Kickoff Sessions

#327 Daniel Fazio - How To Build a $1,400,000/Month Business (Step-by-Step Breakdown)

• Darren Lee • Episode 327

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0:00 | 1:34:28

The One Thing Behind $1.4M Months

Darren

Making over 1.4 million a month in your 20s, what's the main contributing factor if you were to boil it down to one thing that contributed to getting a past that 1 million a month market?

High-Ticket Funnel And Opt-In Strategy

SPEAKER_02

If you really want to actually be able to unlock scale, you have to separate the people out who are responsible for marketing and sales from fulfillment. You cannot have leaders of the company whose responsibilities are interlinked between the two. It's when you make that separation that unlocks like a whole different world. The pages is opt-in, VSL, application, call booking, thank you page. I send opt-ins everywhere. So we we get the name, email, and phone number first before they can even see the VSL or read the sales page. Of all of the people who opt in, only a very small percent of them are gonna book a call immediately. Well, then you want to have an email flow. You want to take their email, check if they booked a call or not, and then if not, throw them through an email sequence. Also, we have a setter team. So our setters, when they get the phone number on the opt-in and they don't book a call after like seven minutes or so, call. What we find is that the setters calling will increase the amount of calls booked like 40%.

Darren

Making over$1.4 million a month in your 20s. What's the main contributing factor? If you were to boil it down to one thing that contributed to getting a past that 1 million a month mark, um, you know, it's interesting.

Profit Over Blitzscaling

SaaS Economics And Product-Led Limits

SPEAKER_02

I was actually thinking about this today because I was I was on a coaching call with some dude kind of like explaining this concept to him. And he said he's at like, I don't know, 20, 30k a month or something like that. He's like, How do I blitz scale to 100k a month? And I'm like, you don't. But you don't do that. It's it's just kind of dumb. Um and a while ago, I heard uh it was some video from Iman. Um and Iman has really good takes, and it was basically it was basically him shitting on people who are like um not focusing on profit. Whereas he's talking about uh, I don't know what he was referencing to. I don't remember the exact thing he was saying in the video, but like my takeaway from it was that like you need to focus on profit and being uh like very profitable, which I tend to agree with. Um, so for instance, you can look at someone who makes like so so we're we're we're hanging anywhere from like 1.2 to 1.4 million dollars a month right now. It's split in two. So there's client ascension, which is coaching, and listkit, which is software, and also sells like done-for you uh agency-esque services. Um what's allowed us to get to this point, like you'll see a lot of people like, yeah, it just scaled up from like 100k a month to like 1.8 million dollars a month or like$3.4 million a month in like six months. It was crazy. And it and it's like, well, I was never like that. I was never like that at all. If you were to like plot out the total amount of revenue that we've done um over the course of the five years, the five straight years we've been in business so far, um, it's very gradual. There's never there's never any spikes. Like you'll have a little spike up and then it goes down and it equalizes. It's a very clean, smooth graph up because I've just never subscribed to this belief of um like growth at all costs at the expense of profit, which is normally what occurs. Where it's like, dude, I'd rather like it just it you'll see somebody who's talking about, yeah, we spend uh uh we spend 20k a day on ads or something, and it could be an info business or whatever, and spend it's just hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on ads. And it's like, I don't know, say they spend 600k a month on ads, and it's like they take home like a mil a million revenue or like 1.2 million rev. And it's like that's just dumb. Like it's it's so dumb because now you have to service all these people. It's it I just I think that's this is a very dumb way to go about it. Now, I I think we did raise money at Liskit. We raised um we raised, I think it was 1.8 mil at around there at a 48.6 million dollar valuation. So we have investors in in Liskit. Oh, but they're they're they're a minority stake, but like they're there, and now the problem with having something like that, and you run a software company, so this may be relevant to you, is um there's kind of two ways to run a SaaS company properly. Um one is through product-led growth. So you have something like low ticket. Like, how much does how much does your software cost?

SPEAKER_00

$97, and that's across all offers. There's no enterprise.

Sponsor: Aura Sales Platform

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so$97 a month. All right. Um, there is a zero percent probability you will ever be profitable on ads with a$97 a month offer. Literally ever. It's not gonna happen. And so, so what does that mean in in order to scale that? The only way you can scale it is through organic. So that's that's that's either, so there's two, there's two forms of organic. Organic either through your personal traffic that you have in your personal social media profiles, right? Or word of mouth, which is which in in SaaS terms is called product-led growth. That literally means like, wow, this product is so good. Let me share it. And it like explodes like that. Those are the only two ways that that company will ever scale. And if you don't have product-led growth and you're fully banking on your organic audience, it's gonna hit a local maximum of what your organic audience allows. So for you, um, it's probably around like I would say maybe like 80k a month, like around there.

CAC Reality And Offer Cashflow Design

Darren

Is your sales process right now an absolute mess? You have a spreadsheet tracking a spreadsheet, you're trying to use a zap or full, and everything is just kind of falling apart. Well, scaling your high-ticket sales team is tough. Getting to the next level with your sales team is difficult, and you need the right platform to get there. Check out Aura down below and you'll see exactly how to track every inch of your sales process from scheduling your calls, tracking your leads, tracking all your analytics, and most importantly, all the closes inside your business. Aura is the only sales platform that does full end-to-end management of your sales process. This is the main solution right now for high-ticket sales teams to optimize every inch of your sales process. So if you're a coach or a founder or an agency owner, check out Aura for a full free seven-day trial. Can I ask you a question on that? So this so this is let's go fucking super autistic straight away. This is awesome because I I I dude, I I I agree I agree with you, right? And the reason why I agree with you is because I came from a startup in the UK that everyone will know. It's the fastest growing company of all time in the UK. We raise 800 million over the span of five years, okay? And if you compare it to what we're doing now, my background was in was in fucking this space, right, of raising a ton of money. And the a strategy that we're going for right now is well, it's$97, but there's multiple seeds because it's sales teams, it's a sales team software, right? And our growth is through partnerships, so connecting with a platform or a provider to get that mass distribution. So I'd love to get some insights from you on what was that growth like for you guys? Because were you guys selling to teams, or were you guys selling to individuals? And feel free to go off in any direction here.

Switching To Done-For-You And Quarterly Billing

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, complete completely valid growth mechanism for you. Um, is it so it's uh I imagine you're doing that one through who you have access to in your network, right? And doing activities like this, like for instance, we're having a conversation right now. I'm somebody who would you get what I'm saying? Um, and then probably cold outreach. Like this, there's probably another way that you're facilitating that. Um, now if you were to attempt to do that through ads, it could potentially make sense only if so, all right. Here's this here's here's a very interesting stat. Um, and and I think the audience will like this stat a lot. Every single person watching this video right now who runs ads to a call funnel, like any kind of any kind of call funnel or any kind of agency, any kind of high-ticket service of any kind that's sold via sales call, 98% of you watching this, your CAC on ads is three thousand dollars plus or minus fifteen hundred. Everyone. So with that in mind, you can you can be certain that literally anything, doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't even matter what the funnel is. It can it can it can be it can be a challenge funnel, it can be a webinar funnel, it could be a VSL funnel, it could be a DM funnel at scale. Your CAC is three thousand dollars plus or minus fifteen hundred. It just is so with that in mind, you have you have to design the pricing and the cash flow of the offer based off of that fact. So for instance, okay, so what what we're what the uh something that we rip a lot at uh at at Liskids, we we probably spend like four or five thousand, sometimes like eight thousand a day on this funnel. It's um it's it's it's a cold email offer. We do cold email for people. Now, the original form of this was hey, we'll set it up for you, and then you like have the tech because we are literally the tech provider for them to send cold emails, right? Two problems arose with this is one is you don't you don't you don't make enough money on it um because it's just tech and then and and and and second is that everyone thinks it's a done-for-you service, so when they don't get results, they blame you like it's a done-for-you service. So what we shifted it towards it is a done-for-you service. Like we'll load campaigns up for them and whatnot. Now, we also changed it so that we increases we increase the price a little bit and also removed the ability for them to buy monthly. So I want you to imagine like before, so the CAC at Liskit was like$2,200. That's just what it is, it's always been that it tends to stay around that. And then before the lowest package you could start, there was a$1,500 set of fee, and the lowest package you could start on was$600 a month. All right, so now when you have a low package like that, like 70% of people take the lowest package. So therefore, the average cash collected was about also$2,200. So you were self-liquidating on cash. However, you have cost of fulfillment, so your negative cash flow, right?

Darren

How do you how do you implement that? So with the software, because like is there uh is there a bit of a juxtaposition here between like scaling through software like like asymmetrical and then having the done-for-you components? Like do you just have a shit ton of client success people?

Ads As Amplifier, Not Lifeline

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So it's it's just a tech enabled agency. Like literally, that's that's that's what it is. Um, now I'll explain the different components of it in a second, but like I want to like tie I want to tie this for the audience where it's like we switched from letting people pay monthly that you just have to pay quarterly now. So that increased the average cash collected up front from$2,200 to like 4,000 something. The CAC stayed the same,$2,200. Now you have a 2x on on cash, and now you can you can self-sustain. You don't you don't you don't go negative. Just like a profound like so this is just like an example of you have to create your pricing and the cash flow of your offer, like how how you how you price and how you charge clients. It needs to be designed around your growth strategy in the first place. Because if you're gonna try to do this with ads, you just are gonna have a CAC of$3,000 plus your money is$1,500. You just you just will. So you've got to find a way to get that amount of money, whatever your CAC is, times two in cash at minimum, day one. That's the only way that you'll you'll that you'll be able to scale this. So it's it's it's interesting to me when we go back and we see and we talk about dudes, a lot of dudes bragging about how much money they spend on ads, and then it's like you actually look at the economics of it and they take like nothing home, literally nothing home at all. Their cash flow is terrible, then they take home no profit. It's just like completely hilarious, where it's like, and that's just not a game I've ever wanted to play. So, like going back to the original question of like how how'd you get here? It was like just very slowly and methodically, just just just just being consistent with growing a brand and then using ads to amplify that and like just I don't want to say imagine your brand is imagine it's like a it's like a it's like a water spout, right? And the water the water's flowing into the spout and then like kind of like some of it like drips off before say it's like going into a bucket, some of it's dripping off before the bucket. Ads is like you're just like grabbing those drips. Like that's kind of like that's kind of what it is for personal brands. Sometimes sometimes you can use ad spent to increase the flow of the water a little bit too, but it's like but but but sometimes you you sometimes you try to dump too much ads into a system, and then like just the pipe isn't large enough to handle that flow, and you just explode the pipe and then you go bankrupt. That's that's that's that's that's normally what I see happen. I think I I I think the people get the best results with ads, and it is or even operate their company with any form of longevity at all, is um who play with ads, is it's it's very slow and steady scaling of ads.

Make New Users, Not Just Better Users

Darren

It's interesting because it's like an amplifier, right? And for you guys, the fact that you've had so many fucking clients and so many agencies, it's like your time is big enough to penetrate and your ad strategy is good enough to get to those people. And I just think back to my own like problems back in the day, 2020, 2021, when we were only working with podcasters. So to keep it simple, we were helping podcasters build their business. And I remember one of my good friends, he said to me, he was like, Bro, like, I don't even fucking think you can find those people through ads half the time. Because half of them are hobbyists, they're creative people, they're just not they're just not in the the world, right? So that's where we went a bit broader. So would you would you consider like one of the strategies how you've fucking nailed it and kept that revenue high is because of who you go after? So your your ads can be a bit broader. I don't know. I'd love to kind of get an insight into this, right? Like, what was your ad strategy over time?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay. So it's just like another trick for a lot of people. So like you were helping podcasters do something, or like that that was like the premise of what you were telling?

Darren

That was back in the day. So our first agency was it was done for you podcasting, right? And we'd helped them with their business and their funnels. And then we went to coaching, and the coaching worked worked well, but then it it was fucking tough, right? So then we took the label off and started working with content businesses, and then we took the label off that and worked with broader online businesses with their content.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, is is your audience mostly info sellers or like agencies?

Darren

Uh actually coaches, so more like health coaches, performance coaches, and then um yeah, then business, yeah, business coaches, but mainly on the coaching side.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, in info businesses. All right, um, quick note here. Um you can take any mechanism. So, like so you were helping people with podcasting and whatnot. It's so so say the you have the TAM of podcasters, right? It's not very large, it's it's it's actually profoundly small. You and so what you always want to do with the offer is create someone new in for the mechanism. So, like let me what say say there's some coach here who sells Google ads, or they sell meta ads, or your your your thing is helping podcasters. It was you want you what you actually want is an offer that helps a business owner launch a podcast to get clients, or it's like you never or like the the Google the person who coaches for Google ads, you never want to help people make their Google ads better. You want to make new people who use Google ads. Like if it's for for instance, for for us, it's cold email. You never want to exclusively only target people who do cold email, it's it's you want to make new cold emailers now. Okay, super super important when I'm saying this though. I'm saying that that's for ads. If you're doing organic and you want to like build a brand and make an audience around people who do actively podcast or who do actively call it email or who do actively do Google ads, that works. That's specifically how you build a brand. That is how the brand is made. You know what I'm saying? Around people who do actively do it. But you generally what you want to do when you sell an offer is help people start the thing. Because you have to you have to and this this this applies for every single every single thing on the planet. Podcasts and Google ads, Facebook ads. Doesn't matter what it is, there's always more people not doing it than are. Therefore, the TAM is larger, therefore, it's easier to sell, and you it always allows the new opportunity angle. You know what I'm saying?

Darren

And it's not it's not an improvement offer, it's basically like a new opportunity, exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So, like even if someone's like a health coach or a fitness coach, like you really never want to sell a help the jack guy get more jacked. It's you want to sell the fat person finally stop being fat for the first time in their life ever. You know what I'm saying? That's you're you're gonna make just way more doing that.

Designing A Scalable Coaching Program

Darren

I want to, I'm really curious to see how your business has adjusted. Like, what did the actual offer look like in terms of the program, the delivery of the program, comparing it to like 100k a month, 50k a month, to a million a month? Like, what's the changes that go through the actual structure of the of the program and everything?

Student Success Coaches And Expert Coaches

SPEAKER_02

Okay, yeah, and the coaching program, sure. So is um, all right, here's here's how here's how this worked over. You know, it's interesting. I remember making this for the first time, and I was like doing a lot of investigation as well. Like, how do you even design a coaching program that can scale? Like, how do you even do that? And we bought like a bunch of consulting calls from different people and like tried to figure it out, and and this this is single-handedly the best way. So I'm gonna I'm gonna explain how it evolved over time, and like because you you can't you it it's only you have to follow the process in order in order to do it correctly. All right, so it started off, it was me and my co-founders. Um, so it was me and three three three and three other guys. Um the original arrangement was that I just wanted to do the marketing and I wanted them to do the full uh did the fulfillment, the actual coaching. Um, so I had 50% and they had 50%. That the the the the three of them. So the way it worked was we we we we did a launch through my social media when I had the called email wizard Twitter account. I was operating through there. We opened it up client essential for the first time um in 2021, and we got 12 people in. It was like a test run, and we wanted to do a test run in order to get case studies. So, something that everyone watching this should note is that if they went onto my YouTube channel right now and they looked up a playlist, they went to the playlist, then went to the case studies thing over there, that's like one of the most important things you can ever do. You need to document case studies with your students. So we got case studies. Um, then we relaunched with the case studies, and this was very consistent in marketing. It was primarily Twitter at the time because Twitter actually worked to get business. Um and when we got to about 50 students, so up until this time, it was it was a weekly coaching call and Slack. And so it was a course, all the course content, Slack community, and one weekly group coaching call a week. Then, as more people came in, it turned into two group coaching calls a week. And then as more people came in, it turned into three group coaching calls a week. Um, and then at a certain point, it was somewhere around 60 or 70 students active that it was too much for us to handle, personally, like me especially personally to handle because you are responsible for the students' results. So, like and anyone running a coaching business understands that of the people so there's two there's two kinds of people who are in everyone's coaching program. There's there's people who do get results and people who don't get results. Of the people who don't get results, 90% of those people, it's their own fault because they don't do anything. Like every everyone running a coaching business knows this. That's it's it's their own fault why they're not getting results because they just don't do anything. Okay, so the problem with that is in order to make sure that that you you get these people to do something in order so that they do get a result, and so that they don't throw a complete hissy fit and blame you for everything, is you need to have like an extreme level of forceful communication with them. Like it needs to be like completely absurd the amount that you were pushing them. Um it's it's kind of important to understand that most people's issues doing anything in their own life is that they have a mindset problem. Like every every everyone watching this, like you're an entrepreneur, you have a level of responsibility, it doesn't really apply to you. You don't have like a screwed up mindset, like you understand like how to take responsibility for your own actions. The average person does not know how to do that. Therefore, when they don't get results, they blame everybody but themselves, right? So, okay, so it's what you what you're trying what you're trying to do is you have to make for instance in Slack, we do we do a month, we we do a monthly one on one call, and then on Mondays I'll explain like the whole construction of Slack in a second, but on Mondays they get a personal message from us. What's the plan? Or like this is your plan. You need to do this this week. On Wednesday, how is that going? Friday, did you do it? Every single Monday, Wednesday, Friday, even if they don't respond. Why is that important? Because what happens when they throw a hissy fit because they stop doing anything and then they think that, oh, I spent a much money on this stupid stuff that I can't afford. Oh, I'll I know I'll go ask for a refund for this guy who I bought a coaching program from. That's my little piggy bank. I can go grab from that. And then they go and they look in the Slack channel and they see that you've messaged them 17, 25, 30 times. They haven't responded once. And it's like there's no grounds for a refund here. Because what what what do they what do they do when they do this? They they they make up a reason. It's I don't feel like I got enough support. No, it's not. It's that they spent all their money on some stupid stuff and they look at you like the bank. That's that's that's they made that up. They're looking for they make up reasons. So that's a that's a defense, right? And also, it's not even just the defense, it's just that like doing that like actually works for a lot of people to get them results to like do the thing. So it's like it's half for defense, but it's half like, dude, you make so many more people actually do the thing, and you get so many more case studies by doing that. So I'll now the problem is when we were at 60 something students, it's us doing that. And it was it was a huge pain to do that. So we made this role called a student success coach. The student success coach's job is literally just to do that and the one-on-one calls and get the student what they need. They're like a liaison. So we have two kinds of coaches in our coaching program. There's the student success coaches, and they handle about 55 students each. That's the max. They can't do any more than that. It's it gets all screwed up. And then there are expert coaches. So student success coach, expert coach. Expert coach, they all they are an expert in the topic. They actively run the business. So all of our expert coaches are agency owners that are making six figures a month plus, or or high high five figures uh a month. They they're an actual expert in the thing, and we pay them$400 for every call they do. We have 20 calls a week. So now you're probably wondering like, how do you get these expert coaches? And how do you get these student success coaches? A good portion of them you create inside of your own coaching program. They're the students of the coaching program. That's a good, that's a good portion of them. A secondary portion is that like you just need to have like a high level of social awareness and know how to like network with people and make friends on the internet, and then you find you find people and then you ask them if they can coach inside your thing for$400 a call, and they're like, Yeah, that sounds good to me. And then they host a coaching call every week, and then they they scroll around in your Slack as well, and then they they help and they contribute and they feel like they're a part of something. And that and that and and and that's that's that's how that evolves. Um, but it's important, like the student success coaches, like your first couple student success coaches are gonna be they're gonna be people who were in the program and got results with the program. That's like how that occurs, really.

Darren

Before we move any further, I have one short question to ask you. Have you been enjoying these episodes so far? Because if you have, I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel to help more business owners grow their online business today. And the best part about this, dude, is like that's a positive feedback loop, right? Someone who came in who was just like you, just got results, now is working in there. So what the fuck is your excuse? We do something quite interesting. We do like member spotlight. So instead of me just screaming at them to build, build out their fucking funnels every week, we bring our you our actual customers in, and then they will teach what they do inside their business. And the biggest thing there is people are like, oh my god, I could be like you. They they actually see it, right? It's not just coming from the aspirational leader. Does that make sense? And then it's more of like an actual, it's more of like an ecosystem as a result.

Mindset, Responsibility, And Burnout

The Big Unlock: Separate Marketing, Sales, Fulfilment

SPEAKER_02

One one one of the important things that uh I kind of want to touch on is um so a a big, a big a big portion of why like student success coaches specifically end up being kind of like an unlock for somebody to grow much larger is because the role of who is responsible for the student getting a result is no longer on you. So what actually brings stress on on somebody's mind? It's responsibility, it's you being responsible for something and the outcome of it being uncertain. So if you personally are responsible for a hundred plus people's results on something with their own varying degree of uh commitment levels or mental illness or whatever be the BS, it's it's it's it's it's a it's a huge problem, and it's all you think about all day. So, what does that mean? It means you have exactly zero motivation to continue growing this company because it is emotionally and psychologically painful for you to continue piling more of that stress on. You you you won't do it. You you fit you physically cannot do this. So that now this ties back in to another concept of scaling, which is the following in that there's there's three segments of a business. You have marketing, sales, and operations or fulfillment. Okay. One of the biggest ones, and this this is normally at around like 250k a month, 300k a month that you really got to start doing this, is um even kind of like before you got you gotta separate one of them out at around like 100 100k a month. So what do I mean by separate out? Um I'm the marketing guy. Like that I I do the lead gen, like I get the leads, I'm like the face of the brand. That's that's I I I run the ads, like that. That's my responsibility. That's 90% of what I do on a given day. It's that I am not responsible for any kind of hiring management of people on the fulfillment side. I'm not personally responsible for the clients' results. Like I obviously want them to be higher for marketing purposes. Um, and I'll do the best I can to contribute to it, whatever I can, but it's not my day-to-day responsibility. But that, and I'm using that word specifically, responsibility. It's not my concern, it's somebody else's job. You have to be, you have to separate marketing/slash sales from fulfillment, and you need to go into either one of the sides and have somebody else run that you can't hold the responsibility of both, just because that same premise of you will pull your punches on marketing and sales if you are personally responsible for the results of the clients on the fulfillment side, because it's work, like nobody wants to work, and I'm not saying that in a in a derogatory fashion, I'm saying for like caloric conservement, like you like your body does not want to do that, you want to work the least amount, which is fine. The entire purpose of a business is to make you the maximum amount of profit with the least amount of effort possible. That's that's literally the whole function of it. So it's if you really want to actually be able to unlock scale, you have to separate the people out who are responsible for marketing and sales from fulfillment. These people cannot you cannot have leaders of the company whose responsibilities are interlinked between the two. It's when you make that separation that unlocks like a whole different world, like a completely wildly different world. Because, like, dude, I can sit here, I can run a challenge funnel, close like 45 students in one shot, and like, dude, all these people need onboarding calls, all these people need like Google Docs setup guides made for them, and like it's it's all of the work on a for a client is when they first onboard to. So the first like month or month and uh or or two months of it is like actually the most amount of work for it. So it's like, dude, if I was responsible for that, like I would not want to close 40 people in one shot, like no way.

Owner Bottlenecks And Stepladder Growth

Darren

And dude, this is exactly what happened to us. It's exactly so so keeping the even keeping the agency separate. To be fair, my CEO was running an agency. Now he just does everything. I'm not even involved in the conversations with the clients anymore. But just for the info, just for context, my other partner, Tom, he so we were doing the delivery together. We were doing around eight sessions a week. Now we're doing 20 sessions a week. He's running all delivery, like that's his responsibility. So that's fine. That was step one, that was kind of easy. Next stage then was separating marketing from the sales process. You're gonna love this. I had to figure out ads, and I have a public podcast on the internet with Jeremy Haynes ripping my ass open about me not spending money on ads, not spending enough money on ads, because I was still running the sales team. So it was like this kind of like catch 22. You're gonna you're gonna love this, bro. The ads manager that I brought in, he was he learned ads from client ascension. Yeah, and so I brought in a dude called Leo Moore, he's a Melbourne dude, he ran other ads, and then the last piece sent this is so interesting, was on the sales side. I was because I still I fucking love sales, right? So I was still in with the guys and helping them with the dials and helping them with the DMs and helping them on the calls, and the last stage was stepping out of that and hiring a sales manager, and then because of all of this, I can just go back to being the dancing monkey who does the ads, and that was our big fucking unlock. Now, that did take a year, but again, you just said about the mindset, dude. I have that, I had that mindset issue. Literally, Jeremy said to me, He goes, You have a fucking mindset problem on a podcast. My creative director was like, You want to upload this? And I was like, Yeah, absolutely. So I want it to be a timestamp, and loads of people actually say that to me as well. He said it was a really good podcast. So the idea here is that the business owner is the problem. I always say this you don't have a business problem, you have a business owner problem. And that could be a 10k a month or a million a month.

Creative Energy Management And Work Design

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I Leo's an awesome dude. Um, I'm also I'm also in Jeremy's mastermind as well. Um, but yeah, he's probably totally right because um your your your mindset issue is probably stemming from the fact that like you're pulling punches because you have to do the work on the back end. So, like, of course you're not gonna do that. You know what I mean? It's kind of like this it's it's his premise of walls. It's like um, like everyone wants to blitz scale something, but it's like, okay, well, if like you in order for you to continue running forward, you need to break down a wall that is in front of you. And it's uh this is why people scaling up a company, it normally always looks like a ladder because it's like you scale until you hit a wall, and then you like you take whatever X amount of time to figure out how to dismantle the wall, and then you can continue going, and then you hit another wall, and that's how it works in a stepladder fashion. So um, if you're wondering why people like cap out a specific level is because they just hit a specific wall, and it just so happened to be that your wall was that you needed to learn that you have to separate out the responsibilities of those three segments of the business, and then it's like, dude, it's actually the best thing ever because I do nothing, nothing, zero, besides marketing. It's it's so fun. I I love it, but it's great because, dude, some people just really like fulfilling for clients and like communicating and being on meetings and stuff. Like my my partner, Andre, dude, I don't know, I don't know how I would I would legitimately kill myself if I was this, but he was um he's on meetings, I kid you not, from 8 a.m. until like seven at night. And he tells I was like, dude, how do you do that? He's like, dude, I get energy from meetings. I love meetings. I'm like, bro, I would, I would literally kill myself if I it's there's there's no shot. I can't if I do two meetings, if I do an I do, if I'm if I'm on Zoom, like in a meeting for two hours of the day, that it's done. The whole day's done. I can't, I can't. It's all over.

Darren

You've an interesting personality type because it's like you're you're super fucking creative, and like you're you're you I can see in your brain, you're always like pulling from shit. And I say something, and you're like, oh, like I can pull it from here, but then it's like are you like, is there part of you that's quite like you want to be kind of on your own, just in your own bubble, like doing your own marketing stuff too? Like, I'm kind of just curious asn't like you you have an interesting like makeup of character type. Like, I wonder what your personality type is if yours on like one of those tests and shit.

Ruthless Calendaring And Boundaries

SPEAKER_02

Um, I I think I have, I don't remember what they are though, but it's like if you if you were to look, like I don't know, there's maybe like 60 people in the company in total. Um, I have one person that works below me. One person that works for me. One. I don't like managing, I like to be my own, like I use like agencies and stuff as well, but it's like I don't like want to manage people, I don't want to do that. Um it's it's I I like to be in my own bubble, I guess. I I just I just want to do whatever I want to do. Um I also think that I think if you're any kind of like creative type person where like if you're if you're responsible for making content or you're responsible for marketing where you need to create right, um there's only a finite amount of that that you can expend per day. So like I could express it in hours, like for instance, if I were to I I I could film like two YouTube videos in a day, write write, write, write an email to my email list, or write a couple emails to my email list, um, and then I could, I don't know, maybe like write a sales page or like something something like that. And then once I've done that, I'm I'm I can't make anything else for the rest of the day. I'm it's gassed, it's gone. It's now I I can do like a meeting after that, or I can do some like admin level stuff, but in terms of in terms of like creation, it's that's done. I that's all been expended. It's I think you've got four hours of maximum capacity output per day. And once your four hours is gone, it's it's it's done. And you can only do like maintenance level work after that. So I I I think I think it's important that um people kind of people kind of find out how they work and design your entire life around how you most optimally work. So like if I were to like like my whole life design is I tend to wake up exactly when the sun rises. So right it the the moment the moment the sun rises is that's that's so it changes throughout throughout the year. So it's it's oh it always just I'm circadian matched. I've I've matched myself perfectly to a proper human circadian rhythm. So like right now, the like what that looks like is I am up at 7 a.m. The sun rises at like exactly 7 a.m. 7 a.m. here right now. So I get up, um drink some water, get some coffee, take some L-theanine, sit in front of the red light for a little bit, and then I start working at like it's probably like 7 40, like 7 30, 7 40. I'm at my computer. And then I'm sitting there until like 12 making stuff. That's when I make stuff. I make the best stuff right in the morning, straight, straight when I have the most fuel, the most mental capacity, the most ammo to unload right in the morning. So I unload all of it right there, and then when it gets to like 11 or 12, then I'll eat of like 200 calories of fruit or something. And then it's like then I I can I do maybe like an hour of like admin stuff. Then I go to the gym. I like going to the gym in the in midday, like 1, 2 p.m. Then I get back, and then like anything else is just like a meeting or admin. I can't make anything else now. It's it's it's good, it's impossible, it won't come out if it's like urgent, I could do it, but it's not gonna be like the quality of what I can produce in the morning. And I think it's important that like everyone designs their business around your life, like how and you to you need to observe your body too. Like, I uh no one like observes like how how how they actually where how their body actually works and responds to different things. So you just gotta figure out what it is and be like wildly selfish of how the business is constructed, and you construct it around your life, not your life around the business. So, like if you have a client who wants like calls at this time, it's like no, I don't do calls at this time. Like, for instance, I only do meetings. I'll do like random like internal meetings or something if it needs to be done on Sundays, but like Wednesday, Friday is my external meetings. I don't do it any other day. I'm not doing it, not doing a meeting with you on Thursday, I'm not doing it on Tuesday, I'm not doing it on Monday. I dedicate 100% of the days on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday to making stuff. That's it. I make things. And just I just client client says, Oh, I really want it to be on 11 a.m. on Thursdays. Get fucked. Not doing it. Like, I've just this, I'm not, I'm not doing that.

Application Scoring, Setters, And Email Engines

Darren

And I think it's funny because like yeah, you probably have looked into like where your energy flows as well, right? What gives you energy, what takes you energy. You could just do like a I actually recommend everyone do like a very autistic, like actual time breakdown of what you're doing in a day for just a couple of days. If you did it for two, three days, I did in like a spreadsheet one day, and I was like, oh, there's a bunch of stuff that I hate doing. Typical things I'll hate doing is let's say onboarding new team members or fucking setting up contracts for new people, all that kind of stuff I hate. So I just quickly look at all that stuff, get rid of it, get rid of it. Similar enough to you, man. Uh, where it's I I was laughing when you said you don't want to do anything. We're running like a really big mastermind next week, like a like a really big mastermind, and it's our biggest one yet. And the guys, we went for dinner yesterday with the team yesterday, and the guys were worried about the fucking mics and the sound because there's a headset and all this kind of stuff, and immediately I just drifted out because back in the day, like last year, I'd have to set up the PA system and everything. And now I'm like, oh, this is a great problem that I don't have to solve. And I think it just gives you some clarity. And the last thing I'll say on this as well is like a lot of people that we work with personally, they're really scared to hire people because they kind of got into business for freedom, not knowing that you actually need people to help you to actually make more money. And I genuinely think that a lot of people that I work with anyway, specifically, they'll hire people that they end up doing the work for or babysitting to the point that they resent them. So now I've got to the point where by only hiring people, I'm like, okay, I'll train you. But then here you go, take this and run with it, you know. At that point, I would love to um ask you more on the sales side, if you don't mind. So, like, I'd love to see, like, okay, so across your businesses, it would be great to kind of get a breakdown like revenue-wise across two of them. How did you design the sales? Are you running like, yeah, what does a sales team look like? Is it phone setters, DM setters? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so uh my sales manager is one of my co-founders, Dan. So he's in charge of the sales team hiring and managing them, but I know how it's cons how it's constructed. So the way it works at client ascension is uh we have we have setters and closers. So uh the way we do, the way we let people book calls with us, they have to go through an application. And we use the lead scoring. So um, based off your answers to the application, um, so right now my questions are for client ascension, it's it's how much money do you make? How much money can you invest? I reveal a price range of the offer and I say, can you buy this? Yes or no? Like, how much can you afford? Fucker like that. Um, and then um um I have an IQ test on there. It's it's not it's not it's not it's not a full IQ test, but it's a logic test. I I literally have a logic test where it's like it's a math question. I'm like, if if if you charge this much and and your profit margins this and you work with this many clients, how much do you make? It's it's it's a very simple, basic math test. And if they get it wrong, they lose a point on their lead score. And then like so if they don't get enough points, they just they they get routed to a rejection screen where it's like, sorry, we we can't work with you. Now, if they do have enough points, they get they get routed directly to book a call with closers. Now, our funnel is our our uh the the pages is opt-in VSL application call booking, thank you page. So we use opt-ins. I I send opt-ins everywhere, so we we get the name, email, and phone number first before they can even see the VSL or read the sales page.

Darren

Have you tested that against the opposite?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, I always win with opt-ins. Always. I always have for every single offer I've ever run. I've always won, I've always won with opt-ins.

Darren

Now let me explain why what would be your like highest performing opt-in that gets people to put in their details before they watch a VSL?

SPEAKER_02

It's it's it's like here.

Darren

Yeah, that would be great. Even if you want to share a screen if it's easier. Do you find running like a VSL funnel to be more effective than a webinar funnel? Like, I'm I'm curious how do you Compared it to for yourself, anyway, at least.

Partial Abandons, Triage, And Retargeting Content

$1/Day Brand Ads And Non-Linear Attribution

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'll go through those in a second. So it's it's really like someone gets an ad and they reach this page. It's just build an AI assist agency, the only business model that easily scales. Uh just just some copy on here, and then the button is see how it works. They do that name, email, phone, and then when they do that, they go to this sales page, and then they can see the VSL. And then this is the whole sales page. It's a very long sales page. Um then they click this button, and then this is the application. They go to the type form. And if they if they go through this and get all of it, uh a high enough lead score, then they can uh they're allowed to book a call. Now, okay, so all all there's a ton of different stuff that's happening here. So it's like let me kind of like break it down. You have you have you have of all of the people who opt in, only a very small percent of them are gonna book a call immediately, right? Okay, so well, then you want to have an email flow, you want to take their email, check if they booked a call or not, and then if not, throw them through an email sequence that's like 20-something days long, every email every single day. Also, we have a setter team. So, our setters, when they get the phone number on the opt-in and they don't book a call after like seven minutes or so, call, text. And then so what we find on both client ascension and list kit is that the setters calling will increase the amount of calls booked like 40%. So 40 40 of the total calls booked will come from a setter calling these leads and then setting them. So now what is this what is a setter doing? The setter just is acting like the application. They're asking how much do you make? This is the price. Can you afford it? Would you be able to afford this if it's it if it if it all makes sense for you? Yes, no. If no, then like they don't get set. But if they do, then then they set them. So now on top of on top of uh the 20-something day long automated email sequence, I send an email, a new email that I write four, five, four, four, sometimes at least four, but sometimes like eight times, nine times a week to my email list. I write the email and send it to the email list. Everyone gets it. So I have like I have like on client ascension, it's like 23,000 people on Liskit, it's like 50,000 people. We I don't write it at Liskit. We have another guy who writes it at Liskit, but that that those two things right there, of how dense email is over there, like it's the sequences, and I'm sending all of the time. And this is like heavy value-based stuff, like heavy educational, parasocial relationship building stuff, and also like heavy direct response, like full on blown, like sales letters in the in in in in the in the email inbox, like a lot. So it's the combination of that and the setters that makes the opt-ins work for us. Most people who don't get results with opt-ins just don't do that. That's why they don't get results with opt-ins. That's why a lot of people shit on them. But I I I like them. I just having the email list just is is like really stable for us. So, like a lot of a lot of times we'll do something where it's like like this is kind of how the funnel works, where it's like we send a lot of ads, and so I send all of my organic traffic to the opt-in page. So they're opting in, I'm getting their emails. I'm sending our ads to the opt-in page, so I'm getting their emails. And then if we do, if we decide we're gonna do a paid challenge funnel where the tickets are$67 or$97, I do like a full launch sequence to my email and we'll sell like 300 and something tickets off the email list, and we'll most of like 70% of the total sales will come from the email list. So, what does that mean? It means that I don't have to spend money on ads again to these people. You know what I'm saying? So it's it's so much more efficient, like it's bro, it's so great when you have an email list and it's like it takes like like bro. People like read my emails, like I have like regular readers of the email. It's like a common, it's like a thing. Um then um, all right, so now now, okay, so we have the people on the BSL page, and then and then they go to the application, right? They open up the application, and then um they might not finish the application. The first question on the application is the contact screen, so it's give me your name, email, phone number. Um, and then they they might go through some application questions and they don't finish the application, and then they leave. Okay, well, I have a partial submit point in the application. So now I zap those people over to my hub spot and indicate that they've just partially abandoned an application. Now I have a workflow, like wait seven minutes, check if they booked a call or not. Oh, they didn't? Okay, put them through the the partial abandoned application flow, which is again another email sequence that is unique to that specific thing that occurred. It's referencing that saying, hey, like you were just abandoned application, yada yada yada. And then our setters also get a notification, like, hey, there's a high priority lead right here. Like they were just filling out an application and they left. Okay, now let's say someone does fill out the application and then they fully complete the application, like they've they fully completed it, but then they get to the call booking screen and they just don't select the time. Same exact thing. Another email flow, more setter notifications and more calls for them. Okay, so we have that, and then you have okay, they did book a call. Like, okay, well, how about let's let's send them some emails about either one extremely valuable information, which for me it's it's getting them to watch my YouTube. I'm always like sending them my YouTube stuff. And then two, having the closer manually text them from their personal iPhone and being able to triage them. Because now what happens? A lot, a lot of the sales calls you book, um, it's just just for whatever reason, it doesn't make sense. It's and you want you want to eliminate these people before they get in the call. So you just run a quick triage, like what like what's your situation here? Yada yada, is this gonna work? Is it not gonna work? You figured that out before the call. If it's not gonna work, you get them off the calendar, you open the spot.

Darren

And that's done by a closer. That's very interesting. I thought I thought you would do it by because what we have always done it by setters, where it's like they're sending over the thank you video, they're sending over a free training, they're sending over maybe my story.

SPEAKER_02

No, setter setter only does that if it's a setter booked call.

Darren

Hmm, that's really interesting. Yeah, that would definitely that would actually improve well, obviously it would improve close rate because you you get to meet the closer beforehand. It's like, oh, we were just fucking chatting for the past three days on WhatsApp. So, you know, this is as close as we can get.

SPEAKER_02

Something else I do is I I take all my YouTube videos. I've I have like so since we launched AI assisted agency, which is like the main thing we're advertising, I've posted I think 36 YouTube videos that like promote AI assisted agency. So all 36 of those YouTube videos I uploaded to Meta and into a campaign with the objective engagement and then the the the the the the the the objective video view. So I just upload the file there. I hit every single person whose email address I have and who has hit my pixel with my YouTube videos.

Darren

Hold on. So you is it like a story sequence style? Like C of the stuff.

SPEAKER_02

It's not I don't do it in a sequence. They can be served anyone, but once they through play that one, they don't get that one again.

Darren

But sorry, how how do they how did they visually see it? Does it show up on Instagram? Does it show up on Facebook? And then it's a link to YouTube.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So I'll I'll I'll I'll pull up an example for you right now.

Darren

Yeah, and sorry, I think that that's fucking genius because you upload your email list. Hmm, okay, so you upload because we have a we have a big list too, right? We upload the email list, you hit them with retargeting or yeah, it's retargeting, retargeting from there, and then you're also doing this for your ads for Liskit.

SPEAKER_02

Not on Liskit right now, no.

Darren

Only uh you know you're going into the detail when you're going to the back of fucking ads manager on a podcast. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so so they they look they look like this. So this this is a YouTube video I posted building a one-person online business in 2026, part one, what to sell. So I take the video, and then we put it in a in a one-by-one with the title of the video at the top, and then below it says watch the full video. Um this is what it looks like. Yeah, it's fucking 37 minutes. Yeah, the full video on here. Now, if they happen to click the destination, we make uh landing pages that look like this. So now there's the link to watch it on YouTube and a link straight to the the um the funnel. Now, this is this if they watched it on mobile and they click this watch on YouTube right here, it's a deep link, so it opens the app.

Darren

Yeah, it's like linked or some shit.

SPEAKER_02

And and then there's a summary under here about the video, and then again, button to start my AI assisted agency, which again takes them back to the VSL page.

Darren

Dude, this is fucking cracked. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So like event eventually I'll have like I'll have like a hundred of them, and it's it's dude, it like actually works. Like, it's it's you you can't measure it though. There's no way to measure if that works or not, even with high-ros. I have every single button tracked with high rose, and like yeah, but there's there's no way because they like dude, someone might go through, they'll like through play like 18 of those over the course of a couple weeks, and then they'll book a call and join. You know what I mean? You can't tell if they through played the video, but it's each one. I spend a dollar a day on each one, so it's like nothing.

Content, Brand, And The Enterprise Value Myth

Darren

But you know what it reminds me of? It just reminds of like you know, when you like I'm not broke, so I don't play for YouTube for I pay for YouTube Premium. But if you don't pay for YouTube premium, you get the clickup ads, right? So the click-up ads are fucking everywhere, and it's just always and everyone's like, hey, click up ads, but then everyone uses click-up, right? So what I'm trying to say is like it's like the non-attribution things, which is why organic, if you sell an organic offer, people are like, I can never quantify the ROI. It's like that is what the brand is. Like if I see if I okay, so let's just think about the psychology. If I see your 38 minute fucking video on a Facebook ad, I'm like, this guy provides us so much value. That's it, that's all that I think about. And I guess associate Daniel with providing an insane amount of value. I can't imagine how what I would get when I pay. Like, that's kind of what you're going for, right? Does that make sense? Versus, I need this to be directly OOI generated. We we kind of have, and I will just say, like in a different example, we get that with our webinars, right? We really do a lot of frequent webinars now, a lot of events, and I'll have people who never come to a webinar be like, man, it's great to see you fucking always smashing a cracking it. Oh, I saw that that title idea that was interesting to me. So they are not correlated, but they are correlated at the same time. I actually, you dude, you'll find us you'll find this hilarious. Actually, really interesting. Uh, you'll you'll really like this. I interviewed um, you know Rory Sutherland, the Ogil V guy? Um, I don't think so. You you definitely know of him, dude. Let me share my screen. Uh he is you definitely know this, dude. He's a big fucking huge advertising guy. You'll get a lot of yeah, this dude. So he has this uh whole I had a podcast with him in London, and he so bear in mind Ogil V media, and his whole idea, his whole like thesis is that attribution is not linear with advertising. Like you can't directly always correlate your advertising spend or effort back to any sort of metric, and then you'll you'll actually so basically his whole thesis had a whole podcast with him on this, and he says that if you're someone like yourself who's super creative, got these fucking cool ideas, you know they're gonna work in a non-direct way, it's like leave you be, man, because if you were to put some random data analyst nerd on it, they would fucking do some shitty ad, and then that would yield no result. So the creative is meant to be creative, which is the reason why you're running these$1 a day ads, and they're obviously effective. Are you an agency owner, coach, or consultant looking to scale your online business? At VOX, we help business owners scale their online business with content. We help them specifically build a high-ticket offer, create content that turns into clients, and also help them with the sales process to make sure every single call that's booked in your calendar turns into a client. If you want to see more about exactly how we do this, hit the first link down below and watch a full free training on how smart entrepreneurs are building a business in 2025.

Profit Math: Choose Pools Over Garden Maintenance

SPEAKER_02

Yep. Um, this is this is another reason why, like earlier, if we're if we're going back to like what I was talking about earlier about like scaling slow and whatnot, where it's like I like if someone would have thought to come up with this, like they would think like if you if you tell someone who I don't know, maybe they make a couple five figures a month in profit or something like that, and it's like you tell them, like, hey, you gotta go spend uh ten thousand dollars a month on branding with no measurable return, where it's like that's too much of your income to be comfortable doing that. Like you can't you can't do that, which I think a lot like this is like something like this where it's like, dude, it's 30 something videos, it's a dollar a day, you know what I mean? It's it's nothing, it's it's so negligible. Like it's might it might not as well even exist. There's what there's one thing that was um I heard Mosey talking about it. It was um how he spends 25 hours a week on content, and so for him personally, it's like a couple hundred grand a month as well, on top of that. But it's like but that hit me when he said that. I spent 25 hours a week just on content, and I'm sitting here and I'm like, I probably spend like six hours on content, like I could be doing at least five times more just to even touch her mosey, like uh so the the problem with it, I think a lot of people's uh poor conception with content is they um they think it's not a valid way to run a business because a lot of people have this like there's a category of person who's like so deluded into I need to build enterprise value. I don't do it unless it has enterprise value. This this is this is the shit they say. It needs to have enterprise value, and it's like you're like you're not gonna sell. Like you like you think you're gonna sell, but like you're not gonna sell your business. Nobody sells their business, like you it only seems like everybody sells their business because when they do, it's a huge deal. But if you were to take like say say 90% of businesses are garbage and make zero dollars, like just no profit at all. Profit is unnatural. So, like of the 10% of all the businesses that even make profit at all, five percent of them make enough profit to even be worthy of study in the first place. And of those five percent, less than one percent of those is gonna exit. Nobody exits their business. It is, it is not, it is not a common activity. Obviously, yes, people exit their business, but like it is so uncommon that like you should just you might as well just ignore the premise of it at all. So it's like people always say stuff like, Well, I don't want to, they'll they'll go through this process, they'll legitimately say something like, Well, I don't want to like get all my clients through content and my in personal brand because that has no enterprise value, and it's and then I won't be able to sell. It's like, well, how about we focus on making money first? And then we can focus on building enterprise value. Like that's this this is a this is a this is a hind thought behind profit. You need to make profit. Like that's that's the purpose of a business to make profit. Like I was I was I was on a consulting call the other day um with a dude who was inclined to send it, and he actually did sell his agency. He was making um he was making, I think like 80 something K a month, and he was taking home like around 20K a month of profit, and he sold it for like$520,000. He he let he he took home on the in the sale, like after everything. It was something like that. Like, wow, it's pretty good exit. Um, and then he took that money and he bought a landscaping slash like outdoor construction-esque business. Um, and he bought a consulting call with me because he wanted to learn how to scale it with ads. And I was asking him about all this stuff, and like, and he's got bro, he'll sell a pool build, like he'll build a pool for someone and profit like 30 grand like on building the pool, or like builds an outdoor patio and profits 25 grand. And then he also has this service where it's not landscaping, it's garden maintenance because it's in like super like upscale area of like New England, and um he has a garden maintenance client for$600,$700 a month, and he's like, Well, I want to get more garden maintenance clients because there's a lot of enterprise value in the recurring revenue. And I was like, Do you understand that your CAC for a garden maintenance client is gonna be about$2,000? And uh what's your margin on the garden maintenance? He's like about 30%. I'm like, okay, so um you're you're 600 times 0.3, you're making$180 a month in profit. Your CAC is$2,000. That means your payback period on this is 11 months. It's gonna take you a year to even break even on the acquisition of your garden maintenance client, and you want to do this to build enterprise value. I'm like, you're gonna go broke and live in poverty, building enterprise value. That's what you're gonna do. It's nonsense. This is completely stupid. I'm like, the purpose of the business is to make you profit. You need to make profit. I'm like, do you also understand that you running ads to get a pool build or a patio build? The cac is the cac is gonna be like four grand and you're gonna profit$30,000 and almost 10x your money to profit in like a month. But do you also understand that? He's like, Yeah, I'm like, so why are you trying to get garden maintenance clients as opposed to 9xing your money in 30 days? What is what what is this? This is just dumb. This, this whole this whole premise is dumb. So I'm like, dude, like you can have a thousand or or hundreds of garden maintenance clients, but if you're just like selling 10 pools a month, it was like that's it's like a way better business. I'm like, what do you understand? So the the the analogy I gave to him was like, I was like, and everyone listening now should just do this too. So like we could do it interactive here right now. If I tell you someone's a DECA millionaire, like just imagine a typical DECA millionaire, they have$10 million. Describe the average year of what someone does as a DECA millionaire, just like just throw out what do you think they do, like what their life looks like.

Darren

It's very, very organized and structured between the work that they do, where to invest their time, and what do they do personally?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so like for like personal enjoyment, just like life, like what do you what do you what do you what do you what do you think they do? What do they buy?

Darren

I think I think they literally probably enjoy their business. Uh they probably have some sort of like uh golf fucking interest and philanthropic interest.

SPEAKER_02

So so so yeah, that that yeah, they can have that. Um what I was saying to him, like what we were kind of saying was like, okay, well, I'd imagine is that they probably fly first class, like 90% of the time, probably. Um if they go on a trip somewhere, it's exclusively in like a five-star hotel. Um, places that are like, I don't know, like$1,500 a night, something like that. Um so their their round trip fights places are like$3,000 to$7,000. They maybe go on like four trips a year, five trips a year. Um they probably eat at expensive restaurants twice a week. They probably have like a personal chef, maybe. Um they probably drive a nice car, might, it might be like a Lamborghini, but and then also another car, maybe like a really expensive like escalator or something like that. That's like, I don't know, 100-150. Like maybe, maybe occasionally they fly private and could if it's like a$15,000 flight, like$20,000 flight. Like, that's my conception of a DECA millionaire. Like they got nice clothes. Okay, and then I was trying to explain to him, I was like, do you understand that everything that we just described is like$40,000 a month? And then he's like, Yeah, now that I think about it, it's about it's probably you could you could do all of that with about$40,000 a month. I'm like, okay, okay, got it. So, so, so why are we gonna sit here and operate our business in a completely impoverished way, take no money out, build enterprise value, just negative cash flow fuckery, and try to get an extra. Exit for 10 million, 15 million, so you can have 10 million or 15 million dollars. Because it's like, because so what why are we gonna do that? Because so it's like, okay, cool, you exited your business for 10 million, 15 million dollars. What are you gonna do? Because you don't want the principal to go down. So what are you gonna do with it? You're gonna invest it, like okay, and you're gonna get a seven percent return on it. So you're gonna make seven hundred thousand dollars a year in gains, right? Divided by twelve. That's fifty-eight thousand dollars a month. Or hear me out, we could just be profitable and make fifty-eight thousand dollars a month right now. We could just do that instead, and then we don't have to wait 10 years or 15 years living completely impoverished activities and just live a good life now and have a profitable business. Oh, and like let's not forget that having a profitable business is still exitable. So the net amount of proceeds over the course of 10 years, if you just decide to be profitable, not do this little stupid enterprise value stuff, it's like you'll you'll make more money aggregately in total. So it's it's it's just dumb. Like everything, everything's dumb.

Logistical Intensity: The Pricing Power Lever

Darren

Diarny is a man, you're gonna get more profit as well. As an it's right, you'll have a bigger exit if it is more profitable because it's based on Ebotha anyway. Like that's gonna be your big your your big metric here. It's not gonna just be fucking top line revenue or reoccurring revenue if them if the if the money is. It's funny, dude, because uh one of my own old mentors, and this is a good kind of segue into Liskit. It's a crazy story, dude. Uh, he's one of the guys that taught me sales, he had a software company. He actually I take it back. He sold an asset that he had. They like remodeled a house, they got like a very uh what's the word? It was like an old uh Commonwealth British house. They remodeled it, they sold it for like 10 million. All right, so he was like super wealthy. This guy's old, right? He's old. He was a CEO of a bank, he was making like 70k a month as CEO of a bank. He left that and went to build a startup. There is 20 million, and he didn't take any money himself for his salary. That 20 million went to product and it went to engineers and to marketing, and it was a B2B company, like a very boring B2B banking app. Long story short, seven years comes. He whittles his way through his own personal money because he's a family, the kids are in private school, uh, two kids, wife, all this kind of stuff. He's in his 50s now at this point. Gets to the very, very end. They had raised so much money, he was down to like 7% ownership at the end. And they went to sell. So the company was valued at 50 million, and he wanted to sell, but the private equity company didn't want him to sell because they said, hey, we're not gonna make that much money back, like, no, keep fucking going. Interest rates turn coming around 2021, 2022, and a company goes to zero. Goes to fucking zero, dude. And the idea and the lesson from this is like one, he never had control because he was following someone else's plan of you know, quote unquote enterprise value. Dude almost ended up in a psychoard. I'm pretty sure he did end up in a psychoard, I'm not gonna lie. And the lot the TLDR from this is he he could have done a lot of this himself or else like took some risk off the table. But it was to your point, like he was putting himself through 10 years of agony for this idea of a big exit that literally ended up in zero. Now he was still happy, obviously, he did it, but I mean it's just an interesting lesson, right? Especially with guys that are selling info that want to do software.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, dude, it's it's just it's just the woman in in the red dress. It's like, dude, you got like you got like a nine out of ten hot wife and like a happy family with a bunch of with with the with a bunch of kids who love you and adore you, and like an amazing friend group, an amazing life, and then like there's just like the woman in the red dress, and then you cheat on your wife and she divorces you, you lose the kids, and everyone hates you. Like, congratulations. Like, is it's just dumb. Like, that's what this like stupid fuckery about. The focus on enterprise value is. It's a and people just like say enterprise, they throw it around, like they literally don't even know what they're talking about, they literally don't even know what that is. It's you ever see these tweets? They're so funny because it always comes for somebody who has fucking zero idea what they're talking about. It's um they go, all you need to do is build a software company to ten thousand dollars a month and you sell it for a million dollars. I'm like, no one's buying that for a million dollars. Who who do you know who's purchasing that for a million dollars? I'm like, are you dumb?

Darren

It's actually so funny, and it's also due to the mechanics of it. And uh, I actually just wrote this down a second ago. So about two years ago, I was in Scottsdale interviewing Dickie Bush, and he said to me, uh, he's like, There's a guy called Daniel Fazio who said to me that how they scaled was their ability to organize operational complexity. And dude, it's been etched in my brain ever since. And I always think about it. So my question to you is like, how how do you or how did you organize Liskit? Like, what was the idea?

SPEAKER_02

I think the phrase he used is logistical intensity.

SPEAKER_00

So explain that.

Supply, Margins, And Cold Calling DFY

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay, okay, okay, so this this this concept stems from how I teach offers to people. Um, so like let me let me let me let me explain to you. Well, I want to give you an example. Let's say that um let's say that you're a marketing agency and you you're you you sell leads to roofers, you help roofers get leads, all right. So um, like you know that like leads need to be like qualified and set correctly, right? So, okay. Now imagine there's two agencies you have an agency that generates leads for you and they just give you the leads, whatever. Like here's this person opted in here, they opted in, do whatever you call them. And then you have an agency over here who, when the lead is generated, they call them for you. They they they they do the qualification and set the appointment, like schedule it for you. That logistical intensity of doing that, so like you as a service provider, in order for you to offer that as a just all right. So, first before we proceed, if you owned a roofing company, which of those people would you rather work with? Okay, yes, exactly, because there's more logistical intensity. Any arrangement between you between somebody buying or selling a service, any arrangement between the two parties who are buying and selling any kind of service whatsoever, it's always just a transfer of logistical intensity. That's it. That that's that's that's all it is. Therefore, if your offer has more logistical intensity, it is always attractive 100% of the time. It's always more attractive the more logistical intensity you take over. Okay, now what's interesting about this is if you take something like I'm gonna the example I actually give you is cold calling. We're about to launch this at Liskit. So to offer like cold calling as a service, like say say so you say you're doing cold email for somebody, and and and and like you can also cold call leads, you could cold call the people on the list, you could cold call the people who responded, and then like you just have a caller, right? It's it's it's a logistically intense process to find a cold caller, get them hired, train them up, set them up on the software that they're gonna use for this, even know what software to use in the first place, set up the automations or whatever systems are required for that, get them a script, figure out if the script works or not, go back and forth into training, figure out like figure out how to get results with it. Very logistically intense process. When something is very difficult to do, there's a high degree of logistical intensity to it, that means the supply is profoundly low. When supply is really low, margins are very high. So if you figure out how to do something that's a huge pain in the ass for other people, you can charge an exorbitantly higher amount more money for it than you otherwise could for the stuff that's easy to fulfill.

Darren

Fuck, bro, that's fucking genius. Yeah, that is fucking so intelligent, bro. So that that where did you where did you come to that? Like, where did you where did you settle on that theory, bro?

SPEAKER_02

I don't know. I just I just you just figure it out. You just you just you just see what offers people are buying, and then it's like, wow, a lot of people buy this stuff that it's just basic economics. If supply is low, then like you charge everything you want, you're monopoly, basically.

Darren

Just to iter on iterate on that. So like our agency is a content agency to keep it simple, right? Keep it very, very simple. So scripting, recording, editing, whatever, diamond doesn't. But then the other side of it was in 2022, all of the people that we worked with, they were like, okay, we're getting you know interest from people who are interested, interested, but we're not we're not able to get clients. So then we had a we ran a sales agency with that, so we just set them and closed them on behalf. And dude, this was for enterprise people, this is corporate. So we'd we'd we'd set them SDRs and then we'd put an AE on the account, and we still have those clients in 2026, bro. Still have them. And back then I didn't even know what a fucking sales agency was. I just said, Yeah, sure, just I'll just throw some random person into my email account, and then obviously we built upon it now, and now it's a process, right?

Studios, Sales Ops, And Scarcity Advantage

SPEAKER_02

Yep, because it's it's logistically intense, and they understand that if they were to try to do that themselves, it's completely impossible. Well, it's not impossible, it's just like it's so much effort. This is why um like you see all the stuff about like like Claude bot online, yeah. So it's a or I'm sorry, open claw, like everyone's like obsessed with open claw. Um so like and you see a bunch of people who are selling setups to this for like five, ten thousand dollars, like because it's logistically intense to figure out how to set it up. If you know, like you know what I'm saying? There's there's a low supply of people who know how to even do it. It must be so interesting. When supply like you the I mean, these guys can charge ten thousand dollars right now, but like in a couple weeks they're not gonna be able to because the supply will increase. It's real, it's it's basic economics, you know what I mean? But you gotta find the stuff like sometimes there's something that's like like just no one's bothering to figure out like for like we're gonna sell cold calling, like that's always been a huge pain to like do so. Like we're selling that, and the margins are very good.

Darren

That's that really fucking that really rocking, dude. That's super it's so interesting to observe. And if I look at just like my journey or whatever in this process, because like for the bigger guys, we do sales ops, right? So sales tracking, sales operations, which became our company, and it was like that was the what we found was very interesting was really smart guys were really shit at sales operations, and yeah, I just think that's fucking super fascinating.

SPEAKER_02

Um, sorry, you you know what's a good business is um if you're if you're if you're in a city that happens to have a lot of uh digital nomad online work for yourself entrepreneur type people, um, you have a filming studio. Why did we have it here in Bali? Yeah, so like everywhere like you could you can charge a pretty good amount of money for that. You probably you can almost surely be booked up like all of the time. Why? Yeah, because to figure out and know how to do all this, like proper audio, proper lighting, proper camera setup, knowing how to deal with it, it's logistically intense. It's not it's not the most logistically intense thing in the world, but the supply is pretty low. You can therefore charge a pretty good amount of money. You know, you get what I'm saying? Same premise everywhere, dude. This is why like gas is cheap. You know what I mean? Because it's everywhere. This is why this is why this is why this is why like e-com email marketing agencies generally tend to charge not a lot of money. It's why like it's why Facebook ad agencies are all cheap now. You know what I mean? It's it's why what it's why cold emailing, cold email agencies are cheap. It's it's why it's all cheap. Like it is if you if you have a standard a standard uh I'll help you grow your agency coaching program, it's why it's like you're not gonna, you know, the the only way you get sales with that is branding. Yeah, it's like there's too much supply.

Why Raise For Listkit And The Data Layer Bet

Darren

Could we jump into unlisked? I think it's very interesting to see that uh you raised capital. What was the decision behind that?

SPEAKER_02

Um, it was for it was for uh uh product building product, so um having heads, yeah, engineers.

Darren

Um where do you get your engineers from?

SPEAKER_02

Mostly, mostly, mostly uh in Europe because it was a it was a European VC company, uh so like they want us to hire higher in Europe. Um so it wasn't it wasn't for acquisition, it was it was exclusively for for for building product. Um something that's uh something I just keep coming back to though is um it's another thing where it's like some some sometimes like you just gotta you you just gotta use what you have and stop like trying to like chase something you don't have. So it's like so like what's a skill we have that we're really good at? It's it's selling high-ticket offers. We're really good specifically at making a VSL call funnel to a high-ticket offer and selling it through a sales. That's that's what we're good at. We're not very good at selling um low-ticket stuff. And so so like the the route we're taking it is like allowing people to build apps on top of our data. So like let me let me let me give you for instance. Say say that you um you are a life insurance coaching offer. You you teach you you are a life insurance agent, you got good results, now you started a coaching program to help other life insurance agents get uh get results. Um, let's say one of the ways that you got good results was that you sent a shit ton of cold emails. So what we're doing is like, for instance, we'll work with someone like that who's like a life insurance agent and be like, hey, we can give you all of the data that your life insurance guys will ever need, and you just include it in your coaching program and you pay us.

Darren

What type of data? Sorry, you you mean from an integration perspective?

SPEAKER_02

Or you mean from a Liskit is a database SaaS? That's literally what it is. So it's like so Liskit has like 720 million email addresses. That's like what what it is, you know what I'm saying? Do you do you have any issues with GDPR in Europe? Uh, in Europe, yeah, you would.

Darren

Yeah, but sorry, are you are you selling into Europe though with the VC company based?

SPEAKER_02

But I don't know what they're doing with it, like if they're whether they're cold emailing or not, like that's their own problem. But it's uh it's but in in in the US, it's like no, it's completely illegal.

Darren

Yeah, we're sorry. I thought you meant you as the hosting provider would fucking you know walk EU, come down and try to crack you over the head if you're providing lists in Europe. I'm just curious. No, no, you're it's okay. You can do that. Okay, sick. So you can integrate then with coaching programs and then pull those lists specifically based on the vertical that they're in.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but this is the same premise as you scaling with partners. It's the same exact premise. Exactly. You know what I'm saying?

Darren

Yeah, the difference, I guess the difference with us is it's just uh it's tech agnostic, right? So what I mean by this is just like if people sell with a sales call, because it's the it's it's in it's a sales, it's sorry, it's a call funnel product. Um and then the integrations we have are on a tech base, like with like you know, your big course platforms, um, email providers, uh, what else would there be? Uh appointment setting, right? Appointment AI appointment setting on the front end. So it's actually funny you said the way that you said about the data layer, because um have you have you heard of the concept of well, you obviously you know this, but like the way like vertical SaaS is going is that everyone is trying to be the single source of truth of the data. So if you look at uh open AI, open it why open AI is so interesting is because obviously it's fucking AI, but it's the it's a single source of truth. So the data at the bottom is the is the source of truth, and then you can branch on top, yeah. So which sounds like you guys are too.

UI Fades, LLMs Rise, Data Wins

SPEAKER_02

Well, that that's exactly what we're thinking, is that like the the idea that you need to have a your own UI will not always be the case, it'll just be you integrate with some kind of bot or so some some LLM, and that's how people retrieve what you offer is via via that. You're just a data layer that and your data can be retrieved via any LLM. Like that's that's what's so interesting. That's what that's what we're thinking as well. It's like the the the the necessitation of a UI will will will stop.

Darren

So dude, when I when I worked uh at a trading company, like in product, that's what it was. It was Lego. We were like a we were basically a a shell, and we would connect with let's say Morgan Stanley, uh Morning Star, and we'd retrieve their data from a feed, and there's no UI, bro. It was fucking impossible to build. So I'm like super dyslexic, right? So I need to see things, and it was just API. And I know this seems kind of complicated if people don't understand it, but basically it's just like you are just a shell, and then you connect around, and it's like Lego. It's basically just becomes fucking Lego at that point.

SPEAKER_02

Yep. Yeah, so I that's that's the way that the the the world is so like I'll give you for instance, like dude. I the the other day I was using manis to uh like I I I threw in a bunch of static ad creatives, and I was like, hey, just like look at these and then make me five more that are like this, then they but they say this, and it just did it perfect. I was like, oh, nice, just did it perfectly. It's um so it's like I don't have to go into Photoshop and make this anymore, like Adobe Photoshop. It's I don't need to like I don't need to go in Canva and screw with Canva. Like if it's gonna use Canva, it's gonna interface with Canva automatically for me. You know what I mean? Oh yeah if it needs to use Adobe first, it'll use it itself, but it was using nano banana, so it was just image generation, but it's like it's uh I'm not gonna use you're not gonna use anything else. You're gonna you're gonna you're you're gonna you're gonna use an LLM or an agent and it's going to interface with whatever capability some software company provides. So like for instance, if someone comes in and it's like, hey, find me 17,000 email addresses of marketing agencies. It would be like, would you like to use your listkit credits to do that? Yes, boom. All right, here you go. Like that's it. It just found it.

Darren

What's your uh what's your revenue model? Is it subscription based or it's credits?

SPEAKER_02

I imagine it's credits on listkit now, yeah.

Darren

Do you have any others um like model right now that you're looking that you're looking to? I think this is an inter that's an interesting conversation. Like like trying to find can you pull margin? I don't know, is there anything else you could kind of fucking pull? What do you mean? So uh give you an example. So like um my CTO comes from like a financial SaaS background, and uh they were subscription-based only, and then they just quickly learned that subscription based only is basically super fucking hard to take. So now they're taking transaction fees, uh, GMV transaction or margin. So we're actually going to be doing that with uh if we want to do credit scoring, credit scoring hits the bureau, credit bureau, whatever, and then there's a margin on top. So they would even Twillow, man, because we're gonna do the SMS. It's just usage based.

SPEAKER_02

It's just yeah, it's just usage-based.

Darren

Yeah, I get and then you you add the margin on top, basically.

Pricing Models, Usage, And What Not To Tax

SPEAKER_02

Yep, exactly. Yeah, I like I like that. I I I personally like that. Just just pay as you go, but you it doesn't require a subscription.

Darren

Is there any way that you could do uh I don't know, some sort of transaction? I'm just thinking, like, is there any way you could really fucking like you could add something in that would just blow this shit up? Because if all these bigger businesses are using it, is there any other way that you could basically take some sort of transaction when they when they close a deal? I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that'd be that would be pretty difficult. Well then then then then you're just like you're going back to like being an agency layer, which is like what we already have. It's like so so what would be the problem with with um the only people who are gonna use a database software like Liskit are people who actively send cold emails. But then we talked about earlier how if you want to make a lot of money, you need to create new ones, right? So remember, so so so like I need to create more cold emails, but the only way you can create more cold emails right now is if you just do it for them, which is what we do in the the done for you offer. You see what I mean?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

The only people who check out and buy and like use the Liskit UI are people who already call it email. They already know how to do it.

Darren

What's the biggest challenge you have scaling Liskit?

SPEAKER_02

Um I mean it's it's it's going. The only the only bottleneck that really ever appears with is um um you look if there's like if you're running your coaching program and there's some issue with the product, you can just fix it like yourself, like immediately. Instantly. You can't you can't do that with software. I don't know how to fix it. I have no idea how this works. You know what I mean? So you you rely on other people who have considerably less of a vested interest or motivation to make it work as to the degree that you do, to just much less urgency. So it's like it's it's that's that that's that's annoying to deal with.

Darren

That's a personal thing, man. Um yeah, like engineers are just they're just different, right? They're different creatures. That's what they're so good at what they do. We always joke that like when engineers aren't talking to you is when they're actually at their best, right? Because we're so used to being in Slack and just sending like stupid fucking memes and shit.

Software Bottlenecks And Team Cadence

SPEAKER_02

That's me when I'm doing my marketing stuff too. Like we talked about earlier. It's like, bro, I don't want to be in a meeting, I just want to do what I want to do. Like, I can't, I can't do anything when I'm on meetings. I literally can't.

Darren

Yeah. Yeah, it's like your zone of genius, right? But that's good. Like you you recognize your zone of genius, and it's like that's the only thing that you need to focus on.

SPEAKER_02

There was a period of time where it's like there's like daily meetings at Liskit, and I was like, no, not doing it anymore. Can't do it. Um I'm um no, it doesn't work. I can't, I can't do that. I'm losing, we're losing money by me doing this. I can't do that.

Darren

What's your overall goal? So across like Liskit and Clan Ascension, like let's say five years time, like how do you want your life to look?

SPEAKER_02

Um, I'd like to be personally taken home, like 400k a month profit, like me personally. Um so like these things would probably be they'd have to be above like three million a month.

Darren

Do you do you have plans to sell this kid in the next five years?

SPEAKER_02

If we can, yeah, that'd be great. Like it's ideally what you want to do.

Darren

Um but you could you could probably sell it, you could probably sell it in six months if you want it, but I'm saying, like, do you have a number that you want that makes it hold out or makes you keep growing?

SPEAKER_02

I don't know about the other guys, but if like we got an offer for like 40 mil cash, I'd be like, Yeah, like let's go. I'm out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I I don't know about them, but that's I would personally be like, yeah, that's fine with me. I wonder but but but but to get like all cash offers, like that's it that's not it's not that's rare, you know. It's uh it's gonna be some earnout, it's gonna be it's gonna be in stock, like an illiquid company. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's gonna be something like that.

Personal Targets, Exits, And Reality Checks

Darren

Yeah, dude. Like I as in, you know, coming from so one of the reasons why uh I was so hesitant to go. So for context, I did engineering in school and then I worked for a couple of startups, and the reason why I was so hesitant to go back was kind of because of this, right? Is that it's it's never clean cut, like it's never fully, fully clean cut. Now, obviously, the money is retrievable in terms of you hit the milestones, you get there over two years, you're in as like a consultant once a week and all this kind of shit. But it's just interesting to understand like the game, right? To understand where you're going, what that looks like, what's the reality, and then obviously just going fucking full speed ahead and then not forgetting about it. But I think that's just something that I I I obviously just think about a lot, right? It's seeing the trail of dead businesses, but what do they not have, man? They don't have the fucking five years that you have the you know, of experience, of results, of testimonials, of brand, of equity. Like you've probably seen this too, right? Uh, the amount of guys that that build a company, like a software company, with no experience in sales is absolutely frightening. Like, I I joke to the guys, like, I'm like, you're fucking lucky the guy that owns a business is an addict when it comes to fucking sales and stripe accounts. Because otherwise, Jesus Christ, no wonder you didn't grow the business and you quit and you gave up. Like, it's just ironic how much you need to actually love what you're doing, and not like love what you're doing, but I mean just be absolutely up cracked with this stuff to be remotely successful. Yeah, you fucking remotely successful.

SPEAKER_02

Someone someone who's cracked at their own individual thing, like it's like just it'll just be for the rest of my life where it's like, listen, I'll I'll spend some time getting like to a degree competent using stuff like clawed code, and like I like it, just knowing how to screw with it to the extent that it's useful to do my job, but like I'm gonna keep the main thing the main thing, like my skill that I'll develop for the rest of my life is the ability to convert cold traffic into people who purchase products and services, like that's what's the superpower. It's the superhero. Yeah, it's other people, it's like building a thing, and it's like that's fine, that's your thing. But uh, I think everyone's got to develop some kind of like you gotta have a T-shaped knowledge. I don't know where this term term comes from exactly, but it's like you're a jack of all trades and many things, but you have one thing that you're hyper competent in. And I think it's it's very important that you figure out which of those things that you want to become hyper competent in. I remember not knowing, like when I first started my AG, I remember not knowing whether I liked operations or if I liked marketing or sales. I didn't know which one I liked yet. I remember thinking, like, I think I'm gonna be an operations guy. That's what I thought. I thought I would like that, but then it turns out I did not.

Darren

That was not my it's actually very similar to myself. Actually, very, very similar because I was because I was shit at marketing, so I was like, maybe I must like the back back end stuff. Yeah, and you just you just learn, you know. But dude, you're a fucking legend. This was uh this was such a great podcast, man. I knew it was gonna be awesome too, and I know that we could just riff on shit and stuff too. Uh, I know you travel a lot, man. I would love to do a proper one in person, like a two hour session in person. And uh yeah, man, it was such a great experience.

SPEAKER_02

That'd be dope. Yeah, good stuff, bro. Thanks for having me on, appreciate it.