of the opening message to DM sorcery um because obviously the whole thing was like asking permission, being like, hey, have I got your permission to pitch you, and the first variation was something along the lines of like um like, would it be all right if I tried to sell you something and and then it started working and I was like, oh [ __ ] like I'm going to pull on this thread a little bit and then like, you know, didn't work that well, but it worked pretty well and then I was like, how how can I ask that in a sort of because what what I did is I I I I'd found this like little like this little gem of psychology which was basically just permission-based marketing, but no one had done it on DM before and no one had done it with video before and I just I found like I was like, okay, I'm combining these things, I'm combining this idea of personalized video, selfie video, which is a pattern interrupt, then I'm taking this like permission-based thing and this sort of soft approach and putting them in control and I was like, how do I like shuffle these variables around and I ended up coming up with this whole like like, hey John, Charlie here, look, I have got something to pitch you, but I do not want to do it without your permission and I'd hate to try and sell you something without you being comfortable. So, just send me. And then the thumbs up thing was another thing. So, I was like, you know, the first iteration of that was what I I get I got it from the cold email thing just saying reply yes with one word if you want more information and that worked. Then I tried the thumbs up thing, but because I was doing DM sorcery on Facebook, the thumbs up button was just so available. So, the reply rate just spiked. So it's all these little things that after like a year or two of testing you you you kind of like part of the system.
Um, yeah, Charlie, when you were doing that, like so you're doing that through DMs, you're you're not really doing it scientifically. You're not necessarily going like version one, version two. You're just kind of iterating as you go.
At the beginning, at the beginning it was all based off intuition because I didn't really have the skill or the know-how to do the iterative process and start tracking it and stuff. But then when I found Sam Ovens and the way that he tracked his ads, I then because no one ever looked at um outbound and because people that ran ads, they had perfect tracking systems, perfect systems for testing, scientific method, etc. But no one ever looked at outbound from that perspective. So I was like, I'm just going to borrow this like media buying principle, you know, kind of like a big corporation data. And then when I applied that, that's when I started making real progress. But I was I was like nearly halfway there. But when I found the data tracking thing, it just clicked. I was like, "Oh [ __ ] this is what I've been."
Yeah. So, like with with the DMs though, like when I was doing it for two weeks, like there was some there was some sort of intuition and I was like just changing things every like five or six or seven like DMs and off responses. So, you're just for a bit you're just doing that. You're not necessarily writing down every little variation that you change. You're just doing it intuitively till you find something that kind of works and then do kind of like system. I mean, if I was if I had to go back and do it again, I would definitely start with the whole tracking thing and the meticulous science. So, like 10 DMs like this, iterate something. That's version one. 10 is not really enough. Like I would use like um to test the opening hook, I would want to see that 30 people had seen the opening message to then gauge if it was going to work or not, blah blah blah. But I tested so many different opening messages and the one that stood out was this like, "Hey, can I get your permission to pitch you thing?"
And just going back to this where you're running like four or five tests at the same time, like with where I'm at starting outbound DMs, like you you can't really do that. Would that be fair to say?
That's more for like cold email.
Okay. Honestly, like because running five different test variants yourself for cold DM would be a full-time job, you know, you're not looking to like if you that's yeah, that's the meta that's like going to be optimal for you, guessing what works, but if you don't have those resources just send a me send one blanket message, do it to 30 people, look at the metrics, change one small thing and do it again and you'll know after testing that over like 10 or 11 different iterations and actually like analyzing what the market's telling you you have something that's working unique to you. The main thing is like you start with a hypothesis. So you and you get your hypothesis from the niche and from the market because you've done hundreds of sales calls in your market. So you should know you should be able to create like a hypothesis using your knowledge of Easy Grow and knowledge of the market. You should be able to create your own thing and then you should be able to create quite a few of them and then you should just be able to write them out and then test them and then you'll discover something and then it might not work perfectly, but you'll be like it's kind of like a sign like you're on the right track and then what you'll do is you'll create like five new hypothesis or hypotheses around that thing that works and then one of those will work a little bit better and then again and again and then before you know it you've got like a 10% appointment booking rate and no one else knows what the [ __ ] you're doing and you're laughing to the bank because with two setters you can book like 50 to 100 appointments a month. But I would I would just that being said, I would have kind of just stopped once we're in KPI, which we're almost in KPI now. We're almost at that 2% ABR. I'd stop there.
Yeah, that's fine. But I I feel like probably could go further.
Well, you you can always I mean there's no end to efficiency, but you know, to be fair to to what you said as well, like I did this three, four, five years ago, so it's different game then, you know, like if I did it now, it's not to say that the conversion rates might not have been half because, you know, more people do cold DMs now and everyone's more familiar with the video opening message and stuff like that. Um, but all all you're looking to do is just find something that's in KPI. You don't need like a 10% appointment booking rate. If you get like a two or three and then you get like six or seven setters, now you've got like a a whole two sales reps filled.
I have a question. Sorry.
Okay. It's kind of R&D related, but it also is with appointments. Um, when you're testing stuff, how do you know that it's going to work in all the different niches, right? Because you're testing in like the agency consulting market. How do you know that it's going to work for like brick and mortar?
Because no matter what niche you go to, there's human beings.
Yeah. Which is quite simple because I'd argue agency niche is the hardest niche to make work with outreach.
Yeah. Any niche is easier than agency because they know all the strategies. They get bombarded with ads and outreach every day already. So if you can make it work for that and like it doesn't matter if it if it's a medar owner or a gym owner or an agency owner, like it's all the same. Like it's it's kind of like it's just people and there's just different business models put on top of them. The business model doesn't change the person or the way they think or the way they feel. It just means they might respond slightly differently to different type of language. So like a gym owner might respond to members and um a HVAC person might respond to um air conditioning installations. But beyond the nuances of the the technical things, every we're all human. We all have the same biases. We all have the same issues and the same stuff. It's it's not different.
There is variation to this though because if I were still working with gym owners, I would, for example, do DM sorcery in a gym, you know?
Well, that's like Denny with his olive oil.
Oh, yeah. Literally, it's like it's like little things, right? Like if I was still working with gym owners, I would record my looms in a gym. I would make the DM sorceries in a gym because there's an immediate connect. Or at least I would do it like in like fitness equipment or like a dumbbell or something on the on on my desk or something cuz there identification with you. What do electricians use? Is it like a tool or something that they use or something?
I'm serious.
Yeah. Yeah. Like I mean around your neck or something, you know?
Yeah. You guys laugh, but that works. Of course it does, right? Um, you should do it in like a fuse box or something.
Yeah. like a like a really ancient rusted fuse box and you're about to touch it and be like I got you.
Yeah. And Jack, you should get like a hat with like always be closing and some stuff, you know, like it's like or like something every massive like Wolf of Wall Street thing behind you like it's it there's so much that you can try that would work, you know?
Yeah. Like what what's another like if let's say that you work with dentists just like I don't know [ __ ] brushing your teeth whilst doing it or something.
Get a lap on that. a lab coat on.
Yeah. Simple.
Yeah. Literally stethoscope. People don't think about this because they for some reason think that outreach and organic outreach isn't marketing. Like we spend months building our ads in funnels, but for some reason DM sorcerers like okay, oh Charlie, nice system. And then just start doing it. It's like what niche am I working with? How am I going to say it? How am I going to look? What is my niche? Uh what does my niche like? How am I going to put that into into the videos into that? You could even like include like a joke at the end or something like, you know, what did the electrician say to the plumber cuz it but it's it's this is the thing is like it's no one [ __ ] does that. So when they receive that it's this pattern interrupt where suddenly you're not just this dude with a phone you're like one of them.
Yeah. And then when you when you understand your niche and you get them and it's easy. Like Josh you're working with SMAS right? Everyone knows the Tai Lobas ad, right? So get a DM sourc like a Prius in a garage and that's here in my garage, you know. Here in my garage, I can get you more appointments. Like it's it's just think, you know, then whisper knowledge at the end.
Yeah, that's my excuse to rent a Lambo.
No. Well, if you do it with a Lambo, no one will [ __ ] buy from you, mate. So, no. Get like a Prius or like a golf car, I think.
Yeah. You know, get one of those like child toy cars, like one of those little ones, and then record the ad in that.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah. So, quick question. It's a little bit more tactical, but we did build like somewhat our own system. We had like a 10% ABR from cold email and like a 5% close rate on the actual cold emails. Um, now our thing that was like almost I guess our pattern interrupt was free value. like we did it was for a very very specific YouTube niche and we did like this really really like specific audit which we're basically able to automate. Um it took like five minutes per one. Um now we run out of like the people in the niche. Uh so we need to like rethink it. But I was just kind of interested in your philosophy more than anything because a lot of um Easy Grow is a lot more focused on like the psychology rather than like necessarily anything around free value rather than maybe the inbound systems. Is there a reason is it just scale like why you guys don't ever really lean too much into like the actual free value on any of the outbound?
We do realize free value is psychology as well, right?
Yeah. Yeah. It's also I guess why is that not a psychological trigger that you guys lean into a lot is I guess then I just don't
What did you say your close rate was?
Uh 50% 50%.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the truth is man is that it probably works. We've just never used it. Kind of comes back to that same thing we talked about yesterday where it's like you know if we give someone access to the program next day we know there's no issue. So it's it's the same thing like the free value thing and the audit thing and that probably works as well. But for us like we've we've you know when you build systems you've got these things called initial conditions which basically it's kind of like a way of doing something. It's like a bias and then all of your future iterations are by it's called the law of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. it if you take a like if you're taking like a transatlantic um journey or like a big ship from one end of the world to the other if you're off by like 0.1 degrees then when you land you're going to be thousands of miles away. So basically as more time and volume elapses the initial condition um bias becomes amplified. So for us the reason that we're biased against free value is because in the beginning we never did it. in which I was psychologically predisposed to try that at the beginning and now is all about free value but we didn't try at the start we didn't have it at the finish if that makes sense and so you know I'm not against it and I don't I'm not here saying it doesn't work or anything like that I'm just saying that we found a way that works and we wouldn't change or test it because I would say Johnny's whole brand is built around free value, yeah the inbound stuff.
Yeah, the inbound stuff is where it definitely makes sense, but I was interested cuz it I thought you were going to hint at something and I'm not sure if you were where when you asked about my close rate. Do you think that free value might decrease close rate?
I wasn't sure if that's
No, no. I I just was curious cuz I thought you said your close rate was 5%.
So, I have 5% cold email to close. So, we close one in 20 cold emails. I think it's like it kind of just comes back to what I just said like you know because we because we never did it. We never do it.
Makes sense. And you know, maybe there is a world in which we test it and we try it out. But the thing is with free value is it has to be really [ __ ] good.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I don't know how scalable it is. I don't know how automatable it is, you know? Like my I like things that are simple, scalable, predictable, consistent, and that can just be easily automated with as few moving parts as possible. um which is how we've built like it's the reason DM sorcery is video thumbs up video thumbs up calendar link like there's only five points of friction in that system and you know if you've got to be like you know which PDF would you like and you know what about this and this and could work but we've just never tried it.
Sweet. When I first watched a engine something didn't click about the forces of irrationality when you give every bias and now it just clicked, like should we just like take one bias and just iterate with the Darwinian?
You're talking about the the cognitive biases.
Yes, exactly. Should we just think like okay there is this bias. Let's try with the stimuli.
Yeah. Well, this is kind of how you create a hypothesis is you you you do your like avatar thing. So you know your niche and you think about your niche and then you look at all the cognitive biases and the the flaws of human psychology and then you sort of fuse them together. Basically, here's
The point. Any string of words or any word that you use in your acquisition, for your whether it's ads, whether it's funnels, whether it's VSSLs, whether it's videos, whether it's emails, whether it's cold, any word should serve the purpose of triggering a bias. And this is where people go wrong with email; is they just write their emails and think, "Oh, that looks good." But you need to engineer it where every single couple of words strung together in some way, shape, or form, like tickles a bias. You know, that's what they never use a word that doesn't like, or a string of words that doesn't like, in some way, shape, or form, give you some sort of psychological leverage in the acquisition.
Makes so much sense.
Thank you.
Yeah. Like if I'm writing a VSSL, like everything I put in there is is then reverse engineered. Like, how does that in some way, shape, or form manipulate someone, which is basically what it is because human psychology is very predictable, and if you understand how people tick and how they work, then you can start putting words in front of them and stimuli in front of them that trigger responses that you want. It's not hard. You just need to understand it.
Yeah. I had a question. So, right now I'm not doing any outbound, and everything's sort of coming from YouTube inbound. Would you have the same philosophy of like testing things with videos and like sort of that side of things?
Not really, because like I to a degree, yes, but not not anywhere near as much.
Okay. Because like there's so many variables that are outside of your control with YouTube that you just can't; it's not a controlled test. And also YouTube is just something that you just get better at because the ultimate variable is the quality of the video and how you deliver it.
Yeah. And that's not something that's just something that improves with time. It's kind of like if you were like a footballer and you're trying to like iterate like taking your penalties. It's like the only way that you get better at penalties is by just doing more. And there'll be feedback, and there'll be things that you should listen to, but there's no like spreadsheet for it, if that makes sense. It's it's more intuitive. I might be wrong there, but I I think that's that's how I've done it.
Yeah. I guess what I'm wondering is things like, oh, when you call to action at the end versus first 90 seconds, like well from a from an appointment booking perspective, it absolutely, you know, can work, but it's the same thing where like it the problem with tracking appointments from YouTube videos is let's say that you make a video and you put the call to action in the end, uh, and then like, you know, and let's say that video gets you way more appointments. It could be the call to action, but it could also be the fact your last two videos did well. It could be your recent email blast. It could be the fact that your competitor didn't upload this week. It could be the fact you're in a good mood. It could be the thumbnail. It could be the title. You can't isolate was it? But you can't isolate it because so many things are outside of your control. With email and with DMs and stuff, there's you can you can name the variables on one hand. But with something like you with ads, it's easy as well. But with YouTube specifically, like there's so many things that could lead towards an uptick in appointments. You know, is it is it the fact that you changed the funnel? Is it the headline? Is it the video? Is it the Is it Is it the fact that this week we had more calendar availability?