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Kickoff Sessions
Weekly podcast episodes with the sharpest minds in the world to help you live a richer & more fulfilling life.
Previous guests include Luke Belmar, Justin Waller, Sahil Bloom, Gad Saad, Peter Schiff, Stirling Cooper, Jack Hopkins, Sadia Khan, Matt Gray, Daniel Priestley, Richard Cooper, Justin Welsh, Arlin Moore and more.
Kickoff Sessions
#279 Shan Hanif - Why 99% of Online Entrepreneurs Fail (And How to Fix It)
Watch This NEXT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlK2P76_ZZs
Everyone tells you to scale one product.
But the best businesses don’t stop there.
They build ecosystems.
That’s how Shan Hanif has helped people like Iman Gadzhi, Ali Abdaal & Mike Thurston build machines — not just offers.
One front-end product.
One mid-ticket program.
One high-end backend.
Plus a stack of hybrid delivery models that fuel it all.
It’s not about having 12 different businesses.
It’s about building one clear system with multiple entry points.
In this new episode with Shan, we break down exactly how to do it:
- How to move from freelancer to ecosystem
- How Shan helped scale experts to 7 and 8 figures
- The hybrid model that lets you combine content, service, & product
- And how to build a business that doesn’t rely on virality or ads
This episode is for creators and entrepreneurs who are done with “just selling one thing.”
It’s for people who want to build something that lasts.
Check out the full episode below.
(00:00) Preview and Intro
(01:06) The Real Reason You’re Not Growing
(03:49) The “Growth Operating” Model Explained
(06:44) Cold Outreach vs Inbound: Which One Wins?
(08:17) The Unsexy Side of Business That No One Talks About
(11:22) Why Outsourcing Fulfillment Can Break Your Agency
(17:19) Hiring Experienced People vs Sticking to Your System
(21:28) How Shan Landed Anthony Joshua and Launched Global Brands
(24:31) How to Add Services Without Losing Focus
(26:27) The Full-Stack Agency Model Explained
(32:41) What Makes a Digital Product Ecosystem Work
(36:27) Genflow’s Next Big Move
The secret to scaling to 20 million plus year. You're doing the thing that you actually either have been a consumer of or you know, like, how to physically do it itself. I think when they start an agency or a business, everyone thinks it's all about sales and marketing. It's the social media narrative. In reality, it is about the other side and actually enjoying the other side preparing for a call, getting on a call, sending the follow-up, doing this and making sure everyone else is doing it.
Darren Lee:You don't need to hustle harder. You don't need more content, you need a system. Most entrepreneurs stay stuck under 100k a month because their business is just one front end offer with no back end, no ascension, no ecosystem. Shan Hanif built a 20 million a year ecosystem for the likes of Imangaji, chris Williamson, mike Thurston and the biggest names in the industry. In this episode, he reveals the calm, scalable path to building a business that prints cash without chaos.
Darren Lee:What I'd like to do is almost put together like a roadmap for people for building an online business, and also what's the reason why they're not successful? Because you're seeing the guys who are just fucking killing it and you're working with the guys because you've got to that point. What's the gap between those guys and everyone who's struggling to sell their first agency offer, their first program?
Shan:What's the gap there, I guess?
Darren Lee:so the question is if you were selling an info product what's the gap between the guys that are at the top of the market, that are killing it, and the guys that are struggling? Why are these guys not actually growing, growing their info offer, growing their agency? What's the characteristic trade? Almost?
Shan:in it right growing their info offer, growing their agency. What's the characteristic trait? Almost in it right, I think, because from what I've seen and I guess context is, I guess the clients I've worked with in my agency also have helped a lot of agency founders. I think a lot of people actually don't know what they are selling or what they want to be selling. They're just doing it because they thought this would make sense. That's the biggest thing I have found, um, and I guess to explain that, for example, someone's like ai automations is massive now, so I'm gonna like package that into a, an offer, and I'm gonna sell it. Or, you know, drop shipping looks amazing. Or now, now, I guess gemflam model in the market is called growth operating. You know, growth operating is a new buzzword. I'm going to create that as a info product and I'm going to sell it. So people are like looking for the right business opportunity.
Shan:The clear distinction between people is who like, actually like, basically had a skill slash, interest and they did the thing based on that versus based on the popular business model the popular business, the popular author, the popular this. That's why you see all the guys with 45 lead. No, you know, 45 leads in 60 days or your money back is because everybody read Hamo's book and everyone's copying the exact same thing because, oh, that's the way to do it. Oh, I'm happy because I found the secret. Now I just need to apply it. And everyone's headline says the same and all those guys are not going to succeed because you don't, you don't, you don't know that, basically, and then you. So everything about people that are not successful, in my opinion, is because nothing of this is original.
Shan:They're just looking at what works and trying to piece it together and be like it's gonna work so they never did it for themselves before they try to do it for other people yes, but I think, even if you want to be for other people, right, like I start, set up an agency to do things for other people, but the things I was saying to I could do for other people, I actually had the ability to do so, because you still don't have to be able to. Like you know, the best boxing coach doesn't have to be a world champion, but he knows enough about it that I can teach somebody else, and I think it's almost like that. But I think, going back to the biggest difference is that people are selling something or want to get into a business or something they just don't have the underlying skills for. I guess is the point, because if you want to launch a, like I was saying, a growth operating agency, which is quite hard, because what that?
Shan:What that basically means, if anyone listening is that you're gonna um, do, um, what I do, basically at germflow. So it's like you're gonna go to someone with an audience so you're gonna say to them I'll do lots of, I'll do the back end for you, you, you be the front end and um, that's now becoming very popular, so I'll pick an example, but in that you have to have all those skills now that means that you need to be able to build landing pages, run ads, do this, do that, do this. So it's actually very hard for a beginner, because now you're saying you need like 10 skills, uh, but even if you focus on just one of those? So people don't have the skill, but they want to jump in it because they think this is a profitable niche or a good business model, the best business model, and that's the difference, I guess too.
Darren Lee:The reality is there's like 10 different components in there and if you focus on one component, as it is one, it's incredibly difficult the deeper you go into it.
Darren Lee:And two that can make as profitable as you want it to be. And one of the things that I've really become aware of like working with you on this for the past year was how difficult it is and also how much reps you need to do. Like that was a glaringly obvious thing from your program was the fact that how much reps you have done of outreach, sales, of presentations of proposals to be able to sign these big clients that people think, oh, that just happens for you now 100%, and you've explained that really, really well. So I know you're going to walk through that kind of mentality because people don't realize how much reps is actually involved. Just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes? Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year.
Shan:Thank you and I think you know I actually don't like that saying about reps, because it almost seems like I just got to do the same thing lots of times. It's like no, you have to like work at doing that thing but actually be looking to improve whilst doing it, which means you have to very like strategic and it's a little way of doing something. So the bad thing of reps is someone sending like the same, like cold dm, and they say, if I send it like a thousand times, you know, then obviously it will eventually start to work. So as long as I keep waking up and sending my cold outreach campaign, so they keep pulling more leads from apollo and I'm, I'm doing this, I'm doing that and sending, it's just gonna work. So it's almost like no, because if you're not, I did this, why didn't it work? Okay, I have a new hypothesis. I'll try this. Okay, is this gonna work? This didn't work either. Let me have another hypothesis. You're actually continuously hypothesizing like why is it? And then it'll work? Um, and yes, that takes a lot of, I guess, courage to do that, because you know you are continuously not winning and trying and and you are right, today people are like I'm gonna do something. Is it gonna work? It didn't work. Okay, that means this whole thing doesn't work. And then you're looking for something new or different or new strategy.
Shan:So I had someone email me. He's like watch the youtube video. He's like, um, I'm starting to get clients, whatever I want to. And I was like why, what you do, what's the struggle? They came back to me, goes, I want to get inbound leads, um, and it's not happening for me. I'm making like three videos a week, whatever, whatever. And I was like I just went back to him saying why inbound leads like the only thing you control as a small business agency or whatever is you can sit an outreach and you know that from my thing I go that I call hot outreach is like if you just spend so much time working on the quality of your outreach yourself, you can you control the destiny of your growth. But him he's like I have chosen inbound and like I want leads for my content because that's what I want.
Shan:And I went back to him saying it's not how business works it's ego yeah, but that's good to go to your point of like the difference between success, failure, whatever is just like because people want it to be the way they want it to be. I went back to to him and say he's like saying I want to lose weight but I still want to eat ice cream three times a week. It's just not going to happen. So like you're not going to grow your business if you only want this way of getting leads. And I don't know why people think like that, because you should be wanting to do the best thing that's in your power to grow.
Darren Lee:But you've almost mastered the unsexy element of the business and that's why I love the raw like attitude you have towards it. And the biggest awakening for me to be on lock was the customer success component the least sexy part of a business about not just getting sales, not just putting up a striped screenshot how do you actually?
Shan:it's funny a lot of people have said that to me because they think when they start an agency or a business, everyone thinks it's all about sales and marketing, because that's like it guess the social media narrative. But in reality, it is about the other side and actually enjoying the other side, like preparing for a call, going on a call, sending the follow-up, doing this and making sure everyone else is doing it. Um, that is like I work with other agencies and they're always terrible. Like right now I have an agency I'm working with. I join the call call. No one's on it. I have to chase them for an update to them to finally set an update. And every time I work with a third party agency is like that.
Shan:I worked with a UDC agency recently. The guy's on a LinkedIn post already about how they're working with us or whatever, and they had done zero work and he's already trying to profit off the fact that we're working together, working together. Then, in the timeframe that we worked together, they delivered us eight pieces of content and at the same time, my internal team were also doing it. They delivered 40 pieces of content. So like absolutely useless agency basically. And that's where it's riddled with today because everybody's so focused on sales and marketing and positioning and getting another client to 10K a month, 50k a month, that the other side almost is the lost thing.
Shan:Um, and that is the showing up each week to a call sending wiki updates. You know, some of the cadence that I believe in is like each week you are sending this is my plan this week. This is what happened this week. Here's a deck that showed you what happened and that way of working. Um, it really is very unique. Um, and you're right, I guess I've never thought about it as in like, the thing with me is I don't think something is a choice, is like that's the thing needed for success.
Darren Lee:It just has to happen started a bit more because that's that's super interesting, because the way this extends me was you always have to manage your back door, always to manage your back door, because if you're losing, what? If you've 10 clients and you're losing two clients a month, 20% churn, you're out of business in seven months. So how have you been able to almost like think about that as the highest point of like leveraging the business, because that seems like your unique mechanism to work with.
Shan:We've never lost a client that essentially what we call a mega client in our business, which is someone that's selling more than a million dollars a year. We have never lost one. It was only one that, like, we gave notice to in like eight years of the business, um, and so my earliest creators, like grace beverly being one of them, 2016 we still work with her and she, like last year, had her biggest year with us, even though it's been like eight years, and it is because what I was saying, which is that the when I want to do something, it's very easy to sell something right. It's very easy to position, sell.
Shan:I, I guess, know that if I was to do this, all these other things also have to happen, and hence why, if you sign a client, you're going to sell this. You sell it for a product, like the rest of it. That has to happen is all equally important, and I think that's the part where people then don't do or they think you know if you listen to it online is you find other people to do it. You step away from it, don't work in the business. You can fulfill it by having third-party people. So every single thing about actual fulfillment of work and quality of service is a thing that everyone tells you that you don't need to do, but you shouldn't care about enough.
Darren Lee:It's all about the front end what are limiting beliefs or things that are in an industry that are just simply not true that you believe or that you?
Shan:I think one that you will find other people to fulfill your work as an agency. So I guess on the agency spectrum it's 100% that someone else will do the fulfillment and people massively say that that your job is to bring a client in and you, someone else will fulfill it. I might mean someone else, they mean like hiring remote people overseas. Then it's even your team will fulfill it and you shouldn't have to do it. You shouldn't have to do that. Um like I like.
Shan:I'm still heavily involved in the biggest things that happen in the business. When I someone, someone says where do you spend your time on, etc. I think it's this thinking of I used to think, right, you like, you work on the business, cetera. I think it's this thinking of I used to think right, you like, you work on the business, not in the business. I even say that myself.
Shan:But people literally take it as a literal thing, which is well, I shouldn't have to do this stuff now because I should be focused on growth, which means I shouldn't have to jump on a call, I shouldn't have to check something or whatever. I think that's my biggest difference how everybody thinks, even in the company today 23 million dollars last year we did um in revenue. You know I have 100 plus team in multiple countries or whatever. Like it's not easy, but I'm has still no issue um being involved in absolutely any part of the business, or I'm close enough to almost every part of the business um, because that is the way I can stay like actually manage it, the idea that you don't need to be working in the business. When did you develop?
Darren Lee:that attitude because more most people, when they make more money, they develop more of an ego.
Shan:I think for me it's, um, there is a certain pride and obviously like quality of work, and I think that is where that comes from, because if I'm not across it in some capacity, if that could be the final review, it could be it gets reviewed by somebody else and comes to me or whatever that may be, like the different systems and things are in place. Um, it's just that quality. Yeah, I say to people and my, when I was working 10 years ago, my manager, uh, what happened was I used to email. I worked as an accountancy firm. I sent an email to a client and the client emailed the partner and goes to them that they don't want to work with me anymore, obviously because I'm like terrible.
Shan:Basically, and I remember my manager goes to me every email that you write. You've got to imagine this is the last email you are ever writing, so it's your best email ever. And that always stuck with me is like every piece of work you do you should do to that level, like someone's got a gun to your head and I think that's the thing that's like. No, I don't care what. The thing we're doing just now, um, I guess, as you're recording the other episode. I was just reviewing a website and they hadn't done a few things and I literally was saying to them like no, no, it's not how we do stuff. So that DNA of like what makes us us is the thing that is the quality driver, I think, is how I do it.
Darren Lee:How do you keep that standard when you scale so much? Because I struggle with that which is when it's gone to multiple different parties. Much because I struggle with that which is when it's gone to multiple different parties. The original idea is difficult to bring through everyone when you're, when you're 15, 20, 25, 30 clients.
Shan:I think there's a couple of things. I think one it's um, I massively believe in like as an agency in your culture. You should be openly saying to people we are McDonald's, which means that we're going to follow a way of doing something. A Big Mac tastes the same in every McDonald's, so I don't really care how you want to do this landing page. This is how we do landing pages, so your job is to make this. Yes, of course, if you want to tweak things, change things, whatever, what naturally happens as you scale is people have their own ideas and their own ideas will start objecting or like clashing with how you do something. It's not right or wrong and I say this to people all the time that, especially as you hire better people, obviously they're going to come in with more experience, but more experience in their context. So you hire someone from another company. They could have made amazing landing pages too, so that would be based on the goals and the strategy and what they were doing at that place. It's not wrong, but we are doing things a certain way, so you need to respect that and do it our way. Add your value where you can, but you can't start suggesting a new way, different way, whatever. So fundamentally, it's like the way you are as a business and your culture, you control that. Then you need, like your senior people around you also believe that. So if you are a guy that knows about ads and if you're like this is the way we're going to do ads, we've got to trust that judgment and say this is the way we do it Instead of trying to brainstorm other ways to do it or whatever. And then what happens is naturally you start to develop a certain way you do stuff as a business and then you can document it, you can write it, you can make it into processes. So I think that's the way to control it. But naturally it's tough. It's always going to be. As there's more layers, more genie, people, it will start to deviate. Then I guess you just have a fine line of like what is acceptable for it to not be okay and what things are that have to be okay as per the way we do it.
Shan:So the biggest thing for an agency is to preserve what makes them successful, what's the secret thing that they're so good at, and make sure they keep doing that. That for us is, for example, turning up to a call and actually having a deck to walk a client through for their update and giving sending that out afterwards so there's no. Well, I used to have this people be like, oh, I don't really need to do a deck, I'm just gonna have a chat with them. I was like no, no, that's not how we do stuff, this is the way we do stuff, like we don't really care what your preference is, or I would have this all the time with managers oh, we don't like doing like morning stand-up, you know, we'll just just do what works for us, or my team doesn't like that, I'll do this and it's like no. And that's where my it was really tough. Like 21, 22 as in the 2021, 22 years when we did go from like 30 to 100 because I hired 60 people in one year.
Shan:It. That was the hard bit, because it was very hard to manage just this thing of like. I know you are more experienced than me, I know you're like older than me, I know you worked at like other big jobs, but I needed done like this. And that was my own learning too, because initially I thought they know more. You show me how to do it.
Shan:And then everything started to go wrong in the business we had, like people saying you're going on holiday, turn your phone off. And I was like no, no, we can't do that in our business. We are on because our creators work all time zones. All this, all our online business. Why, if something goes wrong, we have to be online, like actually visible. You can't be a client facing person and be dead to the world. It's not possible.
Shan:So right now in our staff handbook and everything it says that you know all year round, even if you were on holiday, no one's asking you to work. But you can't be like, not cognizant of your clients. So if you have had a message, had a live situation even this week, like mike, who you know, um, the guy that mike the manager's mike's business, he's off on holiday, but even then, like, obviously something has happened. So mike's business, he's off on holiday, but even then, obviously something has happened. So Mike's messaging him. Obviously he's on holiday, but then he's messaged in that internal Slack saying hey, fyi on this, because he still has to be aware of the fact that he's essentially managing clients. He's responsible, so you're never off. So lots of these things ultimately comes down to your culture and how you are and being upfront with it. So people know.
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Darren Lee:What I loved from a lot of your work that you shared in the program was that the culture is you at the founder and you have to be about it. Yeah, and I've told hundreds of people that like that, like fucking stalker me man, can you explain that concept? Because so again, people are selling offers on for nail salons. You know you don't even. They're not even in their nails done right the way you explained that you have to be about that thing I think I think cheesy.
Shan:I think you can only start a business that you actually have real interest in. That's what I fundamentally believe and that's where people are saying what's the secret to scaling to 20 million plus year? You're doing the thing that you actually either have been a consumer of or you know, like how to physically do it itself by consumer of is like then you know what the industry is and how it works and whatever, because you've been in it. So, yeah, when someone's doing lead gen for salons in some place, it's just never going to work because you probably don't even know sales. And then how are you going to help sell for a salon somewhere? Like you don't even know the business inside out, or that industry or this, or you have no interest in it. Um, the easiest way to sell something is if you have interest in that thing. You have a lot of common knowledge that you've gathered in your own personal time by watching stuff, whatever. Um, subtleties.
Darren Lee:Yeah, small subtleties. I've said you know, sharing the podcast or the blog or the linkedin post that relates to that product or service, which gives you a unique advantage in there.
Shan:But when you said about DNA, like my personal DNA on the second side. So that's like, you know your business as in, the thing you should be doing in the first place. You should have a massive natural interest and skill in then, as you are as a person, 100%. You can only build a business based around how you are and you are like how I done that is. I remember in the early days when so 2018 to 19 we scaled the business three times and I did some massive stuff, like I assigned anthony joshua, which at the time was crazy, to like sign him as a client, um, and do all his stuff and lots of other amazing things. Um, we went to the us, grew the business there. We launched the toner sculpt app for chrissy keller, which did like the biggest revenue on the app store outside of the games category at that time. Massive, massive things in 2019.
Shan:But how and how did I do that? From a culture and do it because I was there. What I mean by that is my team was shocked. There was like you like are sitting with us to do the work, like yeah, of course, but like you're still here and it's like 12, I'm not telling them. Guys, make sure you do it. I'm going home. I would sit with them every single day doing it. So I do. It does come from that. And then everybody knows that, like in the company, everybody knows that. Also, everybody knows if there's a live problem going on, I'm gonna go like straight into it. Um, and the team knows that as well today. So, a, they know that I'm about it. B is like you know, that's the expectation because I care that much about it than everyone cares that much about it and where I've seen companies that are like struggle or whatever it's because the CEO is just so far away from, like, the realness of the business that they just don't know and the people don't respect it 100%.
Darren Lee:You know how have you scaled an agency in terms of people say agencies aren't scalable because you're just getting retainers, retainers, retainers. What's the component you've had from a rev share, profit share component to be able to have that asymmetrical?
Shan:return. I think when people say that is because I always think of it like this right, the client that you're pitching, they have a funnel. A funnel right because every person is trying to just win customers or clients. Let's say, your clients are always trying to win customers or clients, right, and today you may come in and say I'll run your ads, which mean you're doing one thing for them which is their top of the funnel. You're going to get more customers into the top of their funnel potentially.
Shan:For me it all unlocked when I was like but I could do other things for that same client. So scale is lean, like stuck and retainer, retainer, trainer, because everyone's like I'm gonna get a hundred clients that I'm gonna sell my ad service to. This is not scalable. So for me it's flipped when I was like but I have the ability to do more, so I'll do ads for them and I'll also do content for them. Well, I can also do this for them because I'm the same person. So it's like because, if you think of it as a funnel right, so let's say, in this example, paid ads for whatever reason, it's like top of the funnel, but I could do econ for them because if I'm sending them the traffic. Maybe that's an opportunity.
Shan:So how I designed my agency was that I want to be full stack to someone's funnel so I can do everything you need to go from driving the traffic to making the sale to retaining the customer. Now this is a real example. Like I had a client who was paying us three thousand dollars per month. They now pay us fifty thousand dollars per month that same client. So when people think scale is like more clients, we scale by doing more for the people we're already winning with um. So I scaled the revenue and that opened up more services. Naturally, because you have to learn and obviously build the departments to do that. So almost had like how you've always done stuff and this is advice to anyone is like do something new for an existing client, because then you can prove that you can do it and win and then you'll be able to then offer that to other people that's a huge unlock, that's a huge perspective shift.
Darren Lee:I guess the feedback on that is how is that not not niche hopping, but diverting focus from the main vessel? Let's say, if your main vessel initially was ads, yeah, how how do you construct that for someone so that they don't go off and do a lot of random shit?
Shan:it isn't, though I think that's where I guess my, my, my beliefs versus the market is just different, because people tell you like, yeah, you have to like, pick one service. One niche equals agency, right? I've just never thought that, because I've never had that in my head, so I never followed it. Um, because what I've always done is I always think of it in full perspective. I'm running ads for somebody if I don't care about how their landing page and website is, if I don't care about the conversion, if I don't care about this, my ad service is only ever going to go so far. Right, because that's the full spectrum. Why are they paying you, me, for ads? Because they want me trying to sell stuff for them.
Shan:If the rest of this funnel is terrible, we're just never going to win in reality, right, at some point it's never going to win. So I've always thought that's why I think it's related I don't see it as I'm only doing this part, but I'm just doing this part of the whole part and I understand the whole part, so why can't I do the other things in the same part is how I thought about it. So for me, a niche is more like industry. I would say, niche is like dgc brands, niche is like podcast, niche isn't paid ads. That's just my opinion. That's the vehicle, vehicle, yeah, it's like you're fixing one part of the funnel for that in that industry. So for podcast today, you could do everything.
Darren Lee:We do email as well. So I'm suggesting we do email with your brand, we do LinkedIn copy, we do IG.
Shan:It's the same thing, then, right. So podcast is the industry and you should be able to as an agency provide services to an industry is how I would say it's.
Darren Lee:I provide almost every service you can imagine to creators. How do you do that from a revenue perspective as an? Is it on a profit share, rev, rev share? Because to give you that huge upside, because you're bringing 100 employees to this party, right yeah, I guess obviously, naturally, you evolve in a business model.
Shan:I think that's another thing that agencies, people are very stuck on like having like this offer For me. I've always that's why I've always said, talked about the idea of like you know, like it's a custom offer, and what I mean by that is based on the scenario, trying to think of the best deal. I'm like a deal maker more than like I have an offer and this is it and I'm going to try toeze you into like package one, two or three. It's like what's the best deal here on the scenario, and it's always think like that live situation. Friday I have a call with the steven violets team. We've had many calls and lots of stuff and it's never kind of worked. They're back again now and I actually I need to figure out what is the deal I'm offering. They've got the fd, his co-founder, everyone on the call, big call. You don't think about it yet tonight like what's the deal, what's the deal I want to offer them? That makes this good, because if I walk in there and say, guys, it's 4k a month or we can take 20 of your thing, it'll just seem like it's like a thing that I'm just this is our package. I need you to make it seem like like it's. It's a deal that we're orchestrating based on what they truly want, and what that does mean is that it'll be a bunch of stuff in reality on my scale.
Shan:But to come back, the step is um, ultimately, you know you'll start charging fees for sure, as retainers. But wherever you can, you should try to do an upside deals, even if you can't do. Give me a percentage of your. You can't do. Give me a percentage of your business, you can always do. Give me a percentage of the upside. Explain so I run like a massive online person's like funnels and ads.
Shan:When we took them on, they were doing like 100K a month. I was like here's all your problems. I know that because of my experience and the skills that I have and my team has. So I knew if I implement our things on your staff, I think you'll be able to get to this level, ie 300k a month. So that difference of 200k, the growth that you will get I want a percentage of that, of the 200 out of 100? Yeah, so each month we check the revenue. 100k is yours. I don't want it Anything above 100K. Give me 20%. So it's pure upside for them. If it's less than 100K, you'll get paid nothing. Obviously, you have to have a certain level of skill and ability to be able to do that, but I guess that's what it takes to get to the 20 million plus a year. Start doing deals which are so performance-based.
Darren Lee:But you, but you have all the reason to do that because you have the skill, and I think that's been a big evolution for us on the agency side is that it's not about signing more clients, it's signing better clients with a higher upside, because we almost have a rev share, not on all of them, but let's say 60% right now. Learn a lesson from you. Where is the next component of that? So if you're adding in, let's say like your own programs or programs around there, like, how do you think about that evolution right from like an agency to moving into more, into like programming info?
Shan:I think for us because we're a bit larger now, but then anyone that's um, you know, like a million or a few million a year there's massive opportunity today because you can't service everybody under the hc model. I think the best model today would be have a very lean agency with really good clients, that you have skin in the game and the percentage and you're actually going to work with them to grow them and make them successful and you're getting a percentage as a win-win. So imagine today you had 10 podcasts that you are personally working with. You're going to show up to every single one of those calls and you're actually going to grow them and they're going to give you a percentage for doing so. That should be the agency.
Shan:And then the long tail of your industry ie all the small podcasts or all the guys that want to start a podcast is where info comes in and we can sell it to them.
Shan:That you do it for yourself. I think that's like the best business model in today's world, because it is very hard to get 50 clients and keep them all happy, because they're all at different stages in their journey and whatever operations is very hard to manage. That. If I was starting again, that's what I would do. I would lean agency work with really good clients that have the right like uh, you know ambition and all that stuff, so they're in it for the right reasons, so you can actually work hard on them. You'll actually personally check each thing and drive them forwards. And the other side yeah, the info space I guess in the agency would be that you take everything you know, package it into a product that gives someone the thing so they can do it themselves, and then you sit and watch them in case they ever get big enough. Then you're like, hey, I'll work with you.
Darren Lee:How did you build that Ascension model? How do you get people those results and then bake in an ascension between the info that agents? The majority of my guests run content businesses. They've used content as the main element of their business to drive more revenue and build their influence online. We've been doing this through a podcast for many years.
Darren Lee:We have many guests, clients and even customers use a podcast as their main source of driving more revenue for their business and building their influence online, and we're offering a handful of spots to book in a call with our team to learn how you yes, you can leverage a podcast to generate more revenue for your business and drive your influence online. Many of our clients and customers start from nothing, but each one of them are action takers and they want to learn more about how to build a podcast and a brand right around their business. So if you want to learn more and you're really interested in building a podcast, check out the link down below and book in a free call with our customer success manager and he will guide you into how you can build and generate more revenue from your podcast this year.
Shan:The truth is, if someone buys your information and gets success, it's always just going to be an organic, natural thing. I don't think you need to have the backend offer and whatever. That's not what I'm saying. That's like that's still you just upselling them. A bigger, better course, a bigger, better course, a mastermind, whatever. That's still different to, I guess, how I see it. Mine is like you sell the information if they make sure you're good, whatever. That's still different to, I guess, how I see it. Mine is like you sell the information if the information isn't good enough when you actually want another client. One of them may just be one of these people, but you know, if you want to sell the more higher ticket products, that's still you just selling the more information package differently. So, as in like the two businesses, right, that's still you profiting more in the info space, the agency space, with that more in the info space, the alien space, where you're doing it for someone like properly yourself?
Darren Lee:who would you say is killing it the most in the space? Like that, like who's optimized that model?
Shan:I don't know.
Darren Lee:To be honest, I don't really follow other people's business models or even who you're working with like who's kind of crushed that in terms of servicing everyone in that market and then providing different levels of maybe like access or info products.
Shan:I think obviously in info products, a man that we've been working for so many years like, obviously, he just naturally has the size of audience and style and the rest of it and different sorts of products. The new one now is around personal branding, which makes so much more sense because he's obviously chilled again building his own brand. That makes sense to package that into a thing. It's obviously chilled in building his own brand. That makes sense to package that into a thing. It's obviously him.
Shan:There are lots of people that I see, obviously, that have done really well in their niche and they've sold it, but I think I don't ever see, or that I've ever seen, like the ecosystem. So when it comes to what we do or when I get involved in an info business, which I actually think is a digital product business, I hate the word info. Info to me is I had to debate with someone else if the difference between an info business and like a digital product business, because I think it's digital products Info to me isn't someone sending information on how to make money or they're teaching you a business model or whatever. Digital product essentially could be anything digital. That's a product that's sold, even like a fitness program.
Shan:So I always think of it as a digital product. That's why I don't really care about the info product. Uh, market lingo done for you, done with you, done on top of you, like all the acronyms and all that stuff. It's like it's. And then people are people's sales page would be like dwy in 70 days or money back or this. They even talk like that because they're only trying to sell to each other and it's this like little world that they are going around and around it's an everland, one really big one, and that's the thing.
Shan:So I think for me it's digital products is the game that I'm in, and I call that the digital product ecosystem, and all that means is imagine you had a triangle. At the lowest end you have, like free information. Then you'll have slightly better information on top which could be behind a paywall, right. That could be like, if it's a fitness creator, you know your free content on social media. You have a subscription app, we sell workout programs. Then you can have a a cohort based coaching offer where you bring 10 people in and working closely with them, then you can have a one-to-one offer and then it could be maybe an in-person two-day, you know, maldives, whatever event. And that's why I call it digital product ecosystem, meaning that you have products throughout the thing for different people in your audience.
Shan:Essentially, and that's where we find success that if I enter a business, I'm like, okay, what are all the different problems your world is having? How do we create products for all those different people? And it could be separate, small products, it could be one product, it could be this, and I think that is the art of info product thing. And I guess where I think it's a bit off today in the world is that most people will try to just create this one amazing product and trying to sell it at the highest price possible because they know they'll be able to convert the least amount of people. So your return is the highest right. So if I say we help you, start a drop shipping store and get to 100k or your money back, you know in six months, right, you'll see this everywhere, so on social media and how much the price 12k, rightk, right, because you just need to convince 10 people to make 100 grand. So it's just like that's basically the wrong way to do it from my experience of being in this industry.
Darren Lee:Before we finish up, how are you creating that digital suite of products in your ecosystem, going forward In terms of what's your next step, even for genflow? Are you going to start creating that suite end to end for people to even get early access to you guys?
Shan:you just start having like a just an info product initially or just a digital product initially yeah, I guess the the truth is of today at my agency, genflow, we only like sign um clients and work with them either work with sign brands, or we sign creators and work with them and we don't actually monetize our like long tail of people coming in here. It is something that I'm working on, which is we need to package up what we know and start selling it to the world, um, so that is something that I'm working on right now, um as a whole, but, yeah, the core focus for us is, though, I guess in my business, what changed is that we're now investing in our biggest opportunities like this that we're owners in, and trying to scale that. So I guess at the moment in my agency, that's our big focus. Second focus would be then okay, how do you monetize what we know?
Darren Lee:It's a bigger upset. Yeah, yeah, for sure, right, but the other one is just to help people, like, genuinely help people. You have a systematized, but that's solving a different problem, but your actual revenue opportunity is scaling the shit out of this.
Shan:Yeah, it's fun working on big projects with big people, so I just can't help myself. That's not actually going to be the focus, obviously. Obviously, selling to like the rest of the world would be easy. So, yeah, want to do it for sure. But yeah, it's more like, like you said, helping people versus trying to make it into a big profit center of the business. Well, that's where your content's for. Yeah, thank you, man, always, always, appreciate it.