Kickoff Sessions

#329 Serge Gatari - How to Build a $1M Business with AI in 2026

• Darren Lee • Episode 329

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0:00 | 1:23:21

AI Speed And Business Obsolescence

SPEAKER_00

Do you think the online space is cooked with AI? A thousand percent, man. I think I think it's I think it's bad. I think it's really bad. Given for me, I'm in AI, and every day I wake up like my god. In what way? Like in like what's the there is this so I'll kind of like explain quickly. Um there is this there's over the last three months, something happened with AI that completely changed, and I think it was with Cloud Code Opus 4.6 or 4.5, where the rate at which new things are shipped, like new features, the velocity at which things are moving is so fast that even being in AI paying attention to it, building a product around AI, means you can also be replaced. Like the speed is just unbelievable for even one person or one company to know where things are going, where things are going. So you know, so the reason why I say like people in the online space might be cooked is because if the people who are spending and paying attention to AI every day are also worried, then what happens to people who don't even understand the thing about AI?

Darren

So, how does that break down, right? Because it's like technology advancement, like Moore's law in terms of like how like the adoption happens, but then on the other side, you have people with potato brains. Like, how are you seeing this from like a let's focus more even on even the business owner side, right? So you are you saying like guys are getting sideway fucked, but are there people that are staying ahead of like even if you're stuck, if you're a little bit behind, do you feel like you're falling behind? Like, like how do how do we actualize that?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, 100%. Like, for I think that there is way too many things to build, and there is way too many things happening in the world of AI. And when I say things, I mean like a lot of different architectures are being released. So, as an example, let's say open claw maybe releases uh a month or two months ago, right? Everybody goes crazy. Um a month later or two weeks later, then something else like paperclip releases, right? Which allows you to build organizations, and then uh Cloud Code now releases their own kind of like open claw architecture, which is, you know, or this uh idea that Cloud can now use your computer, right? So then by the time you see OpenClaw and then you get an idea of how it works, so you can take advantage of it, of the architecture, then one of the bigger companies, whether that be OpenAI or Anthropic or Google, then just will take that thing that worked, we'll ship it, and we'll ship it away for free, right? So so for people in AI, one of the biggest issues that I personally have been dealing with is how do you build in a way that you get empowered by the disruption versus building one specific thing and then being like, okay, this is the what we're going to be forever. For me, like as we've been building, we're not one company, we're not one thing. Because the disruption is just it's scary. But like to come back to your thing about the people who are kind of like a little slow, I think they're gonna pay for adoption. That's the beautiful part about it. It's like the change is so big that the gap now about who understands AI and who doesn't is so big, and the desire to be good at it is so big that the actual monetization in between is like nothing. You think maybe people are building businesses or scaling, that's one little tiny market, but the market of people in AI and desiring it is so big, and the gap is so wide that some of the best businesses are are gonna be built with that.

Darren

Can you give some more definition of that? Because I think what would be really interesting is for you to map out the gap for people, like really kind of almost like just more education around that because it's kind of like saying how long is a piece of string, right? To some people, they look at it, like they look at AI. There's there's people that are like, there what is AI? And there's people that say think that AI is chat GPT. Yeah.

Codifying Knowledge Into GPTs

SPEAKER_00

Okay, yeah. I'll I'll explain. So I'll give an example. So when we started with Cook, um, we started first by literally, I wanted to codify my knowledge frameworks, right? And the thing that led me to that was, you know, I started seeing how GPTs can be built. I was like, wow, this is pretty sick. You can kind of like I can hit, let's say how I built offers in specific verticals. I could be like, yo, we've built this, you know, 100k, 200k a month offer in the in the dental practice or another one in real estate. How did we build the offers that were okay? Cool. Instead of me building a coaching, consulting, a course, or to spend time with you, I could just give you my GPTs. That was the unlock that led me to be like, you know what? People don't consume information, people don't want to be coached, just give them the thing that gives them the answer. From that moment on to today, I'll give you kind of like where we're at today. Today, it's no longer that you can just you give someone um an assistant that gives them an answer. It's now that you codify the process around how you do a job. So I'll take them, I'll give an example. As a media buyer, I have to go into the ads manager. I have then to look at the conversion rate, the click-through rate, I have to look at which ads is performing. I have to then figure out okay, are we gonna kill the losers? Are we gonna duplicate and double on the creative that's working? Hey, I have to also send it back to the CEO so he can record more of this creative, so then we can ship more of it. And then I'm gonna send that data back to the sales team. So then they give me, hey, which leads closed? Maybe I look at Hyros and then I look at, oh, this creative also got the most sales, most revenue. Okay, perfect. We should probably double down and I just look at the conversions. All of those steps turned into skills, okay? And then you then need to solve for the integration. Okay, so the AI needs these skills and the step by step I just went through, but then it also needs access to the integrations. It needs access to meta, it needs access to high-ros, it needs access to our sales uh dashboard. It probably also needs access to our Fathom from the sales team so it can look at who closed, why they closed. Did they come from YouTube, did they come from ads, or did they come from a webinar? And then instead of it sending me back a creative or whatever, it's then gonna go ahead and create the creative and then ship it back on meta to retarget people or whatever. So now that's we went from a simple GPT with a system prompt, which would have like, oh, here's how we do media buying, help me build a campaign structure, to no. Now AI has all the skills, has all the integrations, and also has the playbook around how to go through the entire mission because that entire process is like a playbook, right? And then on top of that, this think of it as a playbook, it has the skills, it has the integrations. Now we took the open claw architecture to start building um and the paperclip arc orchestration to start building AI employees. So I'm gonna build an AI employee called let's say Chris, and he's gonna own this playbook every single morning. He lives on Discord. I message him, hey, yo, uh, Chris, what's going on? And he's gonna run the whole loop and tell me, yo, by the way, this is what's killing it on marketing. I recreated the ads, I shipped it on Meta. Um, let's let's let's wait. And I can just tell him, hey, I don't want us to spend this week, we don't have anything going on, and he's just gonna go shut down the campaign. So now we've fully gone from I'm talking to AI to get an answer, to I should have an AI employee that knows how to run my business, every single function in the business.

Darren

And man, question for you on this is how does the front end look for this if you're interacting with fucking paperclip or whatever it's called? How does that like are you actually programming that or is the interface pretty intuitive?

SPEAKER_00

So I I can show you if you want.

Darren

And and also just for people too, give uh people a definition or a full overview of cook as well, which by the way is absolutely fucking bananas. Yeah, man, like as I go into the detail of it, dude. I I shared on my CTO the other day, and I was like, this is like literally the most retired thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Like, yeah, what what I think is most, and you can go into more detail. What I think is most fascinating is it's not just like building your offer, it's finding the niche, and it's finding it's finding the unfair advantage. Like, dude, how the fuck can you find the unfair advantage in a like a you know, like um a competitive market? Yeah, just in like a competitive world, right? That's that's like it's like an economic equation, right? It's like what is that term? It's um perfect economics if we were able to understand all market dynamics and market supply. That's kind of what this is getting at. It's like solving the problem 100%.

Truth Engine For Market Research

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you brought up maybe I can explain that before we kind of go into the AI stuff, employees. So as I was building this, uh kind of like trying to automate how to build people's offers and launching and scaling, I realized that it's useless to give them leverage because they're just gonna build offers in markets that are just useless. They're gonna go pursue the wrong opportunity. So then I was like, fuck, we're kind of fucked. So we built all this leverage for people who don't really know how to use it. I can know how to I have judgment because I've seen failure, I've seen success. So I know how to go about doubling down on certain niches and verticals and markets because of my judgment. So, how the hell do I give someone my judgment so the first thing they built or they can see if the thing they're doing is actually the right thing, right? So then we ended up building this um thing called the truth engine. And the thing we wanted to figure out is we want to find what is the demand in the market, we want to find what the words of the market are when it comes to what they're struggling with. We then want to figure out uh depending on all these pain points, what are the best mechanisms to build? And then show me the ICP of it. I mean, let me show you. So that now for us, every single person who's um who's kind of like building any offer, like literally, we use this for our clients. Um, we don't know anymore like consult on just like pure um pure insight of our own. No, we're like, yo, okay, which market are we going after? Let's say you want to go out, yeah. One second. So the way that this whole thing works, I'll kind of like show you, is that it first starts by going into deep into a market. So we've connected like a hundred different services. This is what we do. We don't really rebuild anything from scratch, but we connect a lot of different a hundred plus APIs that goes and finds searches and finds you know Reddit stuff. Uh, so it will go find the pain points of a market. So I've done this in a niche like trading, which I have no clue about, but in literally in the same flow, I was able to find the insight as to what to actually go after in a specific market. So if you're going after HVAC as an example, you may think that all they need is Legion, but actually no, uh, they have plenty of work. Only issue is finding qualified people to fill these positions. So you would probably build a talent acquisition mechanism versus just what building a Legion uh thing. Because someone on YouTube said, Oh, just go sell growth to to local businesses, right? And then based on kind of like the the um the things that it found, it will then put together kind of like different solutions to to sell to these markets, okay? And then it will go from this step all the way to what let me show you. It will go find it will kind of like find the ICP, it will find um give you ice different ICPs in the HVAC space, it will give you competitor selling to HVAC, it will give you the go to market, it will give you the pricing based on the benchmarks of the niche, it will know about the cost per lead, cost per booked call, it will look at the cost to fulfill, and then it will how are you getting this data, man?

Darren

I don't know how how is it's just not costing you a ton with all the HVAC?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The the yeah, it's like probably like one, two, three, four, five. Like it costs money. The reason the the part that's super expensive is this here. Like going into these platforms, into all of these, and actually finding the real-time data going on, that's expensive. Building the assets like creatives or funnels, that's not expensive. It's actually finding the data that's super expensive, and then it kind of like goes into this, it scores the opportunity and tells you, yo, uh, this is why it will work. But if you want to truly fix everything, here's the first thing you should probably look at create a mindset, you know, my belief shifting uh asset, then it puts together the offer in one doc, then it shows you the ads of people currently selling to what to HVAC. What the fuck, dude? This is fucking bananas. So you don't even have to like you for sure you could go on iD library, you can all this, but how are you gonna know that to find these specific people? You're not, right? And then content too. What content is going viral in HVAC? So, okay, so it's let's take a step back.

Darren

So when you open up the the left panel, you also had like phone numbers and stuff, right? Usually all that clay data is super fucking expensive, like validation it did. So when you open up that side panel there, here or here, so you had phone numbers too, right? You had all people's phone numbers, their their details, and everything.

SPEAKER_00

Uh no, that's that's that's uh that's for the cold email. Um, it's not here yet.

Darren

Yeah, yeah. But what I mean is like that that stuff is like really expensive. Yeah, like clay data was uh we were paying 50 cents per phone number on clay.

One Workspace With Full Context

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. We're trying to figure out we've we've we're building a way to scrape data ourselves because it's too much just way too expensive. Yeah, it's super super unscalable. Yeah, just super bad. And then you know, it kind of like goes through the whole loop, um, you know, finds the ads, builds the landing page. And what's cool is that it builds and records everything, saves all the context about the business, right? Builds a landing page. And the reason why this is I think this, by the way, is the most powerful thing about it, is because when you're now using all the other agents, it remembers all the context, all the data. So now, um, when you're let's say I'll show you an example. I was uh launching like an ad um here, and I was like, yo, please um create an ad on the same workspace. And I told it, yo, just make me a video um here, and what it did is it tried to give me a set uh script, but I was like, I don't want the script, just make the video, just go ahead and create the video first. So it loaded the skill to the tool, like it researched the tool, it created the context from the from the workspace, and then just goes ahead and what I don't know if you can you hear the audio? Okay, yeah, and then goes ahead and builds this with because we're going after HVAC, right? But imagine having to prompt this entire thing, the background, what the guy's wearing. Right, dude, dude, that does not look like it's made of AI at all, and then check this out. I said, yo, the video cuts out. Look, I said the video cuts out a 10-second mark, see where it would stop and rebuild it. And it said, smart move. Let me watch the video first to see exactly where it cuts, then I'll rebuild it as one. It went ahead and watched the video, looked at where it cut, and then it ends. The CTN never lends. I'm going to rebuild this, and then it rebuilt another clip. And look at the consistency, and look at so this year if I can suck sub summarize what we're trying to build, is like, how do you make everything fucking just just use the technology? Don't just stay because there's a lot of people are getting really good at creative, and then there's a lot of people are getting good at building funnels, then there's a lot of people getting good at vibe coding, but it's like, bro, I'm trying to run a fucking business. I don't want to wait. So you can get you can go on on Cling, you can go on these um Higgs field and actually become really good at prompting, prompt engineer. But I don't if you're running a business, you're not a prompt engineer. I'm trying to shift this, I'm trying to build a service where we can ship these for businesses. And if I have humans prompting the machine, guess what? We're going back to the agency entropy. No margins. You hire one person, then you need another person, then you need another person. I don't want this. I want to be able to have the context of the entire business in this workspace. So when I'm building content, when I'm building funnels, when I'm building assets, when I'm fulfilling content, I wanted to remember the context of the fucking client. So I can just ship. So then you have all the integrations here if you want. So do you do you integrate with GHL?

Darren

I was watching a video on this, I didn't really understand it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. We have uh yeah, we have a CRM right now. We're integrated with uh GHL for now. So you can pull all the data, you can build ship things into CRM.

Darren

Yeah, so this was this is what was really interesting on our side. So I don't know how much you know about or but at a high level, it's like sales performance, right? So it's optimizing the sales team. But the biggest thing that that we found is that like some people have Hubspot far enough, they might use uh like one of our competitors, whatever. But the biggest thing was was headless. You're probably familiar with the term, but the logic is we're building mainly like API first data. So what that means is people can shamoozle it whatever way they want to. So some of the guys will take it in, they'll want to use like let's say the AI coaching part, maybe not so that maybe they want to use like the call data, maybe they'll want to use the lead intelligence because we're basically routing all the lead to go look them up on on whatever that's like the the AI capability in the back end, or they might want some of the call data that's coming back from our note taker and interpreting interpreting it. But basically, long long story short here is like the way I see this is like as you're doing right now, you can just pull shit that's almost UI-less. That there is no front end, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there is, yeah, yeah. I think this is why like this was the unlock which I was talking about, the employee stuff. I don't think you're gonna, I don't think you're gonna use you're not gonna use cook. Like humans are not gonna be the ones using cook, they're gonna have like a Nina or like a Jordan who's gonna leave on their Slack or their WhatsApp or their you know Slack Discord. For us, we have it on Discord. And what this guy's gonna have access to, he's gonna have access to he's gonna be fully autonomous, the same way that you would hire. I don't know if it's a sales manager or a sales team lead, it doesn't really matter. But someone who looks at the team, where is your close rate? What is where are you at based on the benchmarks or the targets that we have for you? And they're gonna just run that loop. I don't want to have to watch every single sales call of my team. Fuck that. I'd rather just be broke, right? But this AI doesn't care. So I'm just gonna build the prompt for him, what to do. I'm gonna give him a skill, right? And by the one thing that's super sick, let me show you this.

Darren

Can you break the sense through the sense more bit? So you basically create a human, you give them a skill of like copywriting or whatever.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so you build all these skills, and let's say if it's a sales team lead, it would be like something like this. Let's say you're a really good at sales team lead, but let's say I'm not good at it. Look at this. Hey, I want to build the skill around managing my sales team. I want to be able to drive their close rate high, look at all the objections they uh they receive and handle them. Um, I want to be able to train them every single day and really, you know, create a huddle and um ramp them up, just make sure that they're motivated to just cook. Maybe that might be showing them what we're building on the product, it might be client wins. Well, to be honest, I don't even know what's the best way to go about it. Please go ahead and create a skill around uh leading a sales team to performance to perform. You can just send off the machine to go learn the skill. Let's say you want to build an accounting firm, a bookkeeping business. Okay, cool, who cares? Go send it. So then once the skill is done being built, it will like show up um as part of skills that have let's say been built. Dude, how many uh like how many engineers do you have for this? Like what was the uh bro, if I told you how many engineers we had, you you'd you'd think it's a joke. We only have like we have less than we have okay, so we have less than four engineers.

Darren

But how how do you manage like the support tickets? Because I imagine there's lots of like my only kind of fear with with some of the quant qualitative stuff was that some of it's subjective.

Skills, Autonomy, And Enterprise Delivery

SPEAKER_00

So I wonder where you're 100%. So so here's the thing. This is why we're still running it. We're if I can we're really running cook as more of an enterprise motion. We're not really selling it to a lot of people, we're not selling it, you know, cheap. So what we do is every single person who kind of like buys it, um, we almost like come so there's this pro term called forward, you know, deployed engineer where. Let's say if Palantir or um sells a government, you know, they'll send like someone in, and actually, that's someone's job is make sure that this thing works for the client. That's kind of like how we're running Cook, which is we're coming in and like, yo, how do we make sure that this works for you? What is your workflow? What are all the skills? What are and look at this cool thing? What content are you consuming every day that you would like to then be executed on? So let's say Hormosy Highlights is going crazy right now. I but I don't want to watch all the videos. So I'm like, yo, connect hormoney highlights all the sources of content that I want to watch on X or on Instagram. Um, and then every day give me an insight, whether that be a tactic or a strategy or an opportunity. And then all I need to do is get context, and if I like it, Jordan's sales team Jordan's sales team needs a script Bible hunter. I don't even know what this is about, but I will be like, yo, let me execute on this. Then you create a task, and once you create a task, it will show up here. What as a mission? It will start actually executing on what on this insight. What the fuck am I looking at?

Darren

This is absolutely wild, man. So so how like where are you business-wise? Like as in terms of how many clients do you have, or like how do you implement this?

SPEAKER_00

Because if it is a volunteer, we have like a we have like a hundred daily users on this right now.

Darren

Sick, because like basically it was uh eman's advice to me. I had a one-to-one with eman like a month ago, and I was like, hey dude, we're getting loads of sign-ups, but we're not getting any, we're not getting any advice. Our activation rate was like 15%, which is like kind of normal for early stage SaaS. And then he literally, it was like the most the stupidest thing ever. He was like, Why don't you just do it for people? And I was like, Yeah, okay, because they they have a they have a HubSpot account executive, right? So then we swap to fully done for you. Same time I spoke with uh Fazio and uh Liskit grew because they did done for you. Now they did it paid, to be fair. Yeah, so we've we've basically done it, but it's it for us, it's very straightforward. It's just like, hey, come off the shitty tools, like Cannon Lee and stuff, and we'll put in uh a partnership manager is what they're called. But yeah, but it's interesting, right? Because you you you need a lot of those people.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, 100%, 100%. Yeah, that's why it's really tough. That's why, like, if I'm honest with you, like it's really tough to if I launched this for like a monthly subscription thing, oh my god, nobody would be using it. Because one, it's so there's so many things you could do, but then it also means that it creates a lot of uh there's too much noise online with potential tools and this and that. So for me, one of the things before I went all in, I was like, if I'm gonna go all in, I'm gonna go all in. But I'm not gonna prioritize big scale, I'm gonna prioritize making this work for the right people, even if that means hey, let's for the next 12 months, let's work together. So for us, the way we we run things is purely one-on-one. We build the thing, we build your business, and we build it through cook. What our vision is, uh, we're trying to facilitate the one person business, like, and then for that to happen, we're almost like building for our clients versus building this software that just is, and then like you use it. No, no, no, no. People are not gonna use shit, like they're not gonna use it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darren

Yeah, activation solo, right?

SPEAKER_00

Activation solo and solo. It's so hard, too.

Darren

You know, you know, it's so hard, it's an absolute fucking grind, dude. It's an absolute grind. So so well when you when you look at this and you're and you're you're building this out, and it's interesting because like you're not selling info attached to this, or are you?

SPEAKER_00

Like oh yeah, yeah. We're selling, we're selling uh consulting, where you get access to an implementation person, you get access to the playbook, you get access to the group stuff, you get access to your one private channel, so you get everything. It's almost like I took clan acquisition in there and I just shipped it back into try cook, so you get all everything together. Because cook or AI alone is not gonna change, it's not gonna help you win, right? So how do you think through cook and how do you it's almost like we're empowering people to start thinking from how do I build with AI, AI native first, and uh, and that requires us also to change our playbook, right? Like nowadays, building companies used to be that you know, you would you know figure out this one thing, and then you would kind of like guess your way, guess your way into making it, and then you would somewhat make it. Now it's like you know, truth. Okay, perfect. Let's build the truth. Okay, now let's build the infrastructure with cook, then let's go figure out that market. And once the client is you get clients, cool. Then how can you have these AI employees running, building assets? You maybe build it first, then you build the skills, then you build, then you ship it to an employee, and then every day you that employee just manages your client.

Darren

I I'm laughing, dude, because like you know, like when we first met, the edge and info was your nuance. So your wisdom, your cool, funky mechanism, how new, how how much I could teach you. That was like three years ago. Now it's just give me the result right now. It's almost like we've turned into like processed food brains. It's like I just want the result right now, I just want my offer built right now, I want everything built. That's why done for you is like crushing, right? Because it's like people have even less patience. It's insane, it's insane, it's insane.

SPEAKER_00

Which is why, like I was saying, you know, like now the age of AI. I think the best thing that could have happened to this space is AI. Because now anybody can finally offer done for you at the margins of software. That to me, by the way, was the initial insight as to why I doubled down. I realized that people will always have desires to build wealth, but then you let's say you do an agency, agency just sucks. You fuck it eats up your soul. You die, you die before you die, you know. And then the next thing is um you go to info, then you scale like crazy, but then people don't execute on your info, so then you're like, fuck, then you get a good run, but then none of your because this the core thing about business is bro, people have to pay you today and pay you five years from now. That's how you fucking build an Apple or a fucking Google or whatever, right? You got a compound. So the info game is great for fast cash, but not good for build wealth. And then I saw a connection with AI where I was like, fuck, I could take my information, my way of thinking, give it to this AI, and get this AI to be the slave for this client and execute on it. That was the insight with Cook. It was how do you take your knowledge, your playbook, you're smart? You know, this is the good thing about curious people, is this is the best age for us to fucking get rich. Because it for people who are just dumb and just slow, they were never gonna do shit with it. But for us who would have made we made it before AI when you know AI couldn't just build stuff for us. Now it's like, bro, every day for me, every day, first two hours of the day documenting how I think, shipping it. Hey guys, I need this skill, I need this employee to run this flow every day. Hey, who wants this playbook? Yeah, and then I can go to businesses and say, hey guys, who wants this playbook? Who wants this process? Oh, you don't have a media buyer? Okay, go hire a media buyer upwork or hire this 10k a month agency, or just fucking tell me what they how they think, tell me the playbook. Okay, Jeremy Haynes just released this new hammer them strategy. Okay, cool. Let's just fucking turn that into a scale. Let's give it access to the ability to create content to script. Oh, maybe it can even create videos. Oh, it can also ship it on your ads, it creates the campaign. Go.

Darren

So, how do people implement this or like the new age of AI? Like, what is the actual way that they can do it?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I can tell how we're doing it with Cook. So, like, yeah, it's that's the part that we I think we've we've focused on. Is like first you have to work on the integration on the plumbing. Because you can use Madness, but then you're gonna use Madness for ads, okay? Then you're gonna have to use this for that. For us, that was the initial thing. Like, how do you allow full a agentic work? Well, you cannot just have 50 tools, you're gonna have one place that remembers your business context and it has all the integration that you need to run that business, and then that has all the skills, and then the skills is really the thing that you add on, right? Where are the skills? What are the integrations? And really, for us, it's like that's what our business is right now. We build the skills, we build the integration, go ship, go work. Does that make sense?

Owning The Data Plumbing Layer

Darren

Yeah, I'm just thinking in my context because the way we've built things is like aura is like an operating system. Well, take a step back. Firstly, my my initial goal was that no none of these high-ticket offers, and I can tell you some specific names in particular, no one had any idea into their into their data, their sales data. So they were using spreadsheets, they were using maybe like uh clothes or Hobspot, their tracking was all over the place. They might have had Looker Studio, but it was a dog's dinner, and realistically, some random 21-year-old was updating stuff. So it was out of date. And I mean, yeah, these are guys doing a million a month, right? And they were like, ah, it's fine, we're just making enough money. And they're like, ah, it's fine. So that was our initial idea. And I'm just looking at my fucking screen right here. But then the issue was, and I wanted to tell you about this, was the data was piped in correctly. We were pulling from Zoom, we were pulling from Google, so the end state data was out of date. So I'll give you the typical example confirmed, confirmed, and unconfirmed sales calls. Very hard to pull from API data, just there's a bit of a lag, all this kind of shit. So we solved that by building a scheduler. So because you have a scheduler, it comes in one way, and then we own the OS underneath, we have the data underneath. Yeah. What why I'm saying that is because now all of our analytics, and I'll just just show you just for visualization, it's very easy to be able to visualize anything on top of what we have because we already have like we own the data, right? So what I'm saying with this is I'll pull this up, is that because we have our scheduler in here, yeah, and everything is built out of underneath layer, that all analytics is perfectly fine. Okay. So, like your show rate, close rate, all your cash is done, your performance, your sales team performance is perfectly fine, even your attribution metrics, which you would get off high-ros typically, it all works underneath. So all my ads down here you can literally see from meta. Yeah. But the big nuance here is the connecting. This is why I'm trying to I'm trying to just pieces together in my head, because because of this, if we do have which we do have down here, we have like a high-ros data inside of integrations, like we have higher high-ros, stripe, ablefy, and any API keys. Yeah. So the way that you're saying this is like because we have this layered in on top, you can also basically do anything, right? Together, we can infer based on that data and this data. But what I what I'm what I'm scratching my head on a small bit is using this to be able to send insights backwards so that the reports come back, say, hey, from everything on high-ros right now, to do what you're call data, to do what you're called transcripts and everything.

SPEAKER_00

Here's exactly it's like right now, this is a lot of data, but then I'm like, okay, then you're gonna send this back to me, and then I'm gonna humans are gonna do certain things, right? Off of it. For for us, it's like, how can you this is um this is a gold, by the way, because even for me, I would tell you that our data is kind of cooked. Uh, but like I would take this, let's say I would take this data, and by the way, what I think you should do, which I don't know if you you've thought about this, you're gonna need to turn Aura into something that you can even give to other platforms, like either through an API or through like um I don't know how this would work, right? But there's an amazing opportunity for this plumbing you've done instead of let's say for me, I'm quick having to rebuild this, I'll be like, yo, uh can you please send me uh your thing? I'm just gonna use your your plumbing on my platform, and then I can send that data back to all the other AI, the AI agents, or I can connect it with with all the marketing, all the this and that. And then now these AI employees have sales data now. I don't have to tell it to go listen to sales calls. It knows it has so much more data points.

Darren

Yeah, and what we'll do is we'll I'll cut out some of this so that you don't see it. But like this is the pipeline, right? Which is all driven by AI. And why this is interesting is because you can't touch this, like you're not you're not let you can't move it, but you see all the all the transcripts are being run. So if I open up like this guy, Jeff, and it's fine once I get in here, is like we can dial this up and down, but you still have your your transcript, right? So starting from here again, your transcripts in here, but then mainly like your review comes in here. So what I'm trying to say is like this is definitely V1 in terms of like not necessarily V1, but I mean this can obviously the UI can be better, but I mean your discovery, your gap, all this kind of jazz. But what I'm saying here is you can you could have an agent that would run this and then would send flags back. I'm just thinking in your like in your world here, you would take this data and then you could just do some yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I would just it was just like, yo, uh hey man, based on your sales calls yesterday, uh you got you scored really low on here. Uh, here is what I built for you. Uh, please read it, train with it, or take a step further. You just have because we're we're we have AI voice kind of about to release on cook. I would just have the the the closer role play with the AI voice based on the trans like Jordan would become an actual agent they can speak with, then they would use that scoring and be like, yo, man, you're falling off track here. Let's let's roleplay on this thing, right? I'm curious with that in mind, right?

Agentic Coaching Powered By Sales Calls

Darren

Because like it's actually funny how I always say this, it's like because we have that analysis. My kind of view on sales is that you should never change multiple things at once, there's too many variables, just change one thing, right? So if we just open, we just worked on the opener, let's say, and how we started the call. My kind of thesis is like, dude, like ours is like$97 a seat per per seat. There's no enterprise, it's just all out of the box because our competitor has an enterprise feature. That's the reason why ours out of the box. What I'm trying to say here is the angle that I go at is like, hey, you don't need coaching, even though we do fucking sales coaching. Yeah, you could just use this instead. But my question to you is like, what role does coaching consulting have in this context, in your context?

SPEAKER_00

So oh bro, it's it's where all the money is gonna be made. So I'll give you this, I'll give you this thesis. I think what you're building, what you're maybe maybe this could be good for you. I think I want you to think bigger for Aura. I want you to realize that what you're building, it's imagine this. Imagine Hyros, right? I pay high rose thousands of dollars a month, right? And there's probably thousands of businesses paying them thousands of dollars a month. Imagine if high rose, uh, they know everything that's happening on the best accounts and the shittiest accounts, right? Think of it, what would be their next move? They're probably gonna build an AI that's that can do marketing for you. Because they have everything. So, in your case for Aura, the move is not, you're not, you're not racing to get users. Like, I want you to think bigger. Yeah, this is good, but the real game, once you have all the sales data, guess who's gonna own that data? You're gonna be able to go back to these businesses, say guys, you guys are so bad at your job, but I've spent I've looked at all the best playbooks around how to manage sales teams, and I've built these AI employees. Now, you're not building a sales agency, you're not building a da-da-da-da-da. No, no, no, no. We're gonna build a fully agentic sales firm that takes all the data from Aura, your enterprise deal, is gonna be like, yo, guys, we're gonna train your entire sales team. And by the way, we're not even gonna charge 20%, just give us a base, five percent of what we bring in on top of what you guys do, or give us a 10k a month base, and it's gonna be fucking expensive. Not some the broke people, keep them on the little monthly thing, but those guys who are willing to take things to the next level, let's say they're 100k a month, they want to do go to a million. Hey, we're happy to train your entire sales team, and we do not take a piece of the cut until your show up rate goes up, your close rate goes up, cash per call goes up, and all we want is as every unlock we do, we just want a piece of that.

Darren

And you can sell the data too, right? You could also like you know, the insight from the data, you know, like data reports you might say that's oh yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Information, yeah. A daily imagine a daily Slack agent that says, Yo, here hey, by the way, not only do you get aura, but you also get a sales agent, but for that you maybe pay 500 bucks a month, 497, you know, go straight up.

Darren

That would be first yeah, fucking hell, man. Because like your brain with this is really interesting because you it's uh it's interesting, you think like agent first. It's funny, like that's like yeah, that's like the way you're your mic, yeah. Because if you look at like industry reports, right? If I was to do an industry report, then you might get something on like healthcare or whatever, like price of like insulin's gone up or some shit. You know, you would have seen those things go back in a day. I'm looking right now at just like I'll pull up an admin that admin dashboard, it's like we've had 2,000 sales calls this month, and there are like you know, they're biz op, health, uh personal development, relationships, all that kind of all that those kind of offers. So, what I'm trying to say is per an index level, if you were able to index based on industry and niche, we could come out with industry reports that's not done by because like I in my head I kind of wanted to.

SPEAKER_00

It's proprietary data, it's proprietary data.

Darren

Yeah, but you don't need to go and do shit. Do you get me? Because back in the day, you'd have to build a report, have Jenny from fucking compliance review it, all this kind of shit. Whereas now it can just be created and just dished out, and then likewise with yourself, because the data is the most valuable thing, right? Which is the reason why I really, really, really wanted to reverse this.

Bugs, Edge Cases, And Shipping Quality

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, I think you have, I think you you have something. I think you got in because you like sales, but I think you you figure it out, you built something because there's really a few things that really right now matters in AI. You can you can vibe code any app, you can vibe code cook, you can literally take a screenshot. Someone who's watching this can take a screenshot and go and cloud code and say, give me this. But what they cannot vibe code is one, the customer relationship, the distribution. The next thing is they cannot create the data. Like, who cares that you can vibe code a sales agent? What you don't have is a 2,000 sales calls from Aura. That's what makes the sales agent be infinitely better. And I would one sales agent is worthless, or a sales uh coach might be worth a thousand bucks a month.

Darren

That's why I asked you about the the bugs, right? Because like, dude, like we we get a lot of bugs, right? I was like, we got a good uh report system, like it comes in from like intercom, and intercom AI is pretty solid. We have a shit ton of observability in the app, so like the schedulers get pounded with like uh like an AI agent like all day, every day, just to see if there are any issues, you know. So, what I'm trying to say here is like that goes into our engineers then, and because my background was in uh a high tech company called Revolute. I do have a good eye for really you worked at Revolute for fucking two and a half years, bro. I got I came out with scares down my face, my back, man. I never got a dude. It's the it's the hardest company in the world to work for.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, man.

Darren

I remember joining a company that's six billion valuation, and then when I left it was 32, and now it's like 75 or some shit.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they're killing it. I I I did a study on on that company, I was learning about it really so.

Darren

Yeah, cool, uh crazy dude, two of them, but uh you know, they did it very well. But I say all this because that was my that's my question to you is like what I've found myself is like like 100% this is like absolutely insane. However, it still gets down to product whereby like sometimes the button doesn't work, this bug comes up and so on. So, like, how do you how do you handle like one improvement to bugs with such a small team?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it comes down to where so I'll explain for you the re the mo your emotion is a little different from ours, right? Because for us, every every client is his own has its own like pod. So everything that they're dealing with, we're dealing it with them, right? And also to fix a lot of these bugs, I don't know why what your team of engineers um maybe it's maybe like a lot of because you're doing a uh you're intaking a lot of new data, right? So maybe that could be that is is it breaking because a lot of new things are happening, or is it breaking because okay, someone hasn't used this button yet or this feature yet? So therefore when they click on it and then they it breaks. Like, what is an example of like a bug?

Darren

Because I'm uh I'll show you. So, like basically, like this is like uh this is like project update. So this is running, this is a continuous sync, this is a CI, so continuous integration, and like things get pushed to production. And then if I look at like a bug report here, you know, custom logo button, custom colors like wasn't updating, and then this is being routed the wrong way. What was this? This is the same bug as there I mentioned before. Sorry, uh yeah, call call calendar cancel uh like move server. Wrong yeah, moves to like a wrong uh approach. So this integration actually in the wrong wrong area. So what I'm saying here is like this is a lot of this is driven by the cons by the team, yeah, or me, uh, or something will go kind of wrong. And then like so this so this is all integrated. So Claude is also integrated with this in terms of so why so quick question.

SPEAKER_00

Um, I'll kind of like explain this. Why don't you guys build a bot that fixes bots, bit these bugs?

Darren

That's a good question for Imran. Like, I guess we we do for some of the observability, is what I mean by this is like it will cut the scheduler is a perfect example because that just batters so much volume that like that will like shit will like do like AWS will fucking there'll be a problem with some of that, you know. It's just like it's just like dumb shit, man. You know what I mean? It's like dumb shit.com, just like really, really stupid stuff. So that's one side, but then the other thing is uh improvements. So like this is where we're like actually changing shit continuously. So like something will come in like this, and this is driven by the so this is a critical, what was it, change of colour of the note taker not joined. So yeah, the note-taker gets added under GDPR into into meets, but in Zoom it goes in automatically, but then some people like don't remember to add it on meets, so that's that leads to like a human error. So, and then look, this is all this is all changed, and this comes into linear, and then linear works in that way. So, what I'm trying to say here is like I don't I'm open to feedback, obviously.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I mean I think so. For you, I think for your for your platform, it's a little different because you're taking in so much um so much input every day. So I feel like I guess there's a lot of uh surface area for things breaking, but at the same time, I'm not really sure why. Because for us, like you know, we also have a lot of users, and we have a lot of shit that could go wrong, right? Way more than than for you. So I don't know why we don't get that much um we get bugs, of course, but we don't, but not in this and not at the rate at which where we're like, oh my god, this is on unsustainable or whatever, right?

Darren

Yeah, and it wouldn't be necessarily unsustainable, it's just interesting because you have a lot of edge cases, correct? You know, whereas like this, there is no edge case, right? Like the edge case in this is just um does a you know, uh, because a lot of it's quantitative data in our context, whereas yours is qualitative, whereby a lot of it's interpretation, correct, correct.

SPEAKER_00

So for us, the way we do it is uh before we ship like what I walk you through 3.0, we're about to ship it, but before we ship it, we actually have to build on it, and I have to document and step by step how things could work and how things would break. So almost like let's say the the build offer build that I walk you through earlier, for us to build that, we had to like trial it out so much, and we had to actually work one-on-one with each client going through it, so we see all the issues, and then we're like, hey guys, here is the structure of what it should look like. So it was almost like, okay, maybe I think this is good. Because us is qualitative stuff, we actually start first with consultants, and then they build the perfect output and the perfect input and the perfect flow. A lot of it I'm also involved in it, like actively involved into building the thing, and then I ship it back to the engineering team, and then they ship it, and then they then they bring it back, then we judge it, and then we're like, okay, cool, this is good, let's keep it out of the way. So it's never that engineers ship things that are not wanted by us or the customer. So then we have to first build, okay, what does it look like in the perfect world? So therefore, that removes, and then the bugs is gonna be like, oh, you know, the content system is down. Uh okay, perfect. Let's just figure out how to fix it. But it's it's always and then also another thing we do with our expectations with our clients is that like shit is gonna break. Like, hey, like we're trying to do all this thing. Uh like I hope you I hope you know that like uh I hope your expectation is that you know it's gonna take us time to fully flesh it out. So it's not perfect, things break. Um but we just you know just wake up and cook and shit.

Darren

And I think yeah, what's interesting there is just about well, I think there's a new another layer here, which is your nuance of the industry and running these offers over the years, is what most people don't have. And then obviously the other part of this too is you're an incredibly product-focused person, like software product person, you know, from when you first met. Yeah, I know obviously you were you were nowhere near where you are now, right? In terms of like that gap you've you've filled, but you still had an insane. And I think one thing I wanted to run by you as well is something that I was always super impressed by you is like you never taught like the info guys, like the info, like you were like you have a nice car and all that kind of shit, but you were never you were never like an info guy. Like I remember like you're eating like fucking scramble egg watching like Schamat, you know, and it's like like I think that those things have kind of really paved the way in now, but even now, you know, it's like your influences have not been the influences in Miami.

SPEAKER_00

No, no, no, no, no. And and I think that and I think that if I would have just been all in info and gotten a lot of my insights from info, I I think I probably would be out of business today. Um, and I even to understand the AI stuff, man. Like I think I probably, you know, I made this tweet the other day. I spent probably two, three hours a day just consuming, just learning, right? But because in the info space, it's really it's there isn't really once you've spent like one year in it, you kind of like get enough of it. And if there's a new strategy, it's like everybody then jumps on it. So you don't really need to be actively learning, consuming. But I got really lucky with this, you know. I think I'm I'm I'm curious in a way that I'm curious for things that are hard and things that I'm just curious. So it led me down this path of just you know, maybe going and listening to the chamaths, maybe going and listening to a lot of these AI startups. There's so many AI startups today, and listening to these founders, right? Um, people going at to different layers of the stack with AI, right? Understanding the importance of energy, understanding, you know, GPUs versus uh, you know, maybe Brock's type of chips. And then then you understand that, then you understand, okay, perfect. Inference is where everything is gonna go. Well, then inference, if inference is gonna be the main bread and butter of AI, then that means that owning the labor that leverages that inference or that behaves on it is a good goal. But then you get into the AI app layer, and then you're like, fuck, all the software companies are losing all their money because they're all deterministic software, like like an old GHL, right? I think GHL was worth you know nine figures or multiple nine figures. But if they do not adapt to this agentic AI layer, I promise you this that company is gonna go back to zero. Because right now, as we're building with hook, I cannot tell you how many clients do not want to do a shit because GHL is complicated. Or think about any other uh CRM you can think of, bro. It's like I have to go click this. I'm like, bro, I want AI to just cook, but I can't because it's built for a human, right?

Darren

Right, and it it's it's so funny, man, because I don't even know, like you know, it takes I don't know, back when people used to do things, you would be like, Okay, I gotta build out my CRM and I'm gonna create this app your flows and make sure that the call comes into the lead, sorry, call comes into call booked, the lead hit the form goes into the lead stage. Whereas what happened, that was what we just did, and then we did a pretty decent job. But what happened was people shot their pants and lost their mind, did nothing, and never used the thing at all. Exactly like that's literally where the insight is that if you're making under like 100k a month, you're just using nothing. And if you're if you're over it, you're using it like the wrong way. And it's actually you'll you'll find this very interesting. The con the communications we're having, so a few of the big sales coaches said this to me, and it all kind of came to tuition. It was like sub 100k a month, they use nothing. So just use Aura in that instance, get on with it. Between 100 and 500, they kind of think that they know better, whereby they have something that's janky as fuck. So like some GHL into a StenFlow thing, and it's like all over the place, and and then the automations are kind of like off, and then 500k above, it's just a massive Frankenstein thing where it's like they're like we call calls fucking apples, so you we gotta make sure they're called apples, just like really strange shit, you know. So it was like that that was the hurt, that's the hurdle of like actual B2B. It's like humans think that they're better than what they are and created a set of rules that are fundamentally retarded. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Webinar Maths And Lead Quality Fixes

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and that's why it's really hard to scale, right? Or that's why it's you s you then end up with like, oh my god, we're doing well. Then you scale a channel that does not actually fucking work, then you burn all the money on marketing, then you beef up your back end all because you looked at you had a good month, but then you don't actually you don't even know if you had a good month or why, because all your data is broken, and then you just end up making this. It's this is like the info space is literally built on on. I don't know if I if I can it's like infospace is built on people who have the truth to succeed, but because of they don't know how to go squeeze that truth from the actual organization they're running, then they build this data thing, this layer, this error table, this GHL, this HubSpot, then they move from thing to thing, and then they're like, My God, and then they add high-ros to it, and then it's like fuck, I don't know how to read high-ros, and then they're like, Oh yeah, we this worked, and then they go tar, then it doesn't work. They're like, Okay, let me go buy this coaching from this person, then let me go buy this coaching. It's literally coaching of the info space is built from people who don't understand that like all your success comes from one person saw you, they resonated with your message, they learned about your product, they decided to do business with you, and then maybe they won't want to keep then they have another bottleneck, so then you build another product to solve that. That's the core of it. But then people try to complex complexify the whole thing and into a Frankenstein thing, and then they get completely confused, and uh now they just think they need more information. Then this person tells them, Hey, you should do this strategy, and then you should do this strategy. I'm like, bro, what the fuck are you saying? I shut down my coaching business. By the way, for me, like if there is one thing that I've stopped doing in the past six months, I when I want to grow more, I don't look at YouTube, I don't look at a coach, I don't look at someone's webinar strategy, I don't look, I look at I literally went back to 2021 data. I said, when did I make the most? When did I have the biggest spurts of revenue? I went from 80k to 180k a month, from 150k a month to you know like 300k a month in in the next month. I looked back into that history, spent literally an entire day looking at data, looking at the customers on board in a single month. I look at all the cohorts, I was like, what were the trends around success? I was like, holy shit, the answer was always in front of me. Double down on it, replicated it. We're gonna do this every fucking week, right? And maybe I don't know if you want to talk about this, but like you know, doing workshops, doing webinars, the only thing I do fuck VSL funnels, fuck everything, you know, double down on what works.

Darren

War me through that, Mike, because you've always been cranking webinars, and to be fair, we did we've been doing them since the end of last year. Yeah, um I I will say, from my own opinion, from my own experience, sorry, that we got them up and running really quickly, and because I've just recorded a shit ton of stuff and whatever, I found it very natural, but I found it hard to go from good to great. Yeah, yeah. I have found it hard, and like and we spent 50k last week on the recent one, yeah, and it's like good cost per lead, but then like shitty fucking quality of leads, yeah, quality of leads was kind of fucking shit. Well, yeah, it was definitely shit. And it was like, well, I I was because I was at Imman's Mastermind last month, and it was the first time I've ever seen this concept, so I have to mention it. They had a chart that was add inefficiency, like when does when do you cross that threshold whereby all extra dollars spent means nothing? And I don't know how the fuck you charted it, but basically, I I was thinking of that because I think we spent like 50k a week, and I was like, Yeah, we shouldn't have done that. Yeah, no, we'd gone we'd gone past the threshold. Um, so how do you think about this? How do you think about your webinars and shit just in general?

SPEAKER_00

So there is this concept with it that's where it gets really tricky, man. I really have started doing the approaching at first. I thought the same thing. I was like, you know, let me go on ads. It's really hard to go from being YouTube organic, maybe IG organic, and then webinar compared to ads to a webinar and then to to pitch. I think there's really for me, this is kind of like how I look at a webinar flow. Um, it's like attention. Where are you gonna get the attention? Is it gonna be from ads only, or is it gonna be also a little bit organic? And then you multiply it by the workshop, how many people show up, um multiplied by how many people are there when you do the pitch, right? Then you have the amount of calls that are scheduled, the amount of calls that are taken, and then the amount of you know cash per call that equals revenue. If I do get attention from YouTube to a webinar, I can do a hundred grand a day with like a hundred people attending that webinar, like that's how insane it is, right? If I get the same a hundred people to on ads, first of all, a lot of them won't even fucking show up. That's a fucking shit show, right? So, how do you get them to show up? We create a community for every webinar. Every person has to become a community. So we have uh webinar webinar communities per event, so I can keep track of how many leads register, how many join the community, right? Okay, perfect. Let's say we have a week, perfect. What are the and then I'll track based on the best webinar, what is it the thing that they consumed? So I try to trickle things like content. So maybe I'll send them a YouTube video, maybe I'll send them this, maybe I'll send them that, right? Or it could even be what am I consuming that I shared that then was like my god, this is really sick. Boom. But then the other thing too is I've stopped pushing ads. Like I'll I I've stopped really wanting to just do the direct response to this and that, and instead, I like to do shorts that then get really good reach organically, and then I'll just take them because then I can see the quality of followers that it's bringing in. I'll be like, yo, let's run this ad as an ad, purely ad related, not even a CTA, just raw dogging it straight to the event. So I use the performing creative that demonstrates our product or whatever, get them to the event, and then what's good is that I can then go back and I can say, Oh shit, this is nice. Like this person came from this reel being run as an ad. So that's one way we kind of like try to solve the quality of the audience on meta. It's like it's a shit show.

Darren

And did you use a WhatsApp group or was it like a Discord group or some shit? They're getting fucking tough as fuck though, right? The crack. I thought they were getting a ton of them shut down. Like there's WhatsApp group agencies now that are running those for people because they're always getting shut down. Yeah, and it costs so much.

SPEAKER_00

I think uh we we do the uh I don't know how they go about doing it, but we create like the there's like these you create like um I don't know how the team does it, but they create like these communities, and then within each, like you have up to like I think within each group you have to up to 2,000 people, so we create like different ones every time. Uh, but we haven't uh gotten maybe because we don't really do crazy stuff in it and they're not super big. Um, but yeah, we haven't had any shutdown, anyone shut down, but the phone numbers might get shut down, right? Like you might have an issue with the WhatsApp number, like hey, stop spamming people. Maybe in that case, yeah, we've had a number uh or two shut down, but then we don't do too much um spamming um in there.

Darren

Okay, so you have the angle. Are you so what what's the offer that you give in the webinar?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, we sell, yeah, uh yeah, we sell no, I give them the price, and maybe this could be something that we uh would love to hear how you're pricing things, but we um we sell a yearly license, um 12.8, then we give them a discounted price if they um if they take uh up on it 7.8. We then give them to book a call. I give the price up front, you book a call, join this cohort, up to you.

Darren

For for a cook specifically, so that's with the software.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's the only way to make it work, bro. You're the unit economics cannot you cannot scale on cold unless you're selling something expensive. You mean info or software, sorry?

Darren

Same shit. What we were doing was we have an offer that's a 6k, we've one that's 20, so we basically run one front end, depending on where they're at, like if they're more on the lower end or higher end. When we sell to a call, the calls are good. Like calls are that's our bread and butter, right? Like we've good on the calls, you got a really good sales team. That's that's our zone of genius, man. Like, marketing isn't a resone of genius, the calls are, and then we fucking swapped it to open cart, which was a retarded idea. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was retarded.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, go on going back on that.

Darren

Oh, oh because because the the the idea was to like uh liquidate, like let's say 0.5 or 0.8, and then everything again, sell book calls, book calls, yeah, and then the ascension rate, then all this kind of stuff. So yeah, that was obviously a dog's dinner, but look, you got you gotta learn sometimes, you know. Um the other thing then was so this is this is actually an interesting conversation. It's kind of more of like um how do you actually build a software company, which is obviously Aura is a different entity, different company, different setup. But because of that, selling things together is actually very complicated. Correct. From like a from like an accounting perspective. So what we were doing for the Aura launch, which would actually worked really fucking well to be honest, which you do it again, is like we ran a webinar for it, helping people fix their biggest sales bottleneck. We sold the annual plan, which is$1,000 per seat. Yeah, and then they add their seats as they want to, then as a result, you know, because the goal is they're making more money, they're adding more people, they're putting in their setters, their closures, a sales manager, yeah, and then it builds from there, they move to an annual plan and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so like that's that's like the logic. Now, obviously, right, this is this is tough, but that was the mental model. Now, what we're looking to doing is like how do we wrap both of them in?

SPEAKER_00

So it's like I would I would personally double down on keep selling the thousand dollar, bro.

Darren

So this was the thing that we were we we do in person, which is it's a thousand dollar per seat, done for you set up, and a sales consultation, and then the sales consultation then is obviously the consulting on the on the back of it, you know. So it's like we can cannibalize it or we can discount it, whatever that may be, yeah, in into the other side of it. And it's it's worked really, really well. It's just that yeah, that has worked really, really, really, really well. This has actually been really good.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because I think what you're what this is the thing. This is why we'll go back to like you just look at what worked. This is the thing. So sometimes you make something work, but then you're like, okay, let me go back to selling this other thing. I say don't sell 1k, never sell it cheaper. If I would even increase the monthly thing to 197. But if you buy the yearly thing, you get for 997, right? And then maybe you give them a little playbook that gives them how to ramp up sales teams, maybe build appointment setting teams, how to actually build the data, give them more value. Sell everybody on a webby, we'll give you one onboarding call, one setup call, a thousand aura for a year, the playbook, and one setup. That's 997 worth of value. You can churn those up, you can ship 10 people a day, get those 10 people onboarded a day. That's 10 hours of onboarding. We're good. Ship that. These customers, guess what? They're gonna be the same customers you sell on your back end. If you think about it, so your front end, if you would have done the 1k on this 50k ad spend you did, I'm sure this ad-to-cart thing would have actually fucking worked. Because I'll give you an example. When when we built Cook, then we built the truth engine. I try to do kind of like a similar thing. I was like, you know what? What if instead of selling cold to a super high ticket thing, I sold them a cheaper thing. So we split Cook into two things, which is right now it's actually still split. The truth engine is one product, and then Cook AI is its own the operating system. We said we're gonna sell the truth engine upfront. So I did a webinar, multiple of them actually, and I would sell the I would I would sell it instead of let's say 1k one 1.9k a year, I said you if you sign up to It's only four nine seven. Um we have in the in the following three weeks from that four nine seven webby to a four nine seven product, I think just on a front end we did like a hundred and thirty K in three weeks. And that liquidated, guess what? That liquidated all our ads. And then guess what? Most people don't just want the insight, the information, the truth, but they want to actually build on top of it. So they're like, yo, uh, what the fuck can I do with this truth? Oh, say this. Get on all actually, everybody who booked, who bought the truth would automatically get the call, the onboarding call or the setup call would be with a closer. That's exactly the model.

Darren

Yeah. So fuck. What other see you're yeah, is there anything else that you have there that you're kind of like missing? I think the only kind of nuance for us is the fact that they are separate businesses, so it's about just making it from a positioning perspective, making it simple, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's what it you gotta make it simple, you know.

SPEAKER_00

But I think uh I think by for me, like client acquisition cook is it because I think for you, I think you might by saying there's two companies, you're adding friction. There's like bro, winning is all that matters. So who cares if it's working companies? You know what I mean? So for me, I did not incorporate cook separately yet. I have not, so it's like, bro, I literally built the thing. Like, let's start cooking, let's start shipping. Because if I would have gone into the formality of like, okay, I need this company to be this, I need this, bro. I don't know if any of them are gonna survive. So I just made it work however it needed to be to work. Um, but for you, I think funny enough, if I don't know how your sales coaching or the sales uh everything on the back end is working, but I think the beautiful thing is anybody interested in aura is gonna be at the stage of having business problems that are actually worth solving for a premium. You're selling actually a product that only resonates with people who have money problems, like who already have money and then now have them have problems from that money they're making. They are now struggling to go to the next so literally your product qualifies people for the back end thing automatically. So it should be your front end thing and every day, every week, every month, just do a little webby, sell people on the thing on the yearly thing, so you can liquidate your ads and it's worth your time, get 50 users a week, or 25, who cares? Perfect, run it up, and then you can gradually scale.

Darren

It's positioning, yeah, 100%. How did you how do you run multiple webinars? Are you running the same webinar just different times and shit? Like, is there something specific you're doing there? Are they all together?

SPEAKER_00

Same webinar every fucking time. I change things, but same webinar. But I mean, so it's a fully cold audience you're hitting. Not so here's the thing with with cold, warm. People are distracted, even if they're warm. Who cares if they're warm if they haven't become a customer?

Darren

Dude, everyone says anyone who's running webinars at a high level says the exact same thing. I don't know who said that to me. I don't know who said that to me recently, exact same thing. So it's like that that's that was actually the sorry, the the example was Shelby, was like Shelby's running the same how to get into high ticket sales every Wednesday, and it's like, whoa, are people not getting bored of it?

SPEAKER_00

It's like, no, as long as it's valuable and you're dropping bangers, bro. Like, I've seen people join three, four webinars before they bought. And it's the same fucking webinar. I'm like, bro, how many times are you gonna show up to this? Either give me your money or just block me. But like, why you keep showing up? But it just works because I think what happens is that some things have to be relearned over and over again. And I may say the same thing this this time, and then maybe they join a few weeks later and the same thing said the same thing the same way, but it just hits different, maybe because of the tone I use or whatever, and they're like, Oh, now I get it. So repetition, man, repetition. And also, this I I've seen this new the reason why I think webinars are currently working is because the the brain of humans are so fried that you cannot get into. I'm sure I don't know how people who use VSL phonos are working right now. Nobody watches videos on the internet. I don't know if you see this, but there is a trend where nobody consumes content.

Darren

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of AI, right? They're that they're like the how-to searches are on Chat GPT that everyone's like just tell me the answer.

SPEAKER_00

So, but a workshop is inherently scarce in nature, it happens at one time, at a it ends at a specific time, you miss it, you miss out. And biologically, you know, from evolution, you scarcity is the thing that drives us to what to actually saying, okay, I want this, let me pay attention. If you don't have a scarce behind the mechanism, the piece of content, you're gonna share it in the world, it's just gonna go just disappear in the sea of ocean. You know, everybody billionaires are creating content, broke people are creating content, rich people are creating content, babies are TikTok making content. Like, where's the attention? You can't get attention until you yeah.

Content Systems Without Killing Creativity

Darren

I'd love to chat as well about your YouTube. So like you just constantly have been hitting it over the years. What's your what's your process on that? Because it it looks super super process oriented, but then when you get into the details, like a lot of it is like loser charts.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's it's I still don't think I have a proper YouTube is really I think it's I really need to get good at get better at YouTube, actually. Funny enough. I'm looking for hiring um someone to kind of like lead it, uh, because I I think is the packaging, um the the the structure of the videos, like you know how you said that the guy from Ali Abdao. I don't I don't have that, and if the moments I've had that, I've never wanted to follow the script. I just like fuck off. Like I just want to create content because the moment I try to create stuff for the algorithm, man, it dri it dries my soul up, and it's like man, I don't want to make this stuff just to make it, I want to create content of things that I'm curious about, and whoever resonates with it resonates with it. But um, but I think I should step step it up. But I don't have a prop, like a crazy YouTube play, to be honest. If I'm honest, I I don't I don't really nah.

Darren

True, but I think it's still where a lot of your like thousand true fans come from, right? Because you there are like a lot of diehard surge fans, you know, and it's like you you have like a really fucking good reputation of people that are like just followed you, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know who I was speaking to recently, and I was like, oh, like I'm super excited to have a podcast surgeon. Like, oh guys, like a legend. It's like you have a good name, so it's that the people that are watching are coming back. And I think if I could even just show you something, it's like I I don't think you need a lot of stuff, I just think you need a little bit of I think everyone needs a bit of more finesse, right? So I just kind of show you and it and like we all just need a little bit more of so I'll just show you even this if I share my screen. Like, I'm obviously like a fucking yapper, and like that obviously is a good and a bad thing because I don't like struggle with action, but I struggle with being like clinical. So when we brought in like a new copywriter, it's like basically the the idea was like, why is your content not selling clients? So I could like word solid some shit, right? And then I would come, he would come back and be like, Okay, look, let's just get this part down, and let's just have like this part down, and then you can kind of run off on your own, right? And it's like, okay, who is the enemy in this story? What's like the psychology we're trying to do? What's our mechanism? What's it you know, what's problem agitation? Say this shit. Here's like the bullet points. Like, that's a good example. The other one was like a re-offer strategy, so we do this thing whereby we teach our clients how to go to people who book call didn't close and run like a very specific offer at the end of the month, it's last day of the month. So we kind of like built on it's a fucking everyone's idea is like a fucking harmosey idea, to be honest, right? But he will have like these points being like you need to emphasize these points, and then I can I can record and we can benchmark against it. And this why that's important is just because like I've just been doing this like yourself for a while, and the way that it was explained to me actually was there's a guy called Gosha, really, really cool dude. He's like a YouTube strategist for business owners, not for fucking random people. And he was like, if you're getting 100 views, well, if you add in scripting and storytelling, you'll get that same hundred plus twenty, and if you add in production value, you'll get the same 120 plus 30. So now you'll get 150. Same idea, it just is a little bit more scripted, a bit more cohesive, and it just looks a little bit prettier. And he was like, There is no because you're not going to get less views because it sounds better, and the way he said it to me like that, I just kind of instantly saw more value in slowing down a small bit. So our our kind of I'm not saying our definitely not perfect, but from Monday to Friday, we'll write these ideas, finalize them, and then on Saturday we'll record them, and we just rinse that model then. So look, you know, on a Saturday we might have two YouTube videos and we might have like 20 ads, but it's a lot better than kind of you know getting up there making shit up, word soliding and kind of fucking it up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think for me, I don't yet have a proper schedule. I do have it, but not perfect. I don't really have a consistent schedule, to be honest. Like sometimes I just riff off uh whenever I have uh ideas. Um quick question. So do you but I guess you're still shooting every day, but more of that structured content, or do you shoot on Saturdays all of your content?

Darren

No, I'm kind of shooting more on like a day where I'll have a bit more space, right? Because like just with our just with our team, it's like I have morning calls and I'll have uh evening calls because it's late for me now. But then during the day, it's like I'm working on things and I'm probably just in the gym. Like if I'm gonna if I'm gonna go to the gym, it's gonna be during the day. So then I I don't have like that free creativity space. Now I can I can do it, but I mean it's it's just not gonna be great. And we've we've recorded a lot in my office too, but I feel like we're getting kind of you gotta mix things up, man. Like it gets dry, it gets stale, you know. So I like taking a bit of time on Saturday, it could be at home or it could be somewhere. Like I'm speaking at Will's mastermind on Friday, but we're staying up in the north in Bali, so we're gonna bring our equipment, and then when I'm there, it's like, well, fuck it, we may as well just record something. I already have a script ready, and it's like, let's do something kind of cool, and I enjoy it, you know. Um you guys don't want this shit to be a chore.

SPEAKER_00

I know, and for me, bro, oh my god, like this is the issue with this is why I haven't I've had a really hard time finding someone who can make this fun for me, who understands how I think and who understands what excites me, and then finds ways to make the machine fit my world, not me be the YouTube machine or the TikTok, like the shorts, like even for me, like the short stuff, bro. Getting me to sit down to speak for 60 seconds, I will not do it. Fuck off. Even if it means I stay broke for a lifetime, so be it. But give me a camera and I have a thought, okay, I'll yep, right? Give me my phone, let me pull out my phone, let me do a um a two-minute um kind of like riff on on IG shorts, I'll do it. But like sit there, like da da da da ah, it's really hard, man.

Darren

It's not native, right? Do you get me? It's like you're not a robot, you're a very expressive person, you care about what you're doing. So, like, if someone handed you a script, to be honest, man, if you take a really step back, like it would just be kind of shit, right? So, this is where I think the I think what I've kind of taken a step back on is like the idea and the the idea has to come from me. The concept, so the packaging can come from someone who understands YouTube and so on, and then the script can come from a writer, and then a production, the recording obviously comes from me. So I'm at the front front end and the back end of the chain. So it's like I just know this to be true. So even at the at the weekend, we're doing lots of changes to the CSM structure in our in our business. I have a video being like I'm rebuilding something right now, and I just voice noted it, and it's like what's actually happening, and then as given to a guy, he cleans it up, puts a bit more structure on it. And I think that makes his life easier, but then it also makes my expectations, it's like a relationship, right? My expectations are a lot different as a result, so we're not we're basically not like cooking it effectively because it it is hard, man. Yeah, yeah, it is hard, especially this is the thing, right? Good to great is a is a is this a is this a yeah fucking lifetime.

Focus, Resistance, And Real Greatness

SPEAKER_00

Um but I think we have to choose our wars too, you know. I think one what happens online because we get so inundated with like paths, I think we just gotta stick to what works and what you're you what you can what you can actually see a path to greatness instead of trying to do everything. That's something that for me I'm like, I don't I don't want to do everything, I just want to do what I think I have a chance at winning at, and then let me do it.

Darren

If something is causing you resistance, so whether that's like obviously short form or just something else, you would just be like, fuck this, we're not gonna double down on this side.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because funny enough, like I know right now guys on YouTube going crazy, right? I also know guys on shorts who are going crazy. By you trying to play both sides of the game, you technically are competing on two fronts, so therefore you never really get good at any of them, right? So so for me, I've really kind of like, and also it's good for your mental health to just be like, I'm just gonna be good at this one day, I'm gonna double down on this. And I I say no to this because the moment you still consider it is it this where this tug, you know, this internal kind of like friction where it's like fuck, I should I know I should be doing this. No, you shouldn't, you don't, it's not that you know you should, it's because you still haven't said no to it. It's like you should are you running a uh this business, this business, do you have this person in your company who's not doing shit? You know that you should probably fire them. It's the moment you say you cut it, you cut the line, life comes back in. Then you can actually go all in. Um, and I think that for a lot of people, it's not that they're not great, is they're just good at a lot of things, which means they're great at nothing.

Darren

Yeah, so they don't give themselves the opportunity to be great at something.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like greatness is a is a focused game, it's not about and you funny enough. Like for me, I always have this mental thing, which is like, okay, YouTube, cool. Like, is it really that hard? No, but just that I have not yet focused on it. There is nothing that you like, X is booming. You can build a billion dollar company just off of X, you can build one off of Meta, you can build one off of YouTube, but by trying to be everywhere, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't be on shorts, right? Because shorts is good, but figure out your way of doing shorts, not the way of someone.

Final Reflections And Next Meet Up

Darren

You know what I mean? Yeah, it's such a good point, man. Such a such a good point. Like, I actually spoke with Ed Lawrence last week, and one of the questions I had for him, I didn't even get a chance. He's like a famous YouTube strategist, moved into more business stuff now. Like, Ed doesn't have Instagram. He followed me on Instagram the other day, he has like 500 followers or something. The guy's built like huge pages on YouTube, and if you speak to him, dude, like even his coaching, he sets like this crazy high bar for people of like how much they need to consume. Now they've committed to becoming great on YouTube or trying to, and like, dude, like he was talking about like two and a half hours a day on YouTube to really understand like different parameters and all this kind of stuff, and it's like, yeah, it's fucking clear what he's really good at what he does. It's fucking it's super super clear. So that's that's a that's the that's actually a good thing, though, right? Because it means that you can actually scale anything. Um, you can scale and you can put anything in there, anything you can put your focus into anything and get a result out of anything, um up to the up to a certain degree for sure, as well, right? Yeah, yeah, man. You're you're a legend, bro. It's 11 o'clock here. I think this is a good point to cut it for tonight. But um, dude, you're an absolute legend. Uh I'm gonna make it my business to see you this year. So whether it's gonna be uh Marbere, Cape Town, somewhere cool. Um but yeah, I think it's long overdue, man.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think we gotta do an in person one and do a banger. Um we should do a um a Joe Rogan type of podcast where we just go off for two hours, three hours.